The difficulties attending navigation compelled the two corvettes to cast anchor a little further on, off Port Galant, the shores of which, bordered by fine trees, are cut by torrents resembling a little distance off magnificent cascades from fifty to sixty feet high. This compulsory halt was not wasted, for a large number of new plants were collected, and the port with the neighbouring bays were surveyed. The commander, however, finding the season already so far advanced, gave up his idea of going out at the westerly end of the strait, and went back the way he came, hoping thus to get an interview with the Patagonians before going to the Polar regions.
St. Nicholas Bay, called by Bougainville the Baie des Français, where the explorers passed New Year's Day, 1838, is a much pleasanter looking spot than Port Galant. The usual hydrographical surveys were there brought to a satisfactory issue by the officers under the direction of Dumoulin. A boat was despatched to Cape Remarkable, where Bougainville said he had seen fossil shells, which, however, turned out to be nothing but little pebbles imbedded in a calcareous gangue.
Interesting experiments were made with the thermometrograph, or marine thermometer, at 290 fathoms, without reaching the bottom, at less than two miles from land. Whereas the temperature was nine degrees on the surface, it was but two at the above-named depth, and as it is scarcely likely that currents convey the waters of the two oceans so far down, one is driven to the belief that this is the usual temperature of such depths.
The vessels now made for Tierra del Fuego, where Dumoulin resumed his surveys. Low exposed, and strewn with rocks which serve as landmarks, there were but few dangers to be encountered here. Magdalena Island, Gente Grande Bay, Elizabeth Island, and Oazy Harbour, where the camp of a large party of Patagonians was made out with the telescope, and Peckett Harbour, where the Astrolabe struck in three fathoms, were successively passed.
"As we struck," says D'Urville, "there were signs of astonishment and even of excitement amongst the crew, and some grumbling was already audible, when in a firm voice I ordered silence, and without appearing at all put out by what had happened, I cried, 'This is nothing at all, and we shall have plenty more of the same kind of thing.' Later these words often recurred to the memory of our sailors. It is more difficult than one would suppose for a captain to maintain perfect calmness and impassiveness in the midst of the worst dangers, even those he has reason to imagine likely to be fatal."
Peckett Harbour was alive with Patagonians, and officers and men were alike eager to land. A crowd of natives on horseback were waiting for them at the place of disembarkation.
Gentle and peaceable they readily replied to the questions put to them, and looked quietly at everything shown to them, expressing no special desire for anything offered to them. They did not seem either to be at all addicted to thieving, and when on board the French vessels they made no attempt to carry anything off.
Their usual height is from four and a half to five feet, but some are a good deal shorter. Their limbs are large and plump without being muscular, and their extremities are of extraordinary smallness. Their most noteworthy characteristic is the breadth of the lower part of the face as compared to the forehead, which is low and retreating. Long narrow eyes, high cheek-bones, and a flat nose, give them something of a resemblance to the Mongolian type.
They are evidently extremely languid and indolent, and wanting in strength and agility. Looking at them squatting down, standing or walking, with their long hair flowing down their backs, one would take them for the women of a harem rather than savages used to enduring the inclemency of the weather and to struggle for existence. Stretched upon skins with their dogs and horses about them, their chief amusement is to catch the vermin with which they swarm. They hate walking so much that they mount horses just to go down and pick up shells on the beach a few yards off.
A white man was living amongst these Patagonians; a miserable, decrepit-looking fellow, who said he came from the United States, but he spoke English very imperfectly, and the explorers took him to be a German-Swiss. Niederhauser, so he called himself, had gone to seek his fortune in the United States, and that fortune being long on the road, he had given ear to the wonderful proposals of a certain whaleman, who wanted to complete his crew. By this whaleman he was left with seven others and some provisions on a desert island off Tierra del Fuego to hunt seals and dress their skins. Four months later the schooner returned laden with skins, left the seal-hunters fresh provisions, went off again, and never came back! Whether it had been shipwrecked, or whether the captain had abandoned his sailors, it was impossible to ascertain. When the poor fellows found themselves deserted and their provisions exhausted, they embarked in their canoe and rowed up the Straits of Magellan, soon meeting with some Patagonians, with whom Niederhauser remained, whilst his companions went on. Well received by the natives, he lived their life with them, faring well when food was plentiful, drawing in his belt and living on roots when food was scarce.