Fitz-Roy has hired two of them and has put officers on them.

It took us nearly a month fitting them out; as soon as this was finished we came back here, and are now preparing for a long cruise to the south.

I expect to find the wild mountainous country of Terra del Fuego very interesting, and after the coast of Patagonia I shall thoroughly enjoy it .-- I had hoped for the credit of Dame Nature, no such country as this last existed; in sad reality we coasted along 240 miles of sand hillocks; I never knew before, what a horrid ugly object a sand hillock is.

The famed country of the Rio Plata in my opinion is not much better: an enormous brackish river, bounded by an interminable green plain is enough to make any naturalist groan.

So Hurrah for Cape Horn and the Land of Storms.