So here we are in water as free from swell as a Central Park lake, taking things very comfortably indeed. But if the sea is free from swell, it is continuously whipped into foam by the succession of tearing snow-squalls which strike us with seemingly cyclonic fury. At eleven o’clock, for instance, it will calm down to a royal breeze; at 11.10 it will be blowing a full gale, accompanied with a driving snow-storm, which whirls the flakes along in a horizontal tempest; and as the temperature was at 33° all day, the drifts lay in the scuppers until shovelled overboard. How cosy and cheerful it is to come down to the great, glowing stove from one of these black squalls and the roaring wind and the sleet and hail, which feel as though they were drawing blood as they sting the face with a fury which is simply resistless! For below everything is delightfully comfortable at a temperature of 65°, and we draw near to the red coals and shiver composedly as we listen to the watch hauling around the yards to the cry of “wear ship.” We will never forget the spectacle which met our eyes this morning half an hour after daybreak. Right before us lay the bleak shores of Tierra del Fuego, stretching from east to west as far as the eye could see, the wildest, grandest coast which the mind can conceive. Sheer down into the sea fell its almost vertical walls of rock and steep, rugged hills, with their black gorges and frowning chasms filled with the snow which had fallen heavily during the night. Farther inland extended a broad expanse of rolling plateau covered with small knolls; and then in all their desolate sublimity rose the magnificent range of snowy mountains, thousands of feet above the sea, clad in their eternal mantle of dazzling white. I have never before seen such a picture as that presented by this deserted, volcanic land. The gray, mournful hills and snow-clad Alpine peaks, now buried in a raging snow-squall, now rearing their ice-crowned summits far above the mists which shrouded their less exalted companions, filled the mind with the idea that their Maker, displeased at His own handiwork, had abandoned forever these lonely shores to the gloomy pall of cloud which usually enfolds the land in its cold, clammy embrace, and to the fierce, wild gales which sweep everlastingly through its gaunt and spectral mountains. What eerie fancies the dark and powerful genius of Edgar Allan Poe could wreathe about this fantastic, uncouth land! Oh, for a day’s wandering through those valleys and ravines, as cold and cheerless as the moon itself! And how I envied the “Beagle’s” men their months of sojourn amidst the grandeur of these fascinating hills!