282 A GRASS BED. [chap. xiii. 



A bit of wood with a nail in it, is picked up and studied as 

 if it were covered with hieroglyphics. Possessed with this 

 feeling, I was much interested by finding, on a wild part 

 of the coast, a bed made of grass beneath a ledge of rock. 

 Close by it there had been a fire, and the man had used an 

 axe. The fire, bed, and situation showed the dexterity of 

 an Indian ; but he could scarcely have been an Indian, for 

 the race is in this part extinct, owing to the Catholic desire 

 of making at one blow Christians and slaves. I had at 

 the time some misgivings that the solitary man who had 

 made his bed on this wild spot, must have been some poor 

 shipwrecked sailor, who, in trying to travel up the coast, 

 had here laid himself down for his dreary night. 



December 2%th. — The weather continued very bad, but it 

 at last permitted us to proceed with the survey. The time 

 hung heavy on our hands, as it always did when we 

 were delayed from day to day by successive gales of wind. 

 In the evening another harbour was discovered, where we 

 anchored. Directly afterwards a man was seen waving his 

 shirt, and a boat was sent which brought back two seamen. 

 A party of six had run away from an American whaling 

 vessel, and had landed a little to the southward in a boat, 

 which was shortly afterwards knocked to pieces by the surf. 

 They had now been wandering up and down the coast for 

 fifteen months, without knowing which way to go, or where 

 they were. What a singular piece of good fortune it was 

 that this harbour was now discovered I Had it not been 

 for this one chance, they might have wandered till they 

 had grown old men, and at last have perished on this wild 

 coast. Their sufferings had been very great, and one of 

 their party had lost his life by falling from the cliffs. They 

 were sometimes obliged to separate in search of food, and 

 this explained the bed of the solitary man. Considering 

 what they had undergone, I think they had kept a very 

 good reckoning of time, for they had lost only four days. 



December jpth. — We anchored in a snug little cove at the 

 foot of some high hills, near the northern extremity of Tres 

 Montes. After breakfast the next morning, a party ascended 

 one of these mountains, which was 2400 feet high. The 

 scenery was remarkable. The chief part of the range was 

 composed of grand, solid, abrupt masses of granite, which 

 appeared as if they had been coeval with the beginning or 

 the world. The granite was capped with mica-slate, and 

 this in the lapse of ages had been worn into strange finger 



