During the time we were upon the coast we had more calms than storms, and the winds so variable, that I question if a passage might not have been made from east to west in as short a time as from west to east; nor did we experience any cold weather.  The mercury in the thermometer at noon was never below 46 deg.; and while we lay in Christmas Sound it was generally above temperate.  At this place the variation was 23 deg. 30’ E.; a few leagues to the S. W. of Strait Le Maire it was 24 deg.; and at anchor, within New Year’s Isles, it was 24 deg. 20’ E.

These isles are, in general, so unlike Staten Land, especially the one on which we landed, that it deserves a particular description.  It shews a surface of equal height, and elevated about thirty or forty feet above the sea, from which it is defended by a rocky coast.  The inner part of the isle is covered with a sort of sword-grass, very green, and of a great length.  It grows on little hillocks of two or three feet in diameter, and as many or more in height, in large tufts, which seemed to be composed of the roots of the plant matted together.  Among these hillocks are a vast number of paths made by sea-bears and penguins, by which they retire into the centre of the isle.  It is, nevertheless, exceedingly bad travelling; for these paths are so dirty that one is sometimes up to the knees in mire.  Besides this plant, there are a few other grasses, a kind of heath, and some celery.  The whole surface is moist and wet, and on the coast are several small streams of water.  The sword-grass, as I call it, seems to be the same that grows in Falkland Isles, described by Bougainville as a kind of gladiolus, or rather a species of gramen* and named by Pernety corn-flags.

[See English translation of Bougainville, p.51.]

The animals found on this little spot are sea-lions, sea-bears, a variety of oceanic, and some land-birds.  The sea-lion is pretty well described by Pernety, though those we saw here have not such fore-feet or fins as that he has given a plate of, but such fins as that which he calls the sea-wolf.  Nor did we see any of the size he speaks of; the largest not being more than twelve or fourteen feet in length, and perhaps eight or ten in circumference.  They are not of that kind described under the same name by Lord Anson; but, for aught I know, these would more properly deserve that appellation:  The long hair, with which the back of the head, the neck and shoulders, are covered, giving them greatly the air and appearance of a lion.  The other part of the body is covered with short hair, little longer than that of a cow or a horse, and the whole is a dark-brown.  The female is not half so big as the male, and is covered with a short hair of an ash or light-dun colour.  They live, as it were, in herds, on the rocks, and near the sea-shore.  As this was the time for engendering as well as bringing forth their young, we have seen a male with twenty or thirty females about him, and always very attentive to keep them all to himself, and beating off every other male who attempted to come into his flock.  Others again had a less number; some no more than one or two; and here and there we have seen one lying growling in a retired, place, alone, and suffering neither males nor females to approach him:  We judged these were old and superannuated.