fill our sails, so that we were obliged to drop the anchor again,
for fear of falling upon the point, and to carry out a kedge to windward.
That being done, we hove up the anchor, warped up to, and weighed the
kedge, and proceeding round the point under our stay-sails; there anchored
with the best bower in twenty fathoms; and moored with the other bower,
which lay to the north, in thirteen fathoms. In this position we were shut
in from the sea by the point above-mentioned, which was in one with the
extremity of the inlet to the east. Some islets, off the next point above
us, covered us from the N.W., from which quarter the wind had the greatest
fetch, and our distance from the shore was about one-third of a mile.

Thus situated we went to work, to clear a place to fill water, to cut wood,
and to set up a tent for the reception of a guard, which was thought
necessary, as we had already discovered that, barren as this country is, it
was not without people, though we had not yet seen any. Mr Wales also got
his observatory and instruments on shore; but it was with the greatest
difficulty he could find a place of sufficient stability, and clear of the
mountains, which every where surrounded us, to set them up in; and at last
he was obliged to content himself with the top of a rock not more than nine
feet over.

Next day I sent Lieutenants Clerke and Pickersgill, accompanied by some of
the other officers, to examine and draw a sketch of the channel on the
other side of the island; and I went myself in another boat, accompanied by
the botanists, to survey the northern parts of the sound. In my way I
landed on the point of a low isle covered with herbage, part of which had
been lately burnt: We likewise saw a hut, signs sufficient that people were
in the neighbourhood. After I had taken the necessary bearings, we
proceeded round the east end of Burnt Island, and over to what we judged to
be the main of Terra del Fuego, where we found a very fine harbour
encompassed by steep rocks of vast height, down which ran many limpid
streams of water; and at the foot of the rocks some tufts of trees, fit for
little else but fuel.

This harbour, which I shall distinguish by the name of the Devil's Bason,
is divided, as it were, into two, an inner and an outer one; and the
communication between them is by a narrow channel five fathoms deep. In the
outer bason I found thirteen and seventeen fathoms water, and in the inner
seventeen and twen