All places that the eye of Heaven visits
Are to a wise man ports and happy havens.
Teach thy necessity to reason thus:
There is no virtue like necessity.
SHAKSPEARE: _Richard II_.
At six o’clock, A. M., Dec. 20, a man at the mast-head cried, “Land,
ho!” We saw the highlands of Tierra del Fuego, about a hundred miles
from Cape Horn. We lay on the water motionless. About a mile from
us was a brig apparently bound the same way. The captain ordered a
boat to be made ready; and the mate, one of the boatswains, and three
sailors, rowed to her. She proved to be the brig “Hazard,” Capt. Lewis,
of Boston, belonging to Messrs. Baker and Morrill, eighty days from
Malaga, bound to San Francisco, with raisins and lemons. The visitors
received much information, and gave papers,--which, though fifty-seven
days old, were gladly received,--some buckwheat, and other things; and
received kind tokens in return. The swell would often hide the boat
from the ship and the ship from the boat, except the upper sails. In
the afternoon the wind sprung up fair; soon we came close to, and the
captains had conversation.
Tierra del Fuego lies south of Patagonia, separated by the Straits of
Magellan. It has high hills, which, at a distance, look like domes.
Many bays indent the coast, causing it to bend frequently. Between this
district of country and Staten Land or Island, are the Straits of Le
Maire, twelve miles broad. Entering the Straits with a fair wind and
a strong current, on the morning of a bright, cool day, Dec. 21, we
went at the rate of thirteen knots. We came alongside of a great patch
of seaweed and kelp on which were eleven large birds. We had tacked
or had been becalmed for almost a week, losing nearly five days. We
therefore enjoyed our speed the more. The hills were picturesque in
the variety of their shapes; their jaggedness and grouping were beyond
imagination. One cluster was surmounted by an enormous stone, fluted
like a sea-shell, looking as if it were placed there for a memorial
purpose. There was another hill which terminated in the appearance
of a man’s head, the face upward, the features regular, and so much
resembling one of the sailors that it received his name. Flocks of wild
ducks, twenty or thirty in each, albatrosses, cape hens, cape pigeons,
penguins or divers, were abundant. These penguins float with only the
head above water, and dive often; they all made the scene most lively.
We sat or stood three or four hours enjoying the wild enchantment. It
was worth to any one a voyage from New York. We saw no trace of an
inhabitant. They are said to be of large stature, almost naked, their
skin and flesh toughened by the climate. They do no tillage, but live
on shell-fish and game. I shall always remember this region for its
wild beauty and seemingly intense barrenness.
We came up with a New-Bedford whaler; the name “Selah” was on her
quarter, whaleboats over her side, and men at the mast-head, looking
for whales or seals. We also descried a large ship ahead of us which we
overtook. She proved to be the “Cambrian,” Liverpool, seventy days out.
We enjoyed the sight of her, an iron vessel, with wire rigging, neat
and handsome.
[Illustration:
CAPE HORN. Page 84.
]
At length we saw Cape Horn Island, the object of our desire, and at
7, P. M., were abreast of it. Some high rocks stood about like
sentinels. We were within a mile of the Cape.
Cape Horn Island is the southernmost extremity of Tierra del Fuego,
in south latitude 55° 58´. It is the southern termination of a group
of rocky islands surmounted with a dome-like hill, out of which is a
projection like a straight horn. But Schouten, the Dutch discoverer,
is said to have named Cape Horn from _Hoorn_, in the Netherlands,
his native place. The whole hill is a bare rock; indeed, how could
anything, even the lowest forms of vegetable life, find root on a
place smitten as this is by the waves? Only the lichens, stealing with
seeming compassion over every form in nature doomed to barrenness,
succeed in holding on to these rocks. The hill is about eight hundred
feet high, its base environed by low, black rocks, with not a sign even
of marine vegetation. One line of these rocks looks like a fort, the
seeming gateway, higher than the rest of the wall, being composed of
perpendicular fragments. All along the base of the rough hill, low,
irregular piles, like a growth of thorns and brambles around a bowlder
in a field, constitute a fringe, as though Nature felt that the place
needed some appropriate decoration; and what could be more so than
that which she has here given? For a long space toward the termination
of the Cape, sharp rocks stand up in groups, and some apart, making a
gradual ending of the scene, all in agreement with the wildness which
marks the region.
