The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia
by John Randolph Spears · English · Gutenberg #39109 · 573,199 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia
Author: John Randolph Spears
Release date: March 11, 2012 [eBook #39109]
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN: A STUDY OF LIFE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO AND PATAGONIA ***
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[Illustration: MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION.]
THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN
A STUDY OF LIFE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO AND PATAGONIA
BY
JOHN R. SPEARS
ILLUSTRATED
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK
27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET
LONDON
24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND
The Knickerbocker Press
1895
COPYRIGHT, 1895
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_
The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N.Y.
TO ALL WHO LOVE THE RED ABORIGINES OF THE AMERICAS
AS GOD MADE THEM.
PREFACE
I am impelled to say, by way of preface, that the readers will find
herein such a collection of facts about the coasts of Tierra del Fuego
and Patagonia as an ordinary newspaper reporter might be expected to
gather while on the wing, and write when the journey was ended. It was
as a reporter of _The Sun_, of New York, that I visited the region
described. And instead of giving these facts in the geographical
sequence in which they were gathered, I have grouped them according to
the subjects to which they relate. So it happens that the work is what
may be properly called a collection of newspaper sketches rather than
the conventional story of a traveller. I make this explanation the more
freely for the reason that book-buyers as a rule, so book publishers
have repeatedly told me, do not take kindly to newspaper sketches bound
in book form. They resent as an attempted imposition, it is said, the
masking of such writings in the garb that belongs to literature, just as
they would resent the sale of cotton-seed oil under the name of lard.
However this may be I am bound to avoid even the appearance of any such
deceitful intent.
On the other hand there are people who depend almost entirely on the
newspapers for their reading matter. They seem to prefer the style of
the newspaper writers. Perhaps a book that is avowedly the work of a
reporter will meet their approval. At any rate I should be particularly
sorry to have any of them think, when the book is offered to them by the
bookseller, that it is anything different from what it is.
Then there is the pleading of the baby act in literature--the offering
of apologies for shortcomings and asking for the leniency of the reader.
I do not think I ought to do it. It is as if a dairy farmer, while
asking full price for his butter, should say: "I've a realizin' sense
that the smell haint just right. The dinged cows was eatin' leeks afore
I know'd it, but I done my best at the churnin' an' I hope ye'll make
allowances." If a buyer is looking for a book with the odor of flowers
and new-mown hay in it I do not think it is becoming to ask him to take
one flavored with garlic instead. Save for the matter manifestly from
books and records I obtained the facts herein by observation and
interviews; and I am willing to abide by the press law that a blunder is
inexcusable. It is, of course, the honest intent of the news-gatherer to
write his facts so that they will not be ignored or misunderstood or
forgotten, but when he fails to reach that standard he loses his market,
and he ought to lose it. And the man who essays the creation of
something permanent ought not to ask that he be judged by a lower
standard than that of the writers for "ephemeral publications."
I am under great obligations to many of the people whom I met in the
course of the journey, for assistance in gathering facts, but of the
whole number Mr. E. L. Baker, the American Consul at Buenos Ayres; Herr
Bruno Ansorge, of the Paramo Mining Company; Mr. Adolph Figue, a
merchant at Ushuaia; and Revs. John Lawrence and Thomas Bridges,
missionaries, were at especial pains to help me. I should like to thank
them again for what they did. And were I not prohibited from doing so I
would include one other name--that of the runaway sailor boy from New
York whom I found in the desolate harbor at the east end of La Isla de
Los Estados.
Having said this much I can very cheerfully face the inevitable--the
fact that the work will be judged by its merits. If it succeeds I shall
be glad, of course; if it fails I shall know better what to do next
time.
J. R. S.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
AFTER CAPE HORN GOLD 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CAPE HORN METROPOLIS 27
CHAPTER III.
CAPE HORN ABORIGINES 47
CHAPTER IV.
A CAPE HORN MISSION 79
CHAPTER V.
ALONG-SHORE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO 107
CHAPTER VI.
STATEN ISLAND OF THE FAR SOUTH 137
CHAPTER VII.
THE NOMADS OF PATAGONIA 151
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WELSH IN PATAGONIA 168
CHAPTER IX.
BEASTS ODD AND WILD 183
CHAPTER X.
BIRDS OF PATAGONIA 201
CHAPTER XI.
SHEEP IN PATAGONIA 215
CHAPTER XII.
THE GAUCHO AT HOME 228
CHAPTER XIII.
PATAGONIA'S TRAMPS 250
CHAPTER XIV.
THE JOURNEY ALONG-SHORE 260
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION _Frontispiece_
GOLD-WASHING MACHINES. PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO 14
PUNTA ARENAS, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN 30
YAHGANS AT HOME(1) 48
THE MISSION STATION AT USHUAIA(1) 92
USHUAIA, THE CAPITAL OF ARGENTINE TIERRA DEL FUEGO(1) 108
AN ONA FAMILY(1) 128
ALUCULOOF INDIANS(1) 134
GOVERNMENT STATION AT ST. JOHN. (FROM A
SKETCH BY COMMANDER CHWAITES, A.N.)(1) 138
A TEHUELCHE SQUAW(1) 158
TEHUELCHES IN CAMP(1) 166
GAUCHOS AT HOME 228
AMONG THE RUINS AT PORT DESIRE, PATAGONIA 270
SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA(1) 276
THE GOVERNOR'S HOME AND A BUSINESS BLOCK IN
GALLEGOS, THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA(1) 282
Note 1: Reproduced by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, from an
article, by the author of this book, in Scribner's Magazine, entitled
"At the end of the Continent."
THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN.
CHAPTER I.
AFTER CAPE HORN GOLD.
If any of the readers of this book have an unrestrainable longing for
wild adventure, with the possibility of suddenly acquiring riches thrown
in as an incentive to endurance, let them pack their outfits and hasten
away to the region lying between Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan
to dig for gold. Neither Australia nor California in their roughest days
afforded the dangers, nor did they make the showings of gold--real
placer gold for the poor man to dig--that have been, and are still to be
found in Tierra del Fuego, and the adjoining islands. Nor is the gold in
all cases too fine to be saved by ordinary rude sluices, for "nuggets as
big as kernels of corn"--the ideal gold of the placer miner--have been
found by the handful, and may still be had in one well-known locality if
the miner is willing and able to endure the hardships and escape the
dangers incident to the search.
But because of the hardships and dangers it is a veritable tantalus
land. There are many more skeletons of dead miners than authentic
records of wealth acquired in Tierra del Fuego, while those who have now
and again struck it rich and gotten clean off with the dust usually have
gone no further with it than Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan,
for Punta Arenas is to this region what San Francisco was to California
and Virginia City to the deserts of Nevada.
The story of the Cape Horn gold diggings is especially remarkable in
this, that the gold there should have remained undiscovered during the
centuries that passed after the first navigators landed in the region.
Consider that Magellan first saw Patagonia and the strait that bears his
name more than 350 years ago. Consider further the character of
Magellan, and the host of explorers that followed him. They were all
admirals, or bore other titles of high rank, and we call them famous,
but they were almost to a man notion peddlers--men who started out with
stocks of gewgaws and trifles which they were to swap for valuables.
Magellan went out, not to make himself famous as a navigator, but to
reach the Spice Islands by a shorter, and therefore more profitable,
route than that by the Cape of Good Hope. He was out for fortune, and
the fame of making discoveries was an incidental matter. And so for the
rest. They were not very particular or nice as to how they got gold to
ballast their ships. They plundered harmless people on the African coast
and elsewhere; robbed ships found under other flags than their own; even
sacrificed innocent human lives in their thirst for gold. Not one of
these greedy sailors and pirates but would have gone almost wild with
joy at the finding of a mine of gold.
And yet here, in the streams that empty into the Straits of Magellan,
even in the streams near Port Famine, where Sarmiento's colony starved
to death, and in the sands of the coast of Patagonia, were gold
diggings--the genuine placer diggings, as said. These navigators sailed
along with their eyes on the gold-bearing shores. They even filled their
water casks in the gold-bearing streams. It is likely that the time came
when scarcely a day in the year passed when some sailor's eye was not on
land in the Cape Horn region where gold could be found, but not until
the latter half of the nineteenth century was gold actually obtained
there.
Then, when gold was found, comes another curious feature of the story.
It probably took twenty years after the finding of the first
dust--twenty years, during every one of which, some gold was found in
the region--to create anything like a stir in the matter. I say probably
twenty years because the actual dates are not known.
The story of the Cape Horn mining region begins on the mainland of
Patagonia north of the Straits of Magellan, and it is at the beginning a
very hazy story. I could not learn definitely either the name of the
first man who found gold in the vicinity of the strait, or the exact
locality in which it was found. I talked with miners and merchants of
the region on the subject, but no one knew anything about it worth
mention. An _Official Memoria General_ on the subject of Mines, printed
in Buenos Ayres in 1889, says that "several years before 1867 it was
known that gold existed on the east coast of Patagonia, and also in the
little streams that run from different points of the Andes. This fact
has been confirmed in various places and at different times by Chilean
miners and shipwrecked seamen." And that is the best information I could
get on the subject.
Early in 1869 Commander George Chaworth Musters of the English navy,
visited Punta Arenas, en route for a journey across Patagonia with the
Tehuelche Indians. In one of the stores of the town, where he stopped
for the purpose of "purchasing tobacco and other necessaries," he found
some nuggets of gold. He speaks of them incidentally along with the
Indian weapons, girdles, and other curios, that the store contained, but
a Yankee sailor from the schooner _Rippling Wave_, who happened into the
store while Musters was there, became enthusiastic over it and said:
"Ah, that's the stuff we used to grub up in a creek in Californy. I
guess if the old boat lays her bones on these here shores, I'll stop and
turn to digging again."
In 1877 and again in 1878, Don Ramon Lista, an Argentine explorer and
writer, visited Punta Arenas, and on his return to Buenos Ayres he
printed his experiences in a pamphlet. In that he says:
The creek called Las Minas that bounds the settlement on the north
abounds in grains of gold; and from 1866 until 1877 many natives of
the island of Chiloe have lived well on the daily product of their
labors in washing the gold-bearing sand.
In the year 1876, a small schooner engaged in the seal fishery, and
commanded by a noted Argentine sailor, Don Gregorio Ibanez, was stranded
near Cape Virgin, the extreme southeast corner of Patagonia. The crew,
without exception, had the good fortune to escape to the land with some
provisions and other valuables, including a shovel. The shovel may seem
to be a novel tool for shipwrecked seamen to carry through the surf,
but Don Gregorio knew what he was doing.
Patagonia is a desert region very much like certain parts of the United
States. One may travel hundreds of miles without seeing a drop of sweet
water, and yet with a shovel water a-plenty may be had by him who knows
where to dig. Don Gregorio, having landed his provisions, put a man at
work digging in the sand not very far from the surf in search of water.
Whether he found water or not tradition does not tell. The story tellers
all forget about the water as they relate how, when the digger had
gotten down about three feet, he began to throw out a layer of black
sand such as no one of the crew had seen before--a black sand that was
dotted all over with little and big dull yellow particles. That was such
an odd-looking sand that Don Gregorio and the digger and all hands had
to take a proper look at it. And when they had taken this look, they
almost went crazy with excitement, because those yellow particles were
pure gold.
But, as I said, neither this discovery nor the gold that was dug from
Las Minas creek at Punta Arenas, nor the stories of these doings which
were carried to England and to California by ships passing that way, had
any effect in creating a rush to the diggings near the straits.
In explanation of this indifference, it may be said that the diggings,
even of Las Minas creek were, on the whole, rather lean. Instances of
considerable finds are mentioned by the old timers of Punta Arenas. Men
cleaned up the stuff by the ounce, in spots, but the run of what men got
was "mere day wages." The find of Don Gregorio's sailors was not
considered of any importance--the tiny nuggets were supposed to be a
stray deposit, and not indicating any bed of gold-bearing sand. The
stuff lay in the sand of the beach, and who had ever heard of such a
thing as placer diggings in the sand along the shore?
In 1877 as many as 120 men worked the sands of Las Minas creek and made
day wages at it. In the United States the fact that 120 men with hash
bowls could wash out even "mere day wages" would create a rush to the
region, while the finding of an occasional nugget "of the weight of 300
grammes," as occurred in Las Minas creek, would create a stampede, of
course, but in the Spanish-American countries the conditions and the
people are different.
However, a time came when even the people of Punta Arenas got excited.
The steamship _Arctic_ of one of the lines running through the strait
was, in 1884, wrecked on Cape Virgin very near the place where Don
Gregorio's sealing schooner went ashore. Like the inhabitants of the
Bahama Islands, the people of Punta Arenas used "to thank God for a good
wreck." The _Arctic_ was a remarkably good wreck, for she was a
well-found, handsomely fitted passenger ship. A motley crew of men
hastened from Punta Arenas to the beach at Cape Virgin, some to get what
they could from her lawfully, and some to get what they could in any
way. It is said now that some one of the number was familiar with the
story of what Don Gregorio's sailors found when digging for water, and
so the old story of gold discoveries there was retold as the gang smoked
and talked and sorted their plunder. Thereat some of them went digging
"just for luck," and found something more exciting even than the silk
fittings, chronometers, cordage, and anchors which they had taken from
the _Arctic_--they found gold.
One Fred Otten cleaned up seventeen kilos (37.4 pounds) of gold in the
course of two weeks, they say, and that sort of luck was enough to
rouse even the phlegmatic wreckers of the Straits of Magellan.
Here, then, at the wreck of the steamship _Arctic_, is found the real
beginning of the story of the Cape Horn gold diggings. In those days
Punta Arenas was a supply depot for a fleet of sealing schooners that
eventually destroyed the rookeries of the region to the south. The
sealing sailors took a hand in with the gold washers. They did more than
that. They had, as they would have said, a severe look at the ground
round about as well as at the layer of sand in which the gold was found.
The lofty banks--in fact, everything in sight from the beach--was what
geology sharps would call an alluvial formation. The lofty precipices
were composed of layers of clay, sand, pebbles, shells, the debris of
prehistoric seas and floods. In one of these layers--a layer that
cropped out under the tide waters--was gold galore. Jack couldn't
explain it, and he didn't want to; but when he had helped to skin the
gold-bearing layer from the clay as far as he could reach, he remembered
that he had seen just such beaches with banks behind them elsewhere--on
Tierra del Fuego, on New Island, on Lennox, on Navarin, on Wollaston, on
Hermit, on Cape Horn itself. He had seen those lofty banks from the
decks of sealing schooners, and he was game to go to them to see if
there was gold in the sand along the shore there as there was at Cape
Virgin. Why shouldn't there be? And there was.
Nor were the citizens of Punta Arenas the only ones excited by this find
of gold dust in the sand at Cape Virgin. The Argentine Government sent
an engineer to examine the region, and the opinion formed by the
engineer was that "the gold-bearing sands of Patagonia are richer than
those of California and Australia." So says an old public document.
Further than that, "there was much agitation in Buenos Ayres among
speculators in mines who had great hopes that grand fortunes might be
obtained easily in Patagonia. A great number of persons solicited from
the government concessions of mines of gold. But as the greater part of
the solicitors had never been in Patagonia, and were obliged to gather
their information from others as to the desirable points, it happened
that much confusion arose."
"Much confusion" just describes what happened. Many concessions were not
only issued on overlapping claims, but on the same claims, and there
were many heart-burnings and feuds over patches of sand that were not
worth anything.
One Don Gregorio Lezama, with a capital of $70,000, organized an
expedition, and sent it out with sluices and wind-mill pumps to supply
the sluices. They reached the diggings and set up both sluices and
pumps. Then they found that when the wind did not blow the pumps could
not supply the sluices with water, and when the wind did blow the men
could not supply the sluices with gold-bearing sand, because that sand
was found only where the waves would then prevent the work of the men.
So the wind-mill outfit was abandoned and another pumping arrangement to
be worked by mules was sent out. The record contains this paragraph as
to the subsequent doings:
The company continued its operations for more or less months, and
obtained some pounds of gold; but the general outlook was not very
encouraging, the work was suspended, and the company liquidated
itself.
So it happened, of course, to the majority of people who went in the
rush to Cape Virgin diggings. They eventually suspended operations and
liquidated themselves. Nevertheless a number had "struck it rich," and
that, as said, started the search for the precious metal along the
stormy coasts and under the towering precipices of the islands away
south to Cape Horn.
My first view of a Cape Horn mine camp was obtained on the east coast of
Tierra del Fuego. I had taken passage on an Argentine naval transport
that was bound on a voyage with supplies for the officials and troops at
various stations which the Argentine Government has established in
recent years throughout the region. To promote the development of its
territories the government carries prospectors and their outfits at very
moderate charges, considering the kind of navigation. Accordingly this
transport had on board four men and about three tons of provisions and
other supplies to be landed at El Paramo, the first mine camp
established on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego.
Paramo is a Spanish word meaning desert. It is a very good name for the
camp. When one has heard the story of this desert camp he will have
gained some idea of the life of a prospector and miner in the Cape Horn
region.
The founder of El Paramo was one Julius Popper, one of the pioneer
prospectors of Tierra del Fuego. He was, in fact, the first prospector
to make a journey across the island, though missionaries, of whom a
curious story will be told at another time, had explored it on another
quest. Popper was an engineer of rare attainments--a civil, mechanical,
and mining engineer--good in all three branches: an astronomer; a
linguist who spoke and wrote a dozen languages fluently. He could with
equal grace and precision conduct a lady to dinner or knock all the
fight out of a claim jumper. Unfortunately, when just beginning to
realize on his investments in Tierra del Fuego, he died at the hands of
murderers. He was poisoned in Buenos Ayres by men whom he had offended
in the south.
In the year 1886 the Cape Virgin diggings were so far worked out that no
more than day wages--a paltry $5 a day, as the miners call it--could be
had. Only the plodders would remain there, and Julius Popper was never a
plodder. So an exploring company of eighteen was gotten together, with
pack horses and a mining outfit, together with arms, ammunition, and a
permit from the Argentine Government to use them whenever necessary.
The landing was made at Future Bay, opposite Punta Arenas. It was in the
month of September, the spring of the southern latitude. Snow lay so
deep on the mountains that a track had to be cleared with shovels for
miles. Then the brush was elsewhere so thick that axes had to be used to
open a passage for miles, but after five days' labor they got to Santa
Maria River, where they found eight men at work on a sluice taking out
about 700 grains of gold a day. This was mere day wages, and they pushed
on until they reached Useless Bay, and then took an easterly course
which they held clear across the island, reaching the coast at the north
of San Sebastian Bay.
Here, in a tongue of sand that encloses the northeast side of the bay,
they found the gold they were looking for in a layer of black sand,
exactly like the layer that had been found at Cape Virgin, although
there was no bank of any kind behind the beach.
Having staked claims here they went away south, discovering and naming
capes, rivers, and ranges of hills, with here and there more placer
gold. It was an open prairie country, with a species of sagebrush on it
such as is found in Patagonia, but instead of a desert they here found
plenty of water everywhere, and sometimes too much in the shape of
swamps; but, unfortunately, the gold was usually found where there was
not a running stream within miles. It was apparent that all sluices
would have to be supplied by means of pumps.
Eventually they fell foul of the Indians. A shower of arrows came at
them from the brush, but all fell short. The number of Indians was
estimated at eighty, armed with bows. The eighteen white men turned
loose Winchesters in reply, the Indians lying down while the fire
lasted, and jumping up to discharge their arrows when it slackened. By
the time the magazines of the rifles were empty the Indians abandoned
the fight. One gets an idea of the quality of the white fighters from
the fact that but two of the Indians were killed, and the further fact
that when the fight was over Mr. Popper posed his men in the attitude of
troops repelling a charge, took a position himself astride one of the
dead Indians, and then had the outfit photographed for subsequent use,
on the cover of a pamphlet in which he described the journey he had
made.
