Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.1): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

10 APPROACH TO THE STRAIT DeC. 1826 Viage, &c.' It is written in a plain and simple style, gives a most correct account of every thing seen, and should therefore be in the possession of every person who attempts the naviga- tion of the strait. Cordova's account of the climate is very uninviting. Speak- ing of the rigours of the summer months (January, February, and March), he says, " Seldom was the sky clear, and short were the intervals in which we experienced the sun's warmth : no day passed by without some rain having fallen, and the most usual state of the weather was that of constant rain."* The accounts of Wallis and Carteret are still more gloomy. The former concludes that part of his narrative with the following dismal and disheartening description : " Thus we quitted a dreary and inhospitable region, where we were in almost continual danger of shipwreck for near four months, having entered the strait on the 17th of December, and quitted it on the 11th of April 1767 : a region where, in the midst of summer, the weather was cold, gloomy, and tempestuous, where the prospects had more the appearance of a chaos than of nature ; and where for the most part the valleys were with- out herbage and the hills without wood." These records of Cordova and Wallis made me feel not a little apprehensive for the health of the crew, which could not be expected to escape uninjured through the rigours of such a climate. Nor were the narratives of Byron or Bougain- ville calculated to lessen my anxiety. In an account, however, of a voyage to the strait by M. A. Duclos Guyot, the follow- ing paragraph tended considerably to relieve my mind upon the subject : — "At length, on Saturday the 23d of March, we sailed out of that famous Strait, so much dreaded, after having experienced that there, as well as in other places, it was very fine, and very warm, and that for three-fourths of the time the sea was perfectly calm." In every view of the case, our proximity to the principal scene of action occasioned sensations of a peculiar nature, in which, however, those that were most agreeable and hopeful * Ultimo Viage al Estiecho de Magallanes, part ii. p. 298.