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144
AUCKLAND ISLANDS.
[Chap. VI.
1840
to its summit. Another hill in the west rises to nearly one thousand feet.
The following observations on the vegetable productions are by Dr. Hooker:—
"Perhaps no place in the course of our projected voyage in the southern ocean promised more novelty to the botanist than Auckland Islands. Situated in the midst of a boisterous ocean, in a very high latitude for that hemisphere, and far removed from any tract of land but the islands of New Zealand, it proved, as was expected, to contain, amongst many new species, some of peculiar interest, as being antarctic forms of genera otherwise confined to the last-mentioned group.
"Possessing no mountains rising to the limits of perpetual snow, and few rocks or precipices, the whole land seemed covered with vegetation. A low forest skirts all the shores, succeeded by a broad belt of brushwood, above which, to the summits of the hills, extend grassy slopes. On a closer inspection of the forest, it is found to be composed of a dense thicket of stag-headed trees, so gnarled and stunted by the violence of the gales, as to afford an excellent shelter for a luxuriant under-growth of bright green feathery ferns, and several gay-flowered herbs. With much to delight the eye, and an extraordinary amount of new species to occupy the mind, there is here a want of any of those trees or shrubs to which the voyager has been accustomed in the north; and one cannot help feeling, how much a greater pleasure it would
