WHALING VOYAGE. 
201 
fuses the earth’s accustomed bounty ; still in these dreary 
regions man finds considerable happiness, for “ God 
tempereth the wind to the shorn lamb and these poor 
Fuegians may be as happy with their scanty meal as the 
greatest emperor over his coronation feast. 
We saw the small islands which are called the Ilde- 
fonzas, and which are situated in a south-west direction 
from Cape Horn, and at a small distance from it. These 
rocky isles offer nothing worthy of remark, except that 
at the time I saw them they were surrounded with 
thousands of sea-fowl of various kinds, which were 
amusing themselves in the air above and around their 
shores. 
We now ran with a fair wind, along the coast of 
Patagonia, which is rocky, uneven and barren. Although 
we had a good view of the coast, we had not the good 
fortune to see any of the inhabitants thereof, the cele- 
brated Patagonians ; but I was so fortunate as to meet 
with Captain Minors, whose ship we fell in with off 
these parts, and who had on a former voyage actually 
traded with those Brobdignagians,»—but then he had 
passed through the Straits of Magellan, and had met 
with them there, on its shores. He did not go so far as 
Gonzalo Fernandez Oviedo, a Spanish writer, who was 
imposed upon by the clergyman Arizega, in stating that 
the Patagonians were so gigantic a race that a tall man 
could not reach the girdle of one of them, or that they 
were in the habit of consuming a couple of pounds of 
raw flesh at a mouthful, or that they swallowed eighteen 
or twenty gallons of water at a draught. Nor did his 
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