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. No. 1. Sir: March 19, 1831. Accompanying this letter, I have the honour to transmit to you, for their Lordships' information, six charts and sixteen plans of harbours and portions of the coast of Tierra del Fuego, the results of Commander Fitz-Roy's surveys in H.M.'s sloop Beagle, between April 1829 and June 1830. Their Lordships wiU, I trust, permit me, as the senior officer of that expedition, to state the pecuhar nature and extent of this service, as well as the complete manner in which it has been effected. On the melancholy occasion of Commander Stokes's death, I was fortunate, through the Commander-in-chief Sir Robert Otway's just discrimination of Commander Fitz-Roy's qualifications, on account of which alone he was selected, to receive him as my colleague, in the command of the Beagle. In April I detached the Beagle, and Adventmre's tender, to complete portions of the Strait of Magalhaens that were then imperfect ; and by him, and under his superintendence and able direction, the Mag- dalen and Barbara Channels through the Tierra del Fuego were surveyed ; a considerable portion of the interior sounds on the western coast was examined ; and the discovery of the Otway and Skyring Waters was made, by Commander Fitz-Roy himself, in the depth of the severe winter of that climate, and on which he was absent from the ship thirty-three days in an open whale-boat. In August the Beagle joined me at Chiloe, and sailed again early in November following, with a view to examine the outward or sea- n '^