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

310 BAR — CRITICAL POSITION. Marcli take in a single sea. The bar is a continuation of the long shingle spit, or bank, which forms the seaward side of the harbour ; and is about nine miles long, though in some places not a hundred yards broad. Towards noon the wind fell light, and the vessels were swept by a strong tide-stream towards a ' race,' whose noise might have appalled the crews of much larger and stouter barks. No bottom could be struck with the deep-sea lead, and no efforts of the crews at the oars had much effect in arresting their progress towards apparently inevitable destruction. Even at this awful time, habitual familiarity with danger, and zeal for the service,- shewed their effects strongly in Mr. Stokes, who eagerly watched for the sun's meridian altitude, with his sextant to his eye, while every now and then he caught a hasty glimpse of the foaming and roaring race towards which the little craft were fast approaching. At this crisis a breeze sprung up which just enabled them to pass clear ; but no one who was in those vessels can ever forget that day, neither do I think they attribute their preservation to blind chance. Sailors see too many of these ' chances' to think of or reflect upon them lightly, and those who have had experience are not wont to forget, that to direct and to preserve are among the least efforts of Omnipotence — so far, at least, as our limited intelligence enables us to discern. At five that afternoon the Paz and Liebre were about eigh- teen miles offshore, out of soundings with their lead-lines, and yet were only a mile and half from the eastern part of the race ; therefore they still stood to seaward, to get as far as pos- sible from a neigh boui'hood so dangerous at any time, but especially so at night. For two hours they passed through a rippling, but could strike no soundings with sixty fathoms of line. In 1830 Mr. Harris (owner of the Paz) sailed from the River Negro in a vessel of about ninety tons, with some horses on board, which he had engaged to convey to a party of gauchoes who were employed on the peninsula of San Jose, in killing cattle for their hides. Within the Bay of San Matias, about six