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

460 PORT DESIRE — NO ARIEL ROCKS. June 1830. the turn of tide in our favour carried us towards the entrance of the harbour, into which we worked, the tide of ebb having just ended ; and we moored abreast of the ruins. My first care was to look for traces of the Adventure or Adelaide, but I found none. A bottle which I had deposited for the Adelaide, at our last visit, by Captain King's direction, was exactly where I then left it, and the papers it contained were untouched. While in this port I got good observations, the weather being clear, though very cold. No guanacoes were shot although many were seen, but numbers of sea-birds were brought on board.* A quince was given to me which was found in a place where the Spanish colony had made a garden. We remarked that the tracks of the guanacoes on shore here were not so large, by one-half, as those we had so lately seen in Tierra del Fuego. Having noticed the currents particularly, in order to compare them with what I observed formerly and with the tide in the port ; I can now say, decidedly, that the flood tide comes from the southward, and that the ebb sets to the south-east. North of Port Desire, or from Port Desire to Cape Blanco, the flood is much the strongest, but off Penguin Island the ebb is, I think, the strongest, setting two or three knots an hour. It is high-water and slack-water, in Port Desire, at half-past twelve, on the days of full and change. The tides, if not attended to, would baffle a ship much in making this port. " On the 21st we sailed, with a fresh breeze from the S. W. and at nine a.m. on the 25th when about one mile south- ward of the alleged position of the Ariel rocks, and near the nominal longitude, I hauled to the wind and ran some distance on their parallel, looking out for broken water. There was a very irregular and heavy swell, as much as would be raised by a gale of wind, but caused apparently by a current ; and while waiting for the meridian altitude, before bearing up, having run twenty miles on the same parallel, a heavy swell rose on the quarter^ which struck our weather quarter boat, and turned • The powder and shot expended here procured four meals of fresh provisions for all hands.