Having learned this much while on the ship, it was with a great deal of curiosity that I climbed from the boat to the pier and walked ashore. The foot of the bluff had been terraced with spiles to keep the seas from washing out the soil there, and it was said that a northeast gale sent an ugly swell into that part of the bay in spite of the shelter of the point on which I had seen the pavilion. Under such circumstances, the only perfectly safe anchorage for a vessel was further up the fiord around a bend. Although the _Ushuaia_ seemed to be anchored in a bowl-shaped bay, there was really a passage through what seemed to be the western wall of the bowl, and a plan of the whole fiord as laid down on the chart was really of the shape of a sock. The stairway up from the pier had a railway of wooden timbers, with a winch at the top designed for hauling up and lowering the boats, but it seems never to have been used. At the head of the stairs was a bell that had been taken from the English ship _Guy Mannering_ that ran into the rocks not far away during a fog in 1892. From the stairs we went to the Governor's house. The Governor was at home in Buenos Ayres on a vacation, but his assistant, with the secretary, did the honors. They had a very good quality of brandy, and very good wine, also. The house was built of planed pine. It was somewhat in the form of a right-angled U, open toward the fiord. The house was ceiled instead of plastered, and was plainly but comfortably furnished. That is to say, it was comfortable for one who could enjoy that climate unmodified by artificial means. To a citizen of the United States the Governor's house was lacking in the one thing most necessary for comfort in a climate where cold and stormy weather is the rule and the thermometer never goes above 12 deg. centigrade. There was no heating stove in it. With the exception of the cook, the baker, and one sailor, that entire crew lived day and night in a moist atmosphere, where the thermometer ranged from 30 deg. to 40 deg. Fahrenheit almost every day in the year.