PORT SAN ANTONIO. 



March 18S8. 



Bad weather forced us into Port San Antonio ; of which 

 Cordova gives so favourable an account, that we were surprised 

 to find it small and inconvenient, even for the Adelaide. 



He describes the port to be a mile and a half long, and three 

 quarters of a mile broad : we found the length a mile and a 

 quarter, and the mean breadth scarcely a quarter of a mile. 

 It possesses no one advantage that is not common to almost 

 every other harbour and cove in the Strait ; and for a ship, or 

 Square-rigged vessel of any kind, it is both difficult to enter, 

 and dangerous to leave. Besides the local disadvantages of 

 Port San Antonio, the weather in it is seldom fair, even when 

 the day is fine elsewhere. It lies at the base of the Lomas 

 Range, which rises almost perpendicularly to the height of 

 three thousand feet, fronting the great western channel of the 

 Strait, whence it receives upon its cold surface the western 

 winds, and is covered by the vapour, which is condensed from 

 them, while in all other parts the sun may be shining brightly. 



This port is formed by a channel, a quarter of a mile wide, 

 separating two islands from the shore. The best anchorage is 

 off a picturesque little bay on the south island, which is thickly 

 wooded to the water's edge with the holly leaved berberis,* 

 fuchsia, and veronica, growing to the height of twenty feet ; 

 over-topped and sheltered by large beech, and Winter's-bark 

 trees, rooted under a thick mossy carpet, through which a 

 narrow Indian path winds between arbutus and currant bushes, 

 and round prostrate stems of dead trees, leading to the seaward 

 side of the island. Upon the beach, just within the bushes, and 

 sheltered by a large and wide-spreading fuchsia bush, in full 

 flower, stood two Indian wigwams, which, apparently, had not 

 been inhabited since the visit of poor Ainsworth. He had 

 occupied these very wigwams for two days, having covered 

 them over with the boaf s sail ; and remains of the ropeyarns 

 that tied it down were still there : a melancholy memento. 



In no part of the Strait did we find the vegetation so luxuriant 

 as in this little cove. Some of the Winter's-bark and currant 

 trees had shoots more than five feet long, and many of the 

 * Berberis ilicifolia. — Banks and Solander MSS. 



