The human dwellings are a few tin shanties. In a walk on shore we were able to see in a gully, a few remains of the walls of the old Spanish settlement. As to the puma, fortunately from its point of view, the railway service left a good deal to be desired. We arrived on Friday, and there turned out to be no train till the following Tuesday, so it lived to be shot another day—unless indeed it met a more ignominious end, for the South American lion is so unworthy of its name that it is sometimes killed by being ridden down and brained with a stirrup-iron. We took three sheep on board, as mutton at twopence a pound appealed to the housekeeping mind, and were able to secure some water, which is brought down by rail; it was a relief to have our tanks well supplied, as the ports further down the coast are defended by bars, and would have been difficult of access in bad weather. Drake, on whose course we were now entering, selected St. Julian, the next bay to the southward, for his port of call before entering the Straits of Magellan; it was there he had trouble with his crew, and was obliged to hang Doughty. We sailed from Port Desire on Monday morning, but were not to say good-bye to it so speedily. We soon encountered a strong head wind, with the result that Wednesday evening found us fifteen miles backwards on a return journey to Buenos Aires, and the whole of Thursday saw us still within sight of it. We amused ourselves by discussing the voyage, which had now lasted more than seven months. One of the company declared that he had lost all sense of time and felt like a native or an animal: things just went on from day to day; there was neither before nor after, neither early nor late. It did not, he said, seem very long since we left Falmouth, but on the other hand our stay at Pernambuco was certainly in the remote past, and so with everything else. We had now, in fact, done about three-quarters of the distance from Buenos Aires towards the Straits of Magellan, and had 300 miles left before we reached their entrance at Cape Virgins.