[Footnote 2:  “Not less than thirty large whales, and some hundreds of seals, played in the water about us.  The whales went chiefly in couples, from whence we supposed this to be the season when the sexes meet.  Whenever they spouted up the water, or, as the sailors term it, were seen blowing to windward, the whole ship was infested with a most detestable, rank, and poisonous stench, which went off in the space of two or three minutes.  Sometimes these huge animals lay on their backs, and with their long pectoral fins beat the surface of the sea, which always caused a great noise, equal to the explosion of a swivel.  This kind of play has doubtless given rise to the mariner’s story of a fight between the thrasher and the whale, of which the former is said to leap out of the water in order to fall heavily on the latter.  Here we had an opportunity of observing the same exercise many times repeated, and discovered that all the belly and under side of the fins and tail are of a white colour, whereas the rest are black.  As we happened to be only sixty yards from one of these animals, we perceived a number of longitudinal furrows, or wrinkles, on its belly, from whence we concluded it was the species by Linnaeus named balaena boops.  Besides flapping their fins in the water, these unwieldy animals, of forty feet in length, and not less than ten feet in diameter, sometimes fairly leaped into the air, and dropped down again with a heavy fall, which made the water foam all round them.  The prodigious quantity of power required to raise such a vast creature out of the water is astonishing; and their peculiar economy cannot but give room to many reflections.”—­G.F.]

As soon as the boat was hoisted in, which, was not till near six o’clock, we made sail to the east, with a fine breeze at north.  For since we had explored the south coast of Terra del Fuego, I resolved to do the same by Staten Land, which I believed to have been as little known as the former.  At nine o’clock the wind freshening, and veering to N.W., we tacked, and stood to S.W., in order to spend the night; which proved none of the best, being stormy and hazy, with rain.

Next morning, at three o’clock, we bore up for the east end of Staten Land, which, at half past four, bore S. 60 deg.  E., the west end S. 2 deg.  E., and the land of Terra del Fuego S. 40 deg.  W. Soon after I had taken these bearings, the land was again obscured in a thick haze, and we were obliged to make way, as it were, in the dark; for it was but now and then we got a sight of the coast.  As we advanced to the east, we perceived several islands, of unequal extent, lying off the land.  There seemed to be a clear passage between the easternmost, and the one next to it, to the west.  I would gladly have gone through this passage, and anchored under one of the islands, to have waited for better weather, for on sounding we found only twenty-nine fathoms water; but when I considered that this was