most unceasingly for that immense distance. | possible to most ships of a thousand tons, and The Ancient Mariner's yarn is true to fact in gave feelings of security in such attempts. that description at least.

isted in Narborough Island, one of the group known as the Chonos Archipelago, twenty miles from us to the northeast. We fought our way toward it against the gale, and let go our anchor there on the 8th of June, a little after mid-day.

We named the new-found water after our ship. | once had to be found, and it fortunately exSome of the more marked localities were christened also. One high cliff of curiously intermingled red sandstone and white marble bore on its perpendicular face a giant "H," done in marble mosaic on the dark sandstone. A species of geological eccentricity. Looming behind a glacier at another point there rose a snowcovered mountain, with a broad summit that was shaped, in the smoothest and purest white, in a giant likeness of a woman's breast. As if some Titanic sculptor had begun to fashion the inland mountain range into the effigy of a sleeping Venus, and had ceased when this exquisite fragment of his toil was done.

Our short cruise to Valparaiso was a thing of the future now. Wood-cutting, slow steaming, crawling by degrees from island to island till some coal station could be found, were to be the rule for weeks, months perhaps. No one could tell how long. The heavy rain and the blank desolation of our anchorage at Narborough aided the vague feeling of misfortune that came over every one on board. I should except our captain. Trained by the severe experience of four shipwrecks (among them that of the steamer San Francisco, where he was forced, although a

ties), he seemed little depressed by the delay, and gave courage and hope to others by his equanimity.

Mesier Channel was clear when we came to it again. A few small bergs were coming down with the tide, but the great fields of ice had gone. We went on steadily northward. Be-passenger, to assume the heaviest responsibilitween us and the open Pacific were only two days more of steaming; and Valparaiso, with news from home, was but a few hundred miles beyond. It was the fifth day of June. Three months had passed since we came away, and in that time neither newspaper nor letter had reached us. The war might have ended for aught we knew. Bets were offered, and found ready takers upon all conceivable contingencies of home affairs. Our careful man had "hedged" to such an extent that when, long after, we reached civilization, no one in the ward-room could unravel the intricate chain of wagers, and we were forced to declare all of them "off."

The two days passed. We left the inland channels with a slight regret. Their canal-like navigation had grown natural by weeks of continuance; and to be under way after sunset was a rather disagreeable novelty. I think on our last night but one we tied up to the bank, in Mississippi river style, finding no bottom in the channel, and no harbor for anchoring.

Round the peninsula of the Three Mountains, and up on the outer side of the islands which lie north of it. And here two unpleasant facts came upon us at once. A heavy gale with rain

Nine days in Narborough with ceaseless rain. Sickness came among the crew. A case of scurvy appeared, with the slight consolation to my mind that its victim was filthy enough in personal habits to contract almost any disease idiopathically. One poor fellow, who had been under medical treatment for a long while, died of tubercular consumption, and was buried on the island. I read the burial-service over his grave with the feeling that others might follow him if our stay in Patagonia should be a lengthened one. I could give little encouragement to my patients when such small prospect of a change for the better in our movements existed.

Through these nine days our men were cutting wood for the furnaces, and bringing it off to the ship. It was water-soaked and almost uninflammable. A few tons of coal were left to use as a base for the wood fires; and on the 17th of June we got up steam, after infinite labor, and ran slowly out of the most dismal harbor I ever saw. We hoped to reach some port to the

I saw them in Sarmiento Channel

regular somersaults of the entire column by files as they swam, completely filling a mile of water in width and more than that in length.

north, where we could again cut wood or find a | tamed. little coal. We meant at least to get inside the swimming in compact column, with curious and islands again, and run our northward course to Chiloe Island in smooth water. Man proposes. Our nine days' cutting of wood gave us but six hours' steam, and we anchored again in the aft- Wood-cutting went on with more ease in ernoon in a secluded little harbor in an unnamed Stokes's Island than it did in Narborough. island, fifteen miles east of Narborough, trying Pleasant weather and more agreeable scenery to solve the problem of our future movements. aided the efforts of the men; and after two days' If more than a week's work at gathering wood stay we started out again. The chart gave a resulted in fifteen miles' steaming, how long winding but broad and deep channel among the would it take us to reach Chiloe, two hundred northern islands of the Chonos group, that lead miles away? The answer was unsatisfactory.into the wide strait between them and the main And fresh discomfort came now from the ex-land, that is known as the Chonos Gulf. Ninuhaustion of our choicer provisions in the officers' lac Channel and Memory Passage are the names messes, our "coming down on our rations" in given to the different portions of this winding consequence, and the paymaster's announce- way. ment that of these even there was but three weeks' supply in the ship. We smoked our pipes, wondered whether our stock of tobacco would give out as well, and reflected gloomily on the probable event of our becoming resident Patagonians during the ensuing season-with mussels, snails, kelp-geese, and other delicacies of the sort, for permanent diet.

