Approaching the coast on the morning of August 30, Brent soon recognized the rugged topography about the entrance to his unnamed harbor. The ship proceeded with the greatest caution. She felt her way with constant soundings. Brent had warned the captain that the chart which he supplied had been made with some haste and not the greatest thoroughness. After creeping along almost inch by inch for fully three hours, the _Richmond_ reached what seemed to be a safe anchorage at a little greater distance from the shore, as Brent remembered it, than the schooner had stopped on his previous visit. While the ship was slowly seeking her moorings, Brent examined the shore searchingly with a powerful glass. He could discover no sign of life, not a trace of the presence of a human being. A nervous apprehension began to rise within him when the anchor had been dropped and only the wild and desolate coast appeared to welcome him. He dreaded to discover the fate of his Patagonian friends, his partner in the treasure-quest, and the vast prize itself which he had come to bear away. As soon as the steamer was at rest, he asked for a small boat and a couple of sailors to row him ashore. Soon he entered the little cove where he had first landed and where he had left the raft and its precious load eight months before. His forebodings increased as he grounded upon the narrow beach and stepped ashore without discovering anything to suggest the previous presence of man. There were not even logs or driftwood from abandoned rafts. The empty boxes which he had landed from the schooner had disappeared. There was simply a silent, desolate, narrow beach, with almost a precipice rising back of it. Concealing his agitation, Brent directed the boatmen to wait for him and sought the natural trail leading to the higher land above. This he found and hastily followed up the steep ascent. A few minutes’ hard climbing brought him to the beautiful bit of pasture-land where he had first met the native Indians, and made acquaintance with the remarkable qualities of Patagonian horses and horsemanship. The little plain was deserted. Its verdure in the cool spring air was not as luxuriant as it had been under the warm summer sun of the previous December. The young man looked about in dismay. The solitude appalled him. Not even a bird-note made the silence less oppressive. He began to fancy himself the victim of a delusion. The uncanny impression that the record in his mind of the past year had no material existence returned to torment him. His common sense came to his rescue after a little, and he tried to consider reasonably the cause of this desolation, where he had expected to find life and activity. That something had gone wrong was almost certain, but he could only conjecture what it might be. He sat down upon a rock to think the matter over, but his meditations brought him little satisfaction.