ABSTRACT
Strait Discovered On 2i October 1520, the feast of St. Ursula and the Eleven Thousand Virgins, the fleet raised a prominent peninsula which Magellan named after the seagoing Cornish princess and her martyred shipmates. Cabo Vírgenes or Cape Virgins it still is, on latitude 52°2o' S, longitude 68°2i' W. Albo was only twenty miles off in latitude, and made a good guess at the longitude. The Cape is a long flat stretch of grass-topped clay cliffs rising about 135 feet above the water. The landmarks for it (said Uriate on Loaysa's voyage) are a white sand hill four leagues north and "three great mountains of sand which look like islands but are not." On top of this cape the Chile-Argentine boundary turns a right angle and reaches the Atlantic a few yards east of the Chilean lighthouse on Punta Dungeness, the flat and gravelly extension of Cape Virgins. It then drops due south, leaving to Argentina one-third of Tierra del Fuego down to the Beagle Channel, and giving Chile both sides of the Strait.