I made an interesting culinary discovery during our period of semi-starvation. The kelpgoose, which, when cooked in the ordinary way, has a strong savor of old lamp-oil, may be entirely deprived of that, and every other taste, by boiling it for a day in salt-water, for another day in fresh, and roasting it on the third day. very tender mass of fibrous and muscular tissue is the result, which satisfies hunger if it does not nourish.

In smooth water we steamed easily along. expecting soon to reach the gulf. An awkward surprise awaited us. In place of Fitzroy's am

ple egress from the Ninulac Channel, a most decided barrier of firm land stretched right across our path. Evening was near, and our only choice was another anchorage, with more days of wood-cutting to replenish our nearly exhausted stock. Somebody on board shot an albatross one day while the ship was in the channel of Sarmiento. The incident came up in the memory of some of our officers, and the Ancient Mariner's disasters after a similar act were freely cited as likely to find a parallel in our own case. A Affairs began to look as if this might be so. Still wood-cutting went on through the next day; and then, retracing our course, and trying every avenue that seemed to run eastward, we at length fairly squeezed through an opening that was never intended for a thousand-ton ship to use, and came out into Chonos Gulf. clear channel of inland water stretched from where we were to Chiloe Island, fresh provisions, and possible coal. But a hundred and eighty miles of distance-only a day's work with proper fuel; but with nothing save wood to burn, it became a task of very indefinite length. And just here, as we entered the gulf, our wood gave out again.

We called this second harbor the Bay of the 17th of June. The chart ignored its existence even. I said the island was unnamed. As I sit writing in my state-room this evening-the ship being some eight hundred miles south of San Francisco, and running for that port against a stiff norther, with one hundred and sixty tons of coal on board, and twenty or thirty cases of remittent fever, a legacy from our last ports, Acapulco and Magdalena Bay-a brother officer reminds me that it was called Stokes's Island. For the benefit of visitors to the Chonos Archipelago I would recommend this Bay of the 17th of June. It lies in the northeastern corner of the island, and is as convenient and safe as an anchorage can be. Kelp-geese are abundant, but very hard to kill. It may be interesting to know that one of them disposed of three Sharpe's or Spencer's rifle-bullets, in some mysterious way, that were fired at him and that certainly hit him, and then flew quietly away. The water-fowls are the only game there. From end to end of the Patagonian coast we found no fish that would bite at a baited hook; and the larger land game ceases at Port Famine, in the Strait of Magalhaen, where the sea-coast forest begins. Seals are as abundant as fish are seemingly rare. Their familiar human eyes reminded me many times of the old Aquarial Gardens in Central Court, in Boston, where Mr. Cutting used to demonstrate how thoroughly they might be

A

I hardly remember how many times more we ran in behind some projecting head-land, anchored, and sent our hewers of wood ashore. Sunday Harbor, Delay Harbor, Hindrance Bay -names of our own giving—each mark a place where this sort of work was done. I think that at Hindrance Bay we accomplished the feat of getting wood enough on board to give a hundred miles of steaming, and a hope of going back to civilization again. At noon of the day after we left there we entered the inlet that nearly divides the Island of Chiloe in two, leading up from the Corcovado Gulf to the ancient city of Castro.

For fifteen miles the inlet runs through scenery like that of the Rhine. The high hills on either side come down in slopes and terraces to the water; and every where farm-houses and cultivated fields give a completed appearance to the country. Rarely, even in New England, have I seen such a finished landscape. Fences

and walls mark the limits of the different fields | that were mapped out on the hill-side in varied shades of green. There seemed to be no waste land. A golden haze, resembling vaguely that of an Indian summer at home, covered shore and river as our ship steamed slowly through the windings of the inlet toward the city. From desolation and a wilderness in the morning into a land of plenty at night!

