With the Battle Fleet Part 15

The temperature record and the rich gra.s.ses on the plains told the story of sheep farming here. There isn't much snow. Now and then there is a fall of from two to three feet, but for the most part the snowfalls are only a few inches in depth. The greatest climatic drawback is the searching winds. These winds blow hardest in summer and give a decided chill to the air. The fleet was here in the best season of the year. On two days out of the six it was comfortable to wear light overcoats. The temperature was something like our April weather. Occasionally it rained for a few minutes, but four of the days were absolutely clear. We came in when there was a high wind and a drop in the temperature and we feared that the stay would be most uncomfortable. It was anything but that from a climatic standpoint.

So goes the statement quoted early in this article, that it doesn't rain every day in the year in Punta Arenas because some days it snows. The value of the other statement that the bay is shallow is shown by the fact that if the port hadn't been crowded the fleet would have anch.o.r.ed within half a mile of the city. As it was, it anch.o.r.ed about a mile out and the water was so deep that three of the battleships had to move in a quarter of a mile because there is a limit to the length of anchor chains. As to the impossibility of landing more than once a week, it may be said that there never was an hour when the launches could not land.

Once or twice the wind came up and the little craft tossed about a bit, but that happens in any port. So goes another of the many informing things that have been said incorrectly about this much abused and misunderstood place.

After learning something about the business of the place the inquirer naturally turned to the form of government. He learned that it was a place without politics because it has no suffrage. The Governor and three alcaldes, with a consulting board of paid city officials, run things. The alcaldes are representative men. One represents the foreign interests especially. They pa.s.s rules and ordinances which are approved or disapproved by what would be called in Santiago the Colonial Office.

These laws are rarely disapproved. The alcaldes are wise in their generation. They do not adopt unpopular measures. Public opinion is so strong that any alcalde who got to cutting up and attempting boss rule would find himself so cut off from the rest of the people with whom he must live and do business that he would feel as if he had been banished.

There is a movement to make the territory a province with political powers of its own, but it is being fought vigorously.

"We are so well governed," said a resident of ten years to the Sun man, "that we do not need a change. We can put the responsibility right on the one man in our present situation. Nothing goes wrong and our taxes amount to about $3 on $1,000 in a year. Real estate and live stock are about the only things taxed."

Well governed as Punta Arenas is it is curious to note how certain customs in munic.i.p.al government exist the world over. Did you notice that police official who just went by? Well, he keeps his carriage and private coachman and his people dress well, and his home is above the average in its pretensions. His salary? Oh, about $1,500 a year. You see they can't pay high police salaries in a town of 12,000 and only about fifty policemen. But there are certain resorts which sailormen and others support in all remote places of any size, and the authorities somehow seem not to observe them too closely--well, there's no need to go into the matter further.

Some things, however, are a little different in Punta Arenas from other places, because it is one of the few large free ports in the world. You can import anything duty free. Chile had to adopt this plan to build the place up. Even ocean freight is high to this far off place. Argentina had to make several of its neighboring ports free in consequence of the advantages of Punta Arenas, and so you have about five free ports down in this neck of the woods.

Some curious effects have followed, the most interesting of which is that Punta Arenas is one of the greatest centres of smuggling in the world. You will not get any of its merchants to admit it openly. For instance, it is said that there are more Havana cigars imported into Punta Arenas than into all the rest of Chile put together. They are not consumed here. They go somewhere. Punta Arenas does not begin to use all the millions of goods imported. A little figuring would show that. The outside population in the territory, amounting to about 5,000, could not take care of the rest after the wants of Punta Arenas are satisfied.

Why, there are no less than twenty-two coasting steamers engaged in trade from here, to say nothing about scores of sloops and schooners darting in and out among the islands and channels that run far up the Pacific coast. One of the merchants gave an instance of the smuggling.

He said:

"Not long ago I had several hundred articles of limited sale consigned to me by mistake. I couldn't sell them here and didn't want to send them back. I sent some somewhere else. They sold like hot cakes. You see the price was so much lower than you could buy them before in that same city where they were sent. It is true that there is a great deal of quiet wealth here, but really you mustn't ask too many questions."

An interesting sidelight was thrown on this subject when this same man was talking about the illumination of the city by the American fleet's searchlights on the night before the fleet sailed. Fully seventy-five beams were thrown from the ships. They swept the town fore and aft. Some of the ships concentrated their lights in one spot. Five beams from our ship were centered upon the church steeple in the plaza. It made the place so light that you could read a newspaper anywhere. The entire town was in a light almost like that of midday.

"I wonder that it didn't make some of our people run into holes to hide," said a citizen who knew things when he was speaking of the brilliant illumination.

As is well known, Punta Arenas started out in life as a penal colony. It will surprise most of those who know the place and probably some of the residents themselves that it is still a penal colony legally, because the penal laws were never repealed. Indeed, it is even now a place of exile. Every few months some man arrives from the upper part of Chile who has been banished to the place. Once here he is welcome to stay or go as he pleases. These men are usually embezzlers or undesirable citizens from some other cause in small places where the machinery of justice is inadequate to fit the crime. The culprit is ordered to Punta Arenas.

It was in 1843 that Chile took possession of all this territory, wresting it from Spain. She established a penal colony at once in Port Famine, a few miles from here. In 1849 she removed the colony to Punta Arenas. Two years later there was mutiny of the guards, led by Lieut.

Cambiaso. There was a good deal of slaughtering before it was quelled.

In 1877 there was another similar mutiny, and then Chile withdrew the guards and let Punta Arenas get along as a commercial place.

The free port regulations followed, merchants came dropping in, fur trading became profitable and then came the sheep industry and Punta Arenas graduated into the really modern city it is. Where it is possible to make money there you will find people these days, for the rovers of the earth are just as active as ever and neither cold nor heat, sickness nor desolation will stop the march of commerce.

There are still many citizens of Punta Arenas who came here in the days of the penal colony. Many of them were political prisoners. Many were mere youths who had gone wrong. Scores of them have remained and have grown up to be good citizens and solid business men, a credit to any community. Still the memory of the past remains with some, as was shown when the Sun man was walking along the street with a merchant and stopped to look at a finely dressed party of men and women going down to the pier to go off to the Connecticut on the day of the elaborate reception on board. The men were in frock coats and tall hats and the women in beautifully fitting afternoon gowns.

"That's as fine a looking group of men and women as you would see in any of our ports," said the Sun man.

"Perhaps so," said his companion, "but one has to smile a little when one thinks of some things."

"A past?" inquired the Sun man.

"Oh, yes," was the answer, "but one shouldn't refer to that. Only it does make me smile."

This man hadn't received an invitation to the reception. He had a past that would bear the closest scrutiny. His point of view was responsible for the tone of his remarks. Nevertheless, how many of our own frontier towns could stand inspection when it comes to investigating the careers of some of their solid citizens?

Here is a town which has fine free schools, where the Methodist mission conducted by the Rev. J. L. Lewis not only has a congregation of 300 but an English school of forty pupils; where the Episcopal mission has a congregation of 400 and a mixed school of 100 children; a town where there is very little crime, and what there is is chiefly disorderly conduct; a place where everybody is prosperous, apparently; where life is sometimes dull, but always comfortable, with good government, and where a man can stand on his own merits as he is and not as he has been.

The bluejackets enjoyed their stay here thoroughly. Only the special first cla.s.s men were allowed on sh.o.r.e; to have turned all the men of the fleet loose would have swamped the town, for there were more persons in the fleet than in the city. The men who did get sh.o.r.e leave made for post card shops first. In a day nearly all the best cards were gone. The supply lasted throughout the stay, but now and then you would meet a party of bluejackets hunting the town over for better specimens. So serious was this drain upon the town that the supply of postage stamps ran out on several days. It was necessary to go to the treasury vaults here to replenish the post office.

The bluejackets then swamped the fur stores. Many really fine specimens of furs can be secured here and at moderate prices compared to those in the United States. The bluejackets spent thousands upon thousands of dollars, and so did the officers. Fox, guanaco, seal, otter, alpaca, vicuna, puma--any kind of fur that seems to be in the market, except tiger's skins, was to be found. Then the plumage of birds, ostriches, swans, gulls and so on was sought out eagerly. Some of the skins were fully dressed and some not, but the commonest sight in Punta Arenas for the six days the fleet was here was hundreds of sailors making for steam launches with great bundles of furs under their arms. Many a woman in the States will have the opportunity of explaining to inquiring friends that Tom or d.i.c.k or Bill got that fur for her right across from Tierra del Fuego, and many an officer will show a floor covering with something of the same satisfaction.

Having purchased his furs and postal cards and having taken samples of the various brands of libation, as sailor men usually do in foreign and home ports--it must be said in truth there was almost no excessive drinking because only special first cla.s.s men were ash.o.r.e--Jack turned his attention to other things. He soon found that there were dozens of very good saddle horses in town and he promptly went horseback riding.

Scores of sailors could be seen galloping about the streets. Amusing?

Yes, in a way, but not because they could not ride. Many of them rode like cowboys. You see a large part of the young blood of this fleet, indeed most of it, comes right off the farms, Western farms, too, and those boys know how to ride and handle horses. The people gaped at them and then took it as a matter of course that an American Jack tar could do almost anything.

