i8o9— 1842] VOYAGE II 



To J. S. Henslow. Letter 4 



Monte Video, 24th Nov r lSj2. 

 We arrived here on the 24th of October, after our first 

 cruise on the coast of Patagonia. North of the Rio Negro 

 we fell in with some little schooners employed in sealing : to 

 save the loss of time in surveying the intricate mass of banks, 

 Capt. Fitz-Roy has hired two of them and has put officers 

 on them. It took us nearly a month fitting them out; as 

 soon as this was finished we came back here, and are now 

 preparing for a long cruise to the south. I expect to find the 

 wild mountainous country of Terra del Fuego very interesting, 

 and after the coast of Patagonia I shall thoroughly enjoy it. — 

 I had hoped for the credit of Dame Nature, no such country 

 as this last existed ; in sad reality we coasted along 240 miles 

 of sand hillocks ; I never knew before, what a horrid ugly 

 object a sand hillock is. The famed country of the Rio 

 Plata in my opinion is not much better : an enormous brackish 

 river, bounded by an interminable green plain is enough to 

 make any naturalist groan. So Hurrah for Cape Horn and 

 the Land of Storms. Now that I have had my growl out, 

 which is a privilege sailors take on all occasions, I will turn the 

 tables and give an account of my doing in Nat. History. I 

 must have one more growl : by ill luck the French Government 

 has sent one of its collectors to the Rio Negro, where he has 

 been working for the last six months, and is now gone 

 round the Horn. So that I am very selfishly afraid he will 

 get the cream of all the good things before me. As I have 

 nobody to talk to about my luck and ill luck in collecting, 

 I am determined to vent it all upon you. I have been very 

 lucky with fossil bones ; I have fragments of at least 6 distinct 

 animals : as many of them are teeth, I trust, shattered and 

 rolled as they have been, they will be recognised. I have paid 

 all the attention I am capable of to their geological site ; but 

 of course it is too long a story for here. 1st, I have the tarsi 

 and metatarsi very perfect of a Cavia ; 2nd, the upper jaw 

 and head of some very large animal with four square hollow 

 molars and the head greatly protruded in front. I at first 

 thought it belonged either to the Megalonyx or Megathe- 

 rium ; 1 in confirmation of this in the same formation I found 



1 The animal may probably have been Grypotkerium Darwini, Ow. 

 The osseous plates mentioned below must have belonged to one of the 



