On the large island of Tanqui there was scarcely one cleared spot, the trees on every side extending their branches over the sea-beach.

I one day noticed, growing on the sandstone cliffs, some very fine plants of the panke (Gunnera scabra), which somewhat resembles the rhubarb on a gigantic scale.
The inhabitants eat the stalks, which are subacid, and tan leather with the roots, and prepare a black dye from them.

The leaf is nearly circular, but deeply indented on its margin.

I measured one which was nearly eight feet in diameter, and therefore no less than twenty-four in circumference! The stalk is rather more than a yard high, and each plant sends out four or five of these enormous leaves, presenting together a very noble appearance.
DECEMBER 6, 1834.
We reached Caylen, called "el fin del Cristiandad." In the morning we stopped for a few minutes at a house on the northern end of Laylec, which was the extreme point of South American Christendom, and a miserable hovel it was.

The latitude is 43 degrees 10', which is two degrees farther south than the Rio Negro on the Atlantic coast.