But one or two steamers were ever in Castro River before. Ours was the first steam-vessel of war to enter it. So the inhabitants told us, at least. As we moved along the hill-sides were dotted with men, women, and children hurrying down to the shore to see the strange sight. Our opera-glasses showed them miles away. Farmhouses emptied themselves of entire families, even to babies in arms and dogs. Padres, with their gowns brailed up, came over the fields from distant villages, bringing their parishioners with them.

The whole country-side population stampeded for the river. The Great Eastern caused no greater proportionate excitement when she entered New York harbor for the first time than our ship created in Chiloe.

The prices of provisions in the island were remarkably low. Chickens from fifteen to twenty-five cents each. Sheep a dollar apiece. Beef three cents a pound. Eggs a cent each. Excellent flour, ground in mills like those in use in Bible times, by hand-power, three cents per pound. Hams of singularly delicate flavor fifty cents each. These hams are prepared by smoking only, and are fresh as the pork of recent killing. The people of Castro showed a want of money-making intelligence that we have never found before or since in our cruising round South America. The Bay of all the Saints held as inveterate a set of swindlers in this particular as most cities with names of less holy import. At Montevideo, Valparaiso, and Callao, prices ruled very high. Excepting cigars in Bahia, for the choicest of which it is impossible to pay more than two dollars per hundred, and beef in Montevideo, where a butcher apologized to me for its very exorbitant price, two and a half cents a pound for sirloin steaks, saying that the Flores rebellion had made every thing high, the necessaries of life command a greater price in gold than they did in paper in America when we left Washington in all the

cents is the charge for a tumbler of iced water. I found, however, that the cigars of San Salvador de Bahia de Todos os Santos and the Montevidean beef were each among the choicest of their kind, even at such low rates. For the benefit of visitors to the Brazilian city, I would suggest that an inquiry at almost any tobacco

spiro," with both ends twisted to points, will give them material for smoking that five times the price could not procure them in America in regard to richness and purity of flavor. I venture the remark from the fact that poor cigars there, as elsewhere, outnumber good ones.

A boat met us five miles from Castro contain-coast cities of South America. In Panama ten ing a wealthy old gentleman, the proprietor of Lemuy Island, his family, and their household priest. They were taking an afternoon sail to the city. They were invited on board, and their boat taken in tow. The padre was a gentleman of refinement and education. He gave us all the news he had heard from America, in a tolerably clear account of two or three great bat-nist's shop there for cigars of the brand "Sutles where Grant had driven Lee back with great slaughter. As Grant was in the Southwest when we sailed from Washington, we imagined the battles to have been there. It was some weeks afterward before Spottsylvania and the Wilderness became names of any import to us. The priest acted as pilot up to the city. We anchored at sunset. Our visitors left us with many promises of fresh provisions, fruit, and the many necessaries of shore life that are luxuries on board ship. Our sea-fare had held out well. A week's supply remained when we reached Castro, but salt-horse and beans had grown very distasteful. And the padre told us that in Chiloe chickens sold for twenty-five cents each, and potatoes of excellent quality were but seventyfive cents per barrel.

Castro has historic fame. Though now almost unknown and unvisited, it was once the principal political point on the Pacific coast. Its harbor has a length of twenty miles, with an average width of a mile and a half, and is absolutely free from any danger in storms from any quarter. The often-mentioned "navies of the world" might anchor there at once; and a washtub could be paddled from ship to ship in a storm with no more risk than on a village pond. Every mile or two in the winding length of this Early next morning the padre's story was veri-land-locked bay was a projecting headland, where fied. Boats began to approach the ship at day- a battery might oppose a fleet. There is deep light, bringing every thing eatable that their water and good anchorage from its mouth to the owners could find on shore. The steamer's deck city. Centuries ago the Spaniards had recoglooked like a meat-market. Officers and men nized these advantages, and guarded the harbor were buying beef, mutton, potatoes, fowls, eggs, and city against all hostile intrusion. With hams—any thing with a flavor of land growth the decay of Spain the place became neglected. about it. One needs a few weeks' or months' Castro is now nothing but a village, with grasssubsistence on salted meats to understand how grown streets and hardly a thousand inhabitsavory a breakfast of steak, ham, eggs, fresh ants, though still the centre of one of the finest butter, and actual milk may be. Potatoes espe- farming countries in the world. The climate cially have a substantial relish about them un- of the eastern slope of Chiloe is a temperate one der such circumstances, and these are grown of a in the strictest sense. Snow and ice are almost superior quality by the thrifty farmers of Chiloe. | unknown, and the summer heats are never vio