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19th. Sailed, and, for once during our experience of these
shores, found a heavy swell setting in from the east.*
On the 20th we anchored again in Port Desire, and our first
employment was to look for the rock whose top (Mr. May assured
me with a grave face) we had knocked off with our keel.
22d. Both vessels sailed, and at sunset the Adventure parted
company, steering for New Island in the Falklands. Lieutenant
Wickham was to make a connected survey of the coast
of that archipelago, while the Beagle was in other places.f
After giving some time to sounding and examining portions of
ground in the neighbourhood of Cape Virgins and the eastern
entrance of Magalhaens Strait, we passed the First Narrow
and anchored in Gregory Bay. There, of course, we had an
interview with old Maiia and her party. They received us
kindly, but with some form, being assembled and seated on
the ground near our landing place, with two men standing up
in the midst of them, who looked immoveahly grave and
stupidly dignified. These men were acting as caciques, Maria
said, the real chiefs being absent. They were stripped to the
waist, and the upper parts of their bodies spotted with
white paint. ] The rest of the people were dressed as usual.
An active barter commenced, but the portly actors in the
middle did not take part in it, they remained in their solemnity
till we left them.
On the 2d of Pebruary we anchored in Port Famine, and
on the 10th, having obtained chronometric observations for
which I went there, we sailed for the neighbourhood of the
First Narrow and Lomas Bay (near Point Catherine). We
often anchored thereabouts in the prosecution of our work.
On the 17th, as we ran along the curious spit or bank of
shingle that fronts San Sebastian Bay, I really could not tell,
though I had been in that bay before, whether I had not been
• I think that this easterly swell must have heen caused by a southeast
gale, though it came to us from the east.
■f Appendix, No. 18.
{ Much as a piece of new knotty wood is spotted with white lead
before it receives a coat of paint.