by the cavalry of Cortez when they made their raid into Central America
and conquered that continent in 1535. This pair was handed down from
generation to generation, in the family of Mr. Sanchez, the “Minister of
Hacienda,” or Finance, of the Guatemala Government: they are made of
iron, with wide flanges to protect the feet and legs of the cavalier
from the high grass and brambles of the country through which he had to
ride. This style was long ago abandoned, and is now only seen in
museums.
[Illustration: OVER THE ANDES.]
He who wishes to make the journey from the Chilian to the Argentine
Republic and the east coast of South America has a choice of routes. He
may go by sea, around through the Strait of Magellan, which will cost
him fifteen days’ time and two hundred dollars in money, or he may climb
over the Andes on the back of a mule, a journey of five days, three of
which only are spent in the saddle amid some
[Illustration: MOUNT ACONCAGUA.]
[Illustration: USPALLATA PASS.]
of the grandest scenery in the world. The highest mountain in the
Western Hemisphere is Aconcagua, which rises 22,415 feet above the sea
to the northward from Valparaiso and Santiago, and in plain view from
both cities when the weather is clear. Chimborazo was for a long time
supposed to be the king of the Andes, and in the geographies published
twenty years ago it is described as the highest summit in the world. No
one has ever reached the peak of either mountain, owing to the depth of
snow and impassable gorges, but recent measurements, taken by means of
triangulation, give Aconcagua an excess of about 2000 feet over old
“Chimbo.” Scientists have reached an altitude higher than the summit of
either in the Himalaya Mountains of India, where Mount Everest is
claimed to rise between 27,000 and 30,000 feet. Humboldt made Chimborazo
famous, and very few travellers have gone beyond the point he reached;
but no serious attempt has ever been made to explore the summit of
Aconcagua, as the Chillanos do not often go where their horses cannot
carry them. In mountain gloom and glory Chimborazo is said to surpass
all rivals, standing as it does within sight of the sea, and surrounded
by a cluster of twenty peaks, like a king and his counsellors. But
Aconcagua is grand enough, and has nothing near it to dwarf its size.
The latitude in which it stands brings the snow line much lower than
upon Chimborazo and the other peaks of Ecuador, which are almost upon
the line of the equator, and the purity of the atmosphere gives the
spectator an opportunity to see its picturesqueness at a long distance.
From Santiago, Chili, there is a Government railway as far as the town
of Santa Rosa, which passes around the base of Aconcagua, and furnishes
the traveller with a most sublime panorama of mountain scenery. There
mules and men are hired for the ride over the Cumbre Pass to Mendoza, on
the eastern slope of the Andes, to which a railroad has been recently
opened by the Argentine Government. Here one can take a Pullman sleeper,
and ride to Buenos Ayres as comfortably as he can go from New York to
St. Louis, the distance being about the same.
This railroad was opened in May, 1885, with a grand celebration, in
which the Presidents of Chili and the Argentine Republic, with retinues
of officials, participated. The event was as important to the commercial
development of Argentine as was the first Pacific Railway to the United
States, as it opened to settlement millions of square miles of the best
territory in the republic, and furnished a highway between the two seas.
[Illustration: CAUGHT IN THE SNOW.]
The people of the United States have very little conception of what is
going on down in that part of the world. They do not realize that there
is in Argentine a republic which some day is to rival our own--a country
with immense resources, similar to those of the United States, situated
in a corresponding latitude, prepared to furnish the world with beef and
mutton and bread, and stretching a net-work of railways over its area
that will bring the products of the pampas to market. Geographers do not
keep pace with the development of this part of South America, and to
present accurate accounts of its condition should be rewritten every
year. Who knows, for instance, except those who have been there, that a
man can ride from Buenos Ayres across the pampas to the foot-hills of
the Andes in a Pullman car?
[Illustration: ROAD CUT IN THE ROCKS.]
