In The
Nature Of The Land, However, Around Maldonado, No Such
Reason Is Apparent; The Rocky Mountains Afford Protected
Situations; Enjoying Various Kinds Of Soil; Streamlets Of
Water Are Common At The Bottoms Of Nearly Every Valley;
And The Clayey Nature Of The Earth Seems Adapted To Retain
Moisture.
It has been inferred with much probability, that
the presence of woodland is generally determined [2] by the
annual amount of moisture; yet in this province abundant
and heavy rain falls during the winter; and the summer,
though dry, is not so in any excessive degree.
[3] We see nearly
the whole of Australia covered by lofty trees, yet that country
possesses a far more arid climate. Hence we must look
to some other and unknown cause.
Confining our view to South America, we should certainly
be tempted to believe that trees flourished only under a very
humid climate; for the limit of the forest-land follows, in a
most remarkable manner, that of the damp winds. In the
southern part of the continent, where the western gales,
charged with moisture from the Pacific, prevail, every island
on the broken west coast, from lat. 38 degs. to the extreme
point of Tierra del Fuego, is densely covered by impenetrable
forests. On the eastern side of the Cordillera, over the same
extent of latitude, where a blue sky and a fine climate prove
that the atmosphere has been deprived of its moisture by
passing over the mountains, the arid plains of Patagonia
support a most scanty vegetation. In the more northern
parts of the continent, within the limits of the constant
south-eastern trade-wind, the eastern side is ornamented by
magnificent forests; whilst the western coast, from lat.
4 degs. S. to lat. 32 degs. S., may be described as a
desert; on this western coast, northward of lat. 4 degs.
S., where the trade-wind loses its regularity, and heavy
torrents of rain fall periodically, the shores of the
Pacific, so utterly desert in Peru, assume near Cape
Blanco the character of luxuriance so celebrated at
Guyaquil and Panama. Hence in the southern and northern
parts of the continent, the forest and desert lands occupy
reversed positions with respect to the Cordillera, and these
positions are apparently determined by the direction of the
prevalent winds. In the middle of the continent there is a
broad intermediate band, including central Chile and the
provinces of La Plata, where the rain-bringing winds have
not to pass over lofty mountains, and where the land is neither
a desert nor covered by forests. But even the rule, if
confined to South America, of trees flourishing only in a
climate rendered humid by rain-bearing winds, has a strongly
marked exception in the case of the Falkland Islands. These
islands, situated in the same latitude with Tierra del Fuego
and only between two and three hundred miles distant from
it, having a nearly similar climate, with a geological
formation almost identical, with favourable situations and the
same kind of peaty soil, yet can boast of few plants deserving
even the title of bushes; whilst in Tierra del Fuego it is
impossible to find an acre of land not covered by the densest
forest.
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