To the camp called Paramo, that was established in consequence of
Popper's expedition, came, as said, the Argentine naval transport,
bringing four men and some tons of supplies, on the morning of May 12th.
Considering its age, the number of men employed--from thirty to forty--,
and the fact that it is also a government station, having a prefect, a
chief of police, a schoolmaster, a secretary to the prefect, and a squad
of soldiers to maintain the dignity of the officials, it was a
remarkable camp. There was just three buildings in sight--a
boarding-house for the miners, a home for the mine bosses, and a
combined stable and storehouse. The camp of the government was said to
be located two leagues back in the country. The buildings were of wood,
roofed with corrugated, galvanized iron. They were huddled together so
that they looked from the ship as one building. They were on the usual
mine-camp model of North America--one story high, box shaped, and with
small windows and no superfluous doors. A barbed wire corral stood at
one side of the buildings, which were located so near the beach that a
high surf at spring tide was sure to send the foam quite to the
foundations on which they stood. Indeed, one of them was protected from
the surf by a sort of a wooden sea wall.
Beyond the houses stretched a low yellowish grassy plain that was very
like a Nebraska prairie in appearance, and a league away to the north
rose a low range of treeless hills.
The diggings lay right in the beach. When Popper first discovered the
claim the black sand that contained the gold lay in a bed of from three
to four inches thick, that was for the most part under a layer of coarse
gravel two to three feet thick, though in some places the black sand was
found free of any cover at low tide.
Of the richness of the diggings in the early days it may be said that
the mine was discovered in September, 1886. Popper had to return to
Buenos Ayres and organize a company to work the deposit as well as
perfect his title to the claims according to Argentine law, and then
ship a steam pumping plant with sluices and material for the camp to
the locality. This all took time, and it was not until the end of the
following antarctic winter that he got his plant in operation. He was
then able to pass an average of fifty cubic yards of sand through his
sluices per day. From this he cleaned up in the course of the first
year, after the discovery, 154 pounds (weight avoirdupois) of pure gold.
As another indication of the richness of this territory, I can say that
we took on a government official who had been at the station two leagues
back considerably less than a year, but he had cleaned up enough gold to
satisfy him. He was going home to Buenos Ayres, rich. He had worked
diggings outside the Paramo claim, using common sluice boxes.
While this easily-obtained gold-bearing sand was being worked off, the
miners observed that the supply was renewed somewhat by every storm that
raged, and further, that when a storm happened to come at the time of
the spring tides, a very much larger quantity of gold-bearing sand was
washed up by the waves than in ordinary storms. This had happened, too,
at Cape Virgin, but the renewal of the gold supply by the storms was not
so notable there. However, it appears that eventually a time came when
the miners at Paramo were able to work off all the black sand between
storms. So it happened--so it happens in these days that the miners sit
down and smoke their pipes till the storm comes and goes. After the surf
of the storm is gone and the tide runs out, a fresh layer of black sand
is found with gold in it. The miners say the sand is washed up from a
streak that crops out somewhere below low tide. They think that this
layer could be reached by sinking a shaft near the buildings, but they
can't sink a shaft profitably on account of the water coming in. The
black sand lies on clay, and all the layer, and the other layers above
it, are, so to speak, afloat with water. So they work only after a heavy
surf. The weather, on the average, keeps them busy about half the time.
The land is controlled by a German-Argentine corporation, of which Herr
Carlos Backhausen and Herr Bruno Ansorge are superintendent and foreman.
The men work the sand on shares, and do so well that, paradoxical as it
may seem, there is difficulty in keeping a full gang of men at work. The
trouble is, that, as soon as the men get a few ounces of dust to their
credit, they must take it and go away to Punta Arenas and swap it for
such joys as may be had in that tiny metropolis.
At Paramo, on the beach, they now use a combination of wooden sluices
and a copper-plate machine with which all gold miners are familiar, but
which could not be briefly described here. The riffles in the sluices
save the coarser gold, while the mercury on the copper plates takes up
the flour gold as it drifts away over the plates. Water for all the
machines is pumped from the sea, and it is worth while telling that
experiments there show that some pay streaks can be profitably worked
with salt water when fresh water fails to save a satisfactory return.
Geologists find this gold-bearing layer of black sand (it is a magnetic
iron sand) a most interesting study. They say the deposit at Paramo is a
continuation of that found at Cape Virgin, and that deposit is found at
intervals on the Patagonia coast to the Gallegos River. The geologists
are even confident that it crops out at intervals for over a thousand
miles along the Patagonia coast--always below the water line. Of course,
this bed of sand was deposited where it is now found by the action of
water, and it must have existed at one time in the form of a reef or
vein a thousand miles long in some prehistoric range of mountains. What
a lead that would have been for some lone prospector!
[Illustration: GOLD-WASHING MACHINES. PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO]
Returning north from Paramo on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego, the
transport entered the Straits of Magellan and went to Punta Arenas. From
Punta Arenas we went down through Cockburn Channel to the Antarctic
Ocean, and then, turning east, cruised through Brecknock Pass,
Desolation Bay, Whale Sound, Darwin Sound, and Beagle Channel via the
Northwest arm. Thence we coasted along east and up through the Straits
of Le Maire on the north side of Staten Island, which we followed to St.
John Bay on the east end. These are positively the wildest, most
dangerous waters in the world. As will be told, the hidden reefs and the
whirling tornadoes formed combinations that made experienced travellers
look serious, although in a steamer that was as good a seaboat as ever
floated. And yet the prospectors of Punta Arenas have sailed all over
that route, summer and winter, in twenty-five catboats, looking for
gold.
At Ushuaia, the capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, a small village
in Beagle Channel, I fell in with Harry Hansen, a Punta Arenas
prospector, who for six months had been cruising about the islands to
the south of the channel, and was on his way home very much disgusted
with the life of a prospector. He, with a brother, had faced every kind
of a storm known to the Cape Horn region. They had been obliged to live
for weeks, as the Indians do, on limpets and clams only. Their only home
had been the tiny cabin of a 25-foot sloop. As a result of the six
months of hardship and work they had about twenty-five ounces of gold
dust. So they sold their sloop and took passage with us for the Gallegos
River. As we steamed along they told stories of gold hunting around Cape
Horn.
Lennox Island is just now the centre of interest in that region. Lennox
has high banks and sandy beaches, exactly like those of Cape Virgin, and
the gold is found in a layer of black sand that crops out below sea
level, and is washed up within reach by the waves. But, according to the
Hansens, the best of the diggings there were worked out. There was no
longer any fresh, unworked ground, with its layers of dust that could be
scraped up with a table knife at the rate of three kilos a day, and so
Lennox was not worth the attention of any enterprising prospector. The
plodders who were willing to carry mercury to put in the sluices, and to
sit down and wait for the storms to bring up fresh sand could make a
couple of guineas a day easily enough, but the Hansens did not want any
such wages as that.
Under the point of New Island, very appropriately called the Asses'
Ears, a wide beach was pointed out as the location where an
extraordinary find was made. A party from Punta Arenas had landed there,
and had sunk a wide shaft several feet into the sand, looking for the
gold-bearing layer, but without finding it, although the indications
along shore were good. They abandoned the spot after a day or two and
went away. Then another party came along some time later, and just for
luck concluded to sink the well a little deeper. That was the luckiest
conclusion they ever came to.
Within one foot they struck pay dirt, took out over 100 pounds weight
(48 kilos) within a month, and sailed away content. Their story, when
told at Punta Arenas, sent a host of eager fellows down there to get
what was left, and, singular to relate, about every man who went there
among the first three boat-loads did well. But when I was passing this
point only the smoke of the camp-fire of one lone gold-digger could be
seen faintly beneath the Asses' Ears. He was the last of the plodders,
according to the Hansens, and was likely to become as rich and as mean
as some folks they knew in Punta Arenas--men willing to get rich by
saving and scrimping out of a paltry $10 a day.
And then there was the little bay on the Tierra del Fuego mainland,
called Port Pantaloons. No man of any experience ever thought of landing
there to look for gold. One glance was sufficient to show that no gold
could be found there. So everybody supposed, at least. Instead of steep
banks, showing the well-known layer formation of Cape Virgin, was a
gentle, grassy slope, with a brook that came splashing down a woody
ravine. It was a pretty enough place--in fact, the scenery was probably
what made a party of seven greenhorns from Punta Arenas, out with a
little schooner, put in there and land.
Did I believe in the old saying "A fool for luck"? Well, if I didn't I
would after living in Punta Arenas a while. These seven greenhorns made
a camp and went washing for gold at Port Pantaloons. At the end of five
weeks to a day from the time they left Punta Arenas they were back
again, and had exactly four kilos of gold (say nine pounds) each. And
every man of them took the first steamer for Europe, intending to settle
down and live on the interest of his money instead of having a good time
in Punta Arenas, as he might have had.
Of course, there were a lot of people at Punta Arenas who made haste to
go down to Port Pantaloons to clean up what these greenhorns had left;
but, remarkable to tell, when the experienced miners came to wash where
the greenhorns had been, there was found nothing left to clean up. The
greenhorns had found a pocket, and had cleaned it themselves.
And then there were the Cape Horn group and New Year's Island off the
north coast of Staten Island. The Hansens had visited both localities
and had found, as they said:
Plenty of the stuff, but it was too fine for our sluices without
mercury. Besides, we didn't have a proper ship for these waters.
She was only a ten-tonner. If you want the gold you can have it,
but nobody from Punta Arenas will help you get it. It takes too
much capital to set up copper-plate machines there, and those that
have the capital haven't the pluck to face the sea in these waters.
I suppose you could average fifteen grammes a day without mercury
if that would satisfy you.
But of all spots in the Cape Horn region, Sloggett Bay, on the south
coast of Tierra del Fuego, about forty miles west of the Strait of Le
Maire, is the most tantalizing. More expeditions have been fitted out in
Punta Arenas to go to Sloggett Bay than to any two gold diggings
besides. Almost every expedition has gotten gold, and yet never did an
expedition there pay the outfitters. Indeed, more lives have been lost
trying for Sloggett Bay gold than at any two points besides. And that is
saying a good deal.
There is a man now in Punta Arenas who went down to this bay in a
well-built little schooner, which was manned by fourteen men all told.
They had heard of the gold found there--gold "in nuggets as big as
kernels of corn"--, and nothing should stop them in the work of getting
it, they said. They moored their little craft with long cables and
chains, and made everything as snug and safe as the most experienced
sailors and sealers could suggest. Then they went to work, stripping off
the six-foot layer of gravel that overlies the gold-bearing sand and
carrying the latter up out of reach of the waves; for they had to work
at low tide. The gold is all under water at high tide.
They were a hardy lot and enthusiastic. They worked all of every low
tide, and ate and slept during high water. They got on well with their
work, for a time, but they made a terrible mistake. They slept in their
schooner and kept no lookout--trusted to their moorings to hold them
fast. One night they went to sleep, as usual, well-tired from hard
labor. Then came one of those fearsome gales that characterize the
region. With a speed and power that are beyond description, it picked up
the schooner on the crest of a wave and dashed it into kindling wood on
the beach--dashed out the lives of thirteen of the men as well. One only
was left alive, and, curiously enough, he was entirely uninjured.
"The first I knew that there was a storm," he said, "was when I woke up
lying on the beach, with the wreckage around me."
This man did just what might be expected, they say, of any one of the
Cape Horn miners. He camped on the beach, and worked away at the pay
streak as best he could, until rescued by other prospectors; and he is
still a gold seeker in the Cape Horn region.
Sloggett Bay is really no bay at all. It is a roadstead with sheltering
walls on the northerly and westerly sides, and a very good bottom to
hold an anchor. It is about as much of a harbor as a ship would find on
the bar off Sandy Hook, save that there are mountains along shore
instead of low, sandy beaches. For a northerly or westerly gale the
shelter is as good as any one could wish, but the waves from the
southeast drive in with appalling fury. Indeed, any southerly gale is
dangerous, for the whirling squalls slew a small boat around until
broadside to the combers, and then the end comes before the unfortunate
gold hunter has time to think twice.
The gold of Sloggett Bay is marvellous gold. It is, as said, nugget gold
as distinguished from gold dust. The traditional "nuggets as big as
kernels of corn" are to be had there. I have seen them myself, and when
one has seen a handful of such stuff he does not wonder that prospectors
keep trying again and again, in spite of the fair certainty of death.
The pay streak at Sloggett Bay lies under water, as it does elsewhere
throughout the Cape Horn region, but it is harder to get, because it can
hardly be said to crop out at all. One must strip off about six feet of
sand and gravel at low tide, and then shovel out the pay streak, carry
it up clear of high tide, and there wash out the gold. Of course, when
the tide comes in again the space stripped of the covering sand is
recovered, and stripping must be done over again at the next low tide.
That is very discouraging work, but no form of coffer dam yet devised by
the miners has saved it.
They all agree that there is only one way in which the Sloggett Bay
field can be worked, and they think that that way would probably fail
too. The ideal Sloggett Bay outfit would be a big steam dredge, fitted
to scoop up sand, gravel, and pay streak all together, and after running
the stuff over the sluices and copper plates, to discharge the debris
in a lighter, that could be towed away and emptied in water too deep to
work. If such an outfit could hold on for a week, they say it would pay
for itself. If it could hold on for a month it would make its owners
rich. That it might hold on for a week or two is reasonably probable,
but the chances are that it would become a mass of wreckage even before
it reached the bay. The prospectors say that no dredge ever built for
harbor work could stand a southeast gale there for an hour, and yet the
sailors among them say that a dredge built specially for the work on the
lightship model, with proper ground tackle for mooring fore and aft,
could stand the gales there as well as the storms on the Georges Bank of
Massachusetts are weathered by the lightship.
Among the stories the miners tell of the luck they have had is one that,
whether true or false, is interesting, for even if false it shows that
the man who told it was an original liar; as a matter of fact, I have no
reason for doubting the story. Mr. Theo Benfield, whom I met in Punta
Arenas, said that during a journey from the strait up the coast he
stopped one day under one of the vertical earth banks called barancas in
that country to pick out a fossil that he saw protruding. The relic
proved to be a part of a mastodon's lower jaw, having two teeth still in
place. It was in bad condition, and he was about to throw it away, when
he saw that in a split in the top and side of one tooth was a bit of
some foreign substance to which he applied his knife. He found that it
was gold, that had, as he believed, been deposited there in fine grains
by the action of water, and that the grains had united as deposited. The
gold, as he says, was in a split in the tooth evidently made there when
the jaw was broken. He related the story in support of a theory in
regard to the origin of nuggets which he held, thus: Gold, as it comes
from the broken-down quartz veins is usually very fine, but as the
grains are carried along by the water they fall into little cavities,
where, by the action of chemicals in the water, they are united. The
split in the old tooth had at some time been lying in a place where gold
dust had silted into it until it was about full, and the particles
uniting had formed a curious nugget. Unfortunately Mr. Benfield was more
interested at that time in getting gold than in questions relating to
the origin of nuggets, and so smashed the tooth to get the stuff. He
got, he says, over eight grammes from the tooth. If his story be true,
he might have obtained many times the value of that much gold for the
relic intact, but he did not think of that at the time, and so we have
only one man's word in relation to the matter.
It is a remarkable fact that, in spite of all the prospecting done, no
gold-quartz veins have yet been found. Louis Figue, a merchant at
Ushuaia, in the Beagle Channel, showed me a specimen of nickel ore that
had yielded a remarkable per cent. on the first assay; but the only bit
of gold ore I saw or heard of was a small piece of free-milling stuff
belonging to Bruno Ansorge of Paramo. It was rich, but where the vein
was none could tell, for it was from a bit of drift rock called float by
the miners, and had been picked up between Useless and San Sebastian
Bays.
Very likely the placer gold found in all the streams of Tierra del Fuego
(stream gold as distinguished from that in the beach), and that in the
streams emptying into the Straits of Magellan, comes from veins yet to
be found up in the mountains where the streams rise. Very likely
systematic search would discover the veins. But the search would have to
be made under circumstances that would make the fair-weather prospectors
of Colorado and the grubstake eaters of the Mojave desert gasp. The
mountains of the Cape Horn region are snow-topped the year round. The
cold is not so intense as the early travellers would make one believe,
but there is a strength and a twist to the gales--especially a
twist--that is beyond description. And the gales come every day in
summer and every week in winter. Expeditions have traversed Tierra del
Fuego with horses, but the cheapest and the most comfortable way (in
spite of the danger) to prospect the region is from a well-found boat.
Moreover, every land expedition must contain enough men to keep up a
military guard, because of the hostility of the Indians, while two
well-armed, sober men, can defend a well-found boat from the savages,
and if skilful and cool can usually escape the danger of storms.
But neither from boats nor from a land expedition has any one as yet
been able to explore the higher parts of the mountain sides. Indeed,
where nothing else prevents it, the tropical luxuriance of the evergreen
beeches and magnolia brush heads off the hardy prospector. It is hard
work climbing up rocky gulches and declivities under the most favorable
circumstances, but when one must face fierce gales of wind and at the
same time hew his way through a solid mass of brush covering the whole
space to be explored, the task becomes too great even for a Yankee
prospector. It never has been accomplished, and possibly it never will
be accomplished; but, as they say very often down there, who knows?
There is not a mine camp in all the Cape Horn region south of the
strait, though Paramo, with its three buildings, and say thirty men, is
known as a camp. The placers, as found on almost every sandy beach of
the region, are all soon worked over, and thereafter pay only day wages.
So no camp or village springs up, as would happen were a rich true
fissure vein to be found. But Ushuaia, in the Beagle Channel, the
capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, has three stores and a small
mixed population, besides the troops that maintain Argentine dignity,
and, with its occasional Indian visitors, its happy-go-lucky
architecture, and its heaps of empty bottles, is not unlike a North
American mine town.
The headquarters of the Cape Horn miners will be found at Punta Arenas.
The peculiarities which makes Punta Arenas at once one of the most
interesting, and one of the most disappointing towns in the world, will
be described in the next chapter but it may be said now that miners'
supplies--picks, pans, clothing, and food--are cheaper here than at any
other miners' supply town in the world. But while a man may get these
things at a low price, he has to buy a boat instead of the burros he
would buy in the States to carry his outfit. A couple of burros cost say
$35 in Colorado, but here he must buy a sloop or a catboat, and he ought
to buy a schooner fifty feet long instead. Now any kind of a boat fit to
carry even the amphibious prospector of the Cape Horn region costs at
least $100 in gold, and must be fitted out at a cost of from $25 to $100
more, not to mention the mining outfit proper.
The prospecting sloop of the Cape Horn region is usually of the model of
the little oyster sloops to be found about the harbor of New York. The
hold is stowed full of provisions, tools for mining, and lumber for
sluices. Naturally these prospectors carry a much better supply of food
than prospectors elsewhere do. The Rocky Mountain prospectors with their
burros must needs be content with meal, beans, bacon, and, perhaps,
coffee, but in the Cape Horn region they carry a great variety of stuff
in tin cans and Chili claret by the half barrel. All this costs money,
but it is none too good for that climate. And even the best-provided
outfits are sometimes away from home so long that the supplies are
exhausted.
They sail away south feeling quite certain that they will be back soon
with their vessel ballasted with gold, but the shortest time spent away
from port by any party I heard of was that of the seven who returned
from Port Pantaloons in five weeks. The Hansens were away eleven months
in 1892-93.
Every year some sail away, and the sail disappears beneath the white
peak of Mt. Sarmiento, plainly seen from the water front of Punta
Arenas. After three or four months the "White Wings outfit" or the "Mary
G. outfit" is casually mentioned by the bar-room groups as one that
should be heard from before long. Two or three months later the outfit
is mentioned frequently and with ominous looks and shakings of the head,
while an anxious-faced wife or mother is seen hurrying to the beach
whenever a sail appears in the south, to learn if it be the one she
thinks of as she lies awake every night listening to the Cape Horn
gales. She goes down quickly, but she comes back slowly and with a dry
throat as she learns that it is neither the _White Wings_ nor the _Mary
G_.
