Chapter IX—From Valparaiso to Portsmouth. 
ATURDAY the nth December, H.M.S. “Challenger” left the port of Valparaiso, 
her next destination being the Gulf of Penas, about 900 miles to the south¬ 
ward. We had hoped to accomplish this distance in the space of a week, 
but wind and weather decided otherwise. Driven to westward, we were on 
the 17th and 18th again within sight of Juan Fernandez. At last, on 
Christmas Day, when near the meridian of long. 90° W., we were able to shape our course 
towards land, and on the morning of the last day of the year Cape Tres Montes ; which 
marks the northern entrance to the Gulf of Penas, appeared in sight. It owes its name to 
three lofty promontories, of almost identical shape and height. Part of the day was spent 
off Cape Stokes sounding and trawling, and in the evening we anchored in Port Otway, a 
pretty harbour, which, sheltered by wooded hills, forms the western extension of the Gulf of 
Tres Montes, as the northern end of the Gulf of Penas is termed. Here are several islands, 
and among the oddly-shaped hills by which the gulf is bounded are the Sugar-loaf and the 
Dome of St. Paul, 2284 feet. 
THE STRAITS OF PATAGONIA. 
On New Years Day, 1876, our ship crossed the Gulf of Penas, and entered 
Messier Channel. This broad and deep waterway runs for a distance of about two hundred 
miles fiom north to south, between the large island named Wellington Island and the 
mainland of Patagonia, until it joins the Gulf of Trinidad. Its entrance is marked by high 
mountains standing on each side, and forming an appropriate gateway into the Alpine world 
which lay before us. If the reader will conceive the lakes and upper valleys of the Swiss 
Alps brought down to the sea, and distributed on both sides of a narrow strait extending 
over 500 miles, he will have some idea of the panorama—unsurpassed in variety, grandeur, and 
savage beauty—which was unfolded before our view. During the greater part of the distance 
