Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager: With an account of the great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia from the year 1740 till their arrival in England 1746Byron, John
History
Byron's Narrative of the Loss of the Wager: With an account of the great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia from the year 1740 till their arrival in England 1746
Byron, John
Chiloé (Chile); Patagonia (Argentina and Chile); Wager (Ship)
any covering, shivering in our wet clothes. The frost coming on with
the morning, it was impossible for any of us to get a moment's sleep;
and having flung overboard our provision the day before, there being
no prospect of finding anything to eat on this coast, in the morning we
pulled out of the cove; but found so great a sea without, that we could
make but little of it. After tugging all day, towards night we put in
among some small islands, landed upon one of them, and found it a mere
swamp. As the weather was the same, we passed this night much as we had
done the preceding; sea-tangle was all we could get to eat at first,
but the next day we had better luck; the surgeon shot a goose, and we
found materials for a good fire. We were confined here three or four
days, the weather all that time proving so bad that we could not put
out. As soon as it grew moderate, we left this place, and shaped our
course to the northward; and perceiving a large opening between very
high land and a low point, we steered for it; and when got that length,
found a large bay, down which we rowed, flattering ourselves there
might be a passage that way; but towards night we came to the bottom of
the bay, and finding no outlet, we were obliged to return the same way
we came, having met with nothing the whole day to alleviate our hunger.
Next night we put into a little cove, which, from the great quantity
of red-wood found there, we called Redwood Cove. Leaving this place in
the morning, we had the wind southerly, blowing fresh, by which we made
much way that day, to the northward. Towards evening we were in with a
pretty large island. Putting ashore on it, we found it clothed with the
finest trees we had ever seen, their stems running up to a prodigious
height, without knot or branch, and as straight as cedars: the leaf
of these trees resemble the myrtle leaf, only somewhat larger. I have
seen trees larger than these in circumference, on the coast of Guinea,
and there only; but for a length of stem, which gradually tapering,
I have no where met with any to compare to them. The wood was of a
hard substance, and, if not too heavy, would have made good masts; the
dimensions of some of these trees being equal to a main-mast of a first
rate man-of-war. The shore was covered with driftwood of a very large
size; most of it cedar, which makes a brisk fire; but is so subject to
snap and fly, that when we awoke in the morning, after a sound sleep,
we found our clothes singed in many places with the sparks, and covered
with splinters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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