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

APPENDIX. 229 the offing : and if bound to the south, steer also du-ect to the place, if fortunate enough to have a wind which admits of your doing so ; but if not, stand out to sea, by the wind, keeping every sail clean full tiie object being to get through the adverse southerly winds as soon as possible, and reach a latitude from which the ship will be sure of reaching her port, on a direct course. Every experienced seaman knows that no method is more adverse to making quick passages than that of ' hugging the wind,' as it is called. When Sir Thomas Hardy was on this coast, he used to cross the southerly winds with a topmast studding-sail set, as many men cross the trades, his object being to get into other winds. The current on the coast of Chile is northerly, about half a mile an hour ; varying a little with the wind. The idea some persons have of Copiapo being a difficult place to make is rather unfounded ; the following is the manner in which we made it in the Beagle, when strangers to that part of the coast. July 3. A dull gloomy day, wind moderate from the southward at 10 A.M. we were thirty miles south of Copiapo, by the dead rec- koning from noon yesterday ; but being aware of the northerly set, which near the shore is half a mile an hour, we steered an E.N.E. course in for the land ; at noon it was in sight, forming two long rounded-topped hills : the northern one was the highest, it ended in a bluff, with a low point sloping off it ; this we rightly supposed was the Morro of Copiapo, it bore N.E. ; and the other which was a-head the high land of Tortoral ; this had a gradual slope to sea- ward. A roimd and rather peaked black rock, about ten feet high, a little open, of a low level (eighty-five feet high) of a light brown colour, with some remarkable white patches on it, was seen at three ; and a little before it, about a point south of the Morro, was a low, black, rocky island. The latter was Isla Grande, and the former the Caxa Grande rock, with the west point of the anchorage cove, on which there is a flag- staff : as we neared the land the wind gradually left us ; and, as the day closed, we were four miles from the Caxa Grande. The clouds that covered the high land in-shore of Copiapo, lifted off a little in the evening, showing us two remarkable hills, one with a notched top, and the other like a sugarloaf, with rather a flat top ; this was in a direction a little south of the Caxa Grande, and