190 
FROM VALPARAISO TO PORTSMOUTH. 
furious gale was blowing from the west, before which we ran at the rate of fourteen miles 
an hour. On both sides of the Strait nothing was to be seen but the hard rock, against 
which the waves spent their fury in vain, whilst above them the clouds reflected a bluish 
light from enormous glaciers. Except at Heard Island, we had never had such a scene 
before our eyes. What terror its aspect must have inspired to the countless shipwrecked 
and starving crews who have perished in these Straits ! The old navigator who gave a 
name to the spot, as is well known, lost half his fleet in these dismal latitudes. From 
information received long afterwards, and unhappily much too late, it appears that, at the 
very time of our passage, the captain of a ship abandoned on fire off Cape Horn, his wife, 
and the crew, were dying of starvation on a small island within two days’ sail of our track. 
Motives of humanity, apart from the immense commercial advantages certain to arise from 
the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, should hasten the execution of 
the project, in order to put an end to the great loss of life and property which annually 
occurs in the vicinity of Cape Horn and the Straits of Patagonia. 
The “Challenger” made such progress on the last-named day, that at 4 p.m. we 
rounded Cape Froward, the southern extremity of the American continent. We now turned 
our faces for the first time towards England, and our minds began to fill with expectant 
thoughts of home. That evening we put into Port Famine, once the site of a settlement 
which now has disappeared. The clearings alone, and some slight traces of dwellings, indicated 
the former presence of man. Since we had rounded Cape Froward the weather seemed to 
have grown much milder, and the barren rocks had given way to large forests growing up to 
the mountain-tops. 
Early on the 14th, our good ship anchored off Punta Arenas—in plain English, “Sandy 
Point”—the new Chilian settlement in the Straits of Magellan. 
It is interesting to watch the early stages of what may at some future time develop 
into a thriving seaport town, a large commercial city, or, it may be, the capital of an 
independent state. A 
sandy plain divided 
by rough palings into 
skeleton streets and 
squares ; here and 
there a furze-bush, or 
the stump of an old 
denizen of the forest, 
in the centre of what 
may become the Regent Street of the future city; a few avenues formed by wooden huts, and 
beyond these a belt of land encumbered with trunks of trees, the first slain in the combat 
between man and the wilderness ; and finally, upon the nearest horizon the “ forest primeval ” 
rolling inland over hill and dale, a veritable ocean of verdure. Punta Arenas seems to have 
made a good beginning. It already boasts a fort, a church, a school, a consulate, a garrison, 
PUNTA ARENAS. 