The sight of this spot, one landmark of our continent, can never fade
from the memory of the beholder. Like many a distinguished object
it is of moderate size, its impressiveness being due not to its
bulk or height, but to its position. At first you are disappointed
in not seeing at such a place something colossal; you would have
it mountainous; at least, you would have thought that it would be
columnar. Nothing of this; you have the disappointment which you
feel on seeing for the first time a distinguished man, whom you find
to be of low stature, whereas you would have had him of imposing
appearance. But soon, however, you feel that you are at one of the ends
of the earth. Here the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans begin, the great
deep dividing itself into those two principal features of our globe.
Anything monumental, any thing statuesque, or even picturesque, here,
you feel would be trifling. Like silence, more expressive at times than
speech, the total absence of all display here is sublimity itself; you
would not have it otherwise than an infinite solitude, unpretentious,
without form, almost chaotic. Around this point it is as though there
were a contest to which ocean each billow shall divide; here the winds
and waters make incessant war; the sea always roars and the fulness
thereof. The rocks which finally terminate the Cape stand apart, as you
sometimes see corners of blocks of buildings where an extensive fire
has raged and the most of the walls have fallen in; but here and there
a shoulder of a wall overhangs the ruins.
We stood together as we passed the last landmarks, and sang,
“Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.”
It had been a day from beginning to end of constant pleasure, from the
moment that we entered the Straits of Le Maire. We had accomplished one
great design in our voyage. Would that the pleasant theory that musical
sounds leave their vibration in the air might have reality given to it,
and praise to God break forth from all of every language who navigate
the Cape!
We had reason to feel that we were not a great way from circumpolar
regions; for at a quarter before eleven, the night previous, there were
lingering streaks of pink light in the west. We never before read out
of doors so late in the evening as we did that 21st of December on deck.
We had been steering south, going five degrees below the Cape; then
we needed to turn and go northward; but the fierce winds made no
account of our plan. You may be several weeks trying in vain, as a
ship belonging to our firm was, to double the Cape; but by favoring
winds, we were only six days. Once only during this time had we a
full view of the Horn; our captain had been here six times, and now
for the second time only saw the Cape. Nothing lay between us and
the Antarctic Circle and the South Pole. The waves were Cape-Horn
swells, peculiar to that region. The sight of the ocean there was
wild beyond description. Now and then the sun would come out, but his
smile seemed sarcastic. Going on deck to view the tempest you are made
to feel, as the ship goes down into deep places, that you would be
more surprised at her coming up than if she should disappear. It is
a good time and place for faith. One of the Latin fathers said, “Qui
discat orare, discat navigare;” Let him who would learn to pray go to
sea. It is to be doubted whether there are many places on the globe
where one feels the power of solitude precisely as here. In the depth
of a wilderness, or among mountains, solitude is more like death; but
here it seems to have consciousness; you are spell-bound by some awful
power; there is an infinitude about these watery realms; it seems like
being in eternity. In the ascent of Mont Blanc, while gazing from the
Mer de Glace on those needles of granite, inaccessible except to the
eagle, I once felt that nothing could exceed the sense of desolateness
there inspired; but to be at the end of a continent, with two oceans
separating and forming a wild race-way where they go asunder, all the
winds and storms being summoned to witness the inauguration of two
oceans, their frantic uproar seemingly designed for the great occasion,
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego with their stupendous solitudes
listening to the clamor; and then the feeling that the next place
recorded on the map is the Antarctic Circle, with its barriers of cold
and ice, you are warranted in the conviction that you are as near the
confines of unearthly dimensions as you can be on this planet. You
think of home, and the thought of your separation from friends and
country and your consignment to these awful wilds, gives you a feeling
of littleness, of nothingness, seldom if ever experienced elsewhere.
And here is the proud ship that stretched her length in the pier at
New York so far as to hold her spar over the passing drays, reaching
almost to the opposite ware-rooms, now less than an egg-shell in these
waters,--a tiny nautilus, a bubble, whose destruction any moment,
unseen by any human eye, could not detain any of these proud waters to
be so much as a mound over her grave.
One day, before we entered the Straits and reached Cape Horn, along the
neighborhood of Patagonia, the sea was more than usually disturbed, a
ground-swell succeeding a gale lifting the waves higher than we had
seen them, so that the motion of the ship had no uniformity for any
two consecutive moments during the larger part of the day,--a cold,
cheerless day, the sun now and then shining faintly, the wind ahead,
no chance for a nautical observation, everything to the last degree
forlorn. A bird came in all this turmoil and lighted in the water near
the ship, and swam about us. The sight suggested the following lines:--