BAY OF PORT FAMINE. 719 



On Tuesday, the 19th March, the Hassler 

 left Sandy Point. The weather was beautiful, 

 a mellow autumn day with a reminiscence 

 of summer in its genial warmth. The cleft 

 summit of Sarmiento was clear against the 

 sky, and the snow-fields, swept over by alter- 

 nate light and shadow, seemed full of soft 

 undulations. The evening anchorage was in 

 the Bay of Port Famine, a name which marks 

 the site of Sarmiento's ill-fated colony, and 

 recalls the story of the men who watched and 

 waited there for the help that never came. 

 The stay here was short, and Agassiz spent 

 the time almost wholly in studying the singu- 

 larly regular, but completely upturned strata 

 which line the beach, with edges so worn 

 down as to be almost completely even with 

 each other. 



For many days after this, the Hassler pur- 

 sued her course, past a seemingly endless pan- 

 orama of mountains and forests rising into 

 the pale regions of snow and ice, where lay 

 glaciers in which every rift and crevasse, as 

 well as the many cascades flowing down to 

 join the waters beneath, could be counted as 

 she steamed by them. Every night she an- 

 chored in the sheltered harbors formed by the 

 inlets and fiords which break the base of the 



