10 



APPROACH TO THE STRAIT 



Dec. 1826 



Viage, Sec' It is written in a plain and simple style, gives a 

 most correct account of every thing seen, and should therefore 

 be in the possession of every person who attempts the naviga- 

 tion of the strait. 



Cordova's account of the climate is very uninviting. Speak- 

 ing of the rigours of the summer months (January, February, 

 and March), he says, " Seldom was the sky clear, and short 

 were the intervals in which we experienced the sun's warmth : 

 no day passed by without some rain having fallen, and the 

 most usual state of the weather was that of constant rain.""* 



The accounts of Wallis and Carteret are still more gloomy. 

 The former concludes that part of his narrative with the 

 following dismal and disheartening description : " Thus we 

 quitted a dreary and inhospitable region, where we were in 

 almost continual danger of shipwreck for near four months, 

 having entered the strait on the 17th of December, and quitted 

 it on the 11th of April 1767 : a region where, in the midst of 

 summer, the weather was cold, gloomy, and tempestuous, 

 where the prospects had more the appearance of a chaos than 

 of nature ; and where for the most part the valleys were with- 

 out herbage and the hills without wood." 



These records of Cordova and Wallis made me feel not a 

 little apprehensive for the health of the crew, which could 

 not be expected to escape iminjured through the rigours of 

 such a climate. Nor were the narratives of Byron or Bougain- 

 ville calculated to lessen my anxiety. In an account^ however, 

 of a voyage to the strait by M. A. Duclos Guyot, the follow- 

 ing paragraph tended considerably to relieve my mind upon 

 the subject : — "At length, on Saturday the 23d of March, we 

 sailed out of that famous Strait, so much dreaded, after having 

 experienced that there, as well as in other places, it was very 

 fine, and very warm, and that for three-fourths of the time the 

 sea was perfectly calm." 



In every view of the case, our proximity to the principal 

 scene of action occasioned sensations of a peculiar nature, in 

 which, however, those that were most agreeable and hopeful 

 * Ultimo Viag-e al Eslrecho de Magallanes, part ii. p. 298. 



