The Desolate Land specializes in sheep and wide open spaces MANY OF THE schoolbooks de- •cribe Tierra del Fuego simply as By JULIO C. SILVA “the biggest sheep ranch in the Andean ridge, whose eternally raise some eyebrows around ,” as if that were all there snow-covered peaks, here as all York. was to it. Its very immensity and along the line, mark the boundary What I remember best from desolation 27.476 square miles a between the two countries. The quick occupied by ten thousand people visit to this remote border runs from Cape Espiritu a few years ago is the look of its make the archipelago seem uni- * Santo on the strange rocks, seemingly torn J&*'l - , 5Kfc3S&- j&SKw&fbS'' Agra formly monotonous. But within from to the in the south. a lunar landscape, combined that uniformity and monotony lies with The lesser islands are labeled with bare mountains, with torrential a wild and inhospitable landscape an of names of ' evocative mixture streams that suddenly dropped with which not even the wastes various nationalities, chiefly Eng- from sight Alaska or can compare. in mysterous clefts, of lish. On the Chilean side there are dark-gray, black, In fraternal fashion, the terri- and the almost Navarino, Hoste Island. Clarence spattering long-suffering coigue tory is divided between of Island, and Santa Ines. On the Ar- trees. (Notafogus enanus). With and . It is made up of si* is- gentine side, in addition to its by branches twisted and tortured At the Argentine-Chilean border on Beagle Channel, a small police lands. The largest, Isla Grande or section of the main island, once snow, they are the only wind and outpost keeps passing ships. Tierra del Fuego proper, is an ex- called King Charles South Land, is arboreal vegetation. track of tension of and of the Staten Island, a fact that might When visited the zone, he noted, that it was an im- mense territory (one sixth of the area of Chile) whipped by hurri- canes and storms, a desolate land inhabited by cannibals and wild beasts, where the .most horrible tragedies took place on land and sea. Life there was impossible for civilized beings. The English scho- lar emphatically declared that the plains were worthless. He called them “Cursed Lands” and said even the waters seemed to carry their curse. For a long time no country, not even Chile, wanted to assume the responsibility of officially taking possesion of the torbuous Tierra del Fuego. The Alacalufs, Onas, and Yaghans, the fierce nomadic Indian tribes who lived there, con- tinued to light the fires that had given the territory its name when Magellan's sailors sighted them in Waterfront at . Many wrecks have occurred in rough 1520. Beagle Channel here. Islands around Tierra del Fuego abound in penguins. This variety Finally, in 1843, after four makes braying sound, is called “jackass”. months of difficult navigation, the Chilean schooner Ancud, under Ca- ptain Juan Williams, arrived at Puerto de Hambre (named Port Famine by shipwrecked mariners). Atfer destroying documents left by •some Englishmen who had tried to take possession of the area at the beginning of the nineteenth cen- tury, Williams ordered the Chil- ean flag raised, to the accompani- ment of the appropriate salvos. The next morning, September 24, a French frigate under Captain Mais sain anchored at the same place and raised the tricolor, amid its own salvos. Likewise acting on or- ders of his government, the Frenchman had also come to take possession of Tierra del Fuego. Williams immediately protested affront to Chilean sovereignty. the IMW til 11 The Frenchman, taking pride in his diplomacy, retired after an-

"y vsSML Wr II • nouncing that he would report what had happened to his govern- ft" 4 ' ' ¦' j ment. ** t • J?* ’Js*s ,<.• /if To strengthen Chilean ties with this distant possession. President Franciseo Bulnes ordered a penal Snow-capped overlook galvanized-iron houses of Ushuaia. colony, now defunct, founded near the present site of . Zealand and , which also sheep on Tierra del Fuego and the Years later, in 1884, the Argentine became some of the “biggest sheep adjoining section of Chilean Pa- the world,” were Government did the same thing in ranches in pop- tagonia. Today there are more its part of the territory, at Ushuaia. pulated with criminals from Lon- than seven million (one for each Chilean), By a strange coincidence, halfway xalue of these wastelands to the producing more than don jails. twenty-one thousand tons of around the world , something wool Evergreen oaks are shaped by buffeting of prevailing winds. similar was taking place. New In 1857 there were thirty-four a year, of which about eighteen thousand tons are exported. Argen- tina exports 130,000 tons, including what it grows on the mainland. The figures are eloquent proof of the - • _ nnm titt— I I I illHTHllll—l¦ir rfWWW*WBWW”" rVI FIMM value of these wastelands to the two nations. In addition to this wealth of wool, oil has been discovered in recent years in the Chilean spot known as Springhill which now has many wells. There is also pe- troleum across the Strait, near Punta Arenas, a town of forty- five thousand that is the world’s southernmost city. At first, the colonization of this area was a sort of Klondike gold rush. But Tierra del Fuego was much less accessible and offered far less gold. Some of the advent- urers of various nationalities drawn there turned to sheep rais- ing because they had no alter- native. as the historians slyly - serve. The struggle for existence continued to be fierce. The Minis- try of Agriculture estimated that 75 percent of the first colonists Bullocks are still used to haul heavy lads in high-wheeled carts on modern ranch. (from 1850 to 1900) failed. Tta# PAG. 10 HIMISrMKRI SUNDAY, MAY 12, ItS7