Drawing; similar to watercolour engraved by Cook J.W. as `P[un]t[a] Arena[s] -- San Carlos, Chiloà © reproduced facing Narrative 1: 300. "About 1840 the Governor of Chile established a penal colony at Punta Arenas and Port Famine, which miserably failed in consequence of a mutiny." Narrative "P 300. Vol 1 --" [top centre]; "RF" FitzRoy [top right corner]

The main feature, standing in the left and left centre of the picture, is a timber frame thatched single storey building, with six somewhat irregularly spaced wooden uprights, a small barred window between the third and fourth uprights from the left, and a veranda at the right end. The thatched roof is `anvil'-shaped, i.e., the lower part pitched inwards and the upper part back outwards. The walls appear to be of horizontal timber boarding. In the foreground there are two treestumps, the left-hand one below the window, sawn off, the right-hand one closer to the viewer, leaning and broken, with new foliage beginning to sprout. To the left of both stumps there are tall tufts of grass. To the right of the building, two human figures stand close to the veranda, at the upper end of ground which slopes downwards from the centre to the right centre of the picture to lower rough level ground in the right of the picture, marked with more tufts of grass. At the left-hand edge of the lower level ground and at the right-hand edge of the picture are two more sawn or broken treestumps; new foliage is sprouting to the right of the first of these. Behind the building a verdant slope, falling from left to right and also just visible to the left of the roof, appears behind the right-hand side of the roof, covered with much shrubby vegetation and about nine trees, all but one of which are tall enough to rise against the blank sky. The trees are shown in leaf, and thus are evergreens, given the midwinter date of the sketch. Lower on the right, more distant ground stretches in front of an expanse of water. The upper rigging of a boat (the Beagle?) is just visible behind the lowest point of the verdant slope. On the far side of the water we can see the very vague indication of a far shoreline backed by low rounded hills. [Remarking on the vegetation of Chiloà © Charles Darwin comments in his diary for 29 June 1834: "This resemblance to Tropical scenery is chiefly to be attributed to a sort of arborescent grass or Bamboo, which twines amongst the trees to the height of 30 or 40 feet & renders the woods quite impervious.-- to this may be added some large ferns, the trees also are all evergreens, & the stems are variously coloured white, & red &c.--" (from Keynes, R. D., Charles Darwin's Beagle diary, p. 245)]