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[Illustration: MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION.]
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
COPYRIGHT, 1895
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
_Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_
The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N.Y.
TO ALL WHO LOVE THE RED ABORIGINES OF THE AMERICAS
AS GOD MADE THEM.
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 book-buyers 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 Figue, 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.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
CHAPTER I.
AFTER CAPE HORN GOLD 1
CHAPTER II.
THE CAPE HORN METROPOLIS 27
CHAPTER III.
CAPE HORN ABORIGINES 47
CHAPTER IV.
A CAPE HORN MISSION 79
CHAPTER V.
ALONG-SHORE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO 107
CHAPTER VI.
STATEN ISLAND OF THE FAR SOUTH 137
CHAPTER VII.
THE NOMADS OF PATAGONIA 151
CHAPTER VIII.
THE WELSH IN PATAGONIA 168
CHAPTER IX.
BEASTS ODD AND WILD 183
CHAPTER X.
BIRDS OF PATAGONIA 201
CHAPTER XI.
SHEEP IN PATAGONIA 215
CHAPTER XII.
THE GAUCHO AT HOME 228
CHAPTER XIII.
PATAGONIA'S TRAMPS 250
CHAPTER XIV.
THE JOURNEY ALONG-SHORE 260
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
PAGE
MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION _Frontispiece_
GOLD-WASHING MACHINES. PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO 14
PUNTA ARENAS, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN 30
YAHGANS AT HOME(1) 48
THE MISSION STATION AT USHUAIA(1) 92
USHUAIA, THE CAPITAL OF ARGENTINE TIERRA DEL FUEGO(1) 108
AN ONA FAMILY(1) 128
ALUCULOOF INDIANS(1) 134
GOVERNMENT STATION AT ST. JOHN. (FROM A
SKETCH BY COMMANDER CHWAITES, A.N.)(1) 138
A TEHUELCHE SQUAW(1) 158
TEHUELCHES IN CAMP(1) 166
GAUCHOS AT HOME 228
AMONG THE RUINS AT PORT DESIRE, PATAGONIA 270
SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA(1) 276
THE GOVERNOR'S HOME AND A BUSINESS BLOCK IN
GALLEGOS, THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA(1) 282
Note 1: Reproduced by permission 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."
THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN.
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. I could not learn definitely either the name of the
first man who found gold in the vicinity of the strait, or the exact
locality in which it was found. I talked with miners and merchants of
the region on the subject, but no one knew anything about it worth
mention. An _Official Memoria General_ on the subject of Mines, printed
in Buenos Ayres in 1889, says that "several years before 1867 it was
known that gold existed on the east coast of Patagonia, and also in the
little streams that run from different points of the Andes. This fact
has been confirmed in various places and at different times by Chilean
miners and shipwrecked seamen." And that is the best information I could
get on the subject.
Early in 1869 Commander George Chaworth Musters of the English navy,
visited Punta Arenas, en route for a journey across Patagonia with the
Tehuelche Indians. In one of the stores of the town, where he stopped
for the purpose of "purchasing tobacco and other necessaries," he found
some nuggets of gold. He speaks of them incidentally along with the
Indian weapons, girdles, and other curios, that the store contained, but
a Yankee sailor from the schooner _Rippling Wave_, who happened into the
store while Musters was there, became enthusiastic over it and said:
"Ah, that's the stuff we used to grub up in a creek in Californy. I
guess if the old boat lays her bones on these here shores, I'll stop and
turn to digging again."
In 1877 and again in 1878, Don Ramon Lista, an Argentine explorer and
writer, visited Punta Arenas, and on his return to Buenos Ayres he
printed his experiences in a pamphlet. In that he says:
The creek called Las Minas that bounds the settlement on the north
abounds in grains of gold; and from 1866 until 1877 many natives of
the island of Chiloe have lived well on the daily product of their
labors in washing the gold-bearing sand.
In the year 1876, a small schooner engaged in the seal fishery, and
commanded by a noted Argentine sailor, Don Gregorio Ibanez, was stranded
near Cape Virgin, the extreme southeast corner of Patagonia. The crew,
without exception, had the good fortune to escape to the land with some
provisions and other valuables, including a shovel. The shovel may seem
to be a novel tool for shipwrecked seamen to carry through the surf,
but Don Gregorio knew what he was doing.
