They left Monte Video the 14th November, with a fine breeze from the north, which was favourable for their course to Magellan’s Straits.  The wind was contrary from the 16th to the 21st, and they had a very high sea, so that they were obliged to keep what advantageous boards they could in tacking under their courses and close-reefed top-sails.  On the 22d there was a hard gale, accompanied with squalls and showers, which continued during the night, over a frightful sea.  The Etoile made signals of distress, but it was not till the 24th that she came within hail, or could specify the damage she had received.  Her fore-top-sail-yard had been carried away, and four of her chain plates; and all the cattle she had taken in at Monte Video, except two, were lost in the storm.  This last misfortune, unluckily, was common to both vessels, and in their present situation admitted no remedy.  During the remainder of this month, the wind was variable from S.W. to N.W. and the currents ran rapidly to the southward, as far as 45 deg. latitude, where they were merely perceptible.  No ground was reached by sounding till the 27th at night, when they were in latitude 47 deg., and about thirty-five leagues from the coast of Patagonia.  In this position, they had seventy fathoms, and an oozy bottom with black and grey sand.  From the 27th till they saw land, they had pretty regular soundings, in 67, 60, 55, 50, 47, and 40 fathoms, when they got sight of Cape Virgin, or, as Anson calls it, Cape Virgin Mary, the same name by which it was known to Sir John Narborough.  Bougainville advises not to approach near the coast till coming to latitude 49 deg., as there is a hidden rock in 48 deg. 30’, at six or seven leagues off shore, which he says he discovered when sailing here in 1765.  He then ran within a quarter of a league of it, and the person who first saw it, took it to be a grampus.

He now enters upon a discussion respecting the longitude of this cape, of which he got sight on the 2d December, and which is certainly an interesting point in geography, as it determines the length of the straits.  This however may be omitted, as the question is considered in the account of Captain Cook’s Second Voyage, and will of course come before the reader in its proper place.  Though differing with Anson as to its precise position, Bougainville admits that his lordship’s view of it is most exactly true.

Contrary winds and stormy weather opposed the entrance into the straits for several days, and after having entered, obliged him to lie-to between the shores of Terra del Fuego and the continent.  His foresail was split on the 4th December, and as he had then only twenty fathom, the fear of the breakers which extend S.S.E. off the cape, induced him to scud under bare poles, which, however, facilitated his bending another foresail to the yard.  He afterwards discovered that these soundings were not so alarming as he then imagined them to be, as they were in fact those in