The distance from the first to the second opening may have been six or seven leagues, and was passed without accident. This opening is only one and a half leagues in width, and four in length. In this part of the strait the ships easily reconnoitred St. Bartholomew and St. Elizabeth Islands.
At the latter the French landed. They found neither wood nor water. It was an absolutely desert land.
Leaving this place, the American side of the strait is amply furnished with wood. But although the first advances had been fortunate, Bougainville was to find plenty to try his patience.
The distinctive character of the climate lies in the rapid atmospheric changes, which succeeded each other so quickly that it is quite impossible to forecast their sudden and dangerous variations. Hence the damages which it is impossible to foresee, which retard the passage of the ships, even if they do not force them to seek shelter for repairs.
Guyot-Duclos Bay provides an excellent anchorage, with six or eight fathoms of water and sound bottom. Bougainville remained there long enough to fill several casks, and endeavoured to procure fresh meat, but he only met with a few wild animals. St. Anne's point was reached. At that place Sarmiento had founded the colony of Philippeville in 1581.
In a preceding volume we have narrated the fearful catastrophe which procured the name of Port Famine for this spot.
The French reconnoitred several bays, capes, and harbours at which they touched. They were Bougainville Bay, where the Etoile was repainted, Port Beau Bassin, Cormadière Bay, off the coast of Tierra del Fuego, and Cape Forward, which forms the most southerly point of the strait and of Patagonia, Cascade Bay in Tierra del Fuego, the safety, easy anchorage, and facilities for procuring water and wood of which, render it a most desirable haven for navigators.
The various ports which Bougainville discovered are particularly valuable, as they offer favourable points for doubling Cape Forward, one of the most difficult routes for sailors on account of the violent and contrary winds which prevail there.
The year 1768 opened for the adventurers in Fortescue Bay, below which is Port Galant, the plan of which had been taken with great exactitude by M. de Gennes. Detestable weather, of which the worst winter in Paris can give no idea, detained the French expedition for three weeks. It was visited by a band of Pecheians, the inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, who boarded the ship.
"We made them sing," says the narrative, "dance, listen to instruments, and above all eat. Everything was pleasant to them, bread, salt meat, tallow, they devoured everything that was given them. They showed no surprise either at the sight of the vessels or that of the various objects which were shown to them, no doubt because to feel surprise at works of art, one must have elementary ideas. These men, akin to brutes, treated chef-d'oeuvres of human industry as they treated the laws and phenomena of nature.