Narrative of the surveying voyages of his majesty's ships Adventure and Beagle (vol.2): between the years 1826 and 1836 : describing their examination of the southern shores of South America, and the Beagles's circumnavigation of the globe

1833. UNICORN GALES WRECKS. 273 desire to get it for my collection. Being alone and finding the water cold, he may have become alarmed, then accidentally entangling his legs in the sea-weed, lost his presence of mind, and by struggling hastily was only more confused. The rising tide must have considerably augmented his distress, and hastened the fatal result. 5th. This day we buried the body of our lamented young friend, on a rising ground near Johnson Cove, in sight of our ship. All the French attended the melancholy ceremony, as well as all our own party, excepting the very few who were obliged to stay on board. 6th. An agreement was brought about, and witnessed by me, between M. le Dilly and the master of the Rapid schooner, by which the latter bound himself to convey to Monte Video those of the Magellan's crew whom the Beagle could not carry : and next day another French whaler arrived (the fourth we had lately seen), belonging to the owners of the Magellan, so there was no longer any want of help for M. le Dilly. A few days afterwards a sealing schooner, the Unicorn, arrived, Mr. Wilham Low being sealing master and part owner; and, although considered to be the most enterprizing and intel- ligent sealer on those shores, perhaps anywhere, the weather had been so much against him that he returned from his six months' cruise a ruined man, with an empty ship. All his means had been employed to forward the purchase and outfit of the fine vessel in which he sailed ; but having had, as he assured me, a continued succession of gales during sixty-seven days, and, tak- ing it altogether, the worst season he had known during twenty years' experience, he had been prevented from taking seal, and was ruined. Passengers with him were the master and crew of a North American sealing schooner, the Transport, wbich had been wrecked on the south-west coast of Tierra del Fuego, in Hope Harbour ; and he told me of two other wrecks, all occasioned by the gale of January 12-13th. At this time I had become more fully convinced than ever that the Beagle could not execute her allotted task before she, and those in her, would be so much in need of repair and rest, A'OL. II. X