if she was conscious of the fate that threatened
her, were sluggish and slow, and she seemed unwillingly to obey the
impulse of the light southerly breeze that aided her progress. Indeed
there appeared to be an opposing tide until we drew in between the high
rocky sides of the channel, when suddenly the ship was hurried onwards
with such rapidity that to prevent our being swept past a cove on the
right it was necessary to close with its outer point, towards which a
merciless eddy flung the ship's head so rapidly, that before the
thrown-aback sails checked her way, her jib-boom was almost over the
rocks.* During the few awful moments that succeeded, a breathless silence
prevailed; and naught was heard but the din of waters that foamed in fury
around, as if impatient to engulf us in their giddy whirl. Still, it must
be confessed, that our hearts sickened within at the thought that our
little bark, after having braved so many storms, and done so much good
service to the state, might be left to whiten a foreign shore with her
timbers. Providence, however, decreed it should be otherwise; and the
next moment the Beagle's head was slowly paying off from the shore. But
her broadside becoming exposed to the swell, she was again driven in
towards the point, and so close, that before the well-trimmed sails gave
her way, as her stern went down with the swell, the assurance that she
must strike, pervaded every shuddering frame. To myself, the sensation
was just as if my feet were under the keel; and I almost expected to feel
the bones crushing. Still we clung to hope, which can find a place even
in the narrowest interval of danger; and our eyes and hearts were lifted
up in supplication to Him who had already so miraculously reprieved us.
Scarcely, however, had the prayer been formed and preferred, when the
peril was past: in the course of an hour we were safely moored in East
Cove, Kent Group.

(*Footnote. See the view annexed.)

LIGHTHOUSE HILL.

In this wild and confined anchorage we were detained by constant westerly
gales for a fortnight, during the whole of which there was only one
really clear day, when I got angles to all the distant points from a hill
near the south-east extreme of the group, nine hundred and ten feet high
and quite precipitous on its seaward face. We named it Lighthouse Hill,
its admirably conspicuous situation suggesting the purpose to which it
might be devoted; the materials for building, moreover, are