4i DEATH OF CAPTAIN STOKES. 



allusion to the fate of her first commander, in whom 

 the service lost, upon the testimony of one well 

 qualified to judge, "an active, intelligent, and most 

 energetic officer:" and well has it been remarked 

 by the same high authority, " that those who have 

 been exposed to one of such trials as his, upon an 

 unknown lee shore, during the worst description of 

 weather, will understand and appreciate some of 

 those feelings which wrought too powerfully upon 

 his excitable mind." The constant and pressing 

 cares connected with his responsible command — 

 the hardships and the dangers to which his crew 

 were of necessity exposed during the survey of 

 Tierra del Fueofo — and in some degree the awful 

 gloom which rests for ever on that storm-swept coast, 

 — finally destroyed the equilibrium of a mind dis- 

 tracted with anxiety and shattered by disease. 



Perhaps no circumstance could prove more 

 strongly the peculiar difficulties connected with a 

 service of this nature, nor could any more clearly 

 testify that in this melancholy instance every thought 

 of self-preservation was absorbed by a zeal to pro- 

 mote the objects of the expedition, which neither 

 danger, disappointment, anxiety, nor disease could 

 render less earnest, or less vigilant, even to the last ! 



The two vessels returned to Enorland in October, 

 1830, when the Adventure was paid off at Wool- 

 wich, and the Beagle at Plymouth ; she was re- 

 commissioned by Captain Fitz-Roy — to whose de- 



