WINDS STORMS. 



243 



could not have been made many years. At sea, when north- 

 eastward of the Falklands, great quantities of drift kelp* are 

 seen, besides water-worn trunks and branches of trees, near 

 which there are generally fish, and numbers of birds. These 

 sure indications of a current from the south-west have been met 

 with upwards of two hundred miles to the northward of Berke- 

 ley Sound. There is not, however, reason to think that this 

 current ever runs more than two knots an hour, under any cir- 

 cumstances, and in all probability its usual set is even less than 

 one knot. 



Wind is the principal evil at the Falklands : a region more 

 exposed to storms, both in summer and winter, it would be 

 difficult to mention. 



The winds are variable ; seldom at rest, while the sun is 

 above the horizon, and very violent at times ; during the summer 

 a calm day is an extraordinary event. Generally speaking, the 

 nights are less windy than the days, but neither by night nor by 

 day, nor at any season of the year, are these islands exempt 

 from sudden and very severe squalls ; or from gales which blow 

 heavily, though they do not usually last many hours. 



It has been stated by Bougainville and others that in sum- 

 mer the wind generally freshens as the sun rises, and dies away 

 about sunset : also, that the nights are clear and starlight. 

 The information I have received, with what I have myself wit- 

 nessed, induces me to agree to the first of these statements in 

 its most general sense, and to a certain degree I can admit the 

 second ; but, at the same time, it is true that there are many 

 cloudy and very many windy nights in the course of each year, 

 I might almost say month. The Magellan was driven from 

 her anchors, though close to a weather shore in the narrowest 

 part of Berkeley Sound, and totally wrecked in Johnson Har- 

 bour about midnight of the 12th of January-j- 1833. 



The prevalent direction of the wind is westerly. Gales, in 

 general, commence in the north-west, and draw or fly round 

 to the south-west ; and it may be remarked, that when rain 



* Sea-weed detached from the rocks and drifting with the current, 

 t The month which, in that hemisphere, corresponds to July in ours. 



R 2 



