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 ANEGADA BAY LOS CESARES. 287 Be this as it may, there is now a mass of banks extending far to seaward, which make the coast from Blanco Bay to San Bias extremely dangerous; more particularly, as the adjoining shore is almost a dead flat, and so low, that in many parts it can only be seen when the observer is among, or upon, the shoals. The space between Union Bay and San Bias was very appropriately named by the Spaniards Bahia Anegada (dried up bay), because it is so shallow, and the inner parts are rather drowned land than actual water, being only covered at half tide. Falkner says (p. 77), that a Spanish vessel was lost in this bav, the crew of which " saved themselves in one of the boats, and sailing up the river arrived at Mendoza." Whether this ship was called ' Los Cesares'' I am not aware, but as there is an islet in the ' Bahia Anegada ^ named in the old Spanish charts, ' Isla de los Cesares,' I suspect that such was the fact, and incline to connect this story with the many rumours of a settlement, ' de los Cesares,' somewhere in the interior of Patagonia. Falkner says, that " the crew saved themselves in one of the boats ;""* but there were few Spanish vessels about that coast in the early part of the eighteenth century whose whole crew could have been saved in one of their boats.-}* If the remainder had formed even a temporary encampment about San Bias, or near the river Negro, it would have been described, with much exaggeration, by Indians of the west, as well as by those of the East country. A few men might have been admitted into a tribe of Indians who improved their habits and dwellings, so far as to have given rise to the curious reports so much circulated in South America, during the last century and even in this— of a colony of white people, with houses and gardens, in the interior of the continent, some- where about the latitude of forty degrees ; according to some * " In the year 1734, or thereabouts (within how many years after or before that time ?), the masts and part of the hulk were seen," (Falkner, p. 77-) The so-called ' Isla de los Cesares ' is closely attached to, if not a part of the main land at the west side of Anegada Bay. t Reports of the Cesares began to be circulated in the early part of the eighteenth century.