In a very arduous and dangerous cruize he discovered several well-sheltered anchorages, but experienced a "constant heavy gale from W.N.W., with thick weather and incessant drenching rain."
Captain Stokes says, "Our discomfort in an open boat was very great, since we were all constantly wet to the skin. In trying to double the various headlands, we were repeatedly obliged (after hours of ineffectual struggle against sea and wind) to desist from useless labour, and take refuge in the nearest cove which lay to leeward."
From the Harbour of Mercy, Captain Stokes attempted to cross the Strait, on his return to the Beagle; but the sea ran too high, and obliged him to defer his daring purpose until the weather was more favourable.
During his absence, Lieutenant Skyring surveyed Tamar Bay and its vicinity.
Again the Beagle weighed, and tried hard to make some progress to the westward, but was obliged a third time to return to Tamar Bay. After another delay she just reached Sholl Bay, under Cape Phillip, and remained there one day, to make a plan of the anchorage, and take observations to fix its position.
The Beagle reached the Harbour of Mercy (Separation Harbour of Wallis and Carteret),[[62]] after a thirty days' passage from Port Famine, on the 15th, having visited several anchorages on the south shore in her way. But tedious and harassing as her progress had been, the accounts of Byron, Wallis, Carteret, and Bougainville show that they found more difficulty, and took more time, in their passages from Port Famine to the western entrance of the Strait. Byron, in 1764, was forty-two days; Wallis, in 1766, eighty-two; Carteret, in the same year, eighty-four; and Bougainville, in 1768, forty days, in going that short distance.
Five days were passed at this place, during which they communicated with a few natives, of whom Captain Stokes remarks; "As might be expected from the unkindly climate in which they dwell, the personal appearance of these Indians does not
exhibit, either in male or female, any indications of activity or strength. Their average height is five feet five inches; their habit of body is spare; the limbs are badly turned, and deficient in muscle; the hair of their head is black, straight, and coarse; their beards, whiskers, and eyebrows, naturally exceedingly scanty, are carefully plucked out; their forehead is low; the nose rather prominent, with dilated nostrils; their eyes are dark, and of a moderate size; the mouth is large, and the under-lip thick; their teeth are small and regular, but of bad colour. They are of a dirty copper colour; their countenance is dull, and devoid of expression. For protection against the rigours of these inclement regions, their clothing is miserably suited; being only the skin of a seal, or sea-otter, thrown over the shoulders, with the hairy side outward.
"The two upper corners of this skin are tied together across the breast with a strip of sinew or skin, and a similar thong secures it round the waist; the skirts are brought forward so as to be a partial covering. Their comb is a portion of the jaw of a porpoise, and they anoint their hair with seal or whale blubber; for removing the beard and eyebrows they employ a very primitive kind of tweezers, namely, two muscle shells. They daub their bodies with a red earth, like the ruddle used in England for marking sheep. The women, and children, wear necklaces, formed of small shells, neatly attached by a plaiting of the fine fibres of seal's intestines.