On the whole, it appears from reading the stories of these early navigators that the land of the Yahgans, while lacking the eternal ice of the Eskimo land, was bad enough, and in the matter of storms it was worse even than the region of Baffin's Bay. As for the difference in the people, it is apparent that the Yahgans were believed to be far more wretched than the people of the North, because the Eskimos were clothed in the warmest of furs and lived in huts, which, if made of ice and snow, were still perfect shelters from the furies of the storms, while the Yahgans went naked and often slept unsheltered from the snow and the freezing sleet that fell in every month of the year. The islands on which are found the homes of the Yahgan Indians are almost without exception mountains that rise from the depths of the Southern Sea. As one sails among them the idea that here is a mountain chain that at some time long past was suddenly submerged in the sea is irresistible. For miles and leagues one may coast along without finding a beach wide enough to furnish a foothold, not to mention a place for hauling up a yawl. That the mountain is as precipitous below the water as it is above is easily proved, for soundings with the deep-sea lead line often give 60 to 100 fathoms within 100 feet of the shore line. Rising to the height of 1500 to 2000 feet, these precipitous mountain peaks are lacking in nothing to make them grand and impressive. That they seemed desolate to the early navigators none need doubt, however, for the old-time sailors had a ship wretchedly unfit for such stormy seas, and he was ill-clad, half-fed, and homesick. No mountains seen through riffs in storm clouds and between marching columns of freezing rain could seem pleasant to them. But wherever there is shelter from the prevailing gales a narrow beach is found commonly. Above this grows a forest of trees, of which the greater number are the antarctic beech, and nearly all the rest are species of magnolia. Some grow to a diameter of two feet and a height of fifty. Nearly all of the trees are green the year round, and the magnolias are of a particularly bright and beautiful green.