THE STEAIT OF MAGELLAN. 169 



an end to his life, his mind having given way under the 

 anxiety and hardships which he had experienced in the course 

 of his work. About sixteen years later, the Chilian govern- 

 ment, as I have elsewhere incidentally remarked, established 

 a colony here, which was removed after some time to Sandy 

 Point. The anchorage has been for long regarded as an 

 excellent one, and is well known to all those who have had 

 occasion to pass through the Strait. 



Immediately after we anchored, a large party of us landed 

 and spent some hours on shore, encountering now and then 

 very heavy showers of rain. We found the woods so thick 

 that it was hardly possible to penetrate into them for any 

 distance ; and accordingly wended our way along a tract 

 of open ground between the forest and the sea, till our further 

 progress was arrested by the Sedger, one of the largest of the 

 rivers flowing into the Strait, and, according to the chart, 

 navigable by boats for a considerable distance after quarter 

 flood-tide. So many of the plants were out of bloom that 

 I did not add materially to my botanical collection, though I 

 obtained some very fine foliaceous lichens on the stems of 

 the trees. Several teal, and a specimen of the gray flycatcher 

 obtained on the previous day at Sandy Point, were shot, and 

 we saw numerous small flocks of a black starling, or Troopial 

 {Cur (BUS aterrimus), which we at a later period found to be 

 one of the few land-birds common in the western region of 

 the Strait and western Patagonian Channels, besides occurring 

 abundantly in Chili, where it is frequently kept as a cage- 

 bird on account of the facility with which it may be taught 

 to talk. Ordinarily its notes, when in the wild condition, 

 are sufliciently harsh, but on one occasion I saw one 

 that was singing most melodiously on the top of a low tree. 

 Possibly this may have been an escaped bird, the accom- 