The late war between Peru and Chili robbed Bolivia of all her sea-coast,
and the ports from which her produce was shipped, and at which her
imports were received, now belong to the Chillanos, who charge heavy
export and import duties. The opening of this railroad has caused the
trade of Bolivia to be diverted to the Atlantic, and the extension of
the line to the northward, which is already in progress, will make
Buenos Ayres and other cities on the river La Plata the _entrepots_ for
Bolivian commerce. It is not much farther now from the centre of Bolivia
to the Argentine Railway than to the Pacific coast, and the feeling of
resentment towards Chili
[Illustration: A STATION IN THE MOUNTAINS.]
makes the difference exceeding small. Long trains of mules are passing
up and down the mountains, and their numbers will constantly increase
until the Pacific sea-ports will see nothing that is grown or used in
the country which Chili so ruthlessly robbed. One great difficulty,
however, lies in the fact that from April to November the mountain
passes are blockaded with snow, and it is always dangerous, and often
impossible, to make the journey. Native couriers, who use snow-shoes,
and find refuge in “casuchas,” or hollows of the rocks, during storms,
cross them the year round, carrying the mails. Sometimes, indeed often,
they perish from exposure or starvation, or perhaps are buried under
avalanches. The passes are about thirteen thousand feet high, and are
swept by winds that human endurance cannot survive. During the summer
the journey is delightful, and though attended by many discomforts, has
its compensations to those who are willing to rough it, and who are fond
of mountain scenery. Ladies often venture, and enjoy it. Not long since
a party of thirteen school-ma’ams from the United States, who are
teaching under contract with the Argentine Government, crossed the
mountains to Chili, and had “a lovely time.” Plenty of mules and good
guides can be secured at the termini of the railways, but travellers
have to carry their own food and bedding. There are no hotels on the
way, but only “schacks,” or log houses, which furnish nothing but
shelter. Very often people who are not accustomed to high altitudes are
attacked with sirroche, from which they sometimes suffer severely.
The road over the mountains is always dangerous, clinging as it does to
the edge of mighty precipices and upon the sides of mountain cliffs, and
only trained mules can be used on the journey. During the winter season
the winds are often so strong as to blow the mules with their burdens
over the precipices, and leave them as food for the condors that are
always soaring around. These birds know the dangerous passes, and keep
guard with the expectation of seeing some traveller or mule go tumbling
over the cliffs. Cowhide bridges, the construction of which is not
satisfactory to nervous men, stretch across the ravines after the manner
of modern suspension-bridges, and a floor or path, made of the branches
of trees lashed together with hides, and just wide enough for a mule to
pass, is laid. Travellers usually dismount and lead their mules when
they cross these fragile structures, for the hide ropes which are
intended to keep people from stepping off do not look very secure. The
oscillation of these bridges is very great, and a man who is accustomed
to giddiness will want to lie down before he gets half-way over. It is
remarkable that so few accidents happen, and when they do occur it is
usually because a traveller is reckless or a mule is green. The foxes
sometimes gnaw the hides, but no accidents have occurred from this cause
for many years.
[Illustration: THE CONDOR.]
The journey on mule-back usually takes five days of travel, at the rate
of twenty or thirty miles a day, but good riders, with relays of mules,
often make it in three days. The whole route is historical, as it has
been in use for centuries. There is scarcely a mile without some
romantic association, not a rock without its incident; and tradition,
incident, and romance line the path from end to end. The Incas used the
path before the Spaniards conquered the country, and Don Diego de
Almagro crossed it in 1535 as he passed southward to Chili after the
conquest of Peru.
PATAGONIA.
The spinal column of the hemisphere, extending from the Arctic to the
Antarctic Sea, and called the Cordilleras, breaks suddenly at the foot
of the Southern continent, and is divided by a narrow and deep ravine
called the Strait of Magellan. Before the strait is reached, along the
western coast of South America are numberless islands, cast into the sea
by some convulsion of nature, like sparks flung from hammered iron. Few
of these islands have ever been explored, but they all bear a close
resemblance to the main-land in their geological formation, and it is
believed that deposits of copper, silver, and other minerals, as well as
coal, exist under their surfaces. On Chiloe, the largest of the Chili
archipelago, mining companies are already operating to a small extent,
but of the resources of the other islands little or nothing is known.
