several hills of a peculiar red earth, exceeding vermillion in colour, which perhaps, on examination, might prove useful for many purposes.  The southern, or rather S.W. part of the island, is widely different from the rest; being destitute of trees, dry, stony, and very flat and low, compared, with the hills on the northern part.  This part of the island is never frequented by ships, being surrounded by a steep shore, and having little or no fresh water; besides which, it is exposed to the southerly winds, which generally blow here the whole year round, and with great violence in the antarctic winter.

The trees, of which the woods in the northern part of the island are composed, are mostly aromatic, and of many different sorts.  There are none of them of a size to yield any considerable timber, except those we called myrtle-trees, which are the largest on the island, and supplied us with all the timber we used; yet even these would not work to a greater length than forty feet.  The top of the myrtle is circular, and as uniform and regular as if clipped round by art.  It bears an excrescence like moss on its bark, having the taste and smell of garlic, and was used instead of it by our people.  We found here the pimento, and the cabbage-tree, but in no great quantity.  Besides these, there were a great number of plants of various kinds, which we were not botanists enough to describe or attend to.  We found here, however, almost all the vegetables that are usually esteemed peculiarly adapted to the cure of those scorbutic disorders which are contracted by salt diet and long voyages, as we had great quantities of water-cresses and purslain, with excellent wild sorrel, and a vast profusion of turnips and Sicilian radishes, which two last, having a strong resemblance to each other, were confounded by our people under the general name of turnips.  We usually preferred the tops of the turnips to the roots, which we generally found stringy, though some of them were free from that exception, and remarkably good.  These vegetables, with the fish and flesh we got here, to be more particularly described hereafter, were not only exceedingly grateful to our palates after the long course of salt diet to which we had been confined, but were likewise of the most salutary consequence in recovering and envigorating our sick, and of no mean service to us who were well, by destroying the lurking seeds of the scurvy, from which none of us, perhaps, were totally exempted, and in refreshing and restoring us to our wonted strength and activity.  To the vegetables already mentioned, of which we made perpetual use, I must add that we found many acres of ground covered with oats and clover.  There were some few cabbage-trees, as before observed, but these grew generally on precipices and in dangerous situations, and as it was necessary to cut down a large tree to procure a single cabbage, we were rarely able to indulge in this dainty.