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 at home listened to the repeated protests of the Commodore before he left St. Helen's Roads. Of the courage and humanity of Anson himself throughout the whole adventure it is impossible to speak too highly.

The voyage of Commodore Byron, who sailed from England in 1764, was altogether one of discovery, his special instructions being to ascertain whether there was reason to believe "that lands and islands of great extent, hitherto unvisited by any European power, were to be found in the Atlantic Ocean between the Cape of Good Hope and the Magellanic Strait, within the latitudes convenient for navigation, and in the climates adapted for the produce of commodities useful to commerce." He was further ordered to seek for "His Majesty's islands called Pepys's Island and Falkland's Island," about the position, or even the existence, of which there had previously been considerable doubt. Byron having already had some experience of the southern latitudes under Anson, gives an account of his voyage and adventures homewards after the wreck of the Wager on the coast of Chili, a narrative which is one of the most romantic stories in naval history. He shows that there was no ground for believing in the existence of Pepys's Island; but, during a passage through the Falkland Islands and a considerable part of the Straits of Magellan, he furnishes much interesting information regarding the native Patagonians and the intricate navigation of these then scarcely known straits. Thence he made his way across the Pacific, passing and naming various small groups of islands, till he at length anchored in the harbour