However, We Were Spared
Any Further Experience On The Point; For The Next Day, When We Must
Have Been Near
The Cape of Pillars, which is the south-west point
of the mouth of the straits, a gale set in
From the eastward, with a
heavy fog, so that we could not see half of the ship's length ahead.
This, of course, put an end to the project, for the present; for a
thick fog and a gale blowing dead ahead are not the most favorable
circumstances for the passage of difficult and dangerous straits.
This weather, too, seemed likely to last for some time, and we
could not think of beating about the mouth of the straits for a
week or two, waiting for a favorable opportunity; so we braced up
on the larboard tack, put the ship's head due south, and struck
her off for Cape Horn again.
CHAPTER XXXII
ICE AGAIN - A BEAUTIFUL AFTERNOON - CAPE HORN - "LAND HO!" - HEADING FOR HOME
In our first attempt to double the Cape, when we came up to the
latitude of it, we were nearly seventeen hundred miles to the
westward, but, in running for the straits of Magellan, we stood so
far to the eastward, that we made our second attempt at a distance
of not more than four or five hundred miles; and we had great hopes,
by this means, to run clear of the ice; thinking that the easterly
gales, which had prevailed for a long time, would have driven it
to the westward.
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