By July 12, midwinter of course in the southern hemisphere, they had rounded the Horn, and Huxley writes from that most desolate of British possessions, the Falkland Islands:—­]

I have great hopes of being able to send a letter to you, via California, even from this remote corner of the world.  It is the Ultima Thule and no mistake.  Fancy two good-sized islands with undulated surface and sometimes elevated hills, but without tree or bush as tall as a man.  When we arrived the 8th inst. the barren uniformity was rendered still more obvious by the deep coating of snow which enveloped everything.  How can I describe to you “Stanley,” the sole town, metropolis, and seat of government?  It consists of a lot of black, low, weatherboard houses scattered along the hillsides which rise round the harbour.  One barnlike place is Government House, another the pensioners’ barracks, rendered imposing by four field-pieces in front; others smaller are the residences of the colonel, surgeon, etc.  In one particularly black and unpromising-looking house lives a Mrs. Sulivan, the wife of Captain Sulivan, who surveyed these islands, and has settled out here. (Captain Sulivan, who sailed with Darwin in the “Beagle,” and served with great distinction in command of the southern division of the fleet in the battle of Obligado (Plate River), had surveyed the Falkland Islands many years before his temporary settlement there.  During the Crimean War he was surveying officer to the Baltic fleet, and afterwards naval adviser to the Board of Trade.  He was afterwards Admiral and K.C.B.) I asked myself if I could have had the heart to bring you to such a desolate place, and myself said “No.”  However, I believe she is very happy with her children.  Sulivan is a fine energetic man, so I suppose if she loves him, well and good, and fancies (is she not a silly woman?) that she has her reward.  Mrs. Stanley has gone to stay with them while the ship remains here, and I think I shall go and look them up under pretence of making a call.  They say that the present winter is far more savage than the generality of Falkland Island winters, and it had need be, for I never felt anything so bitterly cold in my life.  The thermometer has been down below 22, and shallow parts of the harbour even have frozen.  Nothing to be done ashore.  My rifle lies idle in its case; no chance of a shot at a bull, and one has to go away 20 miles to get hold even of the upland geese and rabbits.  The only thing to be done is to eat, eat, eat, and the cold assists one wonderfully in that operation.  You consume a pound or so of beefsteaks at breakfast and then walk the deck for an appetite at dinner, when you take another pound or two of beef or a goose, or some such trifle.  By four o’clock it is dark night, and as it is too cold to read the only thing to be done is to vanish under blankets as soon as possible and take twelve or fourteen hours’ sleep.

Mrs. Stanley’s Bougirigards [The Australian love-bird; a small parrakeet.], which I have taken under my care during the cold weather, admire this sort of thing exceedingly and thrive under it, so I suppose I ought to.