Patagonia is a desert region very much like certain parts of the United
States. One may travel hundreds of miles without seeing a drop of sweet
water, and yet with a shovel water a-plenty may be had by him who knows
where to dig. Don Gregorio, having landed his provisions, put a man at
work digging in the sand not very far from the surf in search of water.
Whether he found water or not tradition does not tell. The story tellers
all forget about the water as they relate how, when the digger had
gotten down about three feet, he began to throw out a layer of black
sand such as no one of the crew had seen before--a black sand that was
dotted all over with little and big dull yellow particles. That was such
an odd-looking sand that Don Gregorio and the digger and all hands had
to take a proper look at it. And when they had taken this look, they
almost went crazy with excitement, because those yellow particles were
pure gold.
But, as I said, neither this discovery nor the gold that was dug from
Las Minas creek at Punta Arenas, nor the stories of these doings which
were carried to England and to California by ships passing that way, had
any effect in creating a rush to the diggings near the straits.
In explanation of this indifference, it may be said that the diggings,
even of Las Minas creek were, on the whole, rather lean. Instances of
considerable finds are mentioned by the old timers of Punta Arenas. Men
cleaned up the stuff by the ounce, in spots, but the run of what men got
was "mere day wages." The find of Don Gregorio's sailors was not
considered of any importance--the tiny nuggets were supposed to be a
stray deposit, and not indicating any bed of gold-bearing sand. The
stuff lay in the sand of the beach, and who had ever heard of such a
thing as placer diggings in the sand along the shore?
In 1877 as many as 120 men worked the sands of Las Minas creek and made
day wages at it. In the United States the fact that 120 men with hash
bowls could wash out even "mere day wages" would create a rush to the
region, while the finding of an occasional nugget "of the weight of 300
grammes," as occurred in Las Minas creek, would create a stampede, of
course, but in the Spanish-American countries the conditions and the
people are different.
However, a time came when even the people of Punta Arenas got excited.
The steamship _Arctic_ of one of the lines running through the strait
was, in 1884, wrecked on Cape Virgin very near the place where Don
Gregorio's sealing schooner went ashore. Like the inhabitants of the
Bahama Islands, the people of Punta Arenas used "to thank God for a good
wreck." The _Arctic_ was a remarkably good wreck, for she was a
well-found, handsomely fitted passenger ship. A motley crew of men
hastened from Punta Arenas to the beach at Cape Virgin, some to get what
they could from her lawfully, and some to get what they could in any
way. It is said now that some one of the number was familiar with the
story of what Don Gregorio's sailors found when digging for water, and
so the old story of gold discoveries there was retold as the gang smoked
and talked and sorted their plunder. Thereat some of them went digging
"just for luck," and found something more exciting even than the silk
fittings, chronometers, cordage, and anchors which they had taken from
the _Arctic_--they found gold.
One Fred Otten cleaned up seventeen kilos (37.4 pounds) of gold in the
course of two weeks, they say, and that sort of luck was enough to
rouse even the phlegmatic wreckers of the Straits of Magellan.
Here, then, at the wreck of the steamship _Arctic_, is found the real
beginning of the story of the Cape Horn gold diggings. In those days
Punta Arenas was a supply depot for a fleet of sealing schooners that
eventually destroyed the rookeries of the region to the south. The
sealing sailors took a hand in with the gold washers. They did more than
that. They had, as they would have said, a severe look at the ground
round about as well as at the layer of sand in which the gold was found.
The lofty banks--in fact, everything in sight from the beach--was what
geology sharps would call an alluvial formation. The lofty precipices
were composed of layers of clay, sand, pebbles, shells, the debris of
prehistoric seas and floods. In one of these layers--a layer that
cropped out under the tide waters--was gold galore. Jack couldn't
explain it, and he didn't want to; but when he had helped to skin the
gold-bearing layer from the clay as far as he could reach, he remembered
that he had seen just such beaches with banks behind them elsewhere--on
Tierra del Fuego, on New Island, on Lennox, on Navarin, on Wollaston, on
Hermit, on Cape Horn itself. He had seen those lofty banks from the
decks of sealing schooners, and he was game to go to them to see if
there was gold in the sand along the shore there as there was at Cape
Virgin. Why shouldn't there be? And there was.
Nor were the citizens of Punta Arenas the only ones excited by this find
of gold dust in the sand at Cape Virgin. The Argentine Government sent
an engineer to examine the region, and the opinion formed by the
engineer was that "the gold-bearing sands of Patagonia are richer than
those of California and Australia." So says an old public document.