The region seems but a narrow space as one looks at the maps, but it is
a wide one with labyrinthian channels and hidden bays, the ports of many
a missing sloop and catboat of which never a trace will be found to
tell the tale of disaster. It is a region where no man with a wife or
other person depending on him should enter, but for the young and
independent fellow, who can gain vigor and courage in facing the mad
freaks of an Antarctic gale, there is no place better than that beyond
the Straits of Magellan. He may not get rich--the chances are that he'll
be glad to work his way north in the stoke hole of some steamer--but he
will have had an experience that will make him contented to live
thereafter in the milder region of Uncle Sam's domain, and will,
moreover, fit him to make his way there better than he could have been
prepared in any other way.
CHAPTER II.
THE CAPE HORN METROPOLIS.
This is the story of what may be called the Cape Horn metropolis, for it
is the story of a town which, though a village in population, is the
business centre of the region extending from Port Desire, on the
Patagonia coast, to the little island whose southern angle is called
Cape Horn, and from the Falkland Islands on the east to the limits of
the islands on the west coast of the southern continent. Moreover, it is
a town whose characteristics are absolutely astounding, even to an
experienced traveller who visits it for the first time, and, curiously
enough, the more he may have read and heard about it the more he is
likely to be astonished when he at last sees it himself.
"La Colonia de Magallanes," as Punta Arenas is styled in the public
documents of Chili, is more than fifty years old, and that, to the
traveller looking at it from a ship's deck, is one of the most
astonishing statements made about the town. On "the 21st of April, 1843,
the Government of Chili planted the tri-color banner in the ancient port
of Famine, thus taking possession, in the name of Chili, of the Straits
of Magallanes," as the Chilian record says.
It is tolerably easy to guess that the Chili Government did this act
more from a sentimental desire to hold possession of the territory that
had been famous in history, than from any expectation that the region
would be worth the expense of holding.
Besides the desire to hold ground with historical associations, the
government wanted a penal colony that would be a very long way from the
capital. A penal colony, it was argued, would not only hold troublesome
convicts, but would serve as a place for employing members of the army
suspected of plotting a revolt against the government.
This colony at Port Famine depended entirely on supplies of food from
Valparaiso, and as navigation in those days was much more uncertain than
now, the settlement sometimes well-nigh repeated the experience of
Sacramento's colony, that in the sixteenth century starved to death
there. Because of their sufferings, the convicts rose up one day and
took possession of the settlement. The Governor was killed. Then a ship
happened along and the mutineers boarded it and compelled the crew to
sail on, but a Chilian man-o'-war overtook them, whereat the convicts
were for the most part hanged to the yard-arms. It is said that a man
was seen hanging from every yard-end on the warship, and she was a
full-rigged ship--had twenty-four yard ends to hang men to.
The buildings at Port Famine having been burned by the convicts, the
government decided to re-establish the colony just south of a long
tongue of sand made by a mountain stream emptying into the strait some
miles north of Port Famine. The new settlement was named from the old
one--La Colonia de Megallanes--but because of that tongue of sand it was
nicknamed Sandy Point by English-speaking seamen and Punta Arenas
(which means Sandy Point) by all others, and so the town is called by
everybody in the region.
As said, this was a place far out of the way. The life which the
unfortunates there had to endure may, perhaps, be imagined by those who
understand human nature, but not fully realized. Here were men condemned
to live shut off from all civilized associations because of crimes of
which they had been convicted. They were put in charge of men suspected
of trying to commit other crimes. In most cases keeper and prisoner were
guilty as charged, but in many cases both were innocent. In all cases
the keeper was an absolute monarch with the power, if not the right, to
take the life of any convict under him; and, for that matter, the
officers could shoot the soldiers without very great risk of adequate
punishment.
"It's coolish like the year round," said an old sailor there who had
known the town twenty-five years ago, "but when I saw the colony first
it wasn't a cable's length from hell."
That the colony did not remain a mere penal settlement with a mental
atmosphere like that of sheol was primarily due to the enterprise of a
Yankee from Newburyport, Mass., Mr. William Wheelwright, who founded the
steamship line called the Pacific Steam Navigation Company. This company
began running steamers through the Straits of Magellan in 1868, and they
all stopped at the colony perforce, because it was a convenient place to
take on coal from hulks that were kept there for the purpose. It was
natural that a trade in fresh meats and vegetables should grow out of
the coming of the steamers. And that trade was to Punta Arenas what a
long drink of Chili claret is to the wayfarer from the Patagonia desert.
It brought a new life to the place. On the day the first steamer called
the population was 195 souls. In 1872 it numbered 800.
Then other elements of growth appeared. There was the gold, for
instance, as told in the last chapter. The gold did not bring a
stampede, but it affected the population in a curious fashion.
"Men don't have to slave it for a boss in a gold camp. When they get out
of grub they can take a pick and shovel and go dig some gold," said Mr.
H. Grey, a Yankee merchant there. As the abundance of food affects the
increase of wild animals, so the certainty of earning a living affects
the growth of a human population.
But Punta Arenas grew from one cause that had nothing natural about it,
save as some seafaring people seem to be naturally of a devilish
disposition. One of the most prominent promoters of the growth of Punta
Arenas was the hard-fisted Yankee skipper--he who commanded the sealer
and whale ship fitted out in New London or New Bedford to skin the
rookeries of Staten Island and others farther south. Not that the
skipper deserved thanks or praise from the people of Punta Arenas or any
other people in this matter. He did not do it intending to promote the
prosperity of Punta Arenas or its people. The skipper who helped the
growth of Punta Arenas was an infamous scoundrel, who got sailors to
toil and drudge for him until they had filled his ship with skins and
oil, and then by cruelty that is shocking to consider drove them ashore
at Punta Arenas that he might rob them of their hard-earned wages. Some
other sea captains than Yankees have driven sailors ashore there, too,
but the Yankees have done the most of it.
[Illustration: PUNTA ARENAS, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN.]
Nine tenths of the population with whom I talked had been sailors. Not
all had been hazed from ships, but the majority had.
Last of all came the one industry that was to make Punta Arenas the
antarctic metropolis. Mr. H. L. Reynard, an Englishman living in Punta
Arenas, rented Elizabeth Island early in the seventies, and brought some
sheep there from the Falklands. The sheep took kindly to their new home,
and increased so rapidly that Mr. Reynard soon had to move some of them
to the mainland. They say he now owns over 100,000 sheep, besides horses
and cattle galore, and enjoys--really enjoys--an income of not far from
L400 per week.
The people of Punta Arenas did not wait until Mr. Reynard became rich
before following his example. They began to invest in sheep as soon as
they saw that sheep were profitable, and so far as I could learn every
man there who had gone into the business and had given it ordinary care
had made money. So the sheep spread far and wide over the region, and
men came to care for them and Punta Arenas was the point to which all
these men came for supplies. And, as has happened elsewhere, so here the
rearing of cattle and horses goes along with the rearing of sheep.
It appears that during the early years the garrison in charge of the
convicts numbered on the average sixty soldiers of the line. Besides
these the government employed a lot of men to hunt the guanaco and the
cattle that ran wild in the Cordilleras, in order to keep the garrison
supplied with meat, and, incidentally, to help the soldiers hunt runaway
convicts of whom not a few were found brave enough to face the terrors
of the Patagonia desert for the sake of liberty. Such tales as may be
gathered of the doings and sufferings of these runaways are almost
beyond belief. To follow the beach to the Santa Cruz River, a journey of
from two to three weeks, subsisting on the few raw fish that might be
cast up by the sea, and passing two days at a stretch without water,
were matters of common experience. To wander inland and perish miserably
while striving to reach a mirage lake often happened.
However, it was not so much for the love of liberty that men fled from
the Punta Arenas prison, as it was because they could not endure the
sufferings peculiar to their situation. It was because officers as well
as soldiers of the line and convicts were in exile, and because the
worse instincts of the officers were brought out by the hardships they
endured. In such a penal settlement as that was matters naturally went
from bad to worse, and a second mutiny was inevitable.
On the night of November 10, 1877, the soldiers and convicts united to
take the town, and succeeded. And for three days they held it. They
caught the commander of the garrison and revenged the cruelties of which
he had been guilty by cutting off his nose, cutting out his tongue,
putting out his eyes, hacking off his limbs, and last of all severing
his head from his body, and setting it upon a pole at the prison gate.
With equal animosity they sought the Governor and the chaplain, but both
had fled in time, the former deserting his wife and children that he
might save his own skin whole. Then the mutineers sacked the town and
lived riotously until a Chilian man-o'-war appeared in the offing, when
they gathered their plunder together and started away, according to one
account, 180 in number, and, according to another, in a mob numbering
120. Incredible as it may seem, these mutineers, although they had
forty horses in all, took not one scrap of food with them. Instead of
food they loaded themselves and the animals with clothing, bales of dry
goods, fancy cutlery, bric-a-brac--almost anything and everything the
town afforded that would be of no benefit in the journey that was before
them.
The Chilian authorities made no pursuit worth mention, though a handful
of men well armed and mounted could have rounded up the whole company.
Unmolested they marched away. The first night they killed three horses
for food. The next night and the next and the next they continued to
kill horses. They kept at it till all were gone. Other horses were
captured from incoming Gauchos, but these did not suffice. Many
mutineers were killed in murderous quarrels, but more died because of
the hardships of the route. They found freedom on the desert pampas, but
hunger and thirst overtook them, and crawling beneath the scant shelter
of the thorny bushes growing there, they died, and the foxes and
vultures ate them.
At the end of three months a company of forty reached the Welsh
settlement on the Chubut River, and these were carried to Buenos Ayres
by the Argentine Government, and were there eventually turned loose.
With the burning of the prison an incubus that had weighed upon Punta
Arenas vanished. The town was free to rise and flourish as the exuberant
fancy of its people might dictate, for the prison was never rebuilt.
I first saw Punta Arenas on the 15th of May, 1894. I was on the deck of
the Argentine naval transport _Ushuaia_, and the reader should remember
that May there corresponds to November in the North, while the latitude
of the Magellan region is precisely that of the coast of Labrador. With
these geographical facts in mind, the appearance of things about Punta
Arenas was astonishing, for it was a waterside settlement, backed by
grassy, rolling hills, above which rose mountains green with verdure
that never fades. Indeed, but for the snow-capped peaks away back in the
Cordilleras, one would have had hard work bringing himself to realize
that this was the Magellan of which the early navigators drew such bleak
pictures. And yet Port Famine, where Sarmiento's colony starved to
death, was but a few miles away to the south,--in sight, in fact, from
the masthead. The general aspect of the scenery beyond the settlement
was very much like that to be found in the Adirondacks after an early
snow has whitened the higher peaks, leaving the foot-hills showing
darker and greener by contrast.
But the similarity to an Adirondack picture ended at the village limits.
There is nothing in the New York wilderness, nor yet in the camps that
are found in the Rocky Mountains, that may be compared to Punta Arenas
as it appeared from the water. Four streets ran from the beach up over
the gentle slope--streets yellow with sand, then black with mud and
glistening bright with pools of stagnant water. A stirring population
kicked up sand and mud and splashed through the water. Between these
streets and facing them were massed, of course, the houses--wall after
wall and roof after roof, almost every wall of wood and every roof of
corrugated iron, the exceptional walls being made of iron, like that in
the roofs. But more singular still was the fact that every building
appeared new--a shining mass of pine boards and zinc-white iron, save in
those cases where paint had been used, and these houses looked more
conspicuous even than the rest, for the prevailing color of paint was a
brilliant pink.
The harbor, which is simply an open roadstead, was by no means
uninteresting. A great line steamship, as trim looking as a man-o'-war,
was at anchor discharging and taking in cargo from big lighters
alongside. A great German bark lay beside a big hulk, into which it was
discharging coal brought from Cardiff. A handsome little man-o'-war of
the cruiser type floated the tri-color flag of Chili above her quarter
deck. And besides these a whole fleet--a score or more of schooners,
sloops, and catboats, the trading and prospecting fleet of the
region--bobbed about and tugged at their cables under the impulse of a
smart wind from westward, while lighters and small boats were passing to
and fro among the vessels at anchor.
One of the small boats came alongside with a grocery salesman seeking
orders, and when it went away I went along. It was a clean-lined yawl,
with able seamen at the oars, but it could not travel fast enough to
please me.
I had seen mine camps in the Rockies, and in the deserts of
California--Creede and Death Valley; I had camped with cowboys and
shepherds in Jackson's Hole beyond the Teton Mountains, on the plains of
No Man's Land, and in the forks of the Red River of the South; I was
acquainted with the life of lumbermen in the Adirondacks and the wilds
of Nova Scotia; and I had sailed from the Arsuk fiord in Greenland to
Chicago. But here was a town with pink roofs that sheltered at once the
miner, the prospector, the cowboy, the lumberman, and happy-go-lucky
Jack. What might not one expect in the way of wild life in such a town
as this?
A long wood-and-iron pier furnished a landing for passengers, and at the
head of this stood a new wood and iron hotel, two stories high, and
having a bar-room in the corner next to the pier. I registered there
under the eye of the clerk, who also served as bartender. My
observations of this man were encouraging. He was talking French to one
customer and Spanish to another as I entered. He addressed me in English
when I came in, and then a moment later opened a door behind the bar and
called for hot water in German. Judging from what I saw later still,
when a pretty girl passed, I should say he was not unfamiliar with the
sign language. He also knew how to mix hot whiskeys. After a little talk
about the variety of people in the population of the town, I determined
to take a look at the gambling-houses of the place by daylight, so I
said:
"How many sporting houses in town?"
The barkeeper smiled blandly.
"A plenty," he said; "you'll find the best looking girls in the second
house beyond the postoffice right up this street."
"I meant gambling-houses," said I, "but since you've mentioned sporting
women, how many dance-houses does this place support?"
"One. It's the house I mentioned. Both the girls like to dance, but of
course one of them has to furnish the music. They've got one of
these--how do you call them--pianos that turn with a crank, eh? It's a
fine instrument, I tell you. Of course, if you want to take a chum along
you can get a boy to turn the crank."
"Wait," said I. "What was the number of the biggest gang of cowboys you
ever saw come to town?"
"I suppose as many as twenty."
"Did they have any money?"
"You bet they did."
"And did they spend it?"
"As quick as the Lord would let 'm."
"How many men have you seen coming from the diggings with dust?"
"Half a dozen, maybe. Why?"
"Did they blow in the dust?"
"Well, rather."
"And yet there is only one dance-house in town and that has but two
women in it?"
"That's just the size of it."
"Let us return to the subject of gambling-houses. How many have you?"
"One."
"Do they have big play there?"
"That's what they do--sometimes."
"Where is it? I'd like to see it."
"Um--"
The barkeeper hesitated a moment, and then went to the door and looked
up and down.
"I don't see a member anywhere," he said, "but some of them will be in
at dinner, and I'll introduce you."
"Does one need an introduction to get in?"
"Certainly."
"What! Police watch it in a town like this?"
"Police? No. It's a private club, gentlemen, eh? They would admit you on
your card, I dare say, but it pleases the army and navy members to
observe the usual formalities. Did you think it was run like a saloon?"
As was said, Punta Arenas is a town whose characteristics are absolutely
astounding, even to an experienced traveller. Cowboys, shepherds,
lumbermen, miners, and sailors gather there to waste their substance in
riotous living, and do so waste it, but there is not one public
gambling-house in town, and the one lone dance-house there has but two
girls in it and a hand-organ for music.
"How long have you been in this town?" said I to the drink mixer.
"About twelve years."
"Professional gamblers ever come to town?"
"I think so--one came. He was a Yankee, they say."
"What made you think that?"
"Well, we were up in Bray's billiard saloon. Bray is the boss billiard
player of this town, and he was showing us some fancy shots, when a
stranger dropped in and had a drink, and then we sat around and chatted.
But Bray wanted to play billiards, and so pretty soon he asked the
stranger to take a cue. The stranger said he liked to play billiards,
but it was not worth while to play against the boss player of the town.
"'Never mind that,' said Bray. 'We'll play for the drinks and see how we
match.'
"So they began. The stranger was a pretty fair player, and pretty soon
Bray had to do his best, though by doing his best he managed to beat the
stranger. I think it was thirty-two or thirty-three points. The stranger
showed interest in the game, but was going to put down the cue, when
Bray said:
"'I'll just give you thirty points and beat you for ten dollars.'
"The stranger showed eagerness at once, and putting up the cash went at
it. That was a right pretty game, let me tell you, for both men played
well, but at the last Bray ran out, although the stranger had but one
point to make. The stranger looked excited when Bray ran out, and
taking out a wad said:
"'I'll bet you one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred you can't
do that again.'
"'I'll go you for three hundred,' said Bray. It was just what Bray had
been aching for.
"It was Bray's first shot, and he made a string of nine. Thereat the
stranger took his cue, chalked it, winked at the crowd, and ran out his
string without a break. Then he picked up the cash, stuffed it in his
pocket, and started out, whistling _Yankee Doodle_. We judged by that
circumstance that he was a Yankee."
I was in Punta Arenas four days, and talked with a variety of people,
but that was the only gambling story worth telling that I heard. I asked
if fights and bloodshed were known to the town since the convict mutiny.
They replied that fights were not unknown, but were rare.
"Do the fighters never kill each other?"
"I fancy not," said the barkeeper.
"Ever had cold-blooded murders for money?"
"Not in my day, anyhow."
"Then you've never lynched anybody here."
The barkeeper laughed.
"That's just like a Yankee," he said. "The only lynchings I ever heard
of took place in the States. The government keeps soldiers here, and
everybody is afraid of them."
This last statement explained why the town was peculiar. The government
is monarchial in fact, though nominally republican. Chili is ruled, as
all Latin-American countries are, by the army. Punta Arenas is ruled by
an army officer sent from Santiago. The town ordinances are backed by
bayonets. The Texas town marshal in all his glory could not keep the
peace as soldiers can. The government has decreed that there shall be no
gambling-houses in Punta Arenas of the style found in United States mine
camps. Neither shall there be dance-houses. Instead of these, drinking
saloons are permitted in unlimited numbers, and one or two young women
can get a license for a saloon as readily as a man can.
There are almost one hundred licensed bars in Punta Arenas. They are
found scattered everywhere about town. The young women who own saloons
commonly sit in the doorway knitting or sewing in the daytime. One who
saw them said their trade would probably be larger if they remained
behind the bar or wore veils. A more wretched-looking lot of women was
never seen in the saloon business. It is in little wooden shanties, with
corrugated iron roofs--utterly barren, squalid shanties--that the
riotous living of Punta Arenas is found, and there is not one bright or
picturesque feature about it to give excuse for its existence.
After leaving the bartender at the hotel, I started out to see so much
of the town as could be observed in walking the streets. It is a town
laid out on the checkerboard plan, and like all Spanish-American towns
has a plaza or public square. The streets are unpaved. This means that
near the beach, where there is sand, the wheeling is pretty fair, save
in the driest weather, and elsewhere is pretty bad when fair on the
beach, and good when it is bad on the beach. But one can find much
deeper mud even in the outskirts of New York city than is found in the
streets of Punta Arenas.
The sidewalks are peculiar. Under a village ordinance every such walk
is edged with a six-inch square timber. Between this timber and the
front wall of the house could be found, in a few places stone, in fewer
tile brick, in some well-packed beds of sand, but in the majority of
cases little narrow lakes of water securely held in place by the timber
sea-wall. The plaza showed a rich black loam and nothing else.
Facing the plaza was the old official residence of the Governor. It was
one of the few buildings remaining from the early days. It was a wooden
structure that had originally had a shingle roof over all, but the
moss-grown shingles had rotted away in patches, and had been replaced
with odds and ends of board, tin, and sheet-iron. The contrast between
the Governor in his gorgeous uniform and his official house was
something stunning. The home was the only real shabby building in town.
