Ocean.
With the change in the geological structure of the plains the character
of the landscape likewise altered. While rambling up some of the
narrow and rocky defiles, I could almost have fancied myself
transported back again to the barren valleys of the island of St. Jago.
Among the basaltic cliffs I found some plants which I had seen nowhere
else, but others I recognised as being wanderers from Tierra del Fuego.
These porous rocks serve as a reservoir for the scanty rain-water; and
consequently on the line where the igneous and sedimentary formations
unite, some small springs (most rare occurrences in Patagonia) burst
forth; and they could be distinguished at a distance by the
circumscribed patches of bright green herbage.
April 27th.--The bed of the river became rather narrower and hence the
stream more rapid. It here ran at the rate of six knots an hour. From
this cause, and from the many great angular fragments, tracking the
boats became both dangerous and laborious.
This day I shot a condor. It measured from tip to tip of the wings,
eight and a half feet, and from beak to tail, four feet. This bird is
known to have a wide geographical range, being found on the west coast
of South America, from the Strait of Magellan along the Cordillera as
far as eight degrees north of the equator. The steep cliff near the
mouth of the Rio Negro is its northern limit on the Patagonian coast;
and they have there wandered about four hundred miles from the great
central line of their habitations in the Andes. Further south, among
the bold precipices at the head of Port Desire, the condor is not
uncommon; yet only a few stragglers occasionally visit the sea-coast. A
line of cliff near the mouth of the Santa Cruz is frequented by these
birds, and about eighty miles up the river, where the sides of the
valley are formed by steep basaltic precipices, the condor reappears.
From these facts it seems that the condors require perpendicular
cliffs. In Chile, they haunt, during the greater part of the year, the
lower country near the shores of the Pacific, and at night several
roost together in one tree; but in the early part of summer, they
retire to the most inaccessible parts of the inner Cordillera, there to
breed in peace.
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