beetles, snakes, scorpions ad libitum, and to conclude shot a Cavia
weighing a cwt.--On Friday we sail for the Rio Negro, and then will
commence our real wild work. I look forward with dread to the wet stormy
regions of the south, but after so much pleasure I must put up with some
sea-sickness and misery.


LETTER 4. TO J.S. HENSLOW.
Monte Video, 24th November 1832.

We arrived here on the 24th of October, after our first cruise on the coast
of Patagonia. North of the Rio Negro we fell in with some little schooners
employed in sealing: to save the loss of time in surveying the intricate
mass of banks, Capt. Fitz-Roy has hired two of them and has put officers on
them. It took us nearly a month fitting them out; as soon as this was
finished we came back here, and are now preparing for a long cruise to the
south. I expect to find the wild mountainous country of Terra del Fuego
very interesting, and after the coast of Patagonia I shall thoroughly enjoy
it.--I had hoped for the credit of Dame Nature, no such country as this
last existed; in sad reality we coasted along 240 miles of sand hillocks; I
never knew before, what a horrid ugly object a sand hillock is. The famed
country of the Rio Plata in my opinion is not much better: an enormous
brackish river, bounded by an interminable green plain is enough to make
any naturalist groan. So Hurrah for Cape Horn and the Land of Storms. Now
that I have had my growl out, which is a privilege sailors take on all
occasions, I will turn the tables and give an account of my doing in Nat.
History. I must have one more growl: by ill luck the French Government
has sent one of its collectors to the Rio Negro, where he has been working
for the last six months, and is now gone round the Horn. So that I am very
selfishly afraid he will get the cream of all the good things before me.