The traveller who lands in Punta Arenas and fails to climb the hills
behind the town makes a mistake, because the picture is wonderfully
beautiful and striking as well. The yellowish hills of Tierra del Fuego
rise up in the east beyond the broad waters of the strait. The
snow-capped peaks of Mt. Sarmiento and its neighbors appear above the
horizon at the south, while in the west the evergreen mountains rise
boldly up from the water's edge. And then, right at the foot of these
dark-green mountains lies the zinc and pink town, the most absurd
foreground to a magnificent landscape that ever was imagined.
The lower hills to the northwest of the town have been chopped over in
part and are covered with dead trunks of trees, giving the landscape the
appearance of what the early settlers in the forest districts of the
United States called a deadening. The trees seemed to have been killed
by some kind of an epidemic. They say in the town that the trees were
killed by lightning, but I did not see any marks of lightning on the
trunks. However they died, the landscape there is wild enough to please
an insane artist.
The only manufacturing industries of the place are the saw-mills and a
brick-yard. The saw-mills are located some distance from the village,
and are not novel, but the brick-yard is right at hand. I examined the
brick, and found a product that I had not seen equalled since I saw the
courthouse in Greer County, Tex., which had crumbled under a summer
squall. Even the hardest burned brick in this kiln could be broken with
the naked hands.
A worse industry than brick-making, however, was started some years ago
in the town. What they called a vein of coal was discovered some five
miles from the beach, and, after some talk, a company was formed to
exploit it. A pier was built at the beach, a railroad laid thence to the
mine, and rolling stock brought out from England. This done, they found
that they had a lignite instead of a coal mine. The pier has gone to
pieces, and the old locomotive could be seen partly buried in the sand
not far from the head of the ruined pier. This is the coal of which all
the writers who have visited the strait speak enthusiastically.
However, the town is going to have more industries, and there is to be
still more business done by the traders. The increase in the number of
sheep will soon compel the traders to establish a freezing establishment
there in order that their surplus sheep may be shipped to market. Just
now they sell their surplus to men wishing to establish ranches up
country, but there will soon be no more room for new ranches up country.
Then Punta Arenas may yet manufacture goods from its wool, and it could
very profitably tan its products of hides and skins. The region produces
a bark so rich in tannin that it could be profitably exported to the
States, but still more profitably used on the ground. The Chili
Government will make liberal concessions to any man who knows the
tannery business and has the capital to establish it there. But one must
have the knack to get along comfortably with odd people if he would
succeed in any business there.
The sales of merchandise in the town are naturally large in certain
lines, and they are particularly satisfactory to the merchants, for the
reason that many original packages are called for. It is a wholesale
trade to a remarkable degree. Moreover, the merchants deliver goods to
customers by means of sailboats instead of by wagons, as New York
merchants do. But, one scarcely need add, there is no free delivery by
boats. The navigation of the straits region is hazardous, and therefore
expensive. Only the hardiest sailors will undertake the handling of a
25-foot catboat where, to quote Capt. Samuel Wallis, one of the early
navigators, "even in midsummer the climate was cloudy, cold, and
tempestuous."
The business feature of the town that interests travellers most is that
of the dealer in Indian-made goods and curiosities. Indians from the
pampas and from the southern islands come to Punta Arenas to sell skins,
furs, feathers, baskets, arrow-heads--what not. The dealers find sale
for more stuff, in fact, than the Indians bring, so they have some goods
made to order in the town. The goods are all sold as genuine Indian-made
things, and in a way so they are. There are squaws in town who make a
living doing work of this kind. I saw one of them deliver an armful of
rugs made of guanaco skins to one of the dealers. She was dressed in a
tailor-made suit of good material; she had gold jewelry a plenty, and
her hair was banged across her forehead. The dealer said she was a
half-breed Tehuelche, and I did not doubt it, but when one buys
Indian-made relics he does not suppose that the Indian wore a
tailor-made suit and bangs. I asked Luis Zanibelli, who was formerly a
Maiden Lane jeweller in New York, and is now in the relic business
there, how to tell goods made in the wilds from those made by half-breed
squaws with bangs.
"That's easy," he replied. "Smell of the goods. The genuine Indian goods
from the pampas or the islands always smell bad."
The club of which the barkeeper had spoken as a gambling resort is an
oddity in name, if in no other way. It is called the "Cuerpo de
Bomberos," and that translated into English means the body or society of
firemen. There is a neat little red club-house, built somewhat on the
model of ancient colonial mansions in the States--that is, with pillars
in front. There is a yard full of flower-beds in front of that, and
there are flowers there in May, at least, if not later. The house is
furnished as club-houses are elsewhere, except that it has no kitchen.
The annual dues amount to less than a dollar a month gold, and for this
the members have a remarkably pleasant resort. The barkeeper thought the
play was heavy; this is interesting as showing what is considered heavy
play at Punta Arenas. The heaviest loss of which I heard was 400 paper
dollars--a trifle over $100 gold. The favorite game is baccarat, but the
seductive influences of draw poker are not unknown. The list of members
includes the merchants, sheep-owners, and officials living in the
vicinity or stationed there by government, and in Punta Arenas the word
vicinity covers a territory a hundred leagues away from the centre.
Speaking of the flowers in front of this club-house reminds me that
Punta Arenas is the greatest town for flowers I ever saw. Every house
has window gardens, and many houses have bays and rooms set apart for
great masses of potted flowers and shrubs. It has many more flowers in
proportion to the population even than the tropical cities like Rio.
Flowers grow wild there in great profusion, too, among which the wild
fuschias make the most profuse display, while the ferns and lichens are
something to delight the eye of even the least observant.
For the rest, Punta Arenas claims a population of 3500. It is not unlike
some United States towns in the matter of a local census, but after
making due allowances for local pride and enthusiasm, it still is found
a live and growing village. Lots in the business part of the town now
sell for pounds sterling where paper dollars would have sufficed ten
years ago. Indeed, a lot was sold while I was there for L500 that
changed hands in 1886 for $400 national currency. The old settler goes
about the street bewailing the fact that he didn't buy when he first
came, and saying it is too late now. But those who buy now point to the
growing traffic through the straits, and refer to the line of huge steam
tugs now building in England that will tow sailing ships through the
narrow waters and against the winds that vexed and baffled the early
navigators; they speak confidently of the spread of sheep ranches on
Tierra Del Fuego, and the apparently unfailing discoveries of new
gold-fields among the islands to the south; they talk of the increased
demand for the wood of the straits. They balance against the frosts and
cold rains of midsummer the many Indian summer days of winter, and tell
stories of invalids regaining health that would make both Denver and Los
Angeles green with envy. They find, in fact, no end of signs of future
prosperity for their austral metropolis, and if somebody does not dig a
canal from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific they are very certain to
find these signs well founded. Even if such a canal is made, only one
element of the prosperity of the place will be injured--the traffic
through the straits--and that probably will not be wholly destroyed,
while the other elements can scarcely fail to improve continually.
Mr. Julius Popper wrote in 1888 of Punta Arenas, that it was "a town
that opened its doors at 11 A.M., and was more concerned about picnics
and dances than business." Mr. Frank Vincent said in 1889, that it was a
community scarce one of whom "would be willing to stay if he could get
away." The people there say these remarks were libellous when written. I
am bound to say that in 1894, if a man wanted to get to windward of a
Punta Arenas man in the matter of business, it was necessary to get up
in the morning before crow peep. And as for the people wishing to get
away, one would have hard work to find a citizen there who could be
driven away with a shotgun.
In spite of its climate and its government, it is a blooming and booming
community, and because of the enterprise of its citizens it deserves all
the prosperity the free pastures of the pampas and the waves of the sea
are bringing to it.
CHAPTER III.
CAPE HORN ABORIGINES.
This is the story in part of one of the most interesting and most
unfortunate tribes of Indians known in the history of American
aborigines--interesting because of their remarkable qualities of mind
and body, and unfortunate because they have been almost exterminated by
changes in their habits, wrought by Christian missionaries. It begins
with what was said of them and their country by the early explorers, and
it ends where the missionaries began what was intended to be the work of
civilizing them. It tells of the race as God made it. What the white man
did for it will be told later.
The Cape Horn Archipelago, as the islands south of the Straits of
Magellan may be called, contained when discovered, and still maintains,
three distinct tribes of Indians. One tribe occupied the island of
Tierra del Fuego to the north and east of the coast range of mountains,
of which Mts. Darwin and Sarmiento are the chief peaks. It was a land
tribe; that is, they rarely if ever built canoes, and they subsisted
almost entirely on such products as the land afforded. Another race
occupied the islands to the west of Cockburn Channel. They were always,
so to speak, a race of sailors; they built canoes, cruised about their
region as fancy or the prevalence of food dictated, and were very little
dependent on land beasts for food.
Last of all, we come to the tribe that lived and now exists among the
islands lying south of Tierra del Fuego and along the very narrow south
beach of that great island itself--a tribe that might well be called the
Antarctic Highlanders, since they live further south than any other
known people--and the land they occupy is but a succession of mountain
peaks. These people are known as the Yahgans.
The known history of the Yahgans begins in the stories told by the early
navigators of the region--a brief matter--merely the record of what the
early navigators saw of them--but it is worth printing in part here
because it is interesting, and because the reading of the mistakes made
by the early travellers will help to impress on the memory the
peculiarities of this remarkable tribe.
Darwin, the naturalist, under date of December 25, 1832, wrote of the
Yahgans:
While going one day on shore near Wollaston Island, we pulled
alongside a canoe with six Fuegians. These were the most abject and
miserable creatures I anywhere beheld. On the east coast the
natives, as we have seen, have guanaco cloaks, and on the west they
possess sealskins. Among these central tribes the men generally
have an otter skin, or some small scrap, about as large as a pocket
handkerchief, which is barely sufficient to cover their backs as
low down as their loins. It is laced across the breast by strings,
and according as the wind blows it is shifted from side to side.
But these Fuegians in the canoe were quite naked, and even one
full-grown woman was absolutely so. It was raining heavily, and the
fresh water together with the spray trickled down her body. In
another harbor not far distant, a woman who was suckling a recently
born child came one day alongside the vessel and remained there out
of mere curiosity while the sleet fell and thawed on her naked
bosom and on the skin of her naked baby! These poor wretches were
stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white
paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their
voices discordant, and their gestures violent. At night five or six
human beings, naked and scarcely protected from the wind and rain
of this tempestuous climate, sleep on the wet ground coiled up like
animals. Viewing such men one can hardly make oneself believe that
they are fellow-creatures and inhabitants of the same world....
There is no reason to believe that the Fuegians decrease in number.
[Illustration: YAHGANS AT HOME.]
Quotations might be multiplied but two or three brief ones relating to
the land in which the Yahgans lived will suffice: King says that "the
vegetation is magnificent in some places, and under the shelter of the
great forests some plants are found that would be considered delicate in
England." Captain Cook agrees with this, and describes the wild celery
as among the delicate vegetable productions, but he concludes that "it
is the most savage country I have seen. There is no place in the world
which offers such desolate landscapes." To this may be added the
testimony of Admiral Anson, who said emphatically that it was "the most
horrible country which it was possible to conceive."
On the whole, it appears from reading the stories of these early
navigators that the land of the Yahgans, while lacking the eternal ice
of the Eskimo land, was bad enough, and in the matter of storms it was
worse even than the region of Baffin's Bay. As for the difference in the
people, it is apparent that the Yahgans were believed to be far more
wretched than the people of the North, because the Eskimos were clothed
in the warmest of furs and lived in huts, which, if made of ice and
snow, were still perfect shelters from the furies of the storms, while
the Yahgans went naked and often slept unsheltered from the snow and the
freezing sleet that fell in every month of the year.
The islands on which are found the homes of the Yahgan Indians are
almost without exception mountains that rise from the depths of the
Southern Sea. As one sails among them the idea that here is a mountain
chain that at some time long past was suddenly submerged in the sea is
irresistible. For miles and leagues one may coast along without finding
a beach wide enough to furnish a foothold, not to mention a place for
hauling up a yawl. That the mountain is as precipitous below the water
as it is above is easily proved, for soundings with the deep-sea lead
line often give 60 to 100 fathoms within 100 feet of the shore line.
Rising to the height of 1500 to 2000 feet, these precipitous mountain
peaks are lacking in nothing to make them grand and impressive. That
they seemed desolate to the early navigators none need doubt, however,
for the old-time sailors had a ship wretchedly unfit for such stormy
seas, and he was ill-clad, half-fed, and homesick. No mountains seen
through riffs in storm clouds and between marching columns of freezing
rain could seem pleasant to them.
But wherever there is shelter from the prevailing gales a narrow beach
is found commonly. Above this grows a forest of trees, of which the
greater number are the antarctic beech, and nearly all the rest are
species of magnolia. Some grow to a diameter of two feet and a height of
fifty. Nearly all of the trees are green the year round, and the
magnolias are of a particularly bright and beautiful green.
As one climbs the mountains the trees are seen to be of smaller and
smaller sizes until at from 1000 to 1500 feet above the sea mosses take
the place of trees. Above the mosses come barren rocks and eternal
snows. In many parts of Beagle Channel, and especially at the east end,
there are fairly level spaces bordering the water, with foot-hills that
are rolling instead of craggy. Even at the foot of Mount Misery, on the
east end of Navarin Island, a mountain that got its name from the
severity of the gales that come from its gulches, the scenery is
anything but desolate and horrible. Indeed, natural grassy meadows and
green groves so alternate with park-like beauty over the undulating
ground, that one scarcely can resist the idea that all those open spaces
in the woodland are the work of man. The eye involuntarily seeks for
farm-house and barn, while the sight of the red-haired guanaco makes the
scene all the more pastoral, for the wild beasts seem in that picture
very like domestic animals.
My own view of the picture was under peculiarly favorable circumstances,
for, although in the month of May, which corresponds to the November of
the North, the sun was bright and warm, the water sparkled, and a breeze
sweet and gentle just stirred the grass on the lawns and lifted the
green-leaved boughs of the trees. Seen on another day, when whirling
snow-laden squalls came down from the mountain to rip open the sea and
hurl its foam five hundred feet into the air, the picture would have had
a different aspect, but no landscape which contains green meadows and
green trees the year round can be called "desolate."
As to the meteorological condition among the islands the experience of
the missionaries there during twenty odd years has cleared away many
myths. Some of Captain Cook's men nearly froze to death in the land of
the Yahgans, but it is a fact that even the confined waters (salt) do
not freeze over often or remain frozen for any long time, while a
prolonged storm, during which the thermometer ranged from 10 deg. to 15 deg.
Fahrenheit, is mentioned in the missionary records as an unusually cold
spell. At the worst, the thermometer at Ushuaia has not gone lower than
12 deg. below zero, Fahrenheit, and Ushuaia is about the coldest spot in the
region, because it stands under lofty, glazier-covered mountains that
shut out the rays of the sun for nineteen hours out of the twenty-four
during the short days of winter.
One white man at Ushuaia told me that it was a climate in which winter
and summer alternated every week, and that describes the matter fairly
well. That it is better than people elsewhere suppose may be inferred by
the fact that the white men now there, while admitting the frequent
recurrence of boisterous storms, invariably said it was "the healthiest
climate in the world," and a few said they liked it better than any
other.
Having considered the Yahgans' country and its climate, we now come to
their homes and home life. Of the Yahgans as architects and as tailors,
I am bound to say that they have been well described by the old-time
explorers. The hut was a structure made of poles and a thatch of brush
and grass that was of about the shape of a Yankee haycock, and only a
little larger. It was open on the lee side, the thatching, such as it
was, covering two thirds of the circumference to windward.
The fire was built just within the door or opening, and the inhabitants
sat on grass or moss that partly covered the earth floor. It was
sometimes customary, where the Indians expected to live for some time in
one place, to scoop out the earth of the bottom of the wigwam and heap
it up against the brush wall, thus making a saucer-shaped cavity for the
floor, the brim of which rose high enough to serve somewhat as a wind
break. Moreover, the limpet and other shells gathered by the squaws were
commonly piled to windward of the hut. But even then, if judged by any
white man's standard, the Yahgan house was as bad as any in the world.
So, too, of his dress. He wore a single guanaco or sealskin across his
shoulders, holding it in place by thongs that crossed his breast. This
was the best he wore. They were often stark naked, save for a breach
clout, and the children were always so. The traveller who visits Hermite
Island, in the immediate vicinity of Cape Horn, will find them so at
this day. Living thus, "shelterless and naked in a land of fierce and
freezing storms," one need not wonder that even scientific observers
believed the Yahgan "the most miserable specimen of humanity to be found
on earth."
And yet all who thought him either physically or mentally uncomfortable
when in his natural state were entirely wrong. On the contrary, he was
about the healthiest and happiest savage that ever smashed the head of
an egotistical, meddlesome white man.
The Yahgan was built for the climate where he was found. He was in one
respect like the whale that lived in the waters about him. He had a coat
of fat under his skin that was very much better for him than the best of
flannels and blankets. Besides, he had a custom that at once protected
him from the cold and rendered him offensive to his white discoverers.
He greased himself all over frequently with any oil at his command, and
that is a custom worth remembering by people who may be cast away or
lost in cold climates. Had the early explorers imitated instead of
despised the Yahgan, they would have had fewer tales of suffering to
tell. In these later years, sporting men of the United States have
learned that when about to enter long-distance swimming matches they can
endure the cooling effects of a race through the water much better if
they coat themselves thickly with some such grease as vaseline. The
Yahgan used whale oil as we use vaseline. The explorers spoke of his
"filthy greasy skin," but the scientific sporting man of New York now
imitates the Yahgan, even though vaseline gathers during a swim any
flotsam that comes handy by. The Yahgan was "shelterless and naked in a
land of fierce and freezing storms," but he did not freeze; he did not
even shiver in ordinary Cape Horn weather.
However, one can understand why the explorers did not perceive the real
condition of the Yahgan. They were cold in spite of thick flannels, and
it was but natural that they should judge others by themselves.
But one cannot so easily understand how the explorers fell into such
errors as they did about the ingenuity and the mechanical skill of the
native. The results of Yahgan handicraft were everywhere visible. He
could not make either a good house or a broadcloth suit. In his hands a
white man's coat was ripped to pieces and the strips used for
decorations. But there were his canoes and his weapons--especially his
canoes. The Yahgan boats are mentioned slightingly, if at all, by nearly
every traveller who has visited the region.
"The boats are unwieldy and logy, and the Indians seem to have no knack
of propelling them at any sort of speed," says a latter-day writer, who
saw a canoe of the kind in the Straits of Magellan. This was the
writer's judgment in the matter. But along with his judgment he gave
the dimensions of the boat. It was "about twenty-five feet long, four
feet wide, and three feet deep, with comparatively sharp ends." The
facts as I saw them are so, save that the ends seemed to me to be
extremely sharp.
Now let any civilized canoe expert imagine a boat of those proportions
with lines in an exact arc of a circle, and then let him say whether he
knows of any superior model among either civilized or savage nations--a
model better adapted for combined speed, safety, and capacity than this.
My own experience with Indian canoes includes the kayaks and oomiaks of
the Eskimos in Greenland, the dugouts of old Providence Island in the
Caribbean Sea, and the bongos of the Bay of Panama, but I am bound to
say that the most graceful canoe, as well as the strongest, I ever saw
was made by the Yahgan.
However, one fact about these canoes will convince any one who knows
what Cape Horn storms are that the Yahgan canoe is of a remarkable
model. The Yahgans used them in navigating the waters of the Cape Horn
Archipelago. Further than that, both the Rev. Thomas Bridges and the
Rev. John Lawrence, who for twenty years have been familiar with the
Yahgans, told me that they never heard of a Yahgan being upset in his
canoe until in these later years, when the possession of axes and the
teachings of the missionaries led the Indians to substitute dugouts of
an entirely different model for the canoes they had made in the old
days.
Judged only by his house and his clothing, the Yahgan was of a lower
grade of intelligence, or at least was worse off, than many brutes.
Judged by his canoe, he was a naval architect who produced a model to
which the designers of yachts in the United States and England are in
these days of "spoon" bows approaching, but have not yet equalled.
