y voyage, and after giving me the
tacks he put on board bags of biscuits and a large quantity of smoked
venison. He declared that my bread, which was ordinary sea-biscuits
and easily broken, was not nutritious as his, which was so hard that I
could break it only with a stout blow from a maul. Then he gave me,
from his own sloop, a compass which was certainly better than mine,
and offered to unbend her mainsail for me if I would accept it Last of
all, this large-hearted man brought out a bottle of Fuegian gold-dust
from a place where it had been _cached_ and begged me to help myself
from it, for use farther along on the voyage. But I felt sure of
success without this draft on a friend, and I was right. Samblich's
tacks, as it turned out, were of more value than gold.

[Illustration: A Fuegian Girl.]

The port captain finding that I was resolved to go, even alone, since
there was no help for it, set up no further objections, but advised
me, in case the savages tried to surround me with their canoes, to
shoot straight, and begin to do it in time, but to avoid killing them
if possible, which I heartily agreed to do. With these simple
injunctions the officer gave me my port clearance free of charge, and
I sailed on the same day, February 19, 1896. It was not without
thoughts of strange and stirring adventure beyond all I had yet
encountered that I now sailed into the country and very core of the
savage Fuegians.

A fair wind from Sandy Point brought me on the first day to St.
Nicholas Bay, where, so I was told, I might expect to meet savages;
but seeing no signs of life, I came to anchor in eight fathoms of
water, where I lay all night under a high mountain. Here I had my
first experience with the terrific squalls, called williwaws, which
extended from this point on through the strait to the Pacific. They
were compressed gales of wind that Boreas handed down over the hills
in chunks. A full-blown williwaw will throw a ship, even without sail
on, over on her beam ends; but, like other gales, they cease now and
then, if only for a short time.

February 20 was my birthday, and I found myself alone, with hardly so
much as a bird in sight, off Cape Froward, the southernmost point of
the continent of America. By daylight in the morning I was getting my
ship under way for the bout ahead.

The sloop held the wind fair while she ran thirty miles farther on her
course, which brought her to Fortescue Bay, and at once among the
n