THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 



on spring garments, I readily obtained 

 the best sealing cutter Magellan Strait 

 boasted, as the war had made sealing 

 unprofitable. This was a small twelve- 

 ton boat manned by three men and a 

 cook. It had a small cabin that aecom- 

 ■ modated the collector and his wife, 

 while the four sailors bunked forward 

 close by the stove, which was fed with 

 wood chopped as we went along. Hav- 

 ing Ijeen accustomed to drying wood 

 thoroughly in California before burn- 

 ing it, I imagined we should need coal 

 about Cape Horn where rain or snow 

 thoroughly soaks all wood lying on the 

 ground. The captain, however, took 

 but a sack or two for emergencies, rely- 

 ing on freshly chopped wood most of 

 the time, and I was greatly surprised 

 to see how readily the newly felled trees 

 burned. 



We left Punta Arenas on Xovember 

 25, and were not two hours out before 

 a great flock of birds was sighted, fish- 

 ing in the middle of the strait. We 

 changed our course and ran out to 

 them, but found they were dominican 

 gulls rather than the hoped for shear- 

 waters. It was the largest flock of gulls 

 I had ever seen, containing several 

 thousand birds, and resembled at a dis- 

 tance the great hordes of sooty shear- 

 waters that are seen at Monterey, 

 California, in the summer and fall. 

 Swinging back on our course again, we 

 headed for Point Isidro some fifty 

 miles down the strait, reaching it about 

 four o'clock, and anchored for the 

 night. An old Norwegian, whom we 

 dubbed "Quien sabe"' owing to his fre- 

 quent repetition of that questioning 

 phrase, was the sole warder of the de- 

 funct whaling station located in the 

 cove. In former Aears whaling from 

 this point had been a profitable occupa- 

 tion, many whales being taken in 

 ^Magellan Strait. But they have become 

 scarce lately, and in o\ir two months' 

 trip only three whales were seen, these 

 being in Beagle Channel a short dis- 

 tance south of the strait. We antici- 



pated a couple of hours of rough 

 weather crossing the strait, as the pre- 

 vailing westerly winds sweep strongly 

 up the channel from the western en- 

 trance to near Point Isidro where the 

 strait bends northward. We enjoyed 

 good weather, however^ and after cross- 

 ing, worked with a light wind and the 

 tide as far as King Island in Cockburn 

 Channel. The close view of Mount 

 Sarmiento, the snow-covered peak vis- 

 ible in clear weather from Punta Are- 

 nas, was enjoyed for hours as we passed 

 it, the usual foggy covering being ab- 

 sent in the morning. 



After spending a day at King Island 

 until a head wind subsided, we started 

 out again and succeeded in getting into 

 tlie protected waters just beyond Breck- 

 nock Pass. This was a dreaded spot, 

 for the ocean swells roll up into the 

 channel, and some years before, the 

 captain had been capsized here and all 

 his companions drowned, a sudden 

 squall overturning their boat. We an- 

 chored in a small harbor in tlie lee of 

 London Island, working close in to tlie 

 edge of a kelp patch so that the sudden 

 williwaws or gusty gales sweeping 

 down off the rocky heights could not 

 disturb us. Several diving petrels came 

 into the bay from the sound during the 

 afternoon and I obtained a number, 

 shooting the most of them during a 

 thick snowstorm that raged for an 

 hour. These little birds, though be- 

 longing to the petrel family, resemble 

 in their forms, flight, and feeding hab- 

 its the northern anklets rather than 

 any of the other petrels, and I was in- 

 terested to find in Peru a closely re- 

 lated species unable to fly while molt- 

 ing the wing feathers, being in that 

 particular also like the auklets. Going 

 ashore at London Island and climbing 

 over the granite rocks toward the south, 

 a pretty lake was discovered lying in a 

 small valley, and as we were walking 

 along the shore, one of the brown- 

 breasted plovers that had been so com- 

 mon the preceding winter at Aneud, a 



