370 



SAN ESTEVAN — DISTRESSED MEN, 



Dec. 



tage was taken of an interval of moderate weather to run seve- 

 ral miles along the coast northward, and back again. Strong 

 gales set in afterwards and kept us prisoners several days. This 

 Christmas was unlike the last: it was a sombre period. The wind 

 blew heavily (though we did not feel it much, being well shel- 

 tered) ; all looked dismal around us ; our prospects for the 

 future were sadly altered ; and our immediate task was the 

 survey of another Tierra del Fuego, a place swampy with rain, 

 tormented by storms, without the interest even of population : 

 for hitherto we had neither found traces,* nor heard the voices 

 of natives. 



28th. Directly the weather would admit, we weighed and 

 coasted along till the sun was getting low, when we ran 

 under shelter from sea and wind, and anchored in the corner 

 of a bay which I afterwards concluded must be the bay or 

 port called Stephens, and more properly, San Estevan. While 

 we were furling sails, some men were seen on a point of 

 land near the ship, making signals to us in a very earnest 

 manner. Being dressed as sailors, it was natural for us to con- 

 clude that they were some boat's crew left there to collect seal- 

 skins. A boat was sent to them, and directly she touched the 

 land they rushed into her, without saying a word, as men 

 woidd if pursued by a dreaded enemy ; and not till they were 

 afloat could they compose themselves enough to tell their story. 

 They were North American sailors, who had deserted from the 

 Frances Henrietta (a whaler of New Bedford), in October 1833. 

 When off Cape Tres Montes, but out of sight of land, and 

 in the middle of the night, these six men lowered a boat and 

 left their ship, intending to coast along until they should arrive 

 at Childe. Their first landing was effected on the 18th, but 

 owing to negligence the boat was so badly stove that they 

 could not repair her, and all their hopes of effecting a coasting 

 voyage were thus crushed in the very outset. 



* With one exception. On a height near Cone Creek Mr. Darwin 

 found, in a sheltered hollow of the rock, strewed with dry grass, what 

 appeared to him the place on which a man had slept. For some time 

 this puzzled us considerably : probably a sealer had slept there. 



