The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn Part 14

Nevertheless, these Welshmen--and they were all miners, too, and not farmers--began work to make homes and farms. They laid out a capital city, which they named Rawson in honor of the Argentine Cabinet officer who had interested himself in their behalf. It was a sorry capital then, but duplicates of it can be found in the Texas Panhandle. It was a town of dugouts and mud huts. There was no timber for houses. They planted gardens. They looked the region over. They began to learn how to hunt the guanaco and the ostrich that roamed over the desert.

And then came the Indians, the huge-framed Tehuelches, to whom the early explorer of the region had given the name of Big Feet (Patagonians). It was a notable day in the history of the settlement, but not a day of bloodshed. The Tehuelches and the Welshmen became friends at once, partly because the Indians, on learning why the whites had sought the isolation, comprehended the matter in a way that made them feel a brotherly regard for the intruders such as they had never felt for any other whites. The Welshmen had come to find entire freedom in the desert, and that was something the freeborn son of the desert could appreciate.

That was an excellent beginning, but only a first victory. There were many other foes on the desert. There were the panthers, the great, lean, sly cats that are called also American lions. They swarmed on the uplands and by night came to the settlement for the blood of horses, cattle, and sheep. There were locusts in clouds that obscured the sun.

There were wild geese, ducks, and coots from the river--the winged pests were in legions. It was a waterless region and uninhabitable for man beyond the valley of the stream, but in the th.o.r.n.y brush of the desert millions of nature's allies in her warfare against man found breeding places.

For the first year the colony was to be supplied with provisions by the Argentine Government. The contract was faithfully kept. The colonists hoped to raise enough food for their own use after that, but their hopes failed. The hot winds destroyed the few results of their labors which birds and beasts had spared. Nevertheless, they held on for another year, the government supplying their needs, although, meantime, more colonists had come. Then came another failure of crops. The reader will say it took a lot of pluck to hold on after that for another year. So it did. These Welshmen were full of it. Not only for another year, but for another, and another still--for six weary years those men fought the gaunt wolf that stood at their doors. Then came prosperity, but with leaden footsteps.

That the colonists did not perish absolutely of starvation was due first to the persistent care of the Argentine Government. Uncle Sam was counted generous when he gave to every immigrant 160 acres of land. The Argentine Government not only gave these immigrants 240 acres of land each, on the condition that they improve it somewhat and live there two years, but it established a commissary department in the colony, and for nearly ten years gave free of cost all supplies of food and clothing needed to keep them alive, and as late as 1877, when crops had begun to flourish well, still extended a generous helping hand. This was done in spite of the fact that these Welshmen were avowedly clannish. They had come to establish a Welsh colony, and had obtained permission in advance not only to preserve their own language, but to govern themselves and to live free of taxation. Under the terms of the original concession, they were of value to the Argentine nation only in the fact that they were to break up and cultivate so much wild land. They could not have been made to fight for the land of their adoption even against an invading host of Brazilian monarchists. No government was ever more generous to colonists than the Argentine.

Goods were sent to Chubut by the ship load. But more than once the ship went wrong, and the goods were lost. Then came the time of dire distress when only their good friends the Tehuelches could save them. The Welshmen were starving on several occasions when the Indians came down the river and brought succor--guanaco, and ostrich, and panther meat in abundance, with skins for clothing. As the corn of the Ma.s.sachusetts Indians saved the Pilgrim Fathers, so the meat of the Tehuelches saved the Welshmen. But the Tehuelche Indians have not now to mourn, nor do the Welshmen now hang their heads in shame at the mention of any King Philip. White men made war on the Tehuelches and exterminated them, but no Welshmen, though the colony was then self-supporting, took part in that hateful enterprise, and when the red remnant were forced at last to give up the fight, they came down to the Chubut River and surrendered to the fair-dealing white men, who had called them brothers and meant what they said. More pitiful still, when one brave old chief, wounded to death, was breathing his last in Buenos Ayres, he smilingly looked about him and said:

"I am going to the Welshman's heaven."

