Il6 Transactions, — Miscellaneous. 



that first eventful voyage, is, as it were, lost sight of ; and yet I question if 

 there has heen another voyage of modern times in which so many skilled 

 and usefiil men died, and not through battle or storm or dangers. 



At Eio our voyagers received harsh treatment from the Viceroy, who 

 prohibited any person coming on shore from the ship. This is fully related 

 by Cook. Our artist says : " We were displeasedin receiving this intelligence ; 

 Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander appeared much chagrined at their disappoint- 

 ment, but notwithstanding all the Viceroy's precautions we determined to 

 gratify our curiosity in some measm'e, and having obtained a sufficient 

 knowledge of the river and the harbour by the surveys we had made of the 

 country, we frequently, unknown to the sentinel, stole out of the cabin 

 window at midnight, letting ourselves down into a boat by a rope, and 

 driving away with the tide until we were out of hearing, we then rowed to 

 some unfrequented part of the shore where we landed and made excursions 

 up into the comitry, though not so far as we could have wished to have done. 

 The morning after we went on shore my eyes were feasted with the pleasing 

 prospects that opened to my view on every hand. I soon discovered a hedge 

 in which were many very curious plants in bloom, and all of them quite new 

 to me. There were so many that I even loaded myself with them. We 

 found also many curious plants in the salading that was sent off to us." 

 From Eio he wrote to his brother saying he had " finished 100 draw- 

 ■^ngs on various subjects and taken sketches of many more." He narrates 

 that terrible night of Mr. Banks and Dr. Solander and then' party in the 

 snows on the mountains of Terra del Fuego, in which two men of the party 

 were frozen to death, (which we have at full length and weU told in Cook), 

 adding, — " The dog that had been with them all night had survived them ; 

 he was found sitting close by his master's corpse, and seemed reluctant to 

 leave it, but at length the dog forsook it, and went back to the company and 

 to the ship." His remarks, in passing the straits of Le Maine and round 

 Cape Horn, are worthy of notice : — 



" The land on both sides, particularly Staten-land, affords a most dismal 

 prospect, being made up chiefly of barren rocks and tremendous precipices, 

 covered with snow and uninhabited, forming one of those natural views 

 which human nature can scarcely behold without shuddering, How 

 amazingly diversified are the works of the Deity within the narrow hmits of 

 this globe we inhabit, which, compared with the vast aggregate of systems 

 that compose the universe, api^ears but a dark speck in the creation ! A 

 curiosity, perha^DS equal to Solomon's, though accompanied with less wisdom 

 than was possessed by the Eoyal Philosopher, induced some of us to quit 

 our native land, to investigate the heavenly bodies minutely in distant 

 regions, as well as to trace the signatures of the Supreme Power and 



