CHAPTER V. 



Eastern Pampa Coast — Point Medanos — Mar-chiquito — Ranges of Hills 

 — Direction of Inlets, Shoals, and Rivers — Cape Corrientes — Tosca 

 Coast — Blanco Bay — Mount Hermoso — Port Belgrano — Mr. Harris — 

 Ventana Mountain — View — Argentina — Commandant — Major — Situ- 

 ation — Toriano — Indians — Fossils — Animals — Fish — Climate — 

 Pumice — Ashes — Conway — Deliberations — Consequent Decision — 

 Responsibility incurred — Paz — Liebre — Gale — Hunger — Fossils at 

 Hermoso — Fossils at Point Alta — Express sent to Buenos Ayres — 

 Suspicions and absurd alarm— Rodriguez. 



Aug. 22. From Cape San Antonio (which, though so called, 

 is only a low point) to rather more than half-way towards Cape 

 Corrientes, the sea-coast is sandy and low. Behind the beach 

 are sand-hills, and farther inshore are thickets affording shelter 

 to numbers of jaguars. In sailing along, even with both 

 leads going, we were, for a few minutes, in imminent danger 

 of grounding upon a bank, or ledge, which extends six miles 

 E.S.E. from Point Medanos. The water shoaled so suddenly, 

 and so irregularly, that I could not tell which way to steer ; 

 and as we had been running directly before the wind, it was 

 impossible to retreat by the safest track (that which we had 

 made in approaching) : however, by persevering in pushing 

 eastward, away from the land, steering one way or another as 

 the water deepened, we at last got clear. We then stood out to 

 gain an offing, rounded the bank, and hauled close inshore 

 again nearly opposite to a large salt lagoon, called Mar- 

 chiquito, which approaches the sea so closely as to have occa- 

 sioned an idea that, by cutting through the narrow strip of 

 land which separates them, a fine port might be formed. 



Some persons assert that there is always a communication 

 between the lagoon and the sea ; that cattle cannot pass along 

 the isthmus on account of that opening ; and that a boat might 

 swim from one to the other. If this is the case, we were much 

 deceived on board the Beagle ; for when she passed so near the 

 spot that the lagoon was overlooked by the officers at her mast- 



VOL. II. H 



