5 o SPENCER’S JOURNAL 
arrived at St. Cruz at 6.15 p.m. on the same day. Left 
St. Cruz on Thursday, April 11, at 10 a.m. Entered Magel¬ 
lan Strait at 6 a.m. on April 12, reached First Narrows at 
10.45 a.m., and anchored off Magallanes at 6 p.m. 
Magallanes (from a letter to a friend). 
Tunta Arenas, now called Magallanes.is quite a picturesque 
little city, partly modern, with the really fine houses of sheep magnates 
built round a Plaza, and partly old fashioned, with wide straggling 
streets and wooden or corrugated iron houses, most of them fortunately 
painted red and greeen and yellow and blue. The hills behind are 
already beginning to be capped with snow, and from our windows in 
a very comfortable hotel, we look across the water to Tierra del Fuego 
and, down the streets, can see the tops of snow-mountains that form 
the southern end of the Andes on Tierra. 
First of all the Captain conducted us to the British Consulate, where 
we were formally signed off as members of the crew of the ‘Tudorstar’, 
and my Purserial life came to an end. Then we were taken in charge 
by the Police, and in the head station were detained for some time. 
It seems that no stranger is allowed to enter the gates of Chile, or at 
least to remain in them for more than eight days, without securing 
a “Carnet”. First of all they catechized us minutely as to our fathers 
and mothers, especially the latter, and took down the names of all our 
brothers and sisters. They took finger prints of all our fingers and 
thumbs in duplicate. I expected they would go on to our toes, and was 
rather anxious because there were gaping holes in both socks, but 
fortunately they stopped short of this. 
They then ushered us separately into a small chamber with electric 
lights all round, and took full face and profile views with a little scroll 
bearing an identification number hung down, Japanese fashion, beside 
have been derived from the slow falling of masses of rock on the old coast-lines and 
banks of rivers; and that these fragments have been dashed into smaller pieces, and 
that each of them has since been slowly rolled, rounded, and far transported, the 
mind is stupefied in thinking over the long, absolutely necessary, lapse of years. 
Yet all this gravel has been transported, and probably rounded, subsequently to 
the deposition of the white beds, and long subsequently to the underlying beds 
with the tertiary shells.—Darwin, Journal of Researches into the Natur'al History and 
Geology of the Countries Visited during the Voyage ofH.M.S. ‘ Beagle * round the World , 
under the Command of Captain Fite, Roy , R.N., cap. viii. 