Further than that, "there was much agitation in Buenos Ayres among
speculators in mines who had great hopes that grand fortunes might be
obtained easily in Patagonia. A great number of persons solicited from
the government concessions of mines of gold. But as the greater part of
the solicitors had never been in Patagonia, and were obliged to gather
their information from others as to the desirable points, it happened
that much confusion arose."
"Much confusion" just describes what happened. Many concessions were not
only issued on overlapping claims, but on the same claims, and there
were many heart-burnings and feuds over patches of sand that were not
worth anything.
One Don Gregorio Lezama, with a capital of $70,000, organized an
expedition, and sent it out with sluices and wind-mill pumps to supply
the sluices. They reached the diggings and set up both sluices and
pumps. Then they found that when the wind did not blow the pumps could
not supply the sluices with water, and when the wind did blow the men
could not supply the sluices with gold-bearing sand, because that sand
was found only where the waves would then prevent the work of the men.
So the wind-mill outfit was abandoned and another pumping arrangement to
be worked by mules was sent out. The record contains this paragraph as
to the subsequent doings:
The company continued its operations for more or less months, and
obtained some pounds of gold; but the general outlook was not very
encouraging, the work was suspended, and the company liquidated
itself.
So it happened, of course, to the majority of people who went in the
rush to Cape Virgin diggings. They eventually suspended operations and
liquidated themselves. Nevertheless a number had "struck it rich," and
that, as said, started the search for the precious metal along the
stormy coasts and under the towering precipices of the islands away
south to Cape Horn.
My first view of a Cape Horn mine camp was obtained on the east coast of
Tierra del Fuego. I had taken passage on an Argentine naval transport
that was bound on a voyage with supplies for the officials and troops at
various stations which the Argentine Government has established in
recent years throughout the region. To promote the development of its
territories the government carries prospectors and their outfits at very
moderate charges, considering the kind of navigation. Accordingly this
transport had on board four men and about three tons of provisions and
other supplies to be landed at El Paramo, the first mine camp
established on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego.
Paramo is a Spanish word meaning desert. It is a very good name for the
camp. When one has heard the story of this desert camp he will have
gained some idea of the life of a prospector and miner in the Cape Horn
region.
The founder of El Paramo was one Julius Popper, one of the pioneer
prospectors of Tierra del Fuego. He was, in fact, the first prospector
to make a journey across the island, though missionaries, of whom a
curious story will be told at another time, had explored it on another
quest. Popper was an engineer of rare attainments--a civil, mechanical,
and mining engineer--good in all three branches: an astronomer; a
linguist who spoke and wrote a dozen languages fluently. He could with
equal grace and precision conduct a lady to dinner or knock all the
fight out of a claim jumper. Unfortunately, when just beginning to
realize on his investments in Tierra del Fuego, he died at the hands of
murderers. He was poisoned in Buenos Ayres by men whom he had offended
in the south.
In the year 1886 the Cape Virgin diggings were so far worked out that no
more than day wages--a paltry $5 a day, as the miners call it--could be
had. Only the plodders would remain there, and Julius Popper was never a
plodder. So an exploring company of eighteen was gotten together, with
pack horses and a mining outfit, together with arms, ammunition, and a
permit from the Argentine Government to use them whenever necessary.
The landing was made at Future Bay, opposite Punta Arenas. It was in the
month of September, the spring of the southern latitude. Snow lay so
deep on the mountains that a track had to be cleared with shovels for
miles. Then the brush was elsewhere so thick that axes had to be used to
open a passage for miles, but after five days' labor they got to Santa
Maria River, where they found eight men at work on a sluice taking out
about 700 grains of gold a day. This was mere day wages, and they pushed
on until they reached Useless Bay, and then took an easterly course
which they held clear across the island, reaching the coast at the north
of San Sebastian Bay.
Here, in a tongue of sand that encloses the northeast side of the bay,
they found the gold they were looking for in a layer of black sand,
exactly like the layer that had been found at Cape Virgin, although
there was no bank of any kind behind the beach.
Having staked claims here they went away south, discovering and naming
capes, rivers, and ranges of hills, with here and there more placer
gold. It was an open prairie country, with a species of sagebrush on it
such as is found in Patagonia, but instead of a desert they here found
plenty of water everywhere, and sometimes too much in the shape of
swamps; but, unfortunately, the gold was usually found where there was
not a running stream within miles. It was apparent that all sluices
would have to be supplied by means of pumps.