The officers, too, had their fun ash.o.r.e. In two hours after the fleet was anch.o.r.ed many of those off duty were seen in riding costume cantering about the streets on fine horses that the chief of police put at their disposal. An hour or two later the launches began to land roughly dressed men with rifles and bags. They were hunting parties, going right out to get foxes and pumas and all sorts of wild things in the suburbs. Finally a mysterious group landed from the Vermont. They had ponchos and picks and shovels and guns.

"Where you going?" was the inquiry on all sides.

"Ask Connolly," was the answer.

Now, Connolly is the famous writer of sea fiction, particularly Gloucester fishing stories, the warm personal friend of the President, and he once served in the navy two months as yeoman, at Mr. Roosevelt's suggestion, so as to pick up local color.

"Going out to camp on the hills and discover gold!" was all you could get out of Connolly. Late the next afternoon the bedraggled party swung into town again. Connolly's hand was tied up. A more trampy looking outfit never struck a town.

"What's the matter?" asked the crowd surging about Connolly on the pier.

"Oh, nothing at all," he said, and then he looked faint and sighed. Then began a quest for information as to whether they found gold or shot anything, and how was Connolly hurt. Finally it was whispered that a Tierra del Fuego Indian who had stealthily crossed to the mainland had shot at the party and the Mauser bullet, Mauser, mind you, had nipped Connolly and had caused a bad flesh wound. Then it was a puma that had leaped upon him and he had strangled it to death. Then the story went that he had been shot accidentally by one of the party. Then he had broken his fist in a fierce personal encounter with savages. All through this period of rumors and yarns all Connolly could do was to nod and make a show of great nerve in not noticing the terrible pain under which he was suffering.

Well, there had to be an end of it, and it came out that Connolly had slipped in wading a stream and in trying to keep himself from falling had put a finger out of joint. He grinned over the joke and when he was asked for details of the shooting he said:

"Honestly, we did see some puma tracks!"

That, so far as results were concerned, was the experience of all the hunting parties. The Yankton took some of the officers across to Fireland, about twenty miles, one day. They got some fine birds and a fox or two and had really good sport. Punta Arenas not providing any hunting, the officers took to receptions for the rest of the stay.

One thing that keeps impressing itself upon the patriotic observer as this fleet goes from port to port should be mentioned. It is the painful lack of the American flag on shipping. The English and German flags are seen everywhere. All over this South American country you also hear one lament from merchants. It is that there is no American line of steamships trading directly all along the coast. Everywhere they tell you of the great opportunities for American goods down here.

"If you Americans would only find out what we want and then learn how to pack the goods and then would establish steamship lines there is immense wealth to be had in our trade. Give us American steamship lines," is the burden of general comment.

This is not the place for a discussion of the revival of the American merchant marine or the best methods to attain that end. The writer of this has no desire to go beyond the province of his a.s.signment, which is to chronicle the doings of the fleet, but surely one may mention with propriety the one remark in every port that the presence of the fleet has brought forth.

Punta Arenas was like the rest in its craving for American trade. It may be the jumping off place of the earth, but if you did have to jump off a ship and should land here you might be in far worse places, and if you had to jump off from here the fact would still remain that you might jump from more undesirable places. The American sailor men were practically unanimous in voting Punta Arenas all right and a tremendous surprise.

CHAPTER VIII

THROUGH MAGELLAN STRAIT

Fog, Shoal, Wind and Tide--Most Awesome Scenery in the World, but Not a Place to Anchor--Start at the Witching Hour of 11 p.m.

on Friday Brought Only Good Luck to the Long Line of U. S.

Leviathans, Flanked by Its Torpedo Flotilla--Vessels Wabble Where the Tides Meet, but Steady Hands Curb Them Back to the Course--The w.i.l.l.ywaw--Island Post Office and Cape Pilar, Where No Ship-wrecked Seaman Ever Escaped.

_On Board U. S. S. Louisiana, U. S. Battle Fleet_, AT SEA, FEB. 15.

When word was cabled from Chile just before Admiral Evans's fleet swept in and out of Valparaiso harbor on February 14 that the fleet had pa.s.sed through the Strait of Magellan safely, there was probably a feeling of relief in Washington. Admiration for the successful performance of a great feat of seamanship was probably expressed generally throughout the world. The pa.s.sage accomplished, it was easy to say that all along every one who had any sense knew that it would come out all right and not for one moment had there been any real cause for anxiety. Of course, of course!

Nevertheless all the world knows there was great anxiety and even dread lest something serious might happen in navigating this most treacherous and dangerous pa.s.sage in the world. Even the foreign press said that it would be a supreme test of American seamanship to take a fleet of sixteen battleships, to say nothing of the auxiliaries, through those waters.