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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 CONTENTS I AFTER CAPE HORN GOLD II THE CAPE HORN METROPOLIS III CAPE HORN ABORIGINES IV A CAPE HORN MISSION V ALONG-SHORE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO VI STATEN ISLAND OF THE FAR SOUTH VII THE NOMADS OF PATATGONIA VIII THE WELSH IN PATAGONIA IX BEASTS ODD AND WILD X BIRDS OF PATAGONIA XI SHEEP IN PATAGONIA XII THE GAUCHO AT HOME XIII PATAGONIA'S TRAMPS XIV THE JOURNEY ALONG-SHORE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION GOLD-WASHING MACHINES, PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO PUNTA ARENAS, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN YAHGANS AT HOME (1) THE MISSION STATION AT USHUAIA (1) USHUAIA, THE CAPITAL OF ARGENTINE TIERRA DEL FUEGO (1) AN ONA FAMILY (1) ALUCULOOF INDIANS (1) GOVERNMENT STATION AT ST. JOHN. (FROM A SKETCH BY COMMANDER CHWAITES, A.N.) (1) A TEHUELCHE SQUAW (1) TEHUELCHES IN CAMP (1) GAUCHOS AT HOME AMONG THE RUINS AT PORT DESIRE, PATAGONIA (1) SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA (1) THE GOVERNOR'S HOME AND A BUSINESS BLOCK IN GALLEGOS, THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA (1) (1) Reproduced by permisson 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." 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 bookbuyers 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 Fique, 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. 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.

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