Eventually they fell foul of the Indians. A shower of arrows came at
them from the brush, but all fell short. The number of Indians was
estimated at eighty, armed with bows. The eighteen white men turned
loose Winchesters in reply, the Indians lying down while the fire
lasted, and jumping up to discharge their arrows when it slackened. By
the time the magazines of the rifles were empty the Indians abandoned
the fight. One gets an idea of the quality of the white fighters from
the fact that but two of the Indians were killed, and the further fact
that when the fight was over Mr. Popper posed his men in the attitude of
troops repelling a charge, took a position himself astride one of the
dead Indians, and then had the outfit photographed for subsequent use,
on the cover of a pamphlet in which he described the journey he had
made.
To the camp called Paramo, that was established in consequence of
Popper's expedition, came, as said, the Argentine naval transport,
bringing four men and some tons of supplies, on the morning of May 12th.
Considering its age, the number of men employed--from thirty to forty--,
and the fact that it is also a government station, having a prefect, a
chief of police, a schoolmaster, a secretary to the prefect, and a squad
of soldiers to maintain the dignity of the officials, it was a
remarkable camp. There was just three buildings in sight--a
boarding-house for the miners, a home for the mine bosses, and a
combined stable and storehouse. The camp of the government was said to
be located two leagues back in the country. The buildings were of wood,
roofed with corrugated, galvanized iron. They were huddled together so
that they looked from the ship as one building. They were on the usual
mine-camp model of North America--one story high, box shaped, and with
small windows and no superfluous doors. A barbed wire corral stood at
one side of the buildings, which were located so near the beach that a
high surf at spring tide was sure to send the foam quite to the
foundations on which they stood. Indeed, one of them was protected from
the surf by a sort of a wooden sea wall.
Beyond the houses stretched a low yellowish grassy plain that was very
like a Nebraska prairie in appearance, and a league away to the north
rose a low range of treeless hills.
The diggings lay right in the beach. When Popper first discovered the
claim the black sand that contained the gold lay in a bed of from three
to four inches thick, that was for the most part under a layer of coarse
gravel two to three feet thick, though in some places the black sand was
found free of any cover at low tide.
Of the richness of the diggings in the early days it may be said that
the mine was discovered in September, 1886. Popper had to return to
Buenos Ayres and organize a company to work the deposit as well as
perfect his title to the claims according to Argentine law, and then
ship a steam pumping plant with sluices and material for the camp to
the locality. This all took time, and it was not until the end of the
following antarctic winter that he got his plant in operation. He was
then able to pass an average of fifty cubic yards of sand through his
sluices per day. From this he cleaned up in the course of the first
year, after the discovery, 154 pounds (weight avoirdupois) of pure gold.
As another indication of the richness of this territory, I can say that
we took on a government official who had been at the station two leagues
back considerably less than a year, but he had cleaned up enough gold to
satisfy him. He was going home to Buenos Ayres, rich. He had worked
diggings outside the Paramo claim, using common sluice boxes.
While this easily-obtained gold-bearing sand was being worked off, the
miners observed that the supply was renewed somewhat by every storm that
raged, and further, that when a storm happened to come at the time of
the spring tides, a very much larger quantity of gold-bearing sand was
washed up by the waves than in ordinary storms. This had happened, too,
at Cape Virgin, but the renewal of the gold supply by the storms was not
so notable there. However, it appears that eventually a time came when
the miners at Paramo were able to work off all the black sand between
storms. So it happened--so it happens in these days that the miners sit
down and smoke their pipes till the storm comes and goes. After the surf
of the storm is gone and the tide runs out, a fresh layer of black sand
is found with gold in it. The miners say the sand is washed up from a
streak that crops out somewhere below low tide. They think that this
layer could be reached by sinking a shaft near the buildings, but they
can't sink a shaft profitably on account of the water coming in. The
black sand lies on clay, and all the layer, and the other layers above
it, are, so to speak, afloat with water. So they work only after a heavy
surf. The weather, on the average, keeps them busy about half the time.
The land is controlled by a German-Argentine corporation, of which Herr
Carlos Backhausen and Herr Bruno Ansorge are superintendent and foreman.
The men work the sand on shares, and do so well that, paradoxical as it
may seem, there is difficulty in keeping a full gang of men at work. The
trouble is, that, as soon as the men get a few ounces of dust to their
credit, they must take it and go away to Punta Arenas and swap it for
such joys as may be had in that tiny metropolis.