They rise in picturesque outlines from the water, some of them to an
elevation of several thousand feet, and the panorama presented to
voyagers in what is known as Smythe’s Channel is beautiful and grand.
This is a narrow fiord, named from its first explorer, scooped out, the
geologists say, by the action of ice during the glacial epoch, running
along the main coast, and protected against the violence of the ocean by
the numerous fragmentary formations that line the shore. A glance at the
map of Patagonia will show how many of these islands there are, and how
slender is the thread of sea which separates them from the continent.
The water in the channel is deep and smooth, but the passage is avoided
by navigators because of the powerful currents and the frequency of
snow-storms, which prevail at all seasons of the year. Vessels that take
this course are compelled to anchor at night, unless there is a very
bright moon, and always lie up when the snow falls, because of the
circuitous turns, and the danger of collisions with ships and icebergs.
Smythe’s Channel is so narrow in places that two steamers cannot pass
between the mighty rocks which rise on either side. Most of the
steamships prefer to risk the storms which rage outside, where they can
have plenty of sea-room, and shorten their voyages by sailing at night
as well as by day. There is no more dangerous sailing in the world than
off the west coast of Patagonia and around the Horn, and vessels bound
southward from Valparaiso are very lucky if they enter the Strait of
Magellan without catching a gale of wind.
[Illustration: CAPE FROWARD (PATAGONIA), STRAIT OF MAGELLAN.]
The glaciers of Switzerland and Norway are insignificant beside those
which can be seen from ships passing the Strait of Magellan. Mountains
of green and blue ice, with crests of the purest snow, stretch fifteen
and twenty miles along the channel in some parts of the strait. They
are by no means as lofty as those of Europe, but appear more grand,
rising as they do from the surface of the water in a land where winter
always lingers, and where the sun sets at three o’clock in the
afternoon. The line of perpetual snow begins at an elevation of only two
thousand feet, and water always freezes at night, even in the
summer-time. The highest mountains in Terra del Fuego are supposed to
reach an altitude of seven thousand or eight thousand feet, but the eye
of man has seldom seen them, covered as they are with an almost
perpetual haze or mist, and presenting difficulties which the most
ardent and experienced climber cannot surmount. The highest mountain
known in this region is Mount Sarmiento, one of the most imposing of the
Andean peaks, which rears a cone of spotless snow nearly seven thousand
feet, almost abruptly from the water at its feet. It stands in what is
known as Cockburn Channel, not far from the Pacific, and on clear days
its summit can be distinguished from the decks of passing ships. The
beauty of this peak is much enhanced by numerous blue-tinted glaciers,
which descend from the snowy cap to the sea, and look, as Darwin the
naturalist, who once saw it, said, “Like a hundred frozen Niagaras.”
There are other mountains quite as beautiful, but they sit in an
atmosphere which is seldom so clear as that which surrounds Sarmiento,
and cannot often be seen by voyagers.
The Terra del Fuego Indians, the ugliest mortals that ever breathed, are
always on the lookout for passing vessels, and come out in canoes to beg
and to trade skins for whiskey and tobacco. The Fuegians, or “Canoe
Indians,” as they are commonly called, to distinguish them from the
Patagonians, who dislike the water, and prefer to navigate on horseback,
have no settled habitation. They have a dirty and bloated appearance,
and faces that would scare a mule--broad features, low foreheads, over
which the hair hangs in tangled lumps, high cheek-bones, flat noses,
enormous chins and jaws, and mouths like crocodiles’, with teeth that
add to their repulsiveness. Their skin is said to be of a copper color,
but is seldom seen, as they consider it unhealthy to bathe. They are
short in stature, round-shouldered, squatty, and swelled, a physical
deformity said to be due to the fact that most of their lives is spent
in canoes. The women are even more repulsive in their appearance than
the men, and the children, who are uncommonly numerous, look like young
baboons. Their intelligence seems to be confined to a knowledge of
boating and fishing, and they exercise great skill in both pursuits.
