At noon we rounded the low sandy bar extending southward from Cape Virgins terminating in Dungeness Point, and entered the historic Strait of Magellan. The eastern beach was strewn with fragments of iron from the hull of the iron vessel _Cleopatra_, which was one of the many vessels wrecked here. The skeleton of the _Cleopatra_ was still fighting the sea some distance off shore, and presented a picture which would run into delight under the brush of an artist. The western shore of the point was strewn with fragments of wooden vessels, and two hulls well ashore rocked like cradles, but were apparently not much injured. This point seems to be a convenient graveyard for marine crafts. To our south under a dark bank of cumulus clouds was the white cliff of Cape Espirito Santo, which, like Cape Virgins, is the termination of a long range of hills on Tierra del Fuego. The waters were alive with innumerable forms of life, many of which were new to us. Whales, seals, porpoises and penguins were darting about in the sea like birds in the air, while resting on the glassy surface, hovering over the land, rushing over and around the _Belgica_ were strange members of the feathered tribe; among these, albatrosses, gulls, petrels, ducks, and geese were most numerous. The profusion of animal life around us, the blackness of the lowlands to each side, and the encouraging prospect of the channel before us, furnished a sort of wild fascination which is probably as great in our day as in the time of the early pioneers. Passing westward we had, by midnight, reached the entrance of the first narrows. Here we anchored for the night. For three long months we had gone steadily and persistently southward in one general direction; such a monotony of course draws the Atlantic out into an unimaginable length, but now we were headed westward, away from the Atlantic with its fickle winds to the more friendly Pacific; and our course in the future will be more varied--a circumstance which seems to arouse an agreeable train of thoughts. These thoughts, with the peculiar and continual interest of the scenes around the ship, kept us awake for a large part of our first night in the Strait.