IS33-] GOOD SUCCESS BAY. 219 



follow the example of Hayti; and, considering the enormous 

 healthy-looking black population, it will be wonderful if, at 

 some future day, it does not take place. There is at Rio a 

 man (I know not his title) who has a large salary to prevent 

 (I believe) the landing of slaves ; he lives at Botofogo, and 

 yet that was the bay where, during my residence, the greater 

 number of smuggled slaves were landed. Some of the Anti- 

 Slavery people ought to question about his office ; it was the 

 subject of conversation at Rio amongst the lower English. . . . 



C. Darwin to J. M. Herbert. 



Maldonado, Rio Plata, June 2, 1833. 



My dear Herbert, 



I have been confined for the last three days to a miserable 

 dark room, in an old Spanish house, from the torrents of rain ; 

 I am not, therefore, in very good trim for writing ; but, defy- 

 ing the blue devils, I will send you a few lines, if it is merely 

 to thank you very sincerely for writing to me. I received 

 your letter, dated December 1st, a short time since. We are 

 now passing part of the winter in the Rio Plata, after having 

 had a hard summer's work to the south. Tierra del Fuego 

 is indeed a miserable place ; the ceaseless fury of the gales 

 is quite tremendous. One evening we saw old Cape Horn, 

 and three weeks afterwards we were only thirty miles to wind- 

 ward of it. It is a grand spectacle to see all nature thus 

 raging ; but Heaven knows every one in the Beagle has seen 

 enough in this one summer to last them their natural lives. 



The first place we landed at was Good Success Bay. It 

 was here Banks and Solander met such disasters on ascending 

 one of the mountains. The weather was tolerably fine, and 

 I enjoyed some walks in a wild country, like that behind Bar- 

 mouth. The valleys are impenetrable from the entangled 

 woods, but the higher parts, near the limits of perpetual snow, 

 are bare. From some of these hills the scenery, from its sav- 

 age, solitary character, was most sublime. The only inhabi- 

 tant of these heights is the guanaco, and with its shrill neigh- 