Scientists who have investigated them say that they are of the very
lowest order of the human kind, many degrees below the Digger Indians.
[Illustration: FUEGIANS VISITING A MAN-OF-WAR.]
Although these people are in a perpetual winter, where it freezes every
night, and always snows when the clouds shed moisture, they go almost
stark naked! The skins of the otter and guanaco are used for blankets,
which are worn about the shoulders and afford some protection; but under
these neither women nor men wear anything whatever except shoes and
leggings made of the same material, which protect the feet from the
rocks. There is some little attempt at adornment made by both sexes in
the way of necklaces, bracelets, and ear-rings made of fish-bones and
sea-shells, which are often ingeniously joined together. The women will
sell the skin blankets that cover their backs for tobacco, standing
meantime as nude as a statue of Venus!
Their food consists of mussels, fish, sea animals, and similar sorts,
which they catch with the rudest kind of implements. Their fishing-lines
are made of grass, and their hooks of fish-bones. For weapons they have
bows and spears, the former having strings made of the entrails of
animals, and the latter being long, slender poles, with tips of
sharpened bone. They also use slings with great dexterity, which are
made of woven grass, and are said to bring down animals at long range.
During the day they are always on the water in canoes or dugouts made of
the trunks of trees, the whole family going together, and usually
consisting of a man, two or three wives, and as many urchins as can be
crowded into the boat. When night falls they go ashore and build a fire
upon the rocks, to temper the frigid atmosphere. Around this fire they
cuddle in a most affectionate way. The name of the islands upon which
they live came from these fires. The early navigators, when passing
through the strait, were amazed to see them spring up as if by magic all
over the islands every night at sundown, and so they called them Terra
del Fuego, or the Land of Fire. The English shorten the appellation, and
thus the place is known as “Fireland.”
No one has ever been able to ascertain whether these people possess any
sort of religious belief or have religious ceremonies. Across the strait
the Patagonians, or Horse Indians, are of a higher order of creation,
and perform sacred rites to propitiate the evil and good spirits, in
which, like the North
[Illustration: A FUEGIAN FEAST.]
American savages, they believe; but the Fuegians are too degraded to
contemplate anything but the necessity of ministering to their passions
and appetites. They eat fish and flesh uncooked, and appreciate as
dainties the least attractive morsels. Their language is an irregular
and meaningless jargon, apparently derived from the Patagonians, with
whom they were, some time in the distant past, connected. Bishop
Sterling, of the Church of England, a devoted and energetic man, who has
charge of missionary work in South America, with headquarters on the
Falkland Islands, has made some attempt to benefit these creatures, but
with no great success. He has a little schooner in which he sails
around, and has succeeded in ingratiating himself among the Fuegians by
giving them presents of beads and twine, blankets and clothing. They use
the first for ornaments, the second for fishing gear, but trade off the
other things for rum and tobacco the first chance they get. As long as
his gifts hold out he will be kindly received, no doubt, and his
devotion will meet with encouragement, but if he should land among them
without the usual plunder they would probably kill him at breakfasttime
and pick his ribs for lunch. Towards the Atlantic coast the savages are
of a higher order, and the bishop has established a missionary station
in a little town in which they live. His assistants have succeeded in
persuading the inhabitants of this village to wear clothing, and they
run a primary school from which much good may come.
The Falkland Islands lie off the coast of Terra del Fuego about two
hundred and fifty miles, and belong to the British crown. There is a
town of about eight hundred inhabitants called St. Louis, where the
Governor lives, and a coaling station is maintained for the benefit of
English men-of-war. The chief use of the islands otherwise is
sheep-raising, and the wool exports are becoming quite large. Nothing
else grows there, however, because of the low temperature and the
barrenness of the soil. One line of steamers touches at the Falklands
once a month or so, carrying provisions to the colony and bringing away
the wool.
