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CAMPBELL ISLAND.
[Chap. VI.
1840
attain so great a height as at the Auckland Islands. The seine was hauled on two promising-looking places near the head of the harbour, but without success. A rich collection of marine insects and shell-fish were obtained, and had our time permitted I think we should have found fish in a lake that some of the officers discovered by tracing a small stream to the southward, which emptied its superabundant waters into the upper corner of the inlet.
Those officers whose duties did not confine them to the vicinity of the ships made several excursions across the island, in various parts, especially Dr. Hooker, pursuing his botanical researches, and whose remarks on that department of natural science are here entered.
"Although Campbell's Island is situated 120 miles to the southward of Lord Auckland's group, and is of much smaller extent, it probably contains fully as many native plants. This arises from its more varied outline, and from its steep precipices and contracted ravines, affording situations more congenial to the growth of grasses, mosses, and lichens. Its iron-bound coast and rocky mountains, whose summits appear to the eye bare of vegetation, give it the aspect of a very desolate and unproductive rock, and it is not until the quiet harbours are opened, that any green hue save a few grassy spots is seen. In these narrow bays the scene suddenly changes; a belt of brushwood, composed of some of the trees mentioned as inhabitants of the