As said, for six years, the colonists struggled against failing hopes, eating only the bitter bread of charity, struggled to maintain themselves where they could perpetuate their language in its purity. In 1871 came the turn in the tide. A dam was built across the Chubut River in that year, and an irrigating ditch taken out. Of course they did not finish the ca.n.a.l in one year. It was a ditch thirty-six feet wide on top, eighteen on the bottom, and six feet deep, and year by year they lengthened it out. When the water kissed the warm, dark soil, it was like the kiss of the maiden on the lips of the grateful beast in the fairy story. The desert was transformed into a blooming garden.

And here is an interesting fact. For six years the colonists had eaten no bread, save what was given to them. They would, therefore, get clear of that evil first of all. They sowed wheat and barley, and they sow little else to this day. Whatever may happen, the Chubut man will never again have to ask for bread of anybody.

However, as said, progress was slow. The first ditch was not well located, and when an unusual drought came the water of the river did not reach the ditch, and the crop failed in spite of it. Then, too, there were the wild pests at all times--the locusts and the wild fowl. Even after eleven years of irrigation--in 1882--there was a failure from the drought. But that set them to building a greater ditch, of which they all now make boast.

About five hundred settlers came out in the early years of famine, but the number dwindled to less than two hundred in 1871. In 1880 the result of irrigation had swelled the number to eight hundred, and in 1885 there were double that number. In 1880 the settlers were scattered along the valley for about twenty-five miles from the mouth of the river, and there was a sort of a village at each end of the settlement. The houses were, as a rule, even then mere huts. Wagons, and carts, and horses were had in sufficient number. In fact, the Government at Buenos Ayres had provided all of these things. But the abundant harvests of 1880 and 1881 gave a boom to the settlement which the failure of 1882 only checked temporarily. The colonists went up stream to a valley thirty miles long beyond a narrow canon and took up land there. It was there that the head of the great new ditch was located. They have since gone to a third still higher. They have, in fact, taken up all the available land for seventy miles along the river. They have 270 miles of main irrigating ca.n.a.ls. The largest has a cross section measuring 75 9 36 feet, and the whole 270 miles cost 180,000. There are 3250 people in the settlement.

Some of the details of their condition from time to time remind one of the Yankee frontier settlements. They began their religious life in the colony with union services, and got on comfortably until they prospered.

Sectarians floated in on the waters of the irrigating ditch, so to speak, and there was a burst of zeal in building up denominations that brought a growth in church outfits quite equal to that in the area planted--rather larger, in fact. Among the 2000 people of 1883 there were two independent congregations with ordained ministers, who held regular services in chapels, of which "the walls were baked brick, the roofs were wooden, with a layer of mud on top, and the wooden benches had good backs to them," as one of them described the places of worship.

They had also a stone-walled chapel in a third place, and held regular services in school-houses in other places. The Methodists had a brick church with an ordained minister, at Rawson, and held services in the upper valley. The Baptists had a fine chapel at Frondrey, one of the little villages that sprang up, and an ordained minister for it. In fact, there were, in all, seven ordained ministers in the colony, and in 1884 the Episcopalians brought out the eighth. Every one of these had his 240 acres of land, and every one worked his own farm and got rich, as his neighbors did, raising wheat.

It is a significant fact that up to 1884 the colony did not have a single physician. It scarcely needed one. Still some one was sure to break a limb every two or three years, and the colonists were right glad when, in 1885, a man with a diploma came there and took up the usual allowance of land.

In 1883 a number of Welsh prospectors came from Australia to Chubut and went as far back as the Andes. They found several croppings of lignite, which at first were thought to be good coal, and that made a stir. The stuff is now used for fuel to some extent in the houses, and it is to be found that five tons will serve for about two tons of Welsh coal.

