PUNTA Arenas is known commonly as the jumping-off place of the earth. The generally accepted meaning of that characterization is that it is not only the southernmost settlement of any size of civilized people in the world, but that it is the most forlorn, dreary, desolate place that any one could find in which to live.
Indeed, before this fleet arrived here it is probable that not one person in a hundred in the United States knew where Punta Arenas was, and those who had some vague idea about it had an impression that it is one of those reformed penal colonies where the driftwood of humanity huddle together, tolerate one another because they are birds of a feather and eke out a miserable existence in trafficking with Indians, herding sheep, looting wrecks and spending their spare time in low ceilinged saloons gulping down liquor that would put knockout drops to shame.
Well, it simply isn't true! Punta Arenas is a lively city of 12,000 residents, one of the best governed in the world, with all modern improvements except trolley cars, half a dozen millionaires and scores of men worth $500,000 or more, with one residence at least that would hold its own more than favorably with the residences on Madison Avenue in the Murray Hill part of New York, with excellent schools, with a "society" that knows as well as any on earth how to wear Paris gowns and to give entertainments as finished in all the delicate niceties as could be found in any capital.
Punta Arenas isn't pretty in any sense and even the well-to-do are content to live in one-story houses with corrugated iron roofs, but it is a hustling, busy place where every comfort and luxury can be secured, and it has a pronounced twentieth century air about it. It resembles strongly a western Kansas or Nebraska town. Its climate is always cool but never seriously cold. The lowest recorded temperature in this place, which corresponds in latitude to Labrador in the Northern Hemisphere, is 20 degrees Fahrenheit above zero. The highest is 77. Why, there are two four-in-hands and one French automobile, this in a town, mind you, where there are no roads out in the country and no place except the town streets in which to drive! Any one who has seen these smart turnouts is justified in dropping into slang far enough to say that is going some!
There was good reason for a preconceived unfavorable opinion of Punta Arenas. Recently there have been several flattering accounts published of the town and its life, but they have not received a wide circulation. Such accounts as were in the books of travel, with probably one exception, were repellant. Here is what William E. Curtis said in 1888, in his book entitled "The Capitals of South America," and dedicated to Chester Alan Arthur:
"It [Punta Arenas] belongs to Chile and was formerly a penal colony; but one look at it is enough to convince the most incredulous that whoever located it did not intend the convict's life to be a happy one. It lies on a long spit that stretches out into the strait, and the English call it Sandy Point, but a better name would be Cape Desolation. Convicts are sent there no longer, but some of those who were sent thither when Chile kept the seeds and harvests of her revolutions, still remain there. There used to be a military guard there but that was withdrawn during the war with Peru and all the prisoners who would consent to enter the army got a ticket of leave. The Governor resides in what was once the barracks and horses are kept in a stockade. Hunger, decay and dreariness are inscribed upon everything—on the faces of the men as well as on the houses they live in—and the people look as discouraging as the mud.
"They say it rains in Punta Arenas every day. That is a mistake—sometimes it snows. Another misrepresentation is the published announcement that ships passing the strait always touch there. Doubtless they desire to, and it is one of the delusions of the owners that they do; but as the wind never ceases except for a few hours at a time, and the bay on which the place is located is shallow, it is only about once a week or so that a boat can land, because of the violent surf.
"The town is interesting because it is the only settlement in Patagonia and of course the only one in the strait. It is about 4,000 miles from the southernmost town on the west coast of South America to the first port on the eastern coast—a voyage which ordinarily requires fifteen days; and as Punta Arenas is about the middle of the way it possesses some attractions. Spread out in the mud are 250 houses, more or less, which shelter from the ceaseless storms a community of 800 or 1,000 people, representing all sorts and conditions of men from the primeval type to the pure Caucasian—convicts, traders, fugitives, wrecked seamen, deserters from all the navies in the world, Chinamen, negroes, Poles, Italians, Sandwich Islanders, wandering Jews and human driftwood of every tongue and clime cast up by the sea and absorbed in a community scarcely one of which would be willing to tell why he came there or would stay if he could get away. It is said that in Punta Arenas an interpreter for every language known to the modern world can be found, but although the place belongs to Chile, English is most generally spoken."
All that may have been true in those days, except about the rain, the wind, the shallow harbor and the impossibility of landing in a boat more than once a week and several other items.
Here is what Frank G. Carpenter said in 1900 in his book on South America, and it is the most favorable of any of the books dealing with Punta Arenas: