With this terrible disease we struggled the greatest part of the time of
our beating round Cape Horn. We entertained hopes that when we should
have once secured our passage round the Cape, we should put a period to
this and all the other evils which had so constantly pursued us. But it
was our misfortune to find that the Pacific Ocean was to us less
hospitable than the turbulent neighbourhood of Tierra del Fuego and Cape
Horn; for being arrived, on the 8th of May, off the island of Socoro,
which was the first rendezvous appointed for the squadron, and where we
hoped to have met with some of our companions, we cruised for them in
that station several days. And here we were not only disappointed in our
hopes of being joined by our friends, and thereby induced to favour the
gloomy suggestions of their having all perished, but we were likewise
perpetually alarmed with the fears of being driven on shore upon this
coast, which appeared too craggy and irregular to give us the least hopes
that in such a case any of us could possibly escape immediate
destruction. For the land had indeed a most tremendous aspect; the most
distant part of it, and which appeared far within the country, being the
mountains usually called the Andes or Cordilleras, was extremely high,
and covered with snow; and the coast itself seemed quite rocky and
barren, and the water's edge skirted with precipices. As we were utterly
ignorant of the coast, had we been driven ashore by the western winds,
which blew almost constantly there, we did not expect to have avoided the
loss of our ship and of our lives.

And this continued peril, which lasted for about a fortnight, was greatly
aggravated by the difficulties we found in working the ship; as the
scurvy had by this time destroyed so great a part of our hands, and had
in some degree affected almost the whole crew. Nor did we, as we hoped,
find the winds less violent as we advanced to the northward; for we had