When the Yahgan would build a canoe he stripped wide pieces of bark from
the tallest and smoothest tree trunks he could find, using shell axes,
in the old days, to cut the trees. The bark was stripped from the trunk
with a wooden tool, something like a chisel, and of the very shape found
most advantageous by the white men who, in Pennsylvania and the
Adirondacks, supply hemlock bark to the tanneries. Having his bark off
the tree, the Yahgan cut the strips into such shape that when sewed
together they would form a canoe with a midship section, say four feet
wide by three deep, that was almost the arc of a circle. From this
section the model tapered away almost on the arc of another circle. It
had a sheer at once pleasing to the eye and well adapted to ride the
most tempestuous seas in the world.
To brace this bark sheathing the Yahgan made ribs of split saplings that
looked like hickory barrel hoops--ribs at once strong and light--while
the rails and beams were made of round wood. The bark strips were sewed
together with whalebone taken from whales stranded on the beach. The
ribs, rails, and beams were lashed in place by sinew, usually guanaco
sinew, for that curious animal is found on several islands of the Yahgan
region.
Into the bottom of this canoe the Yahgan put an inverted sod perhaps two
by three feet large, and on this his squaw built a small fire for
warmth. Forward and aft of the fire were put little layers of brush and
grass. The man squatted on the grass forward of the fire, and his
favorite squaw, if he had more than one, was just aft of it, the terms
forward and aft being used to indicate only the direction in which the
canoe travelled, for both ends were alike. The other squaws and the
children were distributed further from the fire. A squaw with an infant
would keep it in her lap. The squaws paddled, the men used the weapons.
But one may doubt whether the Yahgan canoe shows greater ingenuity than
Yahgan weapons and implements for obtaining food do. Mention has been
made of the shell axe. It was made of a five-inch clam shell, or one
larger. A rounded stone was lashed with sinew to the hinge side of the
shell to give weight and make a good hand hold. Then the opposite side
was ground to a cutting edge by rubbing away the softer inner or convex
surface on a smooth rock. Yahgan chips made with this tool were small,
but to see the rapidity with which an old Yahgan makes the blows, or
better still, to see the wavy surface of a strip of wood dressed with a
shell axe--a paddle, for instance--is a matter of interest almost worth
a journey to the region. With this tool the Yahgan felled trees, or
fashioned his harpoon, or stripped the blubber from a stranded whale, or
trimmed his o'er long bangs, as occasion required.
When compared with the stone axes used by aborigines who knew not iron,
this shell axe is a striking illustration of noteworthy differences
between the Yahgan and the other tribes. The shell axe was frail, but
keen-edged. It required a quick but delicate hand to manipulate it. The
stone axe was blunt and heavy. Impelled by a rude hand, it smashed its
way through whatever opposed its progress. With the shell axe in hand,
we begin to perceive somewhat of the mental habits and character of the
Yahgan Indian--to see, at least, that he preferred to accomplish
certain ends by delicate means rather than by sheer brute strength.
Then there were his harpoons. I have one of which the head, made from a
whale rib, is twenty-five and one quarter inches long. To make a diagram
of it let the reader place a dot on a sheet of paper to represent the
point, and then draw from this dot two straight lines that shall diverge
from each other only one inch and three quarters when twenty-one inches
long. That will give an idea of the beautiful taper of the weapon. It
has a single barb, at once deep and strong. It is secured to the shaft
in such a way that when a seal was struck the harpoon head dropped from
its place in the shaft, or handle, after which the handle was towed
broadside on through the water by the wounded beast. Of course, towing
the harpoon shaft in this fashion impeded the animal's flight more than
towing it end on would do.
Another harpoon that I have is twenty-one inches long, and but one inch
wide and a half inch thick at the base, but instead of one heavy barb
near the base it has a series of twenty-six small ones along one side.
These barbs hook back like shark's teeth, and are about as keen-pointed.
Nothing of better shape to hold fast could be devised by a fish-hook
maker. Indeed, the turtle hunters of the West Indies, who have a steel
harpoon of a similar shape, do not make as well-formed barbs. The
harpoon of one barb is for seals, otters, and small whales (large whales
were never attacked unless stranded), while the other form was for the
various kinds of birds found in the region.
For fish spears the Yahgan lashed two or three of the bird harpoon heads
to a shaft in such a manner that the points were spread out; the harpoon
heads formed a V or a tripod, as the case might be, and the barbs were
all on the inside. The fish were speared at night by the light of a
torch. By having two or more of the harpoon heads on the shaft the
chances of hitting the dimly seen fish were of course increased, and,
moreover, a fish caught between two of the harpoon heads and impaled by
a third, was held no matter how it struggled or what its strength.
Nor were the spear and harpoon handles merely saplings cut in the
forest. The Yahgan used a perfectly round handle for one harpoon and a
six-square handle for the other, and both were worked from solid wood
with his wonderful shell axe. I speak now, of course, of the original
native weapon, and not of what the modern Yahgan buys of white traders.
If any reader owns one of the old specimens of Indian workmanship let
him keep it with great care, for the workmen who could make them are
dead and their art is lost forever.
Less showy but equally remarkable were the peculiar wooden chisels with
which the squaws stripped limpets from rocks six feet under water and
brought them to the surface, although they were as heavy and as ready to
sink as stones.
For gathering shell-fish the squaws made baskets of rushes. These
baskets were of the shape of the plain earthen cooking jars found in the
old ruins and cave dwellings of New Mexico and Arizona.
For a long-range weapon the Yahgan used the sling. He saw the Ona
Indians with their bows and arrows. The Onas also used the bolas, which
are the favorite weapons of the Patagonian Indians. With the Ona Indians
the bow and the bolas were used with great success in killing the
fleet-footed guanaco. Now the Yahgan, as said, found the guanaco in his
own proper country as well as when he went visiting the Onas on the
borderland, and he must have fully appreciated all that the Onas could
do with their bolas and bows. Some of the Yahgans even learned to use
these Ona weapons, but they never adopted them. The reason is not far to
seek. The Yahgan sling had a much greater range. The missionaries tell
about Yahgans killing birds afloat at a distance of two hundred yards.
To hit any wild fowl at that distance with a rifle would be called right
good shooting. The guanaco was knocked down and stunned by heavy round
pebbles at ranges up to one hundred yards.
Why, then, did not the Ona adopt the sling? The answer is an interesting
one for the student of anthropology. The home of the Ona was on the
prairies of Tierra del Fuego, where round pebbles are not to be found,
but material for bows and arrows is abundant. The Ona could not burden
himself with pebbles for a sling when journeying across these prairies.
On the other hand, the Yahgan lived on the beaches, where rounded
pebbles were forever at hand, and when he travelled it was not afoot, as
the Ona did, but in a first-class canoe, where he could carry as many
pebbles as he wanted.
The Yahgan sling was made of a piece of raw hide, to which were attached
strings of braided sinew that always ended in fancifully wrought knots.
The Yahgans did not fish with hooks, because they could catch more fish
without. The squaws caught the fish. They paddled to the fishing ground
in the morning and at night, when for an hour each time, the light
being just right, the fish would bite. The line was a strand of seaweed,
which may be had there, slender and strong, of any length up to a
hundred fathoms, perhaps. Bait--meat--was tied to one end of the line,
which was loaded with a sinker of stone rounded to a shape to sink
swiftly. The fish swallowed the bait and the squaw drew it gently but
quickly to the surface. Then she snatched the fish into the boat and the
bait from its gullet with a motion that Georges Bank codfishermen
understand, and then let her bait run quickly down again. Some fish, too
large to land thus, were speared when they came in sight. The time for
fishing was so short that the squaws had to improve it to the utmost
advantage, especially as there were many days when the storms prevented
all fishing. They had no time to waste in removing hooks from the
gullets of fish. It is a fact that when hooks were given them by seamen
they never used the things for fishing. The Yahgan squaws did not know
the joys of taking four-pound trout with a seven-ounce rod, but they had
just as much fun as do the New Yorkers who go out to the fishing banks
every summer day, and they caught more fish, too.
The Yahgan household utensils were few in number and of the simplest
character. He made neither pots, nor kettles, nor cups, nor basins, nor
any sort of receptacle for liquids. He never boiled his food, and when
the missionaries came to the Yahgan land the Indians found the spectacle
of a pot full of boiling meat a most entertaining one. And yet the
Yahgans tried out the oil from whale blubber and other fats, and stored
it away for future use. The fat was impaled on a stick that was then
thrust into the ground close to a bed of coals. The oil was tried out
thus, and it dripped down into the shoulder blade of a guanaco kept for
the purpose. When the hollow of this bone was full, the oil was poured
into a bladder or into the bladder-like leaf of a seaweed that can be
found everywhere in the region. Moreover, there were large clam and
other sea shells on every beach. These served every need of the Yahgan
in the way of cups and basins. What he needed to make he made with
unusual neatness and skill, but he knew when he had enough and worked
for nothing whatever beyond.
If, now, it has been demonstrated that the early explorers looked at the
Yahgan products through prejudiced eyes, the reader will pass with
increasing pleasure to a consideration of the habits of thought and
mental capacity of this Antarctic highlander. I quote Darwin in this
matter, because he was the most eminent of all who have seen the
Yahgans, and should have been less liable than others to make errors.
Darwin had on his ship a Yahgan called Jemmy Button, who had been
carried to England and taught some of the English language. Of this
Yahgan Darwin said: "I should think there was scarcely another human
being with so small a stock of language."
The Rev. Thomas Bridges, who now lives opposite Gable Island, in the
Beagle Channel, has for nearly forty years made a study of the Yahgans
and their language. He has made out of this study a complete grammar of
their language, and has written what is practically a complete
Yahgan-English lexicon. Fully to appreciate the facts that appear in
these two manuscript books, one must not only be something of a
linguist, but must have knowledge of other aboriginal tribes. For
instance, it is helpful to know that Ensign Roger Wells, Jr., U. S.
Navy, working in Alaska, prepared an Anglo-Eskimo Vocabulary of 2263
words, and an Eskimo-English Vocabulary of 2418 words. To quote from a
pamphlet issued by the Alaskan Bureau of Education in 1890, _Circular of
Information No. 2_, the most important contribution to a knowledge of
the Eskimo language is in process of preparation by L. M. Turner, in his
observations made in 1882-84, at Point Barrow. "It will contain a
vocabulary of the Koksoagmyut of over 7000 words."
Cruden's _Concordance of the Bible_ gives 7200 words exclusive of proper
names; Cleveland's _Concordance to the Poems of Milton_ gives Milton's
Vocabulary as 17,377 words, while Shakespeare himself had a vocabulary
of about 24,000.
But the Yahgans, despised by many as "savages of the lowest grade,"
pitied by a few as "most abject and miserable creatures"--these Yahgans
had a language from which has been compiled a vocabulary of over 40,000
words.
As I have said, this is a story in part of one of the most interesting
American tribes. How small is the proportion of the story that I can
give may be inferred from what has just been said about their language.
Where did they get or develop all those words? Are those 40,000 words
the remains of a language which, under other circumstances, was greater,
or is the vocabulary now at its greatest state of perfection? How does
it happen that such a remarkable mental development was found in a
people that lived as these Yahgans did? Questions multiply, but no
answers are found.
Anthropologists suppose that the peoples living at the ends of the earth
under adverse circumstances are "conquered races, exiles, or criminals."
It is guessed by some who have read of the Yahgan that he comes from
some ancient Peruvian or Brazilian civilized tribe, and fled in war time
to Cape Horn. But the Yahgan language is not that of Peru or of Brazil,
or even that of the lost tribes of Israel. There is in it nothing to
connect it with any of the other great languages of the world. Why,
then, should we think incredible the possibility of the Yahgans having
originated where they are? In the alluvial beds of Patagonia and of
Tierra del Fuego are found the petrified remains of the opossum, the
kangaroo, and the monkey. The ostrich and a modified camel (the
guanaco), now live on the desert plains of Patagonia. Who, then, shall
say positively that the Yahgan race has not lived through the cataclysms
that destroyed the opossum and the monkey and left the ostrich and the
camel?
Some years ago the Chili Government sent an expedition to explore the
Yahgan country. The report made by the commander on his return refers to
the Yahgan language as "nasal and harsh; it sounds like the barking of a
dog," but all who speak the language agree that it is as soft and sweet
to the ear as a love-song in French.
To make a study of the construction of this language here would be
impossible for lack of space, even if I knew the facts, but something of
the way the Yahgans talked to one another will be interesting, because
it gives an insight into their character. Let it be remembered that this
was a tribe of so-called savages, and that among savages the squaw is
supposed to be a wretched slave. To the casual observer the Yahgan squaw
was a slave. She paddled the canoe "while the man sat in the bow holding
his weapons." But the Yahgan squaw's life was certainly not without its
amenities, if one may judge by the language.
Thus the Yahgan man never spoke to his squaw of any property in the
family as "mine." He said "ours" instead. He even said "our harpoon." He
never gave orders directly to either squaw or child. If he wanted
something done he would use an expression that meant "Tell to do"; it
was as if he said to his squaw, "Have some one do so and so." More
remarkable still, there was no such word in the language as "obey." They
said instead, "Oblige me by," "Make me the favor of," "Would you be
pleased or be so kind as to do this or that?" Even when the Yahgan was
angry and wished to drive away an offensive person he used a polite
sentence.
As among civilized people certain terms and names may be used between
man and wife, or when talking to a physician or between two men talking
alone, without incurring an accusation of using indecent language, so
among the Yahgans there were certain forms of expression for use in
private and others for society. In short, it was a modest race; in this
respect it was, perhaps, the most remarkable of all the American Indian
nations.
They had poets and novelists and historians. They knew, for instance,
how to tell in the most delicate fashion those sly stories in which the
point was found in the thought of the listeners, and not in the words of
the speaker--where the speaker's words suggested but did not say the
thought. No people in the world enjoyed well-told stories of the kind
more than they, but only the skilful--the literati--were permitted to
tell them. A gross expression was never permitted in company. It is a
lasting pity that none of these tales has been preserved for study. The
missionary taught the Yahgans that their soul's salvation was imperilled
by such thoughts, and the remnant of the race has become so degraded in
every way that the best of this wonderful oral literature has been lost.
They had songs, but no music as civilized people understand that word.
Their songs were what travellers call "monotonous chants." However, they
danced to some songs, and their words were poetic if the song did lack
jingle and varied intonations.
"Food was abundant in the old days," said the Rev. Thomas Bridges, "and
life was easy with them." Hence the Yahgans had abundant leisure to sit
about the hut fire and talk to one another. Their conversation is best
described by the word bright. They were as quick-witted--as quick and
brilliant at repartee as the Irish or French. They also made many puns.
They were what may be called a "clubable race," to borrow a Johnsonian
expression. The missionaries say that within their limits of knowledge
they were ready and logical thinkers. Sarcastic remarks and cynical
observations abounded in their fireside conversations, as well as
flashes of kindly humor.
In politics and religion they were almost equally interesting. They had
no form of government--neither chief nor legislative council--but public
opinion ruled with an iron hand. Theirs was the simplest form of a
republic. When men violated social usages, as sometimes happened, the
guilty were ostracized, and such was the habit of thought among them
that this ostracism drove the guilty one away to live by himself.
Occasionally several families were thus driven into exile together, but
I did not learn of the existence of any such colonies of outlaws as
that found below St. Lawrence Bay on the Siberian coast or the
Kevalinyes, whose home is back of Point Hope in Alaska.
Crimes against property were rare. As to the property of white men they
were called thieves and robbers. Fitzroy is particularly severe on them
in describing their lax notions about property. It seems to me, however,
that the Yahgans and all aboriginal tribes, for that matter, have been
unjustly condemned in this matter. That they took things that seemed of
infinite value to them, which did not belong to them, is not denied. But
this act was not morally what the same act on the part of a civilized
man would have been. Among the aborigines--especially among the
Yahgans--there was much property held in common. It was no harm among
them to take of a neighbor's fuel; his paints were freely divided; his
wood for use in making paddles or spear-shafts was practically common
property. All food taken was equally divided, and when chance threw a
prize, say a wrecked ship, in their way, all shared the valuables found.
So when they saw among white men a superabundance of good things, the
taking of what they saw did not seem the evil thing that it would have
been to the conscience of a white thief. They were, in short, socialists
rather than thieves.
Crimes against the person were avenged by the injured one or his
relatives, so that feuds and vendettas led families to hunting each
other, hither and yon, across stormy seas and into wild and secluded
nooks and inlets. But the Yahgan did not delight in open warfare or
bloodshed. Warfare with neighboring tribes was almost unknown. The
nearest approach to it was when some Yahgan family went hunting some
family of a neighboring tribe to avenge an injury suffered by some
member of the aggressive family. On rare occasions other families in
both tribes took up the quarrel.
The Yahgan could work himself into a foaming passion--he literally
frothed at the mouth in his rage--but he preferred to make even murder a
fine art. He would plan and scheme for months in order that he might
revenge himself without making an open attack. It is said that even the
strong and influential in a clan would work in this fashion when seeking
revenge on the weaker ones, who might have been crushed by a blow at any
moment.
A favorite way of killing an enemy was found in the practice of
gathering the eggs of the sea fowl. In the Cape Horn region the sea fowl
make their nests on the faces of precipices that literally overhang the
stormy seas. There is but one way to reach the nests. The egg gatherer
must be lowered by a rope from the brow of the cliff. The Yahgans had an
excellent rope in the long stalks of seaweed common in the region, and
the egg harvest was for most of them a time of rejoicing. It was also
the time for bloody revenges. The one who sought revenge would ask his
enemy to go seeking eggs, and that was an invitation not to be declined.
Even when the invited one suspected a sinister motive in the cordiality
of the request he must needs accept, because a refusal would be
construed by his neighbors into an acknowledgment that the other had
cause for seeking revenge. And such an acknowledgment would justify the
other in more open means of revenge, and would stamp the refuser as a
coward also.
So the invited one would smilingly accept the invitation. With his heart
sinking within him, he would follow the leader to the crest of the
awful precipice, look down five hundred feet to the crags at its foot,
and then without a word suffer himself to be lowered over the brow at
the end of a rope that he knew would soon be chafed until his weight
would break it.
These Yahgans had no knowledge of God or of a life to come. That they
should have faced certain death in a frightful form thus calmly when
they were young, and life was still sweet, and a loved wife and children
would be left to other hands, is one of their most interesting
characteristics.
Although about all the crimes known to Yahgans grew out of the relations
of the sexes--although there was almost invariably a woman in every
case--it is a fact that the grossest crimes of passion known to
civilized races (such as incest) were unknown among Yahgans.
Marriage was a matter of purchase and sale; wives were sold, sometimes,
by husbands, and daughters were invariably sold by fathers. The marriage
ceremony consisted in painting the girl in a certain fashion for several
days before she was delivered to her husband. A new canoe was very often
the price of a girl. It is a curious fact, illustrative of Yahgan
society, that a father sometimes sold his girls to men whom he did not
really like. A man of influence could have any girl he wished; her
father would rather let the transfer be made than offend the man of
influence, and that, too, when the influential fellow already had a wife
or two. But there were forms and methods in the marriage negotiations
that were dear to the Yahgan heart. The dicker for a wife as conducted
amounted to what would be among civilized people at once an intrigue and
the negotiating of a treaty. It was because of this delicacy of feeling
among the Yahgans that the brutal white whalers and seal hunters that
came to the region were unable to do any serious damage to this race
previous to the year 1870. The Yahgan would not tolerate the rude
lasciviousness of the white seamen, and until taught that it was wicked,
stood up, man fashion, and fought in defence of his wives and daughters.
In religion the Yahgans were oddities, though not unique. They knew
nothing of God, and had no word expressive of such an idea. To the great
grief of the missionaries, there was nothing in the Yahgan language by
which the idea of an everlasting, all-powerful God who must be obeyed
could be adequately conveyed to Yahgan listeners, nor had they any word
for or thought of a future life.
