10 APPROACH TO THE STRAIT Dec. 1826 
Viage, &c.’ It is written in a plain and simple style, gives a 
most correct account of every thing seen, and should therefore 
be in the possession of every person who attempts the naviga- 
tion of the strait. 
Cordova’s account of the climate is very uninviting. Speak- 
ing of the rigours of the summer months (January, February, 
and March), he says, ‘¢ Seldom was the sky clear, and short 
were the intervals in which we experienced the sun’s warmth : 
no day passed by without some rain having fallen, and the 
most usual state of the weather was that of constant rain.”* 
The accounts of Wallis and Carteret are still more gloomy. 
The former concludes that part of his narrative with the 
following dismal and disheartening description: ‘‘ Thus we 
quitted a dreary and inhospitable region, where we were in 
almost continual danger of shipwreck for near four months, 
having entered the strait on the 17th of December, and quitted 
it on the 11th of April 1767: a region where, in the midst of 
summer, the weather was cold, gloomy, and tempestuous, 
where the prospects had more the appearance of a chaos than 
of nature; and where for the most part the valleys were with- 
out herbage and the hills without wood.” 
These records of Cordova and Wallis made me feel not a 
little apprehensive for the health of the crew, which could 
not be expected to escape uninjured through the rigours of 
such a climate. Nor were the narratives of Byron or Bougain- 
ville calculated to lessen my anxiety. In an account, however, 
of a voyage to the strait by M. A. Duclos Guyot, the follow- 
ing paragraph tended considerably to relieve my mind upon 
the subject :—‘ At length, on Saturday the 23d of March, we 
sailed out of that famous Strait, so much dreaded, after having 
experienced that there, as well as in other places, it was very 
fine, and very warm, and that for three-fourths of the time the 
sea was perfectly calm.” 
In every view of the case, our proximity to the principal 
scene of action occasioned sensations of a peculiar nature, in 
which, however, those that were most agreeable and hopeful 
* Ultimo Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes, part ii. p. 298. 
