CHAPTER VII.
The next morning, having said good-bye to Isidoro, who was stopping some days with the Indians before coming down to Santa Cruz to accompany me to Sandy Point, we started off at a brisk gallop, which in about three hours brought us to the broad valley down which the Santa Cruz River rolls its rapid and tortuous course.
The weather was already sensibly colder than at St. Julian. On our road we encountered several snow and hail-storms, and were therefore not sorry when we at last arrived in front of Pavon Island, where there is a small house, built many years ago by an Argentine, who lived there for the purpose of trading with the Indians—a business still carried on by its present inmate, Don Pedro Dufour.
On hearing our shouts, the inmates of the island, i.e., Don Pedro and his peon, came over to us in a small boat, in which our effects and persons were safely transported to the island. The horses and dogs had to swim over as best they could, and a very hard and cold job they must have found it, as the current of the river runs with extreme velocity, something over six miles an hour.
The house into which Don Pedro gave us a hearty welcome, was built of adobe and stones, and contained two dwelling-rooms, a kitchen, and a store-room. There was another smaller house on the island, used as a store-room for the sugar, biscuit, aguadiente, etc., which Don Pedro barters with the Indians for guanaco capas and ostrich feathers.
In the long grass behind the house a troop of horses was grazing, together with four or five fine sheep, with which, judging by their splendid condition, the pasturage of Patagonia evidently agreed. A pig was grunting and clamouring greedily for food in a pen hard by; ducks, pigeons, and other poultry were pecking about the yard; a thrush was singing in a cage hung up outside the house, and altogether there was quite a homely, civilised look about the place which I should not have expected to find, considering that it is the only fixed human habitation in that immense desert, which extends for a distance of some seven hundred miles, from Chubut to Sandy Point—a desert whose area is twice that of Great Britain, and whose only inhabitants are a few ostrich-hunters and Indians.
Pending Isidoro's arrival, I made several excursions in the neighbourhood of the island, amongst others, one to the port of Santa Cruz, where in the hollow of a sheltered ravine stands the settlement of M. Rouquand. The houses, of which there are several, built of timber brought from Buenos Ayres for the purpose, I found to be little the worse for wear or weather.
The cañon where these houses stand is still called 'Les Misioneros,' for it was there that some missionaries resided in 1863, who laboured for a time at the attempted conversion of the Tehuelches to Christianity, without, however, meeting with the success their endeavours deserved.
It is a pity that M. Rouquand's courageous attempt at colonising that desert place and founding an industry, whose success would have been an incentive to further enterprise, should have been thwarted by Chili's having taken umbrage at his occupying a miserable piece of ground, of no possible value to anybody, without having previously gone through the formality of asking their ratification of the concession granted him by the Argentine Government.
The port of Santa Cruz is formed by the confluence of the river of that name and its tributary, the Rio Chico, which at this point expands into a broad bay, capable of affording shelter to a number of ships, and of easy access from the ocean, there being about fifty feet of water over the bar at high tide.
The river Santa Cruz varies in breadth from four hundred yards to nearly a mile, and runs along a winding valley, which extends in a direct line to the westward. In 1834 an expedition under Admiral Fitzroy, composed of three light boats, manned by eighteen sailors, started up the river, with the object of ascertaining its source; but having ascended a distance of 140 miles from the sea, and 240 by the course of the river, want of provisions obliged him to turn back, especially as, finding no diminution in the volume of its waters, he inferred that its upper course must be along the base of the Andes, from north to south, and that its source must probably be near that of the Rio Negro, in lat. 45° S.
In this conjecture he was at error, for in 1877 Dr. F. Moreno successfully determined the source of the Santa Cruz as being taken from a lake situated in lat. 50° 14′ S., and long. 71° 59′ W., some miles from Lake Viedma, with which, however, it has no visible communication. This fine sheet of water measures thirty miles from east to west, and ten miles at its greatest breadth; its depth Dr. Moreno was unable to ascertain—with a line of 120 feet he could find no bottom at a short distance from the shore.
According to the same authority the greatest depth of the river is seventy feet, but the rapidity of the current, in some places as much as fifteen miles an hour, must have prevented reliable soundings being taken.
Near Lake Viedma is a volcano, the Chalten, which, according to the Indians, still throws out quantities of ashes. At the time Dr. Moreno was there, a column of smoke was issuing from its crater.
The country around Santa Cruz River differs in no way from that I had already traversed, one of the peculiarities of Patagonian landscape being its complete sameness. The plains, which occupy the greater portion of the country, extend along the Atlantic Ocean. The line separating them from the fertile mountain regions is extremely sharply defined. Beginning at Cape Negro, Magellan Straits, lat. 53° S. and long. 75° 50′ W., it runs thence west-north-west to the north-eastern extremity of Otway Water, following the channels of Fitzroy Passage, and the northern shores of Skyring Water to long. 72° W., and then extends along the eastern shores of Obstruction Sound and Kirke Water, running then due northward towards Lake Viedma. These plains rise almost uniformly, 300 feet high, one above another, like terraces, and are traversed occasionally by ravines and flat-bottomed depressions, which latter frequently contain salt lakes. The formation of the country is tertiary, resting on porphyry and quartz, ridges of which often protrude through the surface. Near long. 70° W. the plains are capped with a layer of lava, about a hundred miles in width.