Then they found gold and went to work filing claims. The gold, however, lies only thirty-one leagues from a port on the Chili coast where a German steamer calls once a month, so that the diggings, which include placer as well as quartz workings, will hardly benefit Chubut save as a market for produce may be created. About $50,000 gold has been invested in the workings. The Yankee traveller is sure to be informed, too, that "a Texas cowboy named Marshall has a store at the camp, and he says the diggings beat California."

Then it was observed that the desert plains above the upper parts of the inhabited valley swarmed with guanacos as the desert plains of New Mexico once swarmed with antelopes. Droves of from 5000 to 7000 were seen. It was rightly argued that sheep could live where the guanaco did.

The Chubut colonists are going into the wool business, though slowly, and this is certain to be the greatest source of wealth to the colonists in the future. Bunch gra.s.s grows on the uplands. It is in scant quant.i.ty, but it is there. Water flows through the valley. The man who has water can hold all the sheep that can feed on the desert back of his farm, and that means at least two thousand. Sheep thrive wonderfully in the pure air and on the dry gravel of Patagonia. Everywhere along the coast the shepherds boast that every sheep is worth a gold dollar a year clear profit, besides the increase in the flock. But this statement should not lead any one to go to Chubut to begin life, because all the available land in the valley has been taken up.

Meantime, after irrigation brought crops, the subject of transportation had agitated the colonists. The mouth of the Chubut River had an impa.s.sable bar. Nearly all freight, previous to 1885, was either brought to New Gulf and carted thence over the old trail to the valley, or else was brought in tiny sailing vessels which, at the time, when the melting snow on the head waters made a freshet in the river, could work in over the bar. The surplus grain had to be shipped out in the same way. There was a weary and an expensive haul by the one route; by the other, a tedious and expensive waiting for high water. In 1885, a company was formed to construct a railway from the valley to New Gulf, and the Argentine Government granted a charter, and gave a subsidy of 204 square miles of desert land. I guess the subsidy isn't worth much, for there seems to be no way to get water on it. They even carry water from the Chubut valley to supply all employees along the line, now, but a road of a metre gauge was built, and a very good road it is, considering that English stock and materials were used.

Building the road involved the making of two new town sites--one on the gulf and one at the railroad terminus. That in the Chubut valley has been built up, but half a dozen wood, iron, and mud huts are all that can be found at Madryn, on the gulf. Still Madryn is an interesting town. It has a ruler, appointed by the President of the republic. He is called the Prefect. His district is a sub-prefect, and he is a sort of an autocratic Mayor. Lieutenants in the navy get all such appointments in Patagonia.

Madryn also has a Captain of the Port and a squad of sailors to help preserve the dignity of the Prefect, and the Prefect has an a.s.sistant Prefect, who ranks a little below the Captain of the Port. Outside of the official group, but on excellent terms with it, is the railroad group. This includes an agent, who is a well-educated Welshman, and a telegraph operator, who is the charming daughter of the agent. To rank with the non-commissioned officer and the Jack tars of the official group there is a foreman and a gang of railroad trackmen. Then there are two lighters afloat in the bay for the transfer of freight to and from the Argentine naval transports, which come down from Buenos Ayres once in three weeks. These lighters are excellent sea boats, instead of having the models that lighters in New York have. One is a schooner and the other is a sloop, and five men man the two.

The railroad has prospered moderately. It has 5000 tons of wheat to carry from the colony every year, besides some small packages of ostrich feathers, guanaco skins, and products of Indian workmanship. It carries in dry goods, groceries, and hardware, and several pa.s.sengers a month pa.s.s over it each way. A train runs over the road every time a ship comes to port--say once in three weeks. In fact, the company is going to extend the line up the valley. The people living seventy miles above the end of the road want better facilities for shipping their wheat, and they are going to have them. This branch of the road will very likely have a train once a week to accommodate local pa.s.senger traffic. In case the gold mines develop half the wealth they are expected to, the railroad will be carried right away up to the diggings.