At Paramo, on the beach, they now use a combination of wooden sluices
and a copper-plate machine with which all gold miners are familiar, but
which could not be briefly described here. The riffles in the sluices
save the coarser gold, while the mercury on the copper plates takes up
the flour gold as it drifts away over the plates. Water for all the
machines is pumped from the sea, and it is worth while telling that
experiments there show that some pay streaks can be profitably worked
with salt water when fresh water fails to save a satisfactory return.
Geologists find this gold-bearing layer of black sand (it is a magnetic
iron sand) a most interesting study. They say the deposit at Paramo is a
continuation of that found at Cape Virgin, and that deposit is found at
intervals on the Patagonia coast to the Gallegos River. The geologists
are even confident that it crops out at intervals for over a thousand
miles along the Patagonia coast--always below the water line. Of course,
this bed of sand was deposited where it is now found by the action of
water, and it must have existed at one time in the form of a reef or
vein a thousand miles long in some prehistoric range of mountains. What
a lead that would have been for some lone prospector!
[Illustration: GOLD-WASHING MACHINES. PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO]
Returning north from Paramo on the east coast of Tierra del Fuego, the
transport entered the Straits of Magellan and went to Punta Arenas. From
Punta Arenas we went down through Cockburn Channel to the Antarctic
Ocean, and then, turning east, cruised through Brecknock Pass,
Desolation Bay, Whale Sound, Darwin Sound, and Beagle Channel via the
Northwest arm. Thence we coasted along east and up through the Straits
of Le Maire on the north side of Staten Island, which we followed to St.
John Bay on the east end. These are positively the wildest, most
dangerous waters in the world. As will be told, the hidden reefs and the
whirling tornadoes formed combinations that made experienced travellers
look serious, although in a steamer that was as good a seaboat as ever
floated. And yet the prospectors of Punta Arenas have sailed all over
that route, summer and winter, in twenty-five catboats, looking for
gold.
At Ushuaia, the capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, a small village
in Beagle Channel, I fell in with Harry Hansen, a Punta Arenas
prospector, who for six months had been cruising about the islands to
the south of the channel, and was on his way home very much disgusted
with the life of a prospector. He, with a brother, had faced every kind
of a storm known to the Cape Horn region. They had been obliged to live
for weeks, as the Indians do, on limpets and clams only. Their only home
had been the tiny cabin of a 25-foot sloop. As a result of the six
months of hardship and work they had about twenty-five ounces of gold
dust. So they sold their sloop and took passage with us for the Gallegos
River. As we steamed along they told stories of gold hunting around Cape
Horn.
Lennox Island is just now the centre of interest in that region. Lennox
has high banks and sandy beaches, exactly like those of Cape Virgin, and
the gold is found in a layer of black sand that crops out below sea
level, and is washed up within reach by the waves. But, according to the
Hansens, the best of the diggings there were worked out. There was no
longer any fresh, unworked ground, with its layers of dust that could be
scraped up with a table knife at the rate of three kilos a day, and so
Lennox was not worth the attention of any enterprising prospector. The
plodders who were willing to carry mercury to put in the sluices, and to
sit down and wait for the storms to bring up fresh sand could make a
couple of guineas a day easily enough, but the Hansens did not want any
such wages as that.
Under the point of New Island, very appropriately called the Asses'
Ears, a wide beach was pointed out as the location where an
extraordinary find was made. A party from Punta Arenas had landed there,
and had sunk a wide shaft several feet into the sand, looking for the
gold-bearing layer, but without finding it, although the indications
along shore were good. They abandoned the spot after a day or two and
went away. Then another party came along some time later, and just for
luck concluded to sink the well a little deeper. That was the luckiest
conclusion they ever came to.
Within one foot they struck pay dirt, took out over 100 pounds weight
(48 kilos) within a month, and sailed away content. Their story, when
told at Punta Arenas, sent a host of eager fellows down there to get
what was left, and, singular to relate, about every man who went there
among the first three boat-loads did well. But when I was passing this
point only the smoke of the camp-fire of one lone gold-digger could be
seen faintly beneath the Asses' Ears. He was the last of the plodders,
according to the Hansens, and was likely to become as rich and as mean
as some folks they knew in Punta Arenas--men willing to get rich by
saving and scrimping out of a paltry $10 a day.
And then there was the little bay on the Tierra del Fuego mainland,
called Port Pantaloons. No man of any experience ever thought of landing
there to look for gold. One glance was sufficient to show that no gold
could be found there. So everybody supposed, at least. Instead of steep
banks, showing the well-known layer formation of Cape Virgin, was a
gentle, grassy slope, with a brook that came splashing down a woody
ravine. It was a pretty enough place--in fact, the scenery was probably
what made a party of seven greenhorns from Punta Arenas, out with a
little schooner, put in there and land.
Did I believe in the old saying "A fool for luck"? Well, if I didn't I
would after living in Punta Arenas a while. These seven greenhorns made
a camp and went washing for gold at Port Pantaloons. At the end of five
weeks to a day from the time they left Punta Arenas they were back
again, and had exactly four kilos of gold (say nine pounds) each. And
every man of them took the first steamer for Europe, intending to settle
down and live on the interest of his money instead of having a good time
in Punta Arenas, as he might have had.
Of course, there were a lot of people at Punta Arenas who made haste to
go down to Port Pantaloons to clean up what these greenhorns had left;
but, remarkable to tell, when the experienced miners came to wash where
the greenhorns had been, there was found nothing left to clean up. The
greenhorns had found a pocket, and had cleaned it themselves.
And then there were the Cape Horn group and New Year's Island off the
north coast of Staten Island. The Hansens had visited both localities
and had found, as they said:
Plenty of the stuff, but it was too fine for our sluices without
mercury. Besides, we didn't have a proper ship for these waters.
She was only a ten-tonner. If you want the gold you can have it,
but nobody from Punta Arenas will help you get it. It takes too
much capital to set up copper-plate machines there, and those that
have the capital haven't the pluck to face the sea in these waters.
I suppose you could average fifteen grammes a day without mercury
if that would satisfy you.
But of all spots in the Cape Horn region, Sloggett Bay, on the south
coast of Tierra del Fuego, about forty miles west of the Strait of Le
Maire, is the most tantalizing. More expeditions have been fitted out in
Punta Arenas to go to Sloggett Bay than to any two gold diggings
besides. Almost every expedition has gotten gold, and yet never did an
expedition there pay the outfitters. Indeed, more lives have been lost
trying for Sloggett Bay gold than at any two points besides. And that is
saying a good deal.
There is a man now in Punta Arenas who went down to this bay in a
well-built little schooner, which was manned by fourteen men all told.
They had heard of the gold found there--gold "in nuggets as big as
kernels of corn"--, and nothing should stop them in the work of getting
it, they said. They moored their little craft with long cables and
chains, and made everything as snug and safe as the most experienced
sailors and sealers could suggest. Then they went to work, stripping off
the six-foot layer of gravel that overlies the gold-bearing sand and
carrying the latter up out of reach of the waves; for they had to work
at low tide. The gold is all under water at high tide.
They were a hardy lot and enthusiastic. They worked all of every low
tide, and ate and slept during high water. They got on well with their
work, for a time, but they made a terrible mistake. They slept in their
schooner and kept no lookout--trusted to their moorings to hold them
fast. One night they went to sleep, as usual, well-tired from hard
labor. Then came one of those fearsome gales that characterize the
region. With a speed and power that are beyond description, it picked up
the schooner on the crest of a wave and dashed it into kindling wood on
the beach--dashed out the lives of thirteen of the men as well. One only
was left alive, and, curiously enough, he was entirely uninjured.
"The first I knew that there was a storm," he said, "was when I woke up
lying on the beach, with the wreckage around me."
This man did just what might be expected, they say, of any one of the
Cape Horn miners. He camped on the beach, and worked away at the pay
streak as best he could, until rescued by other prospectors; and he is
still a gold seeker in the Cape Horn region.
Sloggett Bay is really no bay at all. It is a roadstead with sheltering
walls on the northerly and westerly sides, and a very good bottom to
hold an anchor. It is about as much of a harbor as a ship would find on
the bar off Sandy Hook, save that there are mountains along shore
instead of low, sandy beaches. For a northerly or westerly gale the
shelter is as good as any one could wish, but the waves from the
southeast drive in with appalling fury. Indeed, any southerly gale is
dangerous, for the whirling squalls slew a small boat around until
broadside to the combers, and then the end comes before the unfortunate
gold hunter has time to think twice.
