You didn't see them on the streets and you were astonished that there was so much society in the place. You heard all languages spoken and you might imagine you were in Paris. When the band struck up it was with a quadrille. You were pleased perhaps to see the old dances—quadrilles, lanciers, schottisches, the old waltzes—danced. You see, the new kind of glides, two steps, walk arounds, fancy steps they call dancing nowadays—and perhaps it is dancing—hasn't struck Punta Arenas yet. Surely in that respect the town was behind the times. It couldn't do the hippety-hoppety steps and the slides and glides. Poor old fashioned Punta Arenas!
The brilliant scenes at Mr. Braun's home were duplicated two nights later at the Governor's ball. This reception was a display in keeping with the wealth of the place. There was no vulgarity, no crudeness, no little amusing sidelights that showed that the town had just arrived in a social way. It was plain that Punta Arenas knew how to entertain. Scores of naval officers said that they never saw entertainments in Washington in better taste.
After all this you began to investigate what it meant. There was one answer to the question—wool and sheep. When you hunted for statistics you got them from an official whose business it is to collect them. You found that last November the population of the place was 11,800 and of the territory 17,000. In 1889 the population of the territory was 2,500 and the town only 1,100. It was a pretty raw town then. You found that in 1906 the number of sheep in the Magellan territory was 1,873,700 and that thirty years ago it was less than 2,000. You learned that the industry was started through the Falkland Islanders, 200 miles to the eastward, where the Scotch missionaries got rich quick and were not averse to worshipping mammon to some extent. You learned that the number of tons of wool exported last year was 7,174, that the number of refrigerated sheep exported last year was 104,427 and that this year it would probably be 130,000.
You learned that the imports of the town were nearly $3,000,000 a year and the exports nearly $5,000,000. You found that there was a coal mine in operation close by, producing about 12,000 tons a year, chiefly for local use. The coal is of the lignite variety and disintegrates rapidly. It is improving as the shaft sinks deeper, and the owners hope soon to have coal that they can sell to steamships. That will help Punta Arenas a good deal.
You learned that there are three daily newspapers here, each giving cable news. Indeed, we heard of the assassination of King Carlos here as quickly as the rest of the civilized world. You were even surprised to find that there is one tri-weekly newspaper in English and you get a copy and read the list of guests at Mr. Braun's reception, quite up to date with the society news. You learned that Punta Arenas had been connected with the rest of the world since December, 1902, when the overland telegraph was put through to Buenos Ayres. You learned that there was gold in all the hills near by; that four dredges were engaged in mining over in Fireland, as they call Tierra del Fuego here, and one in a gulch just back of the town. Some progress has been made with this mining and there are Americans and men from the Transvaal engaged in the industry. A lot of money has been put into it, but the expense of getting the gold is still too high to make the proposition attractive to the general public and so one need not look for a gold rush here for some time. You learned that there was copper mining in many places, but that the difficulty in getting transportation by water from the remote places high up the mountains where such mines are is such as to eat up most of the profits. You learned that about 60 per cent. of the population is foreign, ranking as follows as to numbers: Austrian, German, French, English, Spanish, Scandinavian and American.
The prosperity of the town you then realized depended upon sheep and furs, chiefly sheep. You found four immense ranching companies doing business here and you got the annual report of the largest one, the Exploration Society of Tierra del Fuego. It has 1,200,000 shares, owned mostly by Valparaiso and Santiago people, but Punta Arenas has 140,000 shares, of which Mr. Braun owns 62,000. This company owns 1,200,000 acres of land and its wool clip is nearly 6,000,000 pounds. Last year it had 900,000 sheep, 14,000 cattle and 8,000 horses on its property. Its capital is $6,000,000 and last year it paid nearly 15 per cent. in dividends. It has its property divided into five big ranches. Altogether its real estate holdings are as big as the State of Delaware and nearly one-half as large as the State of Connecticut. That isn't very large compared with the entire territory of Tierra del Fuego, because that land is as big as the State of New York, but it is pretty big doings as sheep ranches go. Australia and Argentina can make a slightly better showing in the production of wool, but, as the Punta Arenas people say, this country is still young in the business.
You began to wonder how the sheep could thrive in this terribly cold and barren region and you were surprised to be told that really it wasn't very cold here. You hunted that matter up for yourself and you found that Father Marabini had been keeping a well equipped meteorological establishment for fifteen years and you got the printed records. You found that the average temperature for February, the warmest month in the year, was 52.5 Fahrenheit, 11.6 centigrade; that the highest temperature for fifteen years was 77 degrees (20.59 centigrade), and that the lowest recorded in summer in all that time was 33.8 (1.31 centigrade). That made you shiver some. Then you looked for the lowest winter records. You found them in July. The lowest recorded temperature for that month is 20 degrees above zero (-6.70 centigrade), and the highest 44 degrees (7.91 centigrade). You found that the average temperature for the three summer months in fifteen years was 52.5 (11.396 centigrade), and the average for the winter months was 36 (2.225 centigrade). Few places in the temperate zone can show a variation of temperature of only sixteen degrees between winter and summer.
The temperature record and the rich grasses on the plains told the story of sheep farming here. There isn't much snow. Now and then there is a fall of from two to three feet, but for the most part the snowfalls are only a few inches in depth. The greatest climatic drawback is the searching winds. These winds blow hardest in summer and give a decided chill to the air. The fleet was here in the best season of the year. On two days out of the six it was comfortable to wear light overcoats. The temperature was something like our April weather. Occasionally it rained for a few minutes, but four of the days were absolutely clear. We came in when there was a high wind and a drop in the temperature and we feared that the stay would be most uncomfortable. It was anything but that from a climatic standpoint.
So goes the statement quoted early in this article, that it doesn't rain every day in the year in Punta Arenas because some days it snows. The value of the other statement that the bay is shallow is shown by the fact that if the port hadn't been crowded the fleet would have anchored within half a mile of the city. As it was, it anchored about a mile out and the water was so deep that three of the battleships had to move in a quarter of a mile because there is a limit to the length of anchor chains. As to the impossibility of landing more than once a week, it may be said that there never was an hour when the launches could not land. Once or twice the wind came up and the little craft tossed about a bit, but that happens in any port. So goes another of the many informing things that have been said incorrectly about this much abused and misunderstood place.
After learning something about the business of the place the inquirer naturally turned to the form of government. He learned that it was a place without politics because it has no suffrage. The Governor and three alcaldes, with a consulting board of paid city officials, run things. The alcaldes are representative men. One represents the foreign interests especially. They pass rules and ordinances which are approved or disapproved by what would be called in Santiago the Colonial Office. These laws are rarely disapproved. The alcaldes are wise in their generation. They do not adopt unpopular measures. Public opinion is so strong that any alcalde who got to cutting up and attempting boss rule would find himself so cut off from the rest of the people with whom he must live and do business that he would feel as if he had been banished. There is a movement to make the territory a province with political powers of its own, but it is being fought vigorously.