Darwin accounts for the regularity with which the plains rise one over the other by the supposition that the land has been raised in a mass from under the sea, the upheaving movement having been interrupted by at least eight long periods of rest, during which the sea ate deeply back into the land, forming at successive levels the long lines of escarpments which separate the different plains.
In that strange country the vegetable kingdom is as little varied as the aspect of the landscape: from Chubut to Sandy Point, from the sea-coast to the Cordilleras, one meets the same few species of miserable stunted bushes and coarse grasses.
The following is a cut showing the formation of the country at Port St. Julian:*
* From a perforation made by E. de Ville Massot, C.E.
Of bushes, the most frequent are the jume (Salicemia) and the calafaté (Berberis axifolia). The former plant is remarkably rich in soda, as will be seen by the following analysis of its ash:
| Chloride of sodium | 19·38 |
| Sulphate of lime | 9·50 |
| Carbonate of magnesia | 1·94 |
| Phosphate of potash | 12·15 |
| Carbonate of potash | 7·50 |
| Silicate of soda | 7·80 |
| Carbonate of soda | 41·73 |
| 100·00 |
Though they are so little favoured by nature, still I must confess that in the sober-hued Patagonian landscapes, with their grave breadth and stern severity of outline, and in the grand monotony of solemn silence and solitude pervading their barren plains, there is something which has left a far deeper impression on my mind than has the brightest and most varied tropical scenery. Standing in the midst of one of those seemingly endless plains, one experiences an indefinable feeling of awe, akin to that which the contemplation of the ocean produces, only, perhaps, more impressively grand; for the ocean is ever noisy and restless, the pampa eternally silent and still.
During my stay at Santa Cruz, nothing of importance occurred, if I may except a ball given by the Indians at the Rio Chico, in honour of somebody's marriage or funeral: I forget which. An Indian who came to the island to get the rum, which is a sine quâ non at all their entertainments, invited us to assist at the ball—an offer which we readily accepted.
On arriving at the camp, a very lively scene presented itself to our eyes. As is customary on such occasions, several mares had been killed, and roasting and boiling was going on at numerous fires. Everyone was feasting in the greatest good-humour, which on our approach was further heightened, scouts having already brought the news that we were coming with the aguadiente.
The advent of the latter was greeted with loud acclamations; some of the older men gathered round the cask, which was speedily tapped, and then with great unction and solemnity they proceeded to taste the liquor, in order to see whether it had been overwatered. Several decided grunts of satisfaction, however, showed that these aged fathers approved of its strength; whereupon a general and doubtless equitable distribution of the spirit took place, and before long the whole camp—men, women, and children—had ample opportunities for judging of its merits for themselves.
Presently a dance was organised. The men who took part in it were all specially painted for the occasion, and wore long feathers on their heads. The dance itself was a monotonous jig, executed to the excruciating music of various drums or tom-toms. The women, strange to say, do not dance; at least, they did not as long as they were sober.
As the evening wore on, after vast quantities of meat had been consumed and innumerable dances had been performed, special attention began to be paid to the aguadiente, and the fun consequently soon began to get very fast and very furious.
Long before midnight everyone was more or less drunk, and the ball which had commenced with becoming order and solemnity had now degenerated into a wild orgie. The flames from the different fires, strangely blended with the pale moonlight, cast a lurid glare on the dusky bodies and painted faces of the revellers, who, mad with excitement and drink, were dancing, singing, and whooping in deafening concert. A more gruesome scene it was hard to imagine. It seemed as if the imps of darkness were celebrating their unearthly rites in this desert spot, and I half expected, at any moment, to see the whole crew vanish, with a flash and a bang, into the bowels of the earth, leaving the orthodox smell of sulphur behind them.
Nothing of the sort occurred, however, though I presently received a shock almost as startling as any supernatural event could have been. An old squaw, who was painfully of this world and the vanities thereof, and who had previously been addressing me for some time in the most eloquent of gutturals, finding that nothing could melt my icy demeanour, as a last resource suddenly threw her arms round my unsuspecting neck and hugged me in a greasy embrace.
With great difficulty I managed to free myself, whereupon I ran away towards some other part of the camp, to escape further annoyance. Had this old beldame been acquainted with woman's privileges on such occasions, she would have known that, under the circumstances, the correct thing to have done was to have fainted or become hysterical. But nothing could have been further from the thoughts of this unenlightened savage—the impulse of her untrained mind being to run after me as hard as her legs could carry her. And the rest of the Indians, with one of those sudden whims drunken people are liable to, took it into their heads to join in the chase, and I soon had the whole crowd shrieking and howling at my heels. What their intentions were I don't know, nor did I feel inclined to discover; fortunately, before they came up to me I reached my horse, which I had left ready saddled, and galloping swiftly away, I soon left them behind me.
I was presently joined by Garcia and the others, who had taken the same opportunity to escape in order to avoid the rows with which these balls frequently wind up. They are not often attended by actual bloodshed, however, as the squaws, with naïve foresight, generally hide all weapons before the ceremonies commence. We reached Santa Cruz shortly after daybreak, and so ended my first experience of a Tehuelche merry-making.
I called at the camp the next day to pay my visite de digestion, and made a point of going to the tent where the old squaw, who was so near becoming teterrima causa belli, abode. She had a bad headache, and looked very demure and penitent. I rallied her with smiles, and attempted, by my assiduous attentions, to make up for my discourteous behaviour of the previous evening. But she took no notice of me, and received all my overtures with the utmost indifference. It was a case of—
'The devil was sick; the devil a saint would be.'