276 



NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



then, after returning to the normal temperature, the 

 thermometer rose steadily as we advanced daily about 

 four degrees of latitude. It may be worth while to 

 give the following extract from my notes, observing 

 that on board ship temperature observations are 

 merely rough approximations. Those best admitting 

 comparison are made about a quarter of an hour after 

 sunset, the precise hour, of course, varying with the 

 latitude, of which I give only a rough estimate. 



Favoured by clear weather, we occasionally had 

 glimpses of projecting headlands on the Patagonian 

 coast, and especially on the 19th, when we made out 

 the promontory of San Jose on the south side of the 

 wide and deep Bay of San Matias, and later in the 

 same day sighted some hills on the north side of 

 the same gulf near the mouth of the Rio Colorado, 

 the chief of Patagonian rivers.* As far as I could 



* It is unfortunate that the Spaniards who had the naming of so 

 large a part of the American continent should have shown so little 

 inventive faculty. When they did not adopt a native name for a river, 

 they rarely got beyond Red River, Black River, or Big River, and 

 wherever we turn we encounter a Rio Colorado, a Rio Negro, or a Rio 

 Grande. 