The gold of Sloggett Bay is marvellous gold. It is, as said, nugget gold
as distinguished from gold dust. The traditional "nuggets as big as
kernels of corn" are to be had there. I have seen them myself, and when
one has seen a handful of such stuff he does not wonder that prospectors
keep trying again and again, in spite of the fair certainty of death.
The pay streak at Sloggett Bay lies under water, as it does elsewhere
throughout the Cape Horn region, but it is harder to get, because it can
hardly be said to crop out at all. One must strip off about six feet of
sand and gravel at low tide, and then shovel out the pay streak, carry
it up clear of high tide, and there wash out the gold. Of course, when
the tide comes in again the space stripped of the covering sand is
recovered, and stripping must be done over again at the next low tide.
That is very discouraging work, but no form of coffer dam yet devised by
the miners has saved it.
They all agree that there is only one way in which the Sloggett Bay
field can be worked, and they think that that way would probably fail
too. The ideal Sloggett Bay outfit would be a big steam dredge, fitted
to scoop up sand, gravel, and pay streak all together, and after running
the stuff over the sluices and copper plates, to discharge the debris
in a lighter, that could be towed away and emptied in water too deep to
work. If such an outfit could hold on for a week, they say it would pay
for itself. If it could hold on for a month it would make its owners
rich. That it might hold on for a week or two is reasonably probable,
but the chances are that it would become a mass of wreckage even before
it reached the bay. The prospectors say that no dredge ever built for
harbor work could stand a southeast gale there for an hour, and yet the
sailors among them say that a dredge built specially for the work on the
lightship model, with proper ground tackle for mooring fore and aft,
could stand the gales there as well as the storms on the Georges Bank of
Massachusetts are weathered by the lightship.
Among the stories the miners tell of the luck they have had is one that,
whether true or false, is interesting, for even if false it shows that
the man who told it was an original liar; as a matter of fact, I have no
reason for doubting the story. Mr. Theo Benfield, whom I met in Punta
Arenas, said that during a journey from the strait up the coast he
stopped one day under one of the vertical earth banks called barancas in
that country to pick out a fossil that he saw protruding. The relic
proved to be a part of a mastodon's lower jaw, having two teeth still in
place. It was in bad condition, and he was about to throw it away, when
he saw that in a split in the top and side of one tooth was a bit of
some foreign substance to which he applied his knife. He found that it
was gold, that had, as he believed, been deposited there in fine grains
by the action of water, and that the grains had united as deposited. The
gold, as he says, was in a split in the tooth evidently made there when
the jaw was broken. He related the story in support of a theory in
regard to the origin of nuggets which he held, thus: Gold, as it comes
from the broken-down quartz veins is usually very fine, but as the
grains are carried along by the water they fall into little cavities,
where, by the action of chemicals in the water, they are united. The
split in the old tooth had at some time been lying in a place where gold
dust had silted into it until it was about full, and the particles
uniting had formed a curious nugget. Unfortunately Mr. Benfield was more
interested at that time in getting gold than in questions relating to
the origin of nuggets, and so smashed the tooth to get the stuff. He
got, he says, over eight grammes from the tooth. If his story be true,
he might have obtained many times the value of that much gold for the
relic intact, but he did not think of that at the time, and so we have
only one man's word in relation to the matter.
It is a remarkable fact that, in spite of all the prospecting done, no
gold-quartz veins have yet been found. Louis Figue, a merchant at
Ushuaia, in the Beagle Channel, showed me a specimen of nickel ore that
had yielded a remarkable per cent. on the first assay; but the only bit
of gold ore I saw or heard of was a small piece of free-milling stuff
belonging to Bruno Ansorge of Paramo. It was rich, but where the vein
was none could tell, for it was from a bit of drift rock called float by
the miners, and had been picked up between Useless and San Sebastian
Bays.
Very likely the placer gold found in all the streams of Tierra del Fuego
(stream gold as distinguished from that in the beach), and that in the
streams emptying into the Straits of Magellan, comes from veins yet to
be found up in the mountains where the streams rise. Very likely
systematic search would discover the veins. But the search would have to
be made under circumstances that would make the fair-weather prospectors
of Colorado and the grubstake eaters of the Mojave desert gasp. The
mountains of the Cape Horn region are snow-topped the year round. The
cold is not so intense as the early travellers would make one believe,
but there is a strength and a twist to the gales--especially a
twist--that is beyond description. And the gales come every day in
summer and every week in winter. Expeditions have traversed Tierra del
Fuego with horses, but the cheapest and the most comfortable way (in
spite of the danger) to prospect the region is from a well-found boat.
