PATAGONTANS PORT FAMINE. Jan., Feb. 



19th. Sailed, and, for once during our experience of these 

 shores, found a heavy swell setting in from the east.* 



On the 20th we anchored again in Port Desire, and our first 

 employment was to look for the rock whose top (Mr. May as- 

 sured me with a grave face) we had knocked off with our keel. 



22d. Both vessels sailed, and at sunset the Adventure parted 

 company, steering for New Island in the Falklands. Lieute- 

 nant Wickham was to make a connected survey of the coast 

 of that archipelago, while the Beagle was in other places.-f- 

 After giving some time to sounding and examining portions of 

 ground in the neighbourhood of Cape Virgins and the eastern 

 entrance of Magalhaens Strait, we passed the First Narrow 

 and anchored in Gregory Bay. There, of course, we had an 

 interview with old Maria and her party. They received us 

 kindly, but with some form, being assembled and seated on 

 the ground near our landing place, with two men standing up 

 in the midst of them, who looked immoveably grave and 

 stupidly dignified. These men were acting as caciques, Maria 

 said, the real chiefs being absent. They were stripped to the 

 waist, and the upper parts of their bodies spotted with 

 wliite paint. J The rest of the people were dressed as usual. 

 An active barter commenced, but the portly actors in the 

 middle did not take part in it, they remained in their solem- 

 nity till we left them. 



On the 2d of February we anchored in Port Famine, and 

 on the 10th, having obtained chronometric observations for 

 which I went there, we sailed for the neighbourhood of the 

 First Narrow and Lomas Bay (near Point Catherine). We 

 often anchored thereabouts in the prosecution of our work. 



On the 17th, as we ran along the curious spit or bank of 

 shingle that fronts San Sebastian Bay, I really could not tell, 

 though I had been in that bay before, whether I had not been 



* I think that this easterly swell must have been caused by a south- 

 east gale, though it came to us from the east, 

 t Appendix, No. 18, 



X Much as a piece of new knotty wood is spotted with white lead 

 before it receives a coat of paint. 



