126 PORT SAN ANTONIO. March 1828. 
Bad weather forced us into Port San Antonio; of which 
Cordova gives so favourable an account, that we were surprised 
to find it small and inconvenient, even for the Adelaide. 
He describes the port to be a mile and a half long, and three 
quarters of a mile broad: we found the length a mile and a 
quarter, and the mean breadth scarcely a quarter of a mile. 
It possesses no one advantage that is not common to almost 
every other harbour and cove in the Strait; and for a ship, or 
square-rigged vessel of any kind, it is both difficult to enter, 
and dangerous to leave. Besides the local disadvantages of 
Port San Antonio, the weather in it is seldom fair, even when 
the day is fine elsewhere. It lies at the base of the Lomas 
Range, which rises almost perpendicularly to the height of 
three thousand feet, fronting the great western channel of the 
Strait, whence it receives upon its cold surface the western 
winds, and is covered by the vapour, which is condensed from 
them, while in all other parts the sun may be shining brightly. 
This port is formed by a channel, a quarter of a mile wide, 
separating two islands from the shore. The best anchorage is 
off a picturesque little bay on the south island, which is thickly 
wooded to the water’s edge with the holly leaved berberis,* 
fuchsia, and veronica, growing to the height of twenty feet ; 
over-topped and sheltered by large beech, and Winter’s-bark 
trees, rooted under a thick mossy carpet, through which a 
narrow Indian path winds between arbutus and currant bushes, 
and round prostrate stems of dead trees, leading to the seaward 
side of the island. Upon the beach, just within the bushes, and 
sheltered by a large and wide-spreading fuchsia bush, in full 
flower, stood two Indian wigwams, which, apparently, had not 
been inhabited since the visit of poor Ainsworth. He had 
occupied these very wigwams for two days, having covered 
them over with the boat’s sail; and remains of the ropeyarns 
that tied it down were still there: a melancholy memento. 
In no part of the Strait did we find the vegetation so luxuriant 
as in this little cove. Some of the Winter’s-bark and currant 
trees had shvots more than five feet long, and many of the 
* Berberis ilicifoliaa— Banks and Solander MSS. 
