M W BAY. 19 



lars are also abundant, while sponges, hydroids and bryozoans may be seen 

 everywhere in the greatest profusion. Protruding from the surface of a 

 bluish sandstone underlying the shingle of the beach and from the face of 

 the cliffs above were numerous shells of a large oyster nearly a foot in 

 diameter, while Cucullea, Venus, Mytilus, Natica, Trophon, Pecten, Den- 

 talium, Brachiopods, Scutella, and a host of other forms of invertebrates 

 were found associated in the same rock. Late in the evening we left Port 

 Madryn and steamed down until near the entrance of the bay, where in a 

 little cove under a precipitous cliff we anchored for the night. I have yet 

 to learn why we anchored here with such extremely favorable weather 

 conditions, unless it was that Captain Calderon, who had at all times been 

 very obliging, wished to give us an opportunity of seeing the splendid 

 entrance to this magnificent bay under the mellow light of a full moon, 

 with the Southern Cross adding its beauty to the general interest of all 

 about us. Whatever the cause may have been, we anchored as detailed 

 above, and, dinner over, the boats were lowered and manned, each with 

 six mariners from our crew, and at the invitation of the captain Mr. Peter- 

 son and myself accompanied him and several of the ship's officers 

 on a fishing expedition. We were well supplied with tackle and bait, 

 and after several hours passed most pleasantly we returned to the ship, 

 shortly after midnight, with a bountiful supply of most excellent fish, pur- 

 chased from some fishermen at the " Pescadores," a few miles up the bay. 

 Many were the expressions of disgust from our Argentine friends that 

 evening because the fish would not bite, but to myself it mattered little, 

 for I was chiefly interested in the splendid, if somewhat solitary, beauty 

 of our surroundings, and was overcome and enraptured by the quite unex- 

 pected novelty of the situation. From childhood I had thought of the 

 coast of Patagonia as visited by almost perpetual storms, surpassed in 

 their frequency and violence only by the region about Cape Horn. But 

 we had now been steaming along this coast for several days under almost 

 ideal atmospheric and weather conditions. How different our actual ex- 

 periences from the impressions given by reading Dana's "Two Years 

 Before the Mast," or "Gold Diggings at Cape Horn," by John R. Spears. 

 With what feelings of comfort and absolute safety we moved about from 

 one locality to another over the perfectly placid surface of the bay, its waters 

 undisturbed by even so much as a zephyr. The complete quiet, save for the 

 rhythmic murmur of the muffled oars, was comparable only with that de- 