Patagonia railroad building is not expensive. All Patagonia between river valleys is everywhere ballasted with proper gravel for a road-bed, and is so nearly level that the ties can be laid, as they were laid on Texas lines years ago, right on the natural surface without turning a shovelful of dirt. As compared with some Yankee railroads, the only railroad in Patagonia is no great affair; but when compared with some others it leaves them out of sight, because it pays dividends as well as develops the country.

To sum it all up, here was a colony that might well have been called a failure before the people reached their destination. It was called a failure by about every impartial observer who visited it during the first ten years of its existence. Nevertheless, in spite of the drought, in spite of alkali, in spite of homesickness, in spite of all the myriad drawbacks to which it was subject, it prospered at the last, and is now worth millions sterling.

But alas for Dr. Michael Jones of Bala College! Alas for Mr. Lewis Jones, now of the colony! They planted their hosts in the uttermost parts of the earth that the shade of Prince Llewellyn might flourish and his language be spoken in its original purity forever. So the shade did flourish and the language was spoken for many years, but when prosperity came there was an influx of other tongues, along with an Argentine Governor and an official staff. Spanish was the language of the Argentine, and was necessary for all official business. Under the Argentine law every child born in the colony was a citizen of the republic, and it was a republic of which even the descendants of Prince Llewellyn did not need to be ashamed. The Welsh youngsters, indeed, have grown up to look with pride to the broad blue and white stripes of the flag under which they were born. They are children of the desert--and they love that desert--love it so well that they never lose an opportunity to speak in its favor; and they speak of it with the soft vowels of the Castilian, rather than with the consonants of the Welsh.

CHAPTER IX.

BEASTS ODD AND WILD.

Let no sportsman or amateur naturalist be deterred from visiting Patagonia by the discouraging words of Darwin. When that famous naturalist had climbed the porphyry hills back of Port Desire, and, gazing away over the brown mesa, had seen little worth mentioning even by a naturalist save "here and there tufts of brown, wiry gra.s.s," and "still more rarely some low, th.o.r.n.y bushes," he went back to his diary in the cabin of his ship and wrote "the zoology of Patagonia is as limited as its flora." If Patagonia be compared with some parts of the tropics where the forests resound continually with the cries of birds and animals, where b.u.t.terflies and humming-birds fill the air, and the insects are seen or felt in countless thousands, then, comparatively speaking, the fauna is limited. And yet there were--and are--some forms of life in Patagonia--insects, for instance--which, if Darwin had happened along at the right time, would have made him think the country about as full of life as it needed to be to keep a human being on the jump. There are as many mosquitoes and punkies (gnats) in Patagonia as in any game country I have seen in the two Americas, but the absence of this sort of life at certain seasons is one of the advantages which it offers to the sportsman, if not to the naturalist. For the hardy seeker after the thrills of the chase, with incidental trophies, Patagonia offers inducements quite the equal, all things considered, of any other wild part of the earth.

Of the animals a sportsman could find there the first in point of numbers is the guanaco. My first view of the guanaco was from the companionway of the steamer in which I coasted the land. It was hanging in the rigging about the mainmast. The ship's captain had been away on a hunt, and had killed two, which were brought on board and hung up while I was writing in my diary down below. I afterward saw guanacos cantering over the hills unsuspicious of danger, and also fleeing toward a far country because certain that danger was near. They were even seen from the deck of the steamer as she ran down the coast. Although certain settlements have driven these animals from three or four old-time haunts, their number in Patagonia is like unto the number of antelope that used to range over parts of the United States. They are seen by the thousand.

