On our journey back we narrowly escaped colliding seriously with a herd of bullocks. We had just passed Robleria, when we noticed some distance ahead of us a solitary bullock standing quietly on the line. On the whistle being sounded he at once left the track, so that the steam, which had been momentarily turned off, was again put on, and the engine resumed her usual speed. We had now approached to within forty yards of the place where the animal had been, when suddenly from a dense clump of bushes to the light there emerged a herd of half-a-dozen bullocks, who with one accord began leisurely to cross the line. Quick as thought Clark with one hand turned on the whistle, while with the other he reversed the engine, leaving the steam valve wide open; and immediately there was a great rattle of machinery below the platform, and the engine checked her way considerably. And now at the last moment, and when the cattle seemed to be almost under the buffers of the engine, they, suddenly coming to a sense of their danger, scattered, and sheered off; but not quickly enough to prevent one unlucky animal being caught by the hind quarters and chucked off like a football, its body rolling down the embankment to the left in a cloud of dust as we whirled by. Clark coolly replaced the reversing lever, and let the engine rush ahead again as if nothing had happened. He remarked that if he had been on one of the regular big engines he would not have bothered himself about the beasts at all, but that half-a-dozen bullocks were rather too much for the little "Quillapan."
Another trip which we made was to the Island of Quiriquina, which lies in the entrance of the bay at about five miles' distance from the anchorage of Talcahuano. An hour's run in the steam-cutter brought us near the northern extremity of the island, where we landed with difficulty in the Bay of Las Tablas. This name has reference to the tabular form of the blocks of sandstone which have fallen from the face of the cliffs and lie strewn on the beach, in which position they resembled the blocks of concrete which one often sees near a pier or breakwater in course of construction. Close to where we landed we found portions of the silicified trunk of a tree, resting on the débris at the foot of the cliff, its fractured ends exhibiting a jagged appearance, as if the fragment had not long previously been broken from the parent stem. It was two and a half feet long by a foot in diameter, and presented well-marked sections of the concentric rings of growth. In one of the rock pools closely adjoining we found also a smaller water-worn fragment, which we were able to annex as a specimen. The sandstone cliff above us exhibited well-marked lines of stratification, dipping to the southward at an angle of about 15°, and in the talus at its base were several large globular masses, which consisted almost entirely of fossil shells, bound together by a matrix of soft clayey sandstone. Conspicuous among these shells were examples of the genera Baculites and Cardium. While the lowest rock in the series of strata was a hard grey sandstone, full of fossil shells, and forming a kind of level terrace skirting the beach, and a wash at high tide, on the north side of the bay this last-mentioned rock was continuous with another horizontal terrace, which ran at a somewhat higher level, as if introduced there by a fault in the strata. It was a coarse, unfossiliferous conglomerate, composed of angular pieces of shingle bound together by a hard but very scanty matrix.
CHAPTER V.
OUR SECOND SEASON IN PATAGONIAN WATERS.
On the evening of the 4th October, our small-pox patients being then sufficiently well to return on board, we sailed from Talcahuano, and proceeded to the southward in order to resume our surveying work in the Trinidad and Concepcion channels.
We entered the Gulf of Peñas on the afternoon of the 9th October, and as it was a clear, bright, sunshiny day, we had a good view of Cape Tres Montes, which forms the northern horn of the gulf, while ahead of us, and towards the S.E. bight, lay the Sombrero, Wager, and Byron Islands, the first of which marks the entrance of the Messier Channel. When we had got fairly inside this channel, a Fuegian canoe of the customary pattern was seen approaching from the western shore. We stopped to allow her to communicate with us, and, of course, the usual bartering of skins for knives and tobacco took place between the natives and our seamen. There were about twelve persons in the canoe, all of whom looked more than usually plump in regard to their bodies, but had the characteristically stunted legs of this wandering race. On leaving us they appeared to be quite sold out, and were almost entirely naked, some of them completely so; however, they seemed well pleased with the bit of traffic which they had accomplished.
We anchored for the night in Island Harbour. On the following morning we got under way at an early hour, and steamed down the Messier Channel and through the English Narrows, reaching Eden Harbour about dusk.
We passed several small icebergs, which had probably reached the channels from a glacier in Iceberg Sound. The largest was about twenty yards across, and projected about six feet above the surface. Most of the hills in this latitude were snow-clad as far as the 1,000 feet line.