[21] Captain FitzRoy followed it for nearly 200 miles, and found it a very considerable river the whole way,--never fordable, according to the accounts he received. He must have been very near the lake when he found himself obliged to turn back.
[22] In 1670 Sir John Narborough passed six months at San Julian's; he also visited Port Desire, and took possession of it, with all due form, for his master, Charles II.--Anson was also at both places in 1741, and the account of his voyage contains views of that part of the coast, and of the harbour of San Julian's.
Narborough, who is very precise in his description of the country, gives an account of a geological fact, which is of some interest now-a-days. He says, "Going on shore on the north-west side of the harbour of San Julian's with thirty men, I travelled seven or eight miles over the hills, &c. On the tops of the hills and in the ground are very large oyster-shells; they lie in veins in the earth and in the firm rocks, and on the sides of the hills in the country; they are the biggest oyster-shells that ever I saw, some six, some seven inches broad, yet not one oyster is to be found in the harbour."
[23] The Choleechel is not now a single island, but is divided into two or three, by branches of the river which intersect it. These channels may have been formed since Vallarino's voyage.
[25] The river was probably unusually low even for the season; for Villariño observes in this part of his journal, that it was nearly five months since they had had a rainy day.
[26] Nahuel-huapi signifies the Island of Tigers according to Falkner.
Malaspina Surveys the Shores of the Rio de la Plata in 1789. Bauza maps the Road to Mendoza: De Souillac that to Cordova. Azara, and other Officers, in 1796, fix the positions of all the Forts and Towns in the Province of Buenos Ayres. Don Luis de la Cruz crosses the Pampas, from the frontiers of Conception in Chile to Buenos Ayres, in 1806. Attempt at a new delineation of the Rivers of the Pampas from his Journal. His account of the Volcanic appearances along the Eastern Andes. Sulphur, Coal, and Salt found there, also Fossil Marine Remains. The Indians of Araucanian origin: Habits and customs of the Pehuenches.