View of Talcahuano
Concepcion, after Santiago and Valparaiso, is the largest city in Chile, and has a decided importance as the outlet for the great central valley. Many passengers come by the railway from Santiago through the central valley to Concepcion, and take the ship at either embarkation. The English and the Germans divide the foreign trade, which is large and profitable.
Continuing down the coast on a voyage on the Oropesa, we passed the briefest day of the year, June 21, out of sight of land. The day was clear and cold. The seas were very heavy. At sunset the navigating officer told us we were in south latitude 41°. The Milky Way never seemed so luminous, nor the evening star, set in the dark southern sky, so bright. The following day was alternate rain and shine, with just a sight of the Chiloe Archipelago through the mists. Few of the vessels now take the more picturesque route into the archipelago and through Smythe’s Channel. The wrecks have become too common.
Heavier seas were encountered in the afternoon and at night. What a night! The Oropesa, a ship of 7,000 tons, was pounded as with an anvil, tossed like a chip, knocked, hammered, slammed and banged about, chased by huge seas astern, struck obliquely by mountain waves, caught horizontally and spun around like a top. First she went at half speed and then at quarter speed, but with plenty of sea-room no one worried.
The next morning at daybreak the lighthouse which marks the Evangelist Islands was sighted. The name, Islands of Direction, which is sometimes given them, is a better description. They fix the entrance into the Straits of Magellan. They are four rocky heaps,—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. After they are sighted the rough seas become gentler, and the ocean is like a rolling, gently swelling prairie. A knob of brown earth is seen. It is Cape Pillar. The gray clouds change into violet and purple, a blinding snow-storm of three hours follows; then the sun lifts a little, and discloses on the right Desolation Islands and the great snow fields. By mid-day the land on either side is quite close. The channel does not appear to be more than a quarter of a mile across. There is some brush, but no trees. The blue glaciers of which we have read are not blue, but are white against the water-green sky. In the afternoon a gauze spreads over the glaciers like a veil of mist, and they are blue.
Scenes at the Straits of Magellan
Cape Pillar—The Evangelist Islands—Cape Froward
A look astern shows that we are passing through the narrowing neck of a long channel with snowy crags and slopes on either side. We are in south latitude 54°, no twilight, a black night, not a star visible, the water not to be seen from the lower deck, the ship groping for anchorage like a blind fisherman. “Two hundred sixty fathoms, no; thirty-six fathoms, yes.” We have conquered the treacherous currents, have turned the dangerous elbow corners, and learn that we anchor for the rest of this black night off Cape Coventry. I thought of Ferdinand Magellan and his sail-ships threading those unknown channels nearly four centuries ago.
We are under way at four o’clock in the morning, and come out on deck to find the sun hooded and cloaked in the snow clouds. It clears later, showing the straits much broader and the hills on either side lower but still under a white mantle. We round Cape Froward, latitude 53° 54′, at times losing sight of Tierra del Fuego. We get a sight of Punta Arenas, the most southerly town on the American Continent or on any continent, 1,600 miles farther south than Cape Town, 900 miles nearer to the South Pole than Christ Church, New Zealand. It is the world’s cross-roads for ocean travel.