But the Yahgan's mind was not wholly material. He believed in spirits or
supernatural and invisible beings, but these were invariably terrible.
There was a spirit of the forest, and another of the water, and another
of the kelp. Crouching over his tiny fire by night, the Yahgan heard
weird voices among the waving trees on the mountain side above him, he
felt the breath that scattered the embers of his hearth, he saw the
deluge that drowned out even his brightest flames, and all these were
manifestations of a power that was ill-defined in his mind, but
nevertheless real. The Yahgan mother in this fearsome presence clasped
her babe more closely to her bosom, not that it was cold, but to save it
from some grasping hand that was always expected, but never came.
In the eddying waters of the tide rip was a boisterous devil that strove
at one moment to throw the canoe into the air, and the next to suck it
down to the unknown region below, while in the beds of kelp lurked a
silent spirit that with soft and slimy touch grasped the bottom of the
canoe, and held it fast until at times the frantic occupants leaped
overboard and disappeared.
In their thoughts of death the Yahgans were perhaps unique. They had a
word which meant dead. When a seal had been harpooned, or a tree cut
down, or a fish beheaded, they said that death ensued. The thing killed
was dead. They had another word which meant lost. If a tool were mislaid
so that it could not be found, or if a dog were left somewhere on the
coast so that he could not find his way to his master's hut, the tool or
the dog was lost.
In times of sickness or of wounds, the Yahgans gathered about an
afflicted one and with rude incantations strove to save the ebbing life
until the spirit had gone forever. Then they quickly took up the body,
and, carrying it out of the wigwam, buried it where it could be most
easily put out of sight. This done, they returned and painted their
faces in such fashion that all other Yahgans who beheld them could tell
how closely the dead one had been related to the living, and the cause
of the death--whether by disease, by accident, or by murder. This was
their only way of showing they were in mourning. They rarely spoke of
the one who had passed away, and when they did so speak they never said
he was dead. They said he was lost.
This also was a matter of grief to the missionaries. When they would
have spoken to the Yahgan of his dead relatives they could not without
offending him seriously; at least that was the condition of affairs when
the missionaries first came.
They had a folk-lore that is now for the most part forgotten, but one
of their traditions was at the foundation of a cruel custom. Long ago,
they said, a Yahgan woman chose a great rock instead of a husband, and,
in consequence, bore a child that was at once a human being and a stone.
When this hybrid grew to man's estate it turned against the tribe,
because, perhaps, of indignities suffered by its mother, who was
ostracized. No Yahgan man could stand against it, though numbers could
temporarily overpower it. They, therefore, combined and thrust harpoons
through it; they chopped it to pieces; they weighted it with rocks and
cast it into a lake; but after each apparent death it appeared again in
another part of the coast as healthy as and rather more malicious than
before. The monster was rapidly becoming an invincible terror, when, by
chance, it stepped on a thorn, which pierced its heel and the monster
was unable to extract it. Its heel was the one part of its body where a
mortal wound could be inflicted. From the effects of this thorn it
became gradually weakened, and they were eventually able to destroy it
altogether. The memory of the deeds done by this being was so
terrifying, that the tribe determined that no such thing should ever
come again to wreck their peace.
To prevent such a coming they invariably destroyed at birth any infant
that came into the world not perfectly formed. The Yahgan's stature was
not such as to meet the approval of the British explorers from whom
Americans have obtained their ideas of Yahgan forms, but there never was
a natural-born cripple to be seen among them.
What the Yahgans' claims to physical beauty were may still be learned by
one who sees them at the Hermite group of islands, but in the Beagle
Channel they have been so altered by new clothing and habits of life
that scarcely a trace of their old-time form remains. The description of
the old-time navigator is not attractive:
These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous
faces bedaubed with paint, their skins filthy and greasy, their
hair entangled.
They are elsewhere spoken of as having dark, copper-colored skins, or
skins of the color of iron rust, while Captain Fitzroy pictures them as
almost black.
One may admit that these old explorers had good eyes, that they
generally described with accuracy what they saw, and yet may prove that
the Yahgans were not hideous.
To begin the argument, it must be said that the missionaries, who had no
interest in making the untutored Yahgan appear in a better light than
that in which he was found, say that he was a polite and affectionate
husband and father, faithful in the care of widows and orphans, a
generous neighbor, and an ardent lover. Food was abundant, and hard
labor rarely necessary. He delighted in what civilized people call the
higher pleasures, the joys of good stories, witty sayings, quick
repartee, and he had almost unlimited opportunity for cultivating the
faculties which gave him greatest pleasure. How could such a man be
hideous?
The answer to the allegation made by the explorers who called the Yahgan
so is not far to seek. They never saw the Yahgan. They only saw the
coating of paint and whale oil that covered him, and because this was
offensive to them they called him hideous. The Yahgan when washed clean,
did not look like the Yahgan clothed in whale oil, smoke from the
ever-present fire, ashes, powdered iron ore, pipe clay--what not. When
washed he was not black; he was not even copper colored. He was as white
as the quarter bloods one sees in the Cherokee nation and as well
featured. The young women were very like those of mixed blood who grace
the halls of the female seminary at Tahlequa, the Cherokee capitol. The
modern tourist camera proves it. Yahgans had straight black hair, great
dark eyes, full red lips, breasts like a Greek Venus, rounded limbs, and
small hands and feet. Better yet, they had a merry, hearty laugh that
was irresistibly infectious. They flushed with pleasure, and blushed and
drooped as if from a blow when shamed.
If ever the moans of outraged Indian maidenhood were charged up by the
Recording Angel against the brutality of the civilized man, it was when
the sufficient arm that protected the Yahgan girl was withdrawn through
a misapplication of the gospel of peace.
Just how the Yahgan maiden lost that protecting arm--just how it
happened that the forecastle brutes came to be free to go and come as
they pleased among the Yahgan homes--will be told in the next chapter,
but what that arm was is found in the tales of seamen cast on these
shores in the old days, or caught napping there when seeking fuel or
water for their ships.
When a band of Yahgans saw a crew of white men ashore in former times,
their course of action was governed entirely by the numbers of the
whites, or, rather, by the comparative strength of the two parties. If
the whites were stronger, the Indians were peaceable; when it was safe
to do so, the Indians set out to exterminate all the whites but one.
Leaping into their canoes some of the Indians would paddle out to cut
off retreat toward the sea, and when they were in place, the rest would
rush down on the seamen, and if possible save all alive for the time
being. Then all the clan gathered about the captives and selected one of
the whites--saved him alive, but forced him to witness the dying
struggles of the rest. Very often those doomed to death were made to
stand in a row facing the one that was saved, that he might the better
witness their despairing faces and see the blood gush from their wounds.
Eventually the one who was saved was taken to the Straits of Magellan,
and there placed on board the first ship that appeared. It was perfectly
plain that a man from each crew was thus sent back to the whites that he
might tell other whites of the fate that befell all foreigners who
landed in Yahgan land. They wanted the whites to keep away from them,
and they took a most effectual means to keep them away. With certain
death staring in the face, any crew that was outnumbered by the natives,
even the sealers, took care to avoid going among the Yahgans. The
Yahgan's deliberate ferocity--ferocity that was exercised with a
purpose--was the sufficient protection of the Yahgan maidens.
As has been said, the Yahgans had an abundance of food in the old days.
The cold waters about Cape Horn swarmed with whales. So numerous were
the fur seals that one sealing schooner got a "first knock down" on one
island of 11,000 head. The hair seal, the otter, and the sea lion were
found by the thousand. Swans, geese, ducks, penguins, gulls, beat the
air and ploughed the waters in uncounted hosts. There were fish in the
sea and guanacos on the land. For a vegetable food there was "a bright
yellow fungus," "elastic and turgid," that had "a mucillaginous,
slightly sweet taste, with a faint smell like that of a mushroom." There
were wild currants and strawberries that tasted more like a raspberry
than like its northern namesake. There was a berry that grew on a thorny
bush (berberis). But the mainstay of the Yahgan was the shell-fish.
Mussels and clams covered every rock under water, and these were alone
sufficient in number and in food qualities to preserve life for long
periods.
The explorers say the Yahgans ate guanaco meat raw. The Rev. Thomas
Bridges denies this. He says, in a lecture on the Yahgans, prepared for
delivery before white folks:
They toasted whale or seal blubber on pointed sticks stuck in the
ground, and caught the oil in large mussel shells placed
underneath. As these filled they poured the oil into bladders for
future use. They dried out fish fat by putting it in large shells
and placing heated stones or shells on it. They cooked large birds
whole by burying them in the coals with hot stones placed inside.
They baked eggs by placing them, after a small hole had been made
in each shell, on end close to the embers and turning them from
time to time. They uniformly ate the blood of animals, but always
cooked it in shells first. I have never seen or heard of the
Yahgans eating any kind of meat or fish raw except certain kinds of
limpets. I have occasionally heard of their heating water by
dropping hot stones into it, but they did not cook their vegetable
food. In winter, however, they warmed the frozen fungi that formed
a part of their diet.
A thousand other interesting facts and characteristics of this
long-despised tribe remain untold here.
There was their habit of carrying dry bird's down to catch the spark
when they struck fire with the iron ore they found on one island only.
They had a tradition that in by-gone years a great flood raised the
waters to the level of certain lines on the mountains, to which they
point the traveller.
They were sensitive about growing old, and it was because their beard
grew late in life and so indicated advancing years that the men plucked
it out.
They were a long-lived race, and some probably lived to be a hundred in
the old days.
They were not cannibals, but held human life as sacred as civilized
people do. It is admitted that in times of dire distress, through
prolonged storms, they sacrificed one (an old woman) to save the rest,
but if that made them cannibals then an American army officer held in
high esteem is a cannibal.
When food was scarce those who got it divided all they had with those
less fortunate, and while hunting away from the huts the men subsisted
on the inferior parts, that they might carry the parts most esteemed to
the women and children.
They did not beat their wives, nor did they punish their children.
To sum the matter up, this was a race, more than three thousand in
number, called the most abject and wretched people in the world, and
yet, "in their circumstances and with their materials, their work was
perfect." They were called savages, and yet neither governor nor judge
was needed to preserve the prosperity of the nation. They were called
heathen, because they knew not God; and yet, prompted by an inner light,
they took no thought for the morrow, they visited the widow and the
orphan in their affliction; neither was there any among them that
lacked. Clear-eyed and strong-limbed, they were able, twenty years ago,
to face the white destroyer as they faced the howling gales that swept
their rugged coasts.
Today the traveller can find, though he search diligently, rather less
than three hundred, but to one who knew them in the old days those seen
anywhere now, save on Hermite Island, would not be recognizable. The
Rev. John Lawrence told me that they were civilized, but to one who can
understand and appreciate the aborigines as God made them, this change,
instead of being a matter of congratulation, is one that should make
every white man connected with it hide his head in shame, and every
other one who sees it shed tears of pity.
CHAPTER IV.
A CAPE HORN MISSION.
The reader who has at hand a good modern map of South America will find,
on looking along the narrow channel that bounds the south side of Tierra
del Fuego, a tiny settlement named Ushuaia. On some maps the settlement
is located on Navarin Island, south of the channel, but the proper place
for it is on a small bay that indents Tierra del Fuego, just east of the
line between Chili and Argentine territory. The settlement is, in fact,
an Argentine capital, the seat of the Government of the Argentine
belongings lying south of the Straits of Magellan. Ushuaia, as a white
man's capital, will be described at another time. In its earliest days
the settlement was a missionary station, containing only a single log
hut, the home of the first Christian who succeeded in gaining a foothold
among the Indians of the Cape Horn region, and it is my purpose here to
tell, as briefly as possible, the true story of this Cape Horn mission.
Something has already been told about the characteristics of the
remarkable people, the Yahgans, who were indigenous to the region--of
their apparent squalid wretchedness when, in fact, they were actually
comfortable and living in the enjoyment of some of the highest pleasures
known to civilized peoples. It is, therefore, necessary for the reader
to shut out from his mind about all the real facts concerning them, and
think only of what they seemed to be if he would fully appreciate the
spirit and intent of the founders of the mission to the Yahgans. It must
be remembered that the region was supposed to be bleak and desolate,
that frightful storms followed each other in swift succession, that the
cold was often intense in midsummer, and that in the midst of these
terrors of nature lived a tribe of savages so low in the human scale
that they did not know enough to build houses to shelter them, or even
to sew skins together into a decent blanket for a covering.
People who had read the journals of the explorers of the region
shuddered at the thought of the life of misery which the natives there
were said to endure. Indeed, so dark was the picture of human life
there, that, although men had been found to brave death at the stake in
the valley of the Mohawk, none so much as suggested in the early days a
mission to the Yahgans, save only as Sarmiento's ill-fated colony hoped
to convert the heathen as well as hold the Straits of Magellan for the
crown of Spain. Nevertheless, a time came when the very terrors of
nature and the apparent degradation of the people there were the magnets
to draw one man to them. This man came from a race and a profession "to
whom an appeal for volunteers for a forlorn hope was never made in
vain." The first missionary to the Fuegian Indians came from the British
Navy.
Captain Allen Francis Gardiner, R.N., was born on June 28, 1794, at
Basilden, Berks, England. He entered the Royal Navy in June, 1810, and
was rapidly promoted until he attained the rank of captain. He was from
his youth an ardent Christian--so ardent, indeed, that he determined to
devote his life to mission work, and only remained in the navy because
he wished to learn what people of the earth was most neglected and
forlorn--most in need of the Christian religion. Having caught a few
glimpses of the Yahgans and their people, and having read the stories
about them which Captain Fitzroy and Naturalist Darwin, with many
others, wrote, Captain Gardiner naturally concluded that the Cape Horn
archipelago was his field. Accordingly, he began work by organizing, in
1814, a mission society, after which he made an attempt to live in his
chosen field.
"He and several devoted companions were landed on one of the small
islands with a tent, materials for a wooden house, and stores and
provisions to last six months," says the record. "But in a very few days
the conduct of the natives showed the missionaries that to remain on
land was impossible. Mercifully the vessel which had brought them was
still within hail," and they were taken off and borne to England.
The trouble with the Indians, it appears, was that they looked with
covetous eyes on the outfit of the missionaries. The record says they
were robbers, but it now appears that this term is much too harsh. They
did, indeed, strive to take valuables from the missionaries without
making any return whatever for them, but it must not be forgotten that
the Yahgans held practically all property in common. They naturally
resented what seemed to them to be the selfishness of these white
intruders just as they ostracized one of their own tribe who did
anything contrary to Yahgan custom.
Finding, as he supposed, his life in danger when he tried to make a home
among the Yahgans, Captain Gardiner returned home to try to raise money
for a ship in which he could live in a Yahgan harbor. He believed he
could repel any Yahgan boarders that might attack him, and eventually
make friends with the repulsed. But he failed to get the money, because
the English were skeptical as to the success of even a mission ship.
Thereat the determined captain bought instead two launches twenty-six
feet long and decked them over. The sum of L1000 was deemed necessary
for this enterprise, of which "a generous Christian lady of Cheltenham
gave L700." Gardiner himself gave L300.
"Captain Gardiner, with three Cornish sailors, Christian men accustomed
to stormy seas," "the ship carpenter who had gone with Captain Gardiner
before," "two men as catechists, Mr. Maidment, and Mr. Richard Williams,
the latter a surgeon in good practice,"--these seven sailed from
Liverpool on September 7, 1850, in the ship _Ocean Queen_, which was
bound to the booming town of San Francisco, but agreed to land them and
their outfit in Tierra del Fuego. They carried stores for six months,
and arranged for more to come before these should be exhausted. On
December 5th their ship anchored in a bay called Banner Cove, in the
west end of Picton Island. The missionaries landed, and then natives
came. Fearing violence the missionaries took refuge on the _Ocean Queen_
for a few days, and then, on December 18th, landed again, built a wigwam
near the beach, moored their boats handy by, and let the big ship sail
away.
Then came what the record calls "a terrible discovery." In taking their
outfit from the _Ocean Queen_ the missionaries had left on board about
all the powder and lead with which to kill the Indians. "They were now
alike without the means of self-defence and of obtaining food," is the
way the story of Captain Gardiner's life puts it, but the plain English
of the matter is that they had come relying on guns to protect them.
They meant to shoot the Indians under certain circumstances. Their motto
was, so to speak: "Trust in God, but keep your powder dry." Now,
however, they had no powder and "they were left almost wholly dependent
on meal, rice, and such things."
Thereafter they "went beating about among the islands, alarmed by every
indication of the people for whose sake all this misery was
encountered." In a diary, written by one of the party, one may read that
"I applied the golden key to heaven's treasury, and with it opened the
storehouse of God's exceeding great and precious promises. What I saw
and felt of Christ's love no tongue can tell," but their faith in Divine
protection was not strong enough to make them risk a visit to the
Indians, and so, at last, they actually died of starvation, although the
region produced and produces a prodigious supply of mussels and limpets,
wild celery and other edible vegetables, not to mention fish and mammals
easily snared by one not afraid to venture away from his boat.
"It does seem remarkable that Gardiner should have apparently erred from
timidity and over-caution," says the writer of the life of that
missionary, and then he piously adds: "We must look to the will of God
in the whole affair."
The death of Gardiner through his own cowardice, to put the matter
bluntly, is only one--the first of a long list of doings that "seem
remarkable" in this story.
The Gardiner party sailed from Liverpool on September 7, 1850. The last
entry in the diary of Captain Gardiner is dated September 5, 1851, while
a letter was found dated the day following. Gardiner, who was the last
survivor, probably died one year from the time he sailed. In October
came the relief ship to the port in Picton Island. An inscription on a
rock which the traveller can still see there was found. It was as
follows:
Dig Below.
Go to Spaniard
Harbour
March
1851
Spaniard Harbor is now called Aguirre Bay. A gale of wind prevented the
relief ship going there, but Her Majesty's ship _Dido_ was sent out, and
she recovered the papers of the dead missionaries and buried the human
bones. Her colors were lowered and three volleys were fired by the
marines after the funeral, because Gardiner had been a naval captain;
and all this, having been well told, together with the stories found in
the diaries, made a sensation in England.
To one who knows the region, the appeals thereafter made by the
missionary society to the English-speaking world seem very remarkable.
Though I do not doubt the honest intentions of the society people, some
of their words would seem to be deliberate attempts to deceive, if
coming from any other kind of society. Thus in _A Memoir of Richard
Williams_, by James Hamilton, D.D., is an appeal for funds for the
society, which (p. 255) says:
This agency may soon stud with gardens and farms and industrious
villages these inhospitable shores. The mariner may run his
battered ship into Lennox Harbour and leave her to the care of
Fuegian caulkers and carpenters; and after rambling through the
streets of a thriving seaport town, he may turn aside to read the
papers in the Gardiner Institution, or may step into the
week-evening service in the Richard Williams chapel.
Following the advice contained in papers which Captain Gardner left, and
taking advantage of the emotions raised among church people by the story
of the Captain's death, the society raised funds with which they built
and manned a schooner fit for the stormiest sea, and sent it out to
establish a station for the conversion of the Yahgans. She was commanded
by Captain W. Parker Snow, and she carried Mr. Garland Phillips, as
catechist, to Keppel Island, one of the Falklands then uninhabited. They
arrived out on January 28, 1855, and found the island about eight miles
long and four wide, with three fresh water lakes. It was "a barren,
desolate place," Phillips thought, and according to the record he and
his associates lived there for more than two years before they got a
single Yahgan to come to live with them.
Eventually "a strong party" was sent out from England to re-enforce
Phillips and "push the work vigorously." This party included "Tom
Bridges, a good-looking, affectionate boy of fourteen, who loved
everybody, and whom everybody loved," and this is the earliest mention
of one who has since made himself the most noted of all who have worked
in the mission. Thereafter matters went on better, because the "strong
party" made a right good sheep ranch of Keppel Island, and in 1857 got
the Yahgan named Button, his wife, and his children to go to Keppel.
