116 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
that first eventful voyage, is, as it were, lost sight of ; and yet I question if 
there has been another voyage of modern times in which so many skilled 
and useful men died, and not through battle or storm or dangers. 
At Rio our voyagers received harsh treatment from the Viceroy, who 
prohibited any person coming on shore "e is ship. cones is — related 
by Cook. Our artist says : '* Wewere di in receiving thi 
Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander appeared nuc chagrined at their Es 
ment, but notwithstanding all the Viceroy’s precautions we determined to 
gratify our curiosity in some measure, and having obtained a sufficient 
knowledge of the river and the harbour by the surveys we had made of the 
country, we frequently, unknown to the sentinel, stole out of the cabin 
window at midnight, letting ourselves down into a boat by a rope, and 
driving away with the tide until we were out of hearing, we then rowed to 
some unfrequented part of the shore where we landed and made excursions 
up into the country, though not so far as we could have wished to have done. 
The morning after we went on shore my eyes were feasted with the pleasing 
prospects that opened to my view onevery hand. I soon discovered a hedge 
in which were many very curious plants in bloom, and all of them quite new 
tome. There were so many that I even loaded myself with them. We 
found also many curious plants in the salading that was sent off to us.” 
From Rio he wrote to his brother saying he had “finished 100 draw- 
Ings on various subjects and taken sketches of many more." He narrates 
that terrible night of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander and their party in the 
snows on the mountains of Terra del Fuego, in which two men of the party 
were frozen to death, (which we have at full length and well told in Cook), 
adding,—** The dog that had been with them all night had survived them ; 
he was found sitting close by his master's corpse, and seemed reluctant to 
leave it, but at length the dog forsook it, and went back to the company and 
to the ship." His remarks, in passing the straits of Le Maine and round 
Cape Horn, are worthy of notice :— 
** The land on both sides, particularly Staten-land, affords a most dismal 
prospect, being made up chiefly of barren rocks and tremendous precipices, 
covered with snow and uninhabited, forming one of those natural views 
. which human nature can scarcely behold without shuddering, How 
amazingly diversified are the works of the Deity within the narrow limits of 
this globe we inhabit, which, compared with the vast aggregate of systems 
that compose the universe, appears but a dark speck in the creation! A 
curiosity, perhaps equal to Solomon’s, though accompanied with less wisdom 
than was possessed by the Royal Philosopher, induced some of us to quit 
our native land, to investigate the heavenly bodies minutely in distant 
regions, as well as to trace the signatures of the Supreme Power and 
