Bidding good-bye to our friends on the _Pinta_, to whom we were indebted for many favors, we started for our trip up the bay in a pouring rain-storm. Our way at first led through the narrow, placid water-ways dividing the islands on the eastern side of the bay. The islands and the shores of the mainland are densely wooded, and appeared picturesque and inviting even through the veil of mist and rain that shrouded them. The forests consist principally of spruce trees, so dense and having such a tangle of underbrush that it is only with the greatest difficulty that one can force a way through them; while the ground beneath the forest, and even the trunks and branches of the living trees, are covered and festooned with luxuriant growths of mosses and lichens. Our trip along these wooded shores, but half revealed {82} through the drifting mist, was novel and enjoyable in spite of discomforts due to the rain. We rejoiced at the thought that we were nearing the place where the actual labors of the expedition would begin; we were approaching the unknown; visions of unexplored regions filled with new wonders occupied our fancies, and made us eager to press on. About noon on the first day we pitched our tents on a strip of shingle skirting the shore of the mainland to the east of Knight island. The _Pinta's_ boats spread their white wings and sailed away to the southward before a freshening wind, and our last connection with civilization was broken. As one of the frontiersmen of our party remarked, we were "at home once more." It may appear strange to some that any one could apply such a term to a camp on the wild shore of an unexplored country; but the Bohemian spirit is so strong in some breasts, and the restraint of civilization so irksome, that the homing instinct is reversed and leads irresistibly to the wilderness and to the silent mountain tops. The morning after arriving at our first camp, Kerr, Christie, and Hendriksen, with all the camp hands except two, went on with the canoes, and in a few hours reached the entrance of Disenchantment bay. They found a camping place about twelve miles ahead, on a narrow strip of shingle beneath the precipices of Point Esperanza, and there established our second camp.