A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 | Page 5

for I thought then that the flood came from the north. Mr
Pickersgill saw not the least signs of any ship having been there lately.
I had inscribed our ship's name on a card, which he nailed to a tree at
the place where the Endeavour watered. This was done with a view of
giving Captain Furneaux some information, in case he should be
behind us and put in here.
On Mr Pickersgill's landing he was courteously received by several of
the natives, who were clothed in guanicoe and seal skins, and had on
their arms bracelets, made of silver wire, and wrought not unlike the
hilt of a sword, being no doubt the manufacture of some Europeans.
They were the same kind of people we had seen in Christmas Sound,
and, like them, repeated the word pechera on every occasion. One man
spoke much to Mr Pickersgill, pointing first to the ship and then to the
bay, as if he wanted her to come in. Mr Pickersgill said the bay was full
of whales and seals; and we had observed the same in the strait,
especially on the Terra del Fuego side, where the whales, in particular,
are exceedingly numerous.[2]
[Footnote 2: "Not less than thirty large whales, and some hundreds of
seals, played in the water about us. The whales went chiefly in couples,
from whence we supposed this to be the season when the sexes meet.
Whenever they spouted up the water, or, as the sailors term it, were
seen blowing to windward, the whole ship was infested with a most
detestable, rank, and poisonous stench, which went off in the space of
two or three minutes. Sometimes these huge animals lay on their backs,
and with their long pectoral fins beat the surface of the sea, which
always caused a great noise, equal to the explosion of a swivel. This
kind of play has doubtless given rise to the mariner's story of a fight
between the thrasher and the whale, of which the former is said to leap
out of the water in order to fall heavily on the latter. Here we had an
opportunity of observing the same exercise many times repeated, and
discovered that all the belly and under side of the fins and tail are of a
white colour, whereas the rest are black. As we happened to be only
sixty yards from one of these animals, we perceived a number of
longitudinal furrows, or wrinkles, on its belly, from whence we
concluded it was the species by Linnaeus named balaena boops.

Besides flapping their fins in the water, these unwieldy animals, of
forty feet in length, and not less than ten feet in diameter, sometimes
fairly leaped into the air, and dropped down again with a heavy fall,
which made the water foam all round them. The prodigious quantity of
power required to raise such a vast creature out of the water is
astonishing; and their peculiar economy cannot but give room to many
reflections."--G.F.]
As soon as the boat was hoisted in, which, was not till near six o'clock,
we made sail to the east, with a fine breeze at north. For since we had
explored the south coast of Terra del Fuego, I resolved to do the same
by Staten Land, which I believed to have been as little known as the
former. At nine o'clock the wind freshening, and veering to N.W., we
tacked, and stood to S.W., in order to spend the night; which proved
none of the best, being stormy and hazy, with rain.
Next morning, at three o'clock, we bore up for the east end of Staten
Land, which, at half past four, bore S. 60° E., the west end S. 2° E., and
the land of Terra del Fuego S. 40° W. Soon after I had taken these
bearings, the land was again obscured in a thick haze, and we were
obliged to make way, as it were, in the dark; for it was but now and
then we got a sight of the coast. As we advanced to the east, we
perceived several islands, of unequal extent, lying off the land. There
seemed to be a clear passage between the easternmost, and the one next
to it, to the west. I would gladly have gone through this passage, and
anchored under one of the islands, to have waited for better weather,
for on sounding we found only twenty-nine fathoms water; but when I
considered that this was running to leeward in the dark, I chose to keep
without the islands, and accordingly hauled off to the north. At eight
o'clock we were abreast of the most eastern isle, distant from it about
two miles, and had the same depth of water as before. I now