d uninhabitable rocks, one of
which, presenting two round hummocks connected by a low reef, exactly
resembles a huge double-headed shot. The last lie in the latitude of
33 deg.; high, wild and cloven. Juan Fernandez is sufficiently famous
without further description. Massafuero is a Spanish name, expressive of
the fact, that the isle so called lies _more without_, that is, further
off the main than its neighbor Juan. This isle Massafuero has a very
imposing aspect at a distance of eight or ten miles. Approached in one
direction, in cloudy weather, its great overhanging height and rugged
contour, and more especially a peculiar slope of its broad summits, give
it much the air of a vast iceberg drifting in tremendous poise. Its
sides are split with dark cavernous recesses, as an old cathedral with
its gloomy lateral chapels. Drawing nigh one of these gorges from sea,
after a long voyage, and beholding some tatterdemalion outlaw, staff in
hand, descending its steep rocks toward you, conveys a very queer
emotion to a lover of the picturesque.

On fishing parties from ships, at various times, I have chanced to
visit each of these groups. The impression they give to the stranger
pulling close up in his boat under their grim cliffs is, that surely he
must be their first discoverer, such, for the most part, is the
unimpaired ... silence and solitude. And here, by the way, the mode in
which these isles were really first lighted upon by Europeans is not
unworthy of mention, especially as what is about to be said, likewise
applies to the original discovery of our Encantadas.

Prior to the year 1563, the voyages made by Spanish ships from Peru to
Chili, were full of difficulty. Along this coast, the winds from the
South most generally prevail; and it had been an invariable custom to
keep close in with the land, from a superstitious conceit on the part of
the Spaniards, that were they to lose sight of it, the eternal
trade-wind would waft them into unending waters, from whence would be no
return. Here, involved among tortuous capes and headlands, shoals and
reefs, beating, too, against a continual head wind, often light, and
sometimes for days and weeks sunk into utter calm, the provincial
vessels, in many cases, suffered the extremest hardships, in passages,
which at the present day seem to have been incredibly protracted. There
is on record in some collections of nautical disasters, an account of
one of these ships, which, startin