who was perfectly indifferent about geographical questions,
especially at dinner-time. Paganel also came across
a regular cargo of old books in the chief officer's chest.
They were in a very damaged condition, but among them he raked
out a few Spanish volumes, and determined forthwith to set
to work to master the language of Cer-vantes, as no one on
board understood it, and it would be helpful in their search
along the Chilian coast. Thanks to his taste for languages,
he did not despair of being able to speak the language fluently
when they arrived at Concepcion. He studied it furiously,
and kept constantly muttering heterogeneous syllables.

He spent his leisure hours in teaching young Robert, and instructed
him in the history of the country they were so rapidly approaching.

On the 25th of September, the yacht arrived off
the Straits of Magellan, and entered them without delay.
This route is generally preferred by steamers on their way to
the Pacific Ocean. The exact length of the straits is 372 miles.
Ships of the largest tonnage find, throughout, sufficient depth of water,
even close to the shore, and there is a good bottom everywhere,
and abundance of fresh water, and rivers abounding in fish,
and forests in game, and plenty of safe and accessible harbors;
in fact a thousand things which are lacking in Strait Lemaire
and Cape Horn, with its terrible rocks, incessantly visited
by hurricane and tempest.

For the first three or four hours--that is to say, for about
sixty to eighty miles, as far as Cape Gregory--the coast on
either side was low and sandy. Jacques Paganel would not lose