454 FAIL TO REACH SAN DIEGO. June 1830. 



of Good Success, to complete wood and water, and obtain 

 rates for the chronometers, previously to leaving the coast. 

 Wind and tide favoured us, and at noon we v/ere moored in 

 Good Success Bay. Soon afterwards I left the Beagle, in my 

 boat, with a week's provisions, intending to try to land near 

 Cape San Diego, and thence walk to the cape with the instru- 

 ments ; but I found a cross swell in the strait, and a rocky 

 shore without a place in which the boat could land : though 

 I risked knocking her to pieces by trying to land in the 

 only corner where there seemed to be any chance. After this 

 escape I tried farther on, without success ; by which time it 

 became dark, and if I had not returned immediately, while the 

 ebb-tide made, the flood would have begun and obliged me to 

 lie at a grapnel, during a frosty night, in a strong tide-way, 

 with the boat's crew wet through : I turned back, therefore, 

 and pulled towards Success Bay, assisted by the tide, but 

 the cockling sea it made half filled the boat more than 

 once, and we were thankful when again safely on board the 

 Beagle. 



" Having failed in this scheme for settling the latitude of 

 Cape San Diego, I thought of effecting it by bringing the 

 Beagle to an anchor in the strait, two or three miles to the 

 eastward of Good Success Bay, and thence connecting the 

 Cape to known points by triangulation ; the heads of this bay 

 and Cape Good Success, quite correctly placed, serving as the 

 foundation. 



" June 5th. I obtained some sights of the sun this morning 

 and observations at noon, besides bearings and angles to verify 

 former ones. All hands were busy wooding and watering, pre- 

 paratory to returning to Monte Video. A large albatross was 

 shot by my coxswain, which measured nearly fourteen feet 

 across the wings. 



" 6th. The snow which covered the ground when we were 

 first here was quite gone, and the weather was comparatively 

 mild. The frost at night was not more than in a common 

 winter's night in England, the thermometer ranging from 9!^"^ 

 to 32°. The tide was carefully noticed this day, being full 