Moreover, every land expedition must contain enough men to keep up a
military guard, because of the hostility of the Indians, while two
well-armed, sober men, can defend a well-found boat from the savages,
and if skilful and cool can usually escape the danger of storms.
But neither from boats nor from a land expedition has any one as yet
been able to explore the higher parts of the mountain sides. Indeed,
where nothing else prevents it, the tropical luxuriance of the evergreen
beeches and magnolia brush heads off the hardy prospector. It is hard
work climbing up rocky gulches and declivities under the most favorable
circumstances, but when one must face fierce gales of wind and at the
same time hew his way through a solid mass of brush covering the whole
space to be explored, the task becomes too great even for a Yankee
prospector. It never has been accomplished, and possibly it never will
be accomplished; but, as they say very often down there, who knows?
There is not a mine camp in all the Cape Horn region south of the
strait, though Paramo, with its three buildings, and say thirty men, is
known as a camp. The placers, as found on almost every sandy beach of
the region, are all soon worked over, and thereafter pay only day wages.
So no camp or village springs up, as would happen were a rich true
fissure vein to be found. But Ushuaia, in the Beagle Channel, the
capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, has three stores and a small
mixed population, besides the troops that maintain Argentine dignity,
and, with its occasional Indian visitors, its happy-go-lucky
architecture, and its heaps of empty bottles, is not unlike a North
American mine town.
The headquarters of the Cape Horn miners will be found at Punta Arenas.
The peculiarities which makes Punta Arenas at once one of the most
interesting, and one of the most disappointing towns in the world, will
be described in the next chapter but it may be said now that miners'
supplies--picks, pans, clothing, and food--are cheaper here than at any
other miners' supply town in the world. But while a man may get these
things at a low price, he has to buy a boat instead of the burros he
would buy in the States to carry his outfit. A couple of burros cost say
$35 in Colorado, but here he must buy a sloop or a catboat, and he ought
to buy a schooner fifty feet long instead. Now any kind of a boat fit to
carry even the amphibious prospector of the Cape Horn region costs at
least $100 in gold, and must be fitted out at a cost of from $25 to $100
more, not to mention the mining outfit proper.
The prospecting sloop of the Cape Horn region is usually of the model of
the little oyster sloops to be found about the harbor of New York. The
hold is stowed full of provisions, tools for mining, and lumber for
sluices. Naturally these prospectors carry a much better supply of food
than prospectors elsewhere do. The Rocky Mountain prospectors with their
burros must needs be content with meal, beans, bacon, and, perhaps,
coffee, but in the Cape Horn region they carry a great variety of stuff
in tin cans and Chili claret by the half barrel. All this costs money,
but it is none too good for that climate. And even the best-provided
outfits are sometimes away from home so long that the supplies are
exhausted.
They sail away south feeling quite certain that they will be back soon
with their vessel ballasted with gold, but the shortest time spent away
from port by any party I heard of was that of the seven who returned
from Port Pantaloons in five weeks. The Hansens were away eleven months
in 1892-93.
Every year some sail away, and the sail disappears beneath the white
peak of Mt. Sarmiento, plainly seen from the water front of Punta
Arenas. After three or four months the "White Wings outfit" or the "Mary
G. outfit" is casually mentioned by the bar-room groups as one that
should be heard from before long. Two or three months later the outfit
is mentioned frequently and with ominous looks and shakings of the head,
while an anxious-faced wife or mother is seen hurrying to the beach
whenever a sail appears in the south, to learn if it be the one she
thinks of as she lies awake every night listening to the Cape Horn
gales. She goes down quickly, but she comes back slowly and with a dry
throat as she learns that it is neither the _White Wings_ nor the _Mary
G_.
The region seems but a narrow space as one looks at the maps, but it is
a wide one with labyrinthian channels and hidden bays, the ports of many
a missing sloop and catboat of which never a trace will be found to
tell the tale of disaster. It is a region where no man with a wife or
other person depending on him should enter, but for the young and
independent fellow, who can gain vigor and courage in facing the mad
freaks of an Antarctic gale, there is no place better than that beyond
the Straits of Magellan. He may not get rich--the chances are that he'll
be glad to work his way north in the stoke hole of some steamer--but he
will have had an experience that will make him contented to live
thereafter in the milder region of Uncle Sam's domain, and will,
moreover, fit him to make his way there better than he could have been
prepared in any other way.