With Button as interpreter, Phillips and some others went over to
Navarin Island in November, 1858, and built a log-house there, in which
they remained a month with the natives about them, returning the first
of 1859 with nine natives, whom they proposed instructing on the ranch
at Keppel Island. These instructions continued until the following
October, when Phillips took them back in his schooner, which was manned
by a captain, a mate, four seamen, a carpenter, and a cook, all
"decidedly good men." On the way over (it was a voyage of six days),
Phillips missed some valuables, and after accusing the Yahgans of
stealing, searched their bundles. Of course the Yahgans were highly
offended, but their anger was apparently appeased later, and a landing
was affected on Navarin Island in peace.
But on the following Sunday, when all hands except the cook went ashore
to hold church services, the Yahgans arose and killed the entire party
that came to them. The cook escaped to the brush when the natives came
after him, and there remained until hunger drove him out. The natives
then bound him, stripped off his clothes, but gave him their own
favorite article of clothing instead--a coat of whale oil, and with no
other dress than whale oil this cook lived in perfect health, until he
was rescued some three months later by a ship that came from the
Falklands in search of the schooner.
This deadly assault on the missionaries is frequently referred to in the
missionary publications to show how fierce and degraded the Yahgans were
before the missionaries got a foothold among them.
During the three years that followed only two Yahgans, a man and his
wife, lived on Keppel Island, but the young English boy spoken of--Tom
Bridges--proved a natural linguist, and so rapidly learned their
language from the Yahgans, that at the end of three years he could talk
freely with them.
Then came a new man into the field, the Rev. W. H. Stirling, who now
lives in Buenos Ayres, and is the Bishop of the Church of England for
South America. On the arrival of Stirling "the interrupted work was
resumed with vigor," and "forty or fifty Fuegians were brought at
intervals" to Keppel.
Of the life led by the Yahgans and the missionaries on Keppel Island,
the records speak freely, and it is worth while considering what that
life was, because Keppel was the preparatory school of the mission.
It appears by direct statement that the missionaries believed "our hope
for the material improvement of these natives lies in their adopting and
following farming and agricultural pursuits with fishing." We must
believe that the first object that the missionaries had in view in
taking the Yahgans to Keppel was to teach them the Christian religion,
because the missionaries say so; but it is apparent that "material"
matters were never lost sight of. The records give the length of time
devoted to these "material" matters every day, as well as that given to
mental and spiritual pursuits. Up to 1879 the natives had two hours per
day for instructions, but in October of that year the school hours were
increased to three per day. The rest of the day was devoted to work on
the sheep ranch and to the garden where the missionaries raised
vegetables. But not all of the Yahgans there received even two hours'
instruction per day, for a missionary who sent two to Keppel from
Wollaston Island wrote regarding them, that they "will, I have no doubt,
make very good men on the farm, but I do not think they will do
anything at school." And the farmer reports: "I could send more lads to
the day-school, but they are not the material Mr. Grubb requires." Mr.
Grubb was the school teacher.
This teacher, W. Balbrooke Grubb, sums up his work in these words:
"Moral training and example and the expounding of the Gospel, all who
knew these natives will admit, has [_sic_] worked a great change upon
them. Glorious conversions or wordy confessions I have not to report."
That Yahgan life was not all work and study on Keppel, however, appears
from the report of the celebration of the birthday of one of Farmer
Bartlett's children. "After tea we had several games, among which was
the avenging the death of a murdered man by the Indians, and an Indian
dance, which is a strange affair." Imagine the vendetta as an
entertainment in the course of a revival in the United States!
But the worst is yet to be told about the treatment of these Yahgan boys
on the Keppel Island farm, and lest some one think I am exaggerating, I
give the words of the report of one of the missionaries:
"As I observed much carelessness and untidiness in the dress of the
boys, I set aside a portion of one day in the week in which, under
my supervision, they were encouraged to mend and repair their
clothing." To this Mr. R. Whaits, the mission carpenter, adds that
"they are badly clothed; boots they have none, nor blankets to
cover them."
The unfortunate natives were not only made to toil at unaccustomed work
the whole day through, but they had to do it unrewarded. They did not
get even decent clothing in return.
I have given a good deal of space to this school, but it is because I
suppose there are other mission schools in the world conducted in the
same fashion, and the people who contribute money to missionary
societies ought to know about these matters.
Having described the school in which sundry Yahgans were civilized, and
"Tom Bridges, a good-looking, affectionate boy," was prepared for the
missionary service, we come to the establishing of the missionary
station in the Yahgan territory and the results of that work.
Until 1869 nothing was done beyond instructing the natives who could be
induced to go to Keppel and learning from them their language. But in
January of that year Mr. Stirling determined to take up his residence
among the Yahgans. His reasons for this are important, and are as
follows:
My motive for living ashore is to exercise a direct and constant
influence over the natives; to show my confidence in them; to
encourage _a more general and regular disposition in them to adopt
our ways_ and to listen to our instructions, and to get the
children within the zone of Christian example and teaching.
Accordingly, he built on the shores of what is now called Ushuaia Bay,
near the present capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, a log-hut that
was 20 x 10 feet large and had walls seven feet high. Here he lived for
seven months. One of four boys who had been in England, and was
subsequently continued in his educational career by being enlisted as
cabin-boy of the mission schooner _Allen Gardiner_, became the
housekeeper of the log-house, and was assisted in the work by another
Yahgan boy. How the days were passed and the natives instructed is told
clearly in the missionary's diary:
Wednesday, 27th (January)--Our _days_ are devoted _to work_. In the
morning, before breakfast, prayer and catechising. In the evening,
ditto; and what with putting the house and its surroundings in
order, making and fencing gardens, superintending wood-cutting and
charcoal-burning, I have passed a curious busy kind of time.
After seven months of the life thus briefly, but fully described, Mr.
Stirling was called home to England for ordination as "Bishop of the
Falkland Islands."
That he had lived unharmed among a tribe who ten years before had
murdered a missionary, is counted among the marvels of the story of this
mission; and it is quoted to show that the sort of training the Yahgan
boys had received at Keppel had tended to civilize them so much that, on
their return to their native haunts, they had in turn civilized their
fellows.
Meantime the boy Tom Bridges had grown to be a man of twenty-five years,
and had prepared himself, with the aid of those who had had charge at
Keppel, to become a missionary himself. With Mr. Stirling's approval he
went to England while Stirling was founding Ushuaia, and before Stirling
reached England Bridges had been ordained a catechist, had married, and
had sailed for Keppel Island. With the departure of the Rev. Mr.
Stirling for ordination as Bishop, Ushuaia was left unoccupied
temporarily, but the vacancy was filled in 1870 by Mr. Bridges and his
wife, who have ever since made their home on the shores of Beagle
Channel, and have until recently taken the lead in the mission work done
there.
Ushuaia Bay is a rounded hollow on the north side of the narrow Beagle
Channel. Lofty, glacier-covered mountains wall off the sun on the north,
and on every other side the ranges are not very far away. To the west,
however, there is an open table land level enough for farm purposes, and
to this came the young missionary and his wife to make a home.
They were apparently displeased with the location afterward, for we read
that "at Ushuaia our position is exposed, and being about ninety feet
above the sea is not favorable for procuring the best results. Many
spots might be chosen where, shelter and greater heat being secured, the
fruits of tillage would be both larger and more certain. But it is vain
for us now to regret our situation."
The log-hut erected by Stirling remained intact, and that was at first
their home; and straightway the work bringing the Yahgan Indians to Mr.
Bridges's standard of civilization and righteousness was begun.
What this standard was has been put in writing, together with a plain
statement of the means employed in raising the standard of
righteousness. He says:
"Our hopes for the material improvement of these natives lie in
their adopting and following farming and agricultural pursuits
together with fishing." And again: "Our daily endeavor is to bind
them with the bonds of Christ's love. To this end we have been of
late showing them the authority of Christ as far greater than that
of Moses."
A tribe of Indians that lived naked in a climate where snow-storms raged
in every month of the year--lived happily and comfortably, too--even in
perfect health on the spontaneous productions of the region, was to be
transformed into a community of farmers there and then. A people who had
in all their wonderful language of 40,000 words no term or idea of
either God or a future existence; who never gave an order, and who had
no such word or idea as to obey, were to be converted to Christianity
by sermons "showing them the authority of Christ as far greater than
that of Moses!"
That the missionaries entered upon this tremendous task with a calm
assurance that they could not be in error as to what the Indians needed,
is perfectly plain to all who peruse the record; and in that assurance
they never faltered. They were as earnestly determined to create
civilized villages and farming communities--that is to say on an English
model--as they were to tell the story of the Christ.
The first "material improvement" work done was, naturally enough, the
making of a comfortable home, with outbuildings and a big garden
attached, for the use of the missionaries. Mr. Bridges reasoned that an
object lesson in home comforts would impress on these wild people the
advantages of civilization more forcibly than words could do; and the
work to which Mr. Bridges devoted the most time was that of impressing
on them the advantages of civilization--_i.e._, making them like white
men. He had little faith in the notions of those missionaries who at
various times have believed they could best reach the heathen heart by
living with the heathen, suffering their hardships, learning to
understand their joys, and so on. Mr. Bridges would not do that.
Besides, in making gardens, building fences and houses, and caring for
cattle and sheep, Mr. Bridges, by employing the Indians, was enabled to
teach them the white man's arts and to encourage what he called "habits
of industry."
[Illustration: THE MISSION STATION AT USHUAIA.]
He assumed that when employed as laborers raising turnips on a Tierra
del Fuego farm, or in the saw-pit splitting logs into boards with a
hand-saw, they would be very much happier than they had ever been while
roaming at will about those seas and inlets in search of seals, birds,
and fish, or when sitting beside a roaring camp-fire inventing and
telling stories. It was, therefore, with a merry heart that Mr. Bridges,
and those, too, who were sent to aid him, saw the Indians take up the
axe to chop, the spade to dig in the garden, the saw to split the logs
for lumber.
But just how the natives were handled and the kind of life they led
about the station can be most convincingly told by a few extracts from
the record, which are in all cases verbatim, save that I have italicized
many words in order, as the missionaries might say, to bring home the
lesson of the hour more forcibly.
In a letter describing to the people of England the work at Ushuaia
after it was well under way (five years after the station was founded),
we get not only Mr. Bridges's ideas about handling workmen, but also his
way of composing a delicate family difficulty and a definite statement
of the price he paid one laborer for two weeks' work. He says:
We need in no way be ashamed of the earthly parts of our duties
here, and I hesitate not to set it plainly before you. _The
society_ has now _three and a half acres_ of garden land in crop,
chiefly with turnips (Swedish), most of which will be used by the
natives in meat stews, thickened with flour, beans, or other
farinaceous food. Besides, much work has been done to the road in
carrying down the embankment, and we hope to have it available for
our cart in a few weeks by diligent labor. A large quantity of wood
has also been cut and brought down to the beach ready for shipment.
Mr. Whaits has commenced sawing out boards from native wood with
great success. We have had for weeks over thirty men employed. _The
natives_ have also considerably added to their own lands under crop
this year, and have _four acres_ in crop.
Peace, with a few and unimportant breaks, has reigned. I must
relate a few instances of its interruption: Some nine or ten men
were at work on the road, Stephen Lucia was in charge, and a few
were vexed that he was not silent when they were idle. Angry,
vengeful words were spoken, and Stephen, in great turmoil of
spirit, came to me and asked to be employed elsewhere, saying that
he could no longer work with the men with the cart. I set him to
other work, and I went down to the men and reproved the guilty ones
for violent language and threatening intimidations. Stephen,
knowing that I would speak to them, came down, and some angry
altercation took place. Yet, after some talking over the matter,
peace was restored, and those who were angry shook hands at my
suggestion, and real good-will has existed among them since.
Another occasion was in connection with a young Eastern called
Hidugalahgoon. He came here with a wife that had been the wife of a
man who had been very violent to her. The young fellow seemed very
fond of her and she of him. He had friends here whom he was
diligent to move in his favor by descanting on the cruelties of the
other man. He was for several weeks employed, and regularly came to
our meetings for worship and instruction. As payment he received a
sufficiency of food and a shirt.
As to the row that the real or original husband of the woman raised when
he came on and found that she would stay with her lover, Mr. Bridges
says:
Being consulted by Hidugalahgoon, I advised that he should, under
the circumstances, give what he could to restore peace. No doubt he
has been a very guilty party in the matter, and I told him to give
up his shirt; he might soon earn another.
That is, instead of denouncing Hidugalahgoon as an adulterer, this
missionary advised him to buy off the outraged husband. The effect of
such teaching as this will appear further on.
We are not left wholly in darkness as to the kind and quantity of food
served, for, in speaking of the day's routine, the record says:
The daily breakfast is a pound of navy bread per man. The dinner is
cooked in our yard under the charge of Mr. Lawrence, who has one or
two boys under him, and tea likewise. A break is made between the
morning and afternoon working time, a space of four and three and a
half hours, respectively, by a distribution of a refreshing drink
of milk and water, slightly thickened with flour and sweetened.
Although not so stated here, the dinner was usually a meat stew with
hard-tack. It was served in a quantity sufficient for the workmen only,
as one may readily infer from a description written elsewhere of the
milk-and-water "refreshing drink."
To encourage the men to work, besides the three meals daily, Mr.
Lawrence used to bring us some milk and water, slightly sweetened,
and a biscuit at 11 A. M. and 4 P. M. Then we would all throw
ourselves down and enjoy ten or fifteen minutes' rest while we took
this refreshment. The little children soon learned the course of
things, and used generally to come for a bit from their fathers or
brothers. They (the fathers or brothers) would have been _glad_ to
have eaten all, but invariably they shared.
Let the reader get this matter well in hand. The Yahgans were employed
on road-making, chopping, pit-sawing and other work of the hardest kind.
The white man had sufficient influence over them to keep a good many so
employed. In return he gave to the laborers what he calls "a sufficiency
of food," but he here distinctly admits that they "would have been glad
to have eaten all"; in other words, it was a bare sufficiency. In
addition, for "a few weeks' work," he gave a common shirt such as the
farm laborers of England wear.
The rule to feed and clothe only those employed at labor was not
rigorously enforced at all times. We read at Christmas time of a
"distribution made to-day of the half-yearly gift of clothing _to the
employed_ and such natives as are more particularly under our charge,
and to children supported by friends at home; also _general_
distribution of old but most acceptable clothing sent by kind friends in
Stanley which was very much needed." Then, "after the morning service,
we all had a happy time with the natives, who were abundantly supplied
with good stew and pudding." In a letter we read that "the half-yearly
distribution of clothing to the baptized natives took place on the 28th
of June." Of course, this favoring of the baptized natives could have
but one effect. If clothing could be had by professing this new religion
the hypocrites among the tribe were pretty sure to see the point and
make the profession. As will appear further on, however, there were not
very many hypocrites among the three thousand Yahgans.
But that the system of paying a "sufficiency of food" and a shirt, such
as laborers wear, for two weeks of labor did not prove entirely
satisfactory to the Indians, save in time of famine, may be inferred
from what is written in the same record:
The men, when left much to themselves, become very idle, and rest a
great deal more than they should. They say they are tired and sore,
and you have to be constantly at them to do a fair day's work. The
natives have been culpably idle at this and all other work they do,
and yet they clamor for more pay, and even speak of ceasing to work
unless their pay is increased.
In fact, the missionary was quite incensed when he found that the
heathen were not willing to do the work of English farm laborers in
return for a "sufficiency of food" and a "semi-annual distribution of
clothing."
If Mr. Bridges had trouble in teaching the tribe habits of industry as
farm laborers, he was also worried somewhat in his efforts to impress on
them the advantage of the kindred virtue of thrift. As wandering
mussel-eaters they had no need of thrift, because mussels were almost
everywhere abundant, and they were lacking in food only when storms
prevented their journeying from a place which had been eaten bare to one
which had not been visited for a time. As farmers, if they were to be
farmers, they would need to be thrifty, especially so in such a climate.
But here is the record, which gives at some length not only a picture of
life at the station, but also the missionary's argument for overcoming
their ancient heathen habit of holding all things in common:
The natives, very much driven by hunger, were very importunate in
coming to him (the Rev. Mr. Lawrence) in order to get something to
eat. They brought logs of fuel by ones and twos, they brought
baskets, spear heads, and spear shafts, others offered to work to
earn some food, others came expressing their sad circumstances and
sought to excite pity in order to get something to eat. Only three
men were regularly employed, but four or five women were much
employed in making shirts, so that these were envied by the rest,
and certainly were much better off. During this time a party of
natives arrived and brought a good supply of sprats. As the three
above mentioned very properly kept their food supplies for
themselves and families, to the great grievance of their neighbors,
so now these sprat owners would not part with any of their sprats
to them.
One of the three expressed himself thus about this matter: "We
hungry folks now: all other people plenty fish, only we poor." In
reply to these remarks he was answered, "You ought not to be sorry,
but glad that these poor people have plenty. Besides, you ought not
to be hungry, because you get food for your work every day, and
your wife also gets food for her sewing, and your son can gather
mussels."
I have quoted the record verbatim because it seems important that people
in the United States should know just how the heathen were treated at
this typical mission, and have the missionary's statement of the case.
It is a fact, incredible as it may seem, that the missionary gave to
the heathen, in return for a day's hard work, only so much food as that
heathen himself needed. To the squaw only as much as she needed was
given. Under that system of pay an able-bodied man and an able-bodied
woman could not together earn even enough food above their own wants to
supply one child. "Your son can gather mussels," said the missionary
when they complained to him that, having divided with their son, they
were hungry. It is worth while to compare the attitude of the missionary
in this matter with that of the heathen father and mother, who were
willing to go hungry in order that they might divide their stinted
allowance of food with their child. But to continue the quotation:
I have striven very much to move the people against the prevalent
habit of begging and giving, but as yet with but little seeming
success. When a canoe arrives many make visits to the new-comers to
get a share of any food they may have brought. They do not ask, but
wait till they have received some. Each woman looks upon what
supplies she gathers as her own. She gives to whom she will, so
that to the same person a portion would be given by each of a man's
two or three wives from their separate possessions. This habit is
very hurtful.
Although it is aside from the object of this story, one cannot help
noting here that among the Yahgans "they do not ask but wait," and that
"each woman looks upon what supplies she gathers as her own." As a
picture of savage customs that is interesting.
It would be instructive and interesting, though not to say pleasant, to
follow these extracts further. They picture accurately the life led by
both missionary and Indian at this station--a life encouraged and
promoted by a society in England that had an income of from $50,000 to
$60,000 a year, and complained because it did not get more. Enough,
however, has been quoted to convey an accurate idea of what was done
there in "material" matters, and something will now be told to portray
the "spiritual" teachings and the results thereof. The record is full of
such things as these:
Subject of this morning's teaching, "Justification by faith in
Jesus."
Subjects of instruction: Faith in God and its proper fruits,
obedience to His will, love and gratitude for all His goodness, and
confidence and joy for all His perfections.
We endeavored to rouse the attention and lively interest in the
free treasures of the boundless love of God, of their God, their
Lord, their Saviour, their Judge, their heaven, their hell, their
own offered mercy and good.
Experienced the helping grace of God in speaking to and reasoning
with the people of the truth of God, especially of Jesus, our
representative before God, who in our stead has borne our sins, and
pleads His--now by faith our--merits, on account of which we can
alone be loved by the Father. Spoke also of the necessity of
denying self and sin, of the works of the flesh, and the blessed
fruits of the Spirit.
These extracts accurately illustrate the character of the preaching. The
following from the same pages of the record will, with equal accuracy,
show what the results were:
We vary as far as we can in illustration by anecdote and
application, and _great effort is necessary to keep their
attention_.
We long to see earnest love, to hear the people inquiring for
Christ. When asked whether they love and wish to serve Jesus, they
answer affirmatively, but _they never volunteer any remark or
questions concerning spiritual things_.
