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72 Cruüe o f the “ Alert.”
stream at high tide, and on the tide falling had been examined
and found to contain a fair number of fish (mackerel). Some
hours later two of our people were wading up the river, and on
coming to a depression in its bed, which was at about the limit
to which the tidal salt-water reached, they found an immense
collection of half-dead and living mackerel in a pool, in which—
the tide being then rather low— the water was almost entirely
fresh. Here they caught, with their hands, fish enough to fill a
boat, amounting to a gross weight of 4 cwt. The probable
explanation of this lucky “ take” seems to be that the fish entered
the mouth of the river with the flood tide— as is their wont— and
on attempting to retreat with the ebb found their return to the
sea barred by our net, and instead of endeavouring to pass
through the meshes preferred to move back into the brackish water
of the river. Here, as the tide fell still further and laid bare
banks of sand stretching across the stream, they became shut off
altogether from the sea, and at dead low tide the fiow of fresh
water so predominated over the salt as to render them helplessly
stupid, so that they fell an easy prey to our sailors.
On the shores of this bay I came across a magnificent Winter’s
bark tree, the largest which I have ever seen in the channels. Its
smooth and almost cylindrical stem was nine feet in circumference,
and ran up without branching to a height of thirty feet from the
ground.
In cruising to and fro about the channel we frequently came
across whales. They were usually either “ finners” or “ sperms’ ;
more commonly the former. I saw only one one “ right whale
during the many months which we spent in these waters. On
the 17th of February we steamed by a school of about twenty
“ finner” whales, and shortly after we passed through a shoal of
small red shrimps {Galatheas), which were so densely clustered
together as to give the water quite a scarlet appearance. This
accounted for the great gathering of Cetaceans. Skeletons of
whales in a very imperfect state were abundant about the shores
Exploration o f the Picton Channel.
of this channel, and many were of large size. On the shore of
Francisco Bay I saw lower jaw bones which measured eleven feet
from condyle to symphysis. I looked, but in vain, for remains of
the Ziphioid Whales.
Some few miles to the eastward of Francisco Bay a deep inlet
pierced Wellington Island in a northerly direction. We were
anxious to explore it, as we thought it not unlikely that it might
prove to be a navigable passage, connecting Trinidad Channel
with the Gulf of Peñas. At length an opportunity occurred, and
on a fine morning in the month of March we steamed into this unsurveyed
inlet. On fairly passing the southern entrance, we found
ourselves traversing a lane of water of such glassy smoothness,
and bordered by such straight running shores, which were not
more than half-a-mile apart, as to seem more like an inland canal
than (which it eventually proved to be) a strait leading through a
nest of breakers to an inhospitable ocean. Its eastern shore
exhibited the kind of scenery prevailing about the Guia Narrows;
viz., round-topped hills with great bare patches of rain-worn rock
extending from the summits to a talus, which was covered with an
uniform mantle of evergreen forest, the latter encroaching upon the
sea-beach. But the country to the west presented a more pleasing
variety, being composed of low undulating slopes of grassy-looking
land, with here and there fissures or landslips exhibiting what
seemed to us, as we scrutinized them with our glasses, to be
sections of a sedimentary formation. We had hitherto seen
nothing like this anywhere among the western channels, and
consequently I for one was extremely anxious to land. However,
the captain had to make the most of daylight for the surveying
work in hand, so that our conjectures as to the nature of this
formation remained unverified. When we had attained a distance
of twenty-five miles from the southern entrance of the Strait, the
western shore was found to be broken up into a chain of low islets,
which in time dwindled away into a great arc of submerged rocks,
over which the swell of the broad Pacific broke with great fury.
Bi
111' fKiti: