122 NATUKAL HISTORY OF 



On our return on board in the afternoon of this day, I 

 was shown a Fuegian bow and arrows which the surveying 

 party had carried ofiP from their assailants. The bow was 

 short (about a couple of feet long), requiring a considerable 

 amount of force to bend it ; and the arrows, which were beau- 

 tifully fashioned, were furnished with thin triangular heads 

 with jagged edges, so united to the shaft as to be readily 

 detached when an object was struck. One of these heads was 

 of flint and the other of rock-crystal. In general form these 

 weapons did not materially differ from those we observed at 

 a subsequent period in the possession of the western tribes. 



On the 8th we remained at anchor all day, a party land- 

 ing and spending some hours in surveying operations at Cape 

 Virgins. My time was fully occupied in stowing away the 

 specimens obtained during my excursion, and in endeavour- 

 ing to remedy the state of confusion into which my collec- 

 tions, etc., had been thrown by the gale during my absence. 

 One of the men who had been on shore brought me a 

 portion of a condor's skeleton, and the dredge yielded a few 

 ascidians and encrusting corallines, as well as numbers of a 

 species of Calyptrcea, the C. costellata of Philippi. In the 

 evening a remarkable light was seen off the Fuegian shore. 

 Next day the ship was employed taking soundings at the 

 eastern entrance of the Strait, and we anchored in the evening 

 off Catherine Point or Queen Katherine's Fore-Land, as it was 

 originally named by Wood, a low and shingly projection on 

 the Fuegian coast, presenting a considerable resemblance to 

 Dungeness Spit on the opposite side. On the morning of the 

 10th some fine Tunicata and a few Tubicolous Annelids were 

 taken in the dredge. "Sounding was again the order of the 

 day till early in the afternoon, when we returned to our 

 anchorage, and a party landed to take angles and erect a 