One of the curious things about the Strait of Magellan is the
Post-office. In a sheltered place, easy of access from the channel, but
secluded from the Indians, is a tin box, known to every seaman who
navigates this part of the world. Every passing skipper places in this
box letters and newspapers for other vessels that are expected this way,
and takes out whatever is found to belong to him or his men. All the
newspapers and books that seamen are done with are deposited here, and
are afterwards picked up by the next vessel to arrive, and replaced with
a new lot. It is a sort of international postal clearing-house, and
sailors say that the advantages it offers have never been abused during
the half century the system has existed.
Every time a vessel passes through the strait the Fuegian Indians come
out in their canoes to show their sociability,
[Illustration: THE SIGNS OF CIVILIZATION.]
and trade what property they are fortunate enough to be possessed of for
tobacco and rum. The steamer we were on ran through several fleets of
dugouts, greatly to the danger of those who occupied them, as they
paddled across our course in the most reckless manner. In each of the
frail canoes were three or four people and several children, who
screamed and gesticulated in the most violent manner. They came so near
the ship that we could distinguish their features and hear their words,
which were clamors for _tabac_ (tobacco) and _galleta_ (food). In one
canoe stood an old hag with long gray hair, and a face that reminded me
of Meg Merriles. A more weird and witchlike being never presented itself
to human eye, and she did not have a thread upon her dirty skin from
head to foot. Stark, staring naked she stood in the group around her,
with the thermometer about forty degrees above zero, and, as she saw the
vessel did not propose to stop, shook her wrinkled arms at us, and
uttered curses loud and deep. There was a fire in the boat in which she
stood, and around it huddled another woman, naked, but with a guanaco
robe over her shoulders, and several children, while the father sat in
the stern and paddled his own canoe, leaving the wife or mother,
whichever she was, to do all the talking.
In another canoe stood a repulsive-looking man, who had taken off his
guanaco robe, and stood naked, flapping it at us, and yelling like a
lunatic. His companions were two naked women and several youngsters, and
they all joined in the chorus with a vigor that we expected would split
their throats, leaving the canoe to drift as it would, finally coming
into collision with another, at which there was a good deal of
scrambling, and an exchange of Fuegian compliments, the nature of which
we could not understand. What they wanted was rum and tobacco, having
acquired a taste for this pernicious weed from the sailors. For a plug
of “Navy” they would exchange a guanaco blanket that could not be bought
in New York for seventy-five dollars, as the guanaco is one of the
rarest and finest of skins. The anger and disgust that was pictured upon
the faces of these creatures when they found that the vessel was not
slackening her speed would have furnished a model for the expressions on
the souls that are lost. The passengers were about as much disappointed
as the Fuegians, for having all read and heard of them, we anticipated
much gusto, as the Spaniards say, in making their acquaintance.
Scientists have long differed as to whether the Firelanders were
cannibals, but this point has been recently settled by a practical
demonstration, and there is no doubt that they actually eat human flesh
when they can get it, and pick the bones very clean. In October, 1884,
during a snow-storm, the steamer _Cordillera_, of the Pacific Steam
Navigation Company’s line, struck a rock in the Strait of Magellan,
about forty miles west of Punta Arenas, and to save as much as possible
of the ship and cargo the captain drove her upon the beach, where she
now lies, almost within a stone’s-throw of passing vessels. The wreck
was soon after abandoned by all but two men, who were left in charge
until wrecking machinery could be brought from Valparaiso. One of these
men was William Taylor, a quartermaster or petty officer of the ship,
and his companion, an ordinary seaman. They were well armed, and it was
supposed were capable of protecting themselves, but it turned out that
they were not. One night I was sitting upon the rickety old dock at
Punta Arenas, waiting for the purser of our ship to take me on board,
when Taylor was introduced to me, and told his story in a most graphic
way.