460 PORT DESIRE—NO ARIEL ROCKS. June 1830. 
the turn of tide in our favour carried us towards the entrance 
of the harbour, into which we worked, the tide of ebb having 
just ended ; and we moored abreast of the ruins. My first 
care was to look for traces of the Adventure or Adelaide, but 
I found none. A bottle which I had deposited for the Adelaide, 
at our last visit, by Captain King’s direction, was exactly 
where I then left it, and the papers it contained were untouched. 
While in this port I got good observations, the weather being 
clear, though very cold. No guanacoes were shot although 
many were seen, but numbers of sea-birds were brought on 
board.* A quince was given to me which was found in a 
place where the Spanish colony had made a garden. We 
remarked that the tracks of the guanacoes on shore here were 
not so large, by one-half, as those we had so lately seen in 
Tierra del Fuego. Having noticed the currents particularly, 
in order to compare them with what I observed formerly and 
with the tide in the port; I can now say, decidedly, that the 
flood tide comes from the southward, and that the ebb sets to 
the south-east. North of Port Desire, or from Port Desire 
to Cape Blanco, the flood is much the strongest, but off 
Penguin Island the ebb is, I think, the strongest, setting two 
or three knots an hour. It is high-water and slack-water, in 
Port Desire, at half-past twelve, on the days of full and 
change. The tides, if not attended to, would baffle a ship 
much in making this port. 
« On the 21st we sailed, with a fresh breeze from the S.W.; 
and at nine a.m. on the 25th when about one mile south- 
ward of the alleged position of the Ariel rocks, and near the 
nominal longitude, I hauled to the wind and ran some distance 
on their parallel, looking out for broken water. There was a 
very irregular and heavy swell, as much as would be raised by 
a gale of wind, but caused apparently by a current; and while 
waiting for the meridian altitude, before bearing up, having 
run twenty miles on the same parallel, a heavy swell rose on 
the quarter, which struck our weather quarter boat, and turned 
* The powder and shot expended here procured four meals of fresh 
provisions for all hands. 
