QQ CAPE NEGRO—FRESHWATER BAY. Jan. 1827. 
The following day was calm, and so warm, that we thought 
if Wallis and Cordova were correct in describing the weather 
they met with, Duclos Guyot was equally entitled to credit ; 
and we began to hope we had anticipated worse weather 
than we should experience. But this was an unusually fine 
day, and many weeks elapsed, afterwards, without its equal. 
The temperature of the air, in the shade on the beach, was 
674°, on the sand 873°; and that of the water 55°. Other 
observations were made, as well as a plan of the bay, of which 
there is a description in the Sailing Directions. 
Here we first noticed the character of the vegetation in the 
Strait, as so different from that of Cape Gregory and other 
parts of the Patagonian coast, which is mainly attributable to 
the change of soil ; the northern part being a very poor clay, 
whilst here a schistose sub-soil is covered by a mixture of 
alluvium, deposited by mountain streams; and decomposed 
vegetable matter, which, from the thickness of the forests, is 
in great quantity. 
Two specimens of beech (Fagus betuloides and antarctica), 
the former an evergreen,—and the winter’s bark (Wintera 
aromatica), are the only trees of large size that we found 
here; but the underwood is very thick, and composed of a 
great variety of plants, of which Arbutus rigida, two or three 
species of Berberis, and a wild currant (Ribes antarctica, 
Bankes and Solander MSS.), at this time in flower, and 
forming long clustering bunches of young fruit, were the 
most remarkable. The berberis produces a berry of acidulous 
taste, that promised to be useful to us. A species of wild 
celery, also, which grows abundantly near the sea-shore, was 
valuable as an antiscorbutic. The trees in the immediate 
vicinity of the shore are small, but the beach was strewed with 
trunks of large trees, which seemed to have been drifted there 
by gales and high tides. A river falls into the bay, by a very 
narrow channel, near its south end; but it is small, and so 
blocked up by trees as not to be navigable even for the smallest 
boat : indeed, it is merely a mountain torrent, varying in size 
according to the state of the weather. 
