ast-line eastward
fully 100 m. and is noticeably free from islands. The northern
entrance to Messier Channel is through this gulf. Messier, Pitt,
Sarmiento and Smyth's Channels, which form a comparatively safe and
remarkably picturesque inside route for small steamers, about 338 m.
in length, separate another series of archipelagoes from the mainland.
These channels are in places narrow and tortuous. Among the islands
which thickly fringe this part of the coast, the largest are Azopardo
(lying within Baker Inlet), Prince Henry, Campana, Little Wellington,
Great Wellington and Mornington (of the Wellington archipelago), Madre
de Dios, Duke of York, Chatham, Hanover, Cambridge, Contreras, Rennell
and the Queen Adelaide group of small barren rocks and islands lying
immediately north of the Pacific entrance to the Straits of Magellan.
The large number of English names on this coast is due to the fact
that the earliest detailed survey of this region was made by English
naval officers; the charts prepared from their surveys are still in
use and form the basis of all subsequent maps. None of these islands
is inhabited, although some of them are of large size, the largest
(Great Wellington) being about 100 m. long. It has likewise been
determined, since the boundary dispute with Argentina called attention
to these territories and led to their careful exploration at the
points in dispute, that Skyring Water, in lat. 53 deg. S., opens westward
into the Gulf of Xaultegua, which transforms Ponsonby Land and Cordoba
(or Croker) peninsula into an island, to which the name of Riesco has
been given. The existence of such a channel was considered probable
when these inland waters were first explored in 1829 by Captain
FitzRoy, but it was not discovered and surveyed until three-quarters
of a century had elapsed. Belonging to the Fuegian group south of the
Straits of Magellan are Desolation, Santa Ines, Clarence, Dawson,
Londonderry, Hoste, Navarin and Wollaston islands, with innumerable
smaller islands and rocks fringing their shores and filling the
channels between them. Admirable descriptions of this inhospitable
region, the farthest south of the inhabited parts of the globe, may be
found in the _Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's
Ships "Adventure" and "Beagle" between the years 1826 and 1836_ (3
vols., 1839).

The western and larger part of Tierra