In December the rugged Chonos Archipelago, still further south, was explored. Here a storm worthy of Tierra del Fuego was experienced. "White, massive clouds were piled up against a dark blue sky, and across them black, ragged sheets of vapour were rapidly driven. The successive mountain ranges appeared like dim shadows; and the setting sun cast on the woodland a yellow gleam, much like that produced by the flame of spirits of wine on a man's countenance. The water was white with the flying spray; and the wind lulled and roared again through the rigging. It was a most ominous, sublime scene." While near Tres Montes the year 1835 was ushered in, as Darwin says, "with the ceremonies proper to it in these regions. She lays out no false hopes; a heavy N.W. gale, with steady rain, bespeaks the rising year. Thank God, we are not destined here to see the end of it, but hope then to be in the Pacific, where a blue sky tells one there is a heaven--a something beyond the sky above our heads." Valdivia being reached in February, the _Beagle_ party were witnesses of a severe earthquake. Darwin was on shore, lying down in the wood to rest. The effect produced upon him by the motion he experienced was very marked: "There was no difficulty in standing upright, but the motion made me almost giddy. It was something like the movement of a vessel in a little cross ripple, or still more like that felt by a person skating over thin ice, which bends under the weight of his body. A bad earthquake at once destroys the oldest associations; the world, the very emblem of all that is solid, has moved beneath our feet like a crust over a fluid; one second of time has conveyed to the mind a strange idea of insecurity, which hours of reflection would never have created." By the same earthquake every house in Concepcion (afterwards visited) was thrown down, and a most impressive sight met the travellers. Arriving at Valparaiso again on March 11, 1835, after only an interval of two days the indefatigable explorer started to cross the Cordillera by the seldom traversed Portillo pass. Here geological observations were abundant. The roar of the mountain torrents spoke eloquently to the geologist. "The thousands and thousands of stones, which, striking against each other, make the one dull uniform sound, are all hurrying in one direction. It is like thinking of time, when the minute that now glides past is irrecoverable. So it is with these stones; the ocean is their eternity, and each note of that wild music tells of one other step towards their destiny." Who can fail to discern in such a passage the poetic instinct which Erasmus Darwin more fully manifested?