In form and habits the guanaco is a very interesting beast. After a man has hunted it a while he comes to think it a model of beauty and grace, but at first view, even on the plains, it seems to the majority of people ridiculous. "It is like a long-legged calf with a neck three times too long," to quote the words of a Yankee sailor I found in Santa Cruz. As a matter of fact it has the body of a goat, but it stands from three to four feet high when full sized. The neck seems to be as long as the body, while the legs, which are as long as those of a deer, are really thicker, and seem thicker than they are, at least in winter, because of the length of hair. The color of the body of the full-grown beast is the red of a red cow, but the pelage is wool rather than hair until the animal is well on in years. However, the pelage of the legs is hair at all ages. In youth the wool is a light, almost a fawn color. At all ages the color of the back shades into white on the belly, while in extreme old age the guanacos are said to turn almost white all over. The track of the guanaco is something like that of a deer, though much larger, while the foot is peculiar in that it has at the under side a very prominent cushion, which projects below the protecting, forked hoof as the foot is lifted into the air, and which at all times probably supports the main weight of the body, making the step very light on the stony desert. The hoof is but a sh.e.l.l surrounding this bulbous cushion.

The cushion is covered with a rough but yielding skin, which, though rough, is not calloused as the foot of a barefooted man comes to be.

When Darwin was in Patagonia he wrote some pages about the guanaco, paying considerable attention to its swiftness, its peculiar shape, which indicated that it was really the humpless camel of the South American desert, and its curious cry when alarmed, the exact neigh of a horse. But more interesting than all this was a habit which he believed it had when about to die. Along the Rio Santa Cruz he found the ground under the brush actually heaped up with the bones of the guanaco. Animal after animal had crawled in under the brushy shrubs, and, lying down upon the bones of others that had come there before it, had breathed its last. He also noticed that when a guanaco was wounded by a bullet it immediately headed for the river. The same habit was observed on the Rio Gallegos, but in no other place than these two valleys.

With Darwin's words as a text, Mr. W. H. Hudson, whose _Naturalist in La Plata_ is the most interesting work on natural history ever written, has taken the trouble to reason out the cause for what he says "looks less like an instinct of one of the inferior creatures than the superst.i.tious observance of human beings, who have knowledge of death and believe in a continued existence after dissolution; of a tribe that in past times had conceived the idea that the liberated spirit is only able to find its way to its future abode by starting at death from the ancient dying place of the tribe or family, and thence moving westward, or skyward, or underground, or over the well-worn immemorial track, invisible to material eyes."

With this uppermost in mind, I made haste on reaching Santa Cruz to ask the gauchos and other citizens for horses and a guide to the nearest guanaco cemetery, but they did not understand me. So I got Hudson's book and showed them the picture of the dying guanaco, and translated as well as small knowledge of Spanish would enable, his touching description of the animal in the place of skulls. By and by they understood, and with one voice said:

"It is not so."

"But the bushes and bones are there--thousands of skeletons."

"Without doubt."

"Why, then, do you say the guanaco does not go there to die, or to escape an imaginary evil? Why does he go there?"

"It is very simple. We stand now in the lee of this house because the wind is very cold. Almost one winter in three the wind is much colder--there is a terrible winter. There is much snow, and ice over the snow. Every place on the mesa is covered. To escape the cold storms the guanacos seek the shelter of the bushes. The storm continues many days.

They can find no food; they cannot leave the shelter. So they die of starvation, one lying over another. Every plainsman has seen a thousand dead guanacos under the bushes after such a winter, not only here but in the cordillera as well."

However, though the guanaco does not have a dying place, it has a lot of characteristics sure to interest those who are lovers of natural history. Like the North American buffalo, it has wallowing places. On the plains of Patagonia, as on those of the Western States, great saucer-shaped hollows are seen in which the guanaco lies down to roll in the dust, but the Patagonian wallows are often much larger than any I ever saw in Kansas or Texas. The gauchos say this is because the guanacos resort to them in considerable herds--from thirty to one hundred--and at night sleep in them standing, heads out, in a ring, while the kids stand within the circle. This habit protects the young from the wild-cats and foxes. The guanaco has no effective defence against the a.s.sault of a panther save in flight. The old male guanaco with a herd of females to defend will fight when a panther attacks him unless the attack is immediately fatal. The canine teeth of the guanaco make a bad wound, and it can kick like a mule, but the panther is so quick and strong that the struggles of its victims are always hopeless.