Visited Mecugaz twice. Spoke to him earnestly as to a dying man who
as yet shows no real faith or special interest in Jesus Christ as
his Saviour and Lord. The conduct of Jemmy Button, Admiral
Fitzroy's protege, _is ever being reacted here_. He would not tell
the people what he had seen, but made capital of their ignorance
and his knowledge by keeping it to himself. _He only became the
greater impostor_, and assumed a pompous conduct toward his
fellows, and did not a whit of good.
A paragraph will serve for one other matter. There came a time when the
missionaries wanted a steamer to replace their old sailing vessel, and
an appeal for the money needed for a steamer was made on the ground that
the new vessel would enable the missionaries to extend their teachings
to the other tribes of the region. They got their steamer, but when it
came their zeal to preach to the Ona and to the Alaculoof had
disappeared. Instead of using their steamer to carry the gospel to these
tribes, they used it to carry their cattle between the farm on Keppel
Island and the station in Beagle Channel.
However, in spite of the fact that the bay produced no food supply worth
mentioning for the natives, in spite of a sterile soil and wretched
location for farming, in spite of every drawback, the settlement grew in
numbers, until, after eleven years, in 1881, such progress had been made
that they had a "Christian village, with cottages instead of wigwams,
and an extemporized church in the midst," six frame cottages which the
Indians had made for themselves out of whip-sawed lumber. These cottages
were of the ordinary packing-case model. They were divided within into
one large "living-room" in the middle with two smaller rooms on each
side of it. Two families occupied each house, using the middle room in
common.
Cattle and goats had been introduced, and the Indians had purchased some
with labor. More than ten acres of ground were cultivated. An orphanage
had been erected, and "twenty-five children are here clothed, fed, and
educated at the expense of friends in England."
Meantime, every Yahgan at the settlement, and many of them elsewhere,
had learned to dress in "civilized garments," which they had obtained in
exchange for labor, or for the furs they caught when hunting, and a very
large proportion of them had learned to "prefer bread food" to any
other. Meantime the baptismal register had attained to a length of 137
names, including infants.
But the one point of success attained, on which the missionaries laid
greatest stress, was the change wrought in the treatment wrecked seamen
received at the hands of the Yahgans.
"The natives had formerly been set against white men by the cruel
treatment which they had met with from sealing vessels. When vessels
were seen the women and children were sent to the woods for safety,"
says the missionary record. In return the Yahgans had slaughtered every
wrecked crew of seamen that fell into their power, saving one man in
each crew, however, whom they compelled to witness the slaughter of the
rest, and whom they then took to some steamer in the Strait of Magellan,
that he might go home and warn his countrymen to keep away from that
region.
"It was only by degrees that a better state of things was brought
about," says the record but in eleven years it was done.
Naturally, this apparent success of the mission attracted the attention
of the Argentine Government. Ushuaia, "the Christian settlement," stood
in Argentine territory, but it was very close, indeed, to the Chili
line. Being jealous of Chilian encroachment, the Argentines decided to
establish a station down on the south coast of Tierra del Fuego to
defend their landed rights. They naturally chose this "Christian
settlement" as the site for the station. That was a great event in the
history of the mission, and the missionaries were all "greatly pleased"
with the sub-prefect and his staff, and troops, and sailors, and
especially with the fact that thereafter at least monthly communications
would be had with the civilized world.
But a marvellous change had been developing even for years without the
knowledge of those who had brought it about. Something was found to be
wrong with the Fuegian converts. The record begins to show such entries
as these:
In the orphanage we have one case of fatal disease. Excessive
languor, without suffering, is his symptom. He is rapidly wasting
away.
We had heard of two families who had been suffering very much and
asked to see me. At the first house we found eleven people sick,
and one old woman who had recovered. They told us three had died,
and pointed out several others whom they said would die, among them
a little boy, who held his arms out to me and said; "No, no, I am
not going to die, Mr. Whaits."
At the next place we found three women, a little boy, and a man
trying to get to a canoe to come to Ushuaia. The man told us he had
buried four, but was so weak he could not bury the others who were
in the house. We found one dear little fellow on his back, not
quite dead. He asked me for water which I gave him. He died a few
minutes after. In the same house we found a man who had been dead
two days, and in his arms a poor little boy not dead. When I took
him away he cried to go back to his father. We took him to Ushuaia,
but he died on the way.
We have now lost forty-three persons in three weeks at Ushuaia. How
far it has spread I cannot say.
_It has been a pleasure to go among them, for in almost every house
we have heard the voice of prayer and praise in the midst of all
their sufferings_ [_sic_].
It is useless to continue these quotations or to tell in detail the
pitiful stories of wretchedness, uncomplaining suffering, and death that
had taken place in this settlement, when the missionaries once got the
tribe well in hand. Let it, instead, be summed up:
The race had been "hardy and vigorous." They had actually increased in
numbers while living naked and smeared with grease from head to foot.
But when put to work as farm laborers, and washed and clothed like white
folks, they complained of being "tired" and "sore," and had to be nagged
into working steadily. They had slept naked in the freezing rain, but
now, if they sat down in their shirt sleeves while at work, they caught
a cold that developed into a fatal disease. Consumption and pneumonia
appeared, and assumed frightful aspects. Little children that had been
round-limbed and bright-eyed when naked in a canoe were wasting rapidly
away in "excessive languor," though dressed in woolens and living in a
warm house.
They continued to waste away until every one of the twenty-five
children, "clothed, fed, and educated at the expense of friends in
England," died, and so did every other child in that "Christian
village," and from that day to this not one child in dozens born has
survived its first year.
The frequent communications with the civilized world had been of
advantage to the missionaries, but measles, grip, diphtheria--what
not?--came on the steamers.
But that is not all, nor, for the tribe, the worst result of the
establishing of this mission in the region. Keep in mind that "the very
ferocity of the natives of Tierra del Fuego protected them." Those are
the words of one of the members of the missionary society, and they were
true words. The ferocity of the Yahgans in their native state protected
them from the devilish evils left in the wake of sailors who visit
aborigines in any part of the world. The sailors, even the sealing
sailors, kept well clear of the Yahgans so long as this ferocity lasted.
But the missionaries fully, if "only by degrees," overcame this ferocity
and made boast of it, saying it was of "the greatest advantage to
commerce." They taught the Yahgans not to kill white men. It would have
been better for the Yahgans had a man-o'-war been sent there to kill the
half of them rather than that they should have learned that lesson. For,
alas, the missionaries made very little, if any, progress in overcoming
the Yahgan notion that women might be bought and sold. Indeed, as in the
case of Hidugalahgoon already mentioned, where one man had carried off
another's squaw, the offender was advised to settle the trouble by
paying for the woman.
The forecastle brutes from the Yankee sealers or any other vessels were
at last free to go among any Yahgans save the insignificant few at
Ushuaia, and to trade liquor and tobacco for women.
To stem the tide of disaster a new station was established at Tekenika
Bay, some fifty miles south. It was in charge of the Rev. Mr. Burleigh
and his wife until he was overturned in a boat in the bay and drowned,
when two of the grown children of the Rev. John Lawrence of Ushuaia,
brother and sister, took hold. They have a small cottage, in a wretched
climate, and sacrifice almost every comfort to do what they believe to
be good for the Yahgans.
But because Yahgan bodies were fitted by nature for nakedness in a bleak
desert, and because Yahgan stomachs digest mussels and whale's blubber
better than turnip soup or mixed milk and water slightly sweetened, the
sacrifices of these young people can only hasten the decay that has
fastened on the tribe.
As was said, here was a tribe, 3000 strong, healthy, hearty, and happy
in spite of apparent adverse circumstances. They for twenty years were
under the lead of a most adroit teacher. They listened to and said they
accepted his spiritual teachings; they reluctantly took up his farming
and mechanic arts; they eagerly sought his kinds of food and clothing.
The missionaries declare the result has been that the whole tribe is
civilized. I saw a score of Yahgans, and all to whom I spoke told me
they were Christians and that other Yahgans were Christians.
But the truth is that of that tribe of three thousand untrammelled souls
less than three hundred can now be found. Their civilization--or the
evidences of their civilization, rather--consists in the use of wretched
and dangerous dugouts in place of graceful and safe bark canoes; the
ragged cast off clothing of prospectors and seamen; wretched little
shanties like those in the New York goat district, and a partial
knowledge of English and Spanish.
Worse yet, in place of what the explorers were pleased to call the
hideous markings of paint, are the really hideous evidences of diseases
that have come since Yahgan "ferocity" ceased to be a "protection" to
Yahgan women.
Where the blame lies let the reader judge for himself, but none can
dispute that the naked savage, who in the old days stood erect man
fashion, and with furious anger fought in defence of wife and daughter
or even for plunder, was a nobler being in the sight of God and man than
the ragged, cringing hypocrite that he has come to be in these last
days.
CHAPTER V.
ALONG SHORE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO.
Although a considerable part of the story of Tierra del Fuego has been
related already in the chapters on the Yahgans, their mission, and the
Cape Horn gold diggings, there are yet a number of objects of human
interest there which remain to be considered. According to the old-time
explorers, a voyage around the coast of this great island was one of the
dreariest as well as the most dangerous in the world. Dangerous it was
and still is, but in a well-found steamer the traveller may find a
sufficient variety in the island and its products and peoples to more
than repay him for all the risk and discomfort.
Of the Tierra del Fuego matters not yet more than touched upon there is
the settlement called Ushuaia, wherein is found the seat of Government
of Argentine's part of the island. Ushuaia is a remarkable capital. It
stands nearer the south pole than any other civilized village in the
world, for one thing. For another, it probably has fewer inhabitants
than any other capital town in the world.
Of the landing of the first white man on the present site of Ushuaia,
enough was told in the last chapter. That was the beginning of the
settlement as a missionary station. The town, as an Argentine
settlement, was founded in September, 1884, and the Argentine flag was
for the first time unfurled over the first building erected for the use
of the officials on October 12 of the same year. Ushuaia, however, was
then made only a sub-prefectura--the residence of a naval Lieutenant,
who had the powers of an American Mayor rather than those of the
Governor of a Territory. The Argentine Government was at that time very
busy planting colonies along the coast of Patagonia and at other points
south, because the dispute which it had had with Chili over the right of
possession had been settled but recently. These settlements were made to
take actual possession of the land acknowledged to be Argentine
territory, and one was necessary somewhere on the south coast of Tierra
del Fuego, because Argentine had secured a large slice of that island.
Very few people knew anything about Tierra del Fuego in those days. The
few hardy prospectors who had ventured across the Strait of Magellan
from Punta Arenas in a search for gold nuggets had not been lucky enough
to make them speak well of it. A few sheep ranchmen had gotten hold of
some pasture land on the north coast, but they had had to keep their
shepherds armed with Winchesters because of the predatory habits of the
Ona Indians who lived on the prairies of that part of the island. There
was one spot, however, where the Indians were known to be harmless,
because white men had been living among them for a long time there, and
that was the mission station on Ushuaia Bay, in the Beagle Channel.
Moreover, Ushuaia Bay was known to be a well-sheltered harbor, where the
anchor of a ship would get a right good hold on the ground. So, after
sending a fleet to erect a lighthouse on the east end of Staten Island
for the benefit of a commerce in which it had no part, the Argentine
Government ordered the fleet to go around into Ushuaia Bay and establish
a sub-prefectura. The building of such a station would tend to encourage
the exploration and development of the island, so the government
believed, and so the event is slowly proving. But just why the place
should have been raised to the dignity of a capital is past finding out,
for it was a sufficient check on Chilian aggression as a sub-prefectura,
while the expense to the government is now several times greater.
[Illustration: USHUAIA, THE CAPITAL OF ARGENTINE TIERRA DEL FUEGO.]
I saw Ushuaia for the first time under rather unfavorable circumstances.
The sky was overcast with storm clouds; roaring gusts of wind, laden
with snow, came driving along at frequent intervals, and the region at
the water level was buried under snow that was at no place less than two
feet deep. It was on the 23d of May, just at the beginning of the
antarctic winter. We had been steaming all the morning along the Beagle
Channel, under the shadow, so to speak, of the glacier-covered range
that overhangs the south coast of Tierra del Fuego, when at about noon
the range turned away to the north from the channel, making a curve so
that a half-circle of lowlands like the floor of an amphitheatre was
left between it and the line of the range. Into the westerly side of
this floor, where the waters could wash the feet of the lofty mountains,
there projected a rounded bay, the mouth of which was well guarded, but
not obstructed, by a low island and a long sandspit on the west. It was
an ideal harbor, and, after what had been said of it on board ship,
there was no difficulty in recognizing it as the site of the capital of
Tierra del Fuego.
A little later we rounded the island and then the settlement came into
view--apparently at that distance a single row of houses standing at the
water's edge. Nor did a closer approach change the appearances very
much, for although not exactly in a row nor washed by the waves, there
was only about a score of buildings all told, and none of them was above
a hundred paces from the bay.
And right curious these houses were. First of all, of course, was the
capitol building, a one-story structure in the form of a right-angled
U standing with the wings away from the sea.
This building was made of wood, and it was painted to that peculiar
shade of red that in old times was so much favored by the Yankee farmer
when he had put up a new barn. A little to the right of this stood the
home of the Governor. This, too, was a frame structure, but it was in
the form of a Central American _hacienda_--a low, rectangular affair,
with a peak roof that ran down over all four walls to form a wide
veranda on all sides. The rest of the buildings of the town can best be
described by saying they were duplicates of the dwellings to be found in
the mine camps of the United States. Every one had plain, unpainted
wooden walls, and every one a corrugated iron roof. A few had garden
plots enclosed with fences of split pickets, but the majority were
unenclosed. They were all scattered along the narrow slope of one of the
foot-hills of the great mountain range. This slope is in summer grassy.
Back of the scattered row of houses the first ridge had once been
covered with a forest, but the trees for ten rods or more up the slope
had been subsequently cut for fuel and other purposes, leaving a field
of stumps. Above the clearing the forest rose rapidly in solid rolling
ridges until six hundred feet above the sea. Then the forest thinned
out, and in clumps and bunches of brush spread up the mountain side for
a few hundred feet more, to disappear entirely at the edges of the
glaciers and banks of eternal snow that were piled among the rugged
rocks clear to the crests three thousand feet above the sea.
To add to the sombre aspect of nature incident everywhere to the winter
season is the lack, in Ushuaia, of sunshine. The Beagle Channel is in 55
deg. south latitude, so that in winter the nights are long and the days
brief at best, while even such lengths of days as they might have in the
open is cut down by the shadows of the lofty crests. The sun does not
get above these crests until almost ten o'clock, and it disappears again
soon after two o'clock. Even then its face is so often hid by the snow
clouds above the crests that one may almost say that the village in
winter is shrouded in perpetual gloom.
As a port Ushuaia showed a substantial wooden pier over one hundred feet
long, built by the government for the use of its officials. At some
distance from this was a smaller and more slender pier, built by a
merchant. There was anchored in the bay the dismantled hulk of what
seemed to be a big, worn-out, seagoing tug. It had really been a tiny
cruiser, however. Another vessel of a similar model, but much newer and
well painted, was a cruiser kept there at the call of the Governor, but
just what he might want to call it for did not appear. Moreover, the
tubes in her boiler had gone wrong and she could not have answered
anybody's call. In addition to these two there was quite a
fleet--say half a dozen sailboats of the sort used by Cape Horn
gold-hunters--sloops and catboats from twenty-five to thirty feet long,
while a tiny schooner that had once been used by the missionaries lay
rotting on the beach some distance around to the west. The vessels
afloat, as they veered to and fro at the ends of their long cables, gave
some air of life to the harbor, an air that was increased by two or
three Indian families, who were paddling about in the wretched little
dugouts the missionaries taught them to make in place of their
old-fashioned bark canoes of Viking model.
Here, then, in the score of mine-camp shanties along the beach and in
two broken-down hulks afloat, lived the inhabitants of the capital of
Tierra del Fuego. If the town itself was curious, its people and their
manner of life were found to be no less curious when one came to get
acquainted. Small and wretched as the place was, it had a complete
outfit of the officials and assistants needed for the dignity and peace
of the most populous territorial capital anywhere. There was a complete
list of executive officers, with secretaries and servants; a complete
list of judicial officers, with clerks and servants; a complete list of
police officials, from a commissioner to a patrolman; a file of soldiers
with commissioned and non-commissioned officers; a crew of sailors for
the vessels, with the usual officers, a school teacher (male), and a
matron for a girls' school.
The town had also six citizens--plain, every-day folks, not entitled to
wear uniform. All told, the number of inhabitants was less than sixty. I
went on shore to learn something more about the local government than
what I could see from the steamer. They told me that the Governor was
in Buenos Ayres working for an appropriation to make improvements.
"Improvements in what?" I asked.
"Just improvements about the place."
"How much money does he want?"
"Who knows? He ought to have $20,000."
"What one thing, for instance, would he do with the money?"
"Well, there is the shed back of the Capitol, where the sawmill is. That
ought to be enclosed to keep the weather off the machinery."
"Would that cost $20,000?"
"It should do so. You'd make it cost that if you were Governor and had
to live here. Nobody gets pay enough to make it worth while staying."
"Will the Supreme Court sit to-day?"
"I beg pardon."
"Will any Judge hold court to-day?"
"Oh! Scarcely. What made you think such a thing likely?"
"When are courts held, then?"
"They aren't held. No cases to be tried."
"Not even a police case?"
"No. Do the people you have seen look like criminals?"
"Certainly not. Where can I find the school-house?"
"There is none."
"Where do they hold school, then?"
"They don't hold any."
"Why not?"
"There aren't any children here."
So the questions and answers ran about all official doings, if that
term may be used in connection with the life in the town as a capital.
The truth was that the executive department of the government had
nothing to execute, so to speak. The courts had no dockets, the police
had no beats to patrol, and no criminals to arrest. The soldiers did not
even stand guard, nor had the sailors either a watch or lookout to
employ them. Of all the government employees there was but one class
that had any employment worth mentioning. The cooks and their assistants
had to labor daily. Even these were well-nigh out of a job when I
arrived. Owing to negligence on the part of some one in Buenos Ayres,
the supplies of flour and about all other kinds of food had been allowed
to run out. We carried thirty half-starved sheep to the settlement from
Punta Arenas, and these were hailed with delight, because everybody
there except the plain citizens was on short allowance.
I made a tour of the place, wading through snow up to my knees. I found
three people engaged in useful occupations. One was a squaw, who was
pulling the hair from an otter skin in the store run by one of the plain
citizens. In the kitchen attached to this store an Englishman was
getting dinner and a German was cutting meat for sausage. In all I saw
three women in the place, but it was said three more could be found.
There was not, they said, a heating stove in town, nor was there a cord
of fuel in any one pile. The men were usually found standing in what
might be called the sitting-rooms of the houses, or in stores conducted
by the plain citizens. They usually had their hands in their pockets.
All wore heavy sack coats, which were kept buttoned to the chin, while
some had mufflers about their necks. The plain citizens were composed
of Englishmen, Italians, and Germans in equal numbers. Three of them
were Argentine citizens, and the others were cosmopolitans.
When, in the course of conversation, I referred to a trip I had made to
some Colorado mining camps, the plain citizens with one accord brought
out specimens of ores that I might pass judgment on them. When I
protested that a brief residence in a couple of mine camps would by no
means make a man a judge of ores, they thought I was over-modest. They
all had specimens of gold dust, but aside from this there was nothing of
value save a chunk of iron said to have come from a limitless bed, and a
piece of ore from which a Buenos Ayres assay had obtained an enormous
per cent. of nickel.
I asked about the gardens. They said that cabbages, turnips, carrots,
parsnips, and a few other hardy vegetables flourished in the season. I
saw cabbages and turnips as big each as a peck measure, but the potatoes
were in no case larger than an English walnut. The wild grass of the
region was said to be very nutritious, and the appearance of the fresh
meat I saw in the stores indicated that it was so. One merchant, Mr.
Ado
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