' If
' tñ
Viage, &c.’ It is written in a plain and simple style, gives a
most correct account of every thing seen, and should therefore
be in the possession of every person who attempts the navigation
of the strait.
Cordova’s account of the climate is very uninviting. Speaking
of the rigours of the summer months (January, February,
and March), he says, “ Seldom was the sky clear, and short
were the intervals in which we experienced the sun’s warmth ;
no day passed by without some rain having fallen, and the
most usual state of the weather was that of constant rain.”*
The accounts of Wallis and Carteret are still more gloomy.
The former concludes that part of his narrative with the
following dismal and disheartening description: “ Thus we
quitted a dreary and inhospitable region, where we were in
almost continual danger of shipwreck for near four months,
having entered the strait on the 17th of December, and quitted
it on the 11th of April 1767: a region where, in the midst of
summer, the weather was cold, gloomy, and tempestuous,
where the prospects had more the appearance of a chaos than
of nature ; and where for the most part the valleys were without
herbage and the hills without wood.”
These records of Cordova and Wallis made me feel not a
little apprehensive for the health of the crew, which could
not be expected to escape uninjured through the rigours of
such a climate. Nor were the narratives of Byron or Bougainville
calculated to lessen my anxiety. In an account, however,
of a voyage to the strait by M. A. Duclos Guyot, the following
paragraph tended considerably to relieve my mind upon
the subject;—“At length, on Saturday the 23d of March, we
sailed out of that famous Strait, so much dreaded, after having
experienced that there, as well as in other places, it was very
fine, and very warm, and that for three-fourths of the time the
sea was perfectly calm.”
In every view of the case, our proximity to the principal
scene of action occasioned sensations of a peculiar nature, in
which, however, those that were most agreeable and hopeful
• Ultimo Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes, part ii. p. 238.
preponderated. The officers and crews of both ships were
healthy, and elated with the prospect before them ; our vessels
were in every respect strong and sea-worthy; and we were
possessed of every comfort and resource necessary for encountering
much greater difficulties than we had any reason to
anticipate.
The re has existed much difference o f opinion as to the correct mode
of spelling the name of the celebrated navigator who discovered this
Strait. T h e F rench and English usually write it Magellan, and the
Spaniards Magallanes; hut by the Portuguese (and he was a native of
Portugal) it is universally written Magalhaens. Admiral Burney and
Mr. Dalrymple spell it Magalhanes, which mode I have elsewhere
adopted, but I have since convinced myself of the propriety of following
the Portuguese orthography for a name which, to this day, is very common
both in Portugal and Brazil.