In the right season each tough old male gathers a harem of from thirty to fifty females, over which he presides in lordly fashion, and in one respect the old fellow is a very good head of a family. He leads the females into the hollows, where the gra.s.s is most abundant, while he remains on the highest knoll of the vicinity keeping watch for the enemy, and contenting himself by browsing on the scant herbage he finds about him. At times, however, the guanacos live in vast herds, and then all the older males remain on the higher knolls as sentinels. Their sense of smell is very keen. It is well-nigh impossible to get within half a mile of the sentinels by travelling down wind--some say they can smell a party of hunters that is a full mile away, and even more up wind. If approached carefully on the lee side one may get very close, however, and then the action of the sentinels is something that makes the gauchos laugh. The way the old bucks prance and jump stiff-legged and paw the air and neigh horse-fashion is one of the funniest things the plainsmen see.

But, like the antelope, the guanaco is full of curiosity. With a little flag or even a handkerchief a man, after concealing himself on the lee side of a herd, can toll them within pistol range by simply waving the cloth in the air at brief intervals. It is likely that the animal distinguishes colors, for the use of two or three flags of bright but different colors excites them much more than one white flag will.

When a herd is fired at with a gun (something that happens rarely in Patagonia) the report excites, but does not necessarily start the beasts running. Indeed, the sight of the smoke may draw them toward the gun.

The wounded animal, if able to run, invariably plunges down the nearest declivity, and in the mountains this sometimes means a drop of hundreds of feet. If the animal is one of the leaders the whole herd with it will follow, sheep fashion. A gaucho, who had guided an English hunter from Punta Arenas up into the cordillera, said one shot of the Englishman's rifle one day killed over a hundred guanacos in this way. They all plunged over a lofty precipice. There was a camp of Indians in the vicinity at the time, and the result of the shot made the white man a very great medicine man in their estimation.

Guanacos can climb a mountain or run on a narrow ledge as well as a goat. Though found on the sea-beach, they also feed clear up to the edge of perpetual snow, and are quite at home in either locality. Their food is gra.s.s and twigs, but they are not found in the woods, save only as the natural parks along the foot-hills of the Andes might be called woodlands. Even there they avoid going into the clumps of trees.

Guanacos, when taken young, are readily tamed, and for two or three years, or until they get their full growth, make very pleasing pets.

They are fond of being caressed, are very playful, and will thrive on any food suitable for sheep or cattle. But in the mating season, after the third year, they become so vicious that it is dangerous for women and children to keep them about. The females are then particularly ill-tempered toward women. They show their dislike by jumping toward the person that excites their anger and striking with all four feet at once.

They also spit to a distance of five feet an acrid substance at the objectionable individual. If they knock one down, they will bite as well as jump on him.

The flesh of a guanaco that is under three years of age is very good; that of a yearling or under is delicious, and killed in the early fall, it is fat and tender; to my taste the young are the equal of any venison. The old ones are tough and rank. The Indians do not kill the old ones unless driven to it by starvation, as during a long storm. To the Indian, however, the guanaco is the mainstay of life. From the hide of the full-grown animals he makes his tent, and from the skins of the very young--preferably those of the unborn--with their silky fur he manufactures the great blanket-like wraps that form his distinctive dress. The skin of the hind legs is readily turned into an easy boot, and the skin of the long neck is dressed and cut into strips which form cords for the bolas, straps, and bridles, and horsegear generally--in short, serves about all the uses of leather. In the sinews of the back the squaws find excellent thread, and in the wool a material admirably adapted to weaving blankets and filling mattresses and cushions. Nor is that all, for the bones serve various uses, and the marrow is used in place of vaseline, as well as eaten.