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.[1]

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 twenty-three. This last is as secure a place as can be, but nothing can be more gloomy. The vast height of the savage rocks which encompass it, deprived great part of it, even on this day, of the meridian sun.

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