Cape Virgins is one of the most important landmarks on the Atlantic seaboard, and its discovery marked the beginning of the most important period of maritime adventures in the history of navigation. Before we pass it, and enter the now famous Strait, permit me to give a few incidents in the story of the discovery of this cape and the hard-earned but triumphant entrance into the narrow path which permitted the first circumnavigation. The credit belongs to a Portuguese, Fernão de Magalhães, and the honour belongs to Spain, for the expedition was under the patronage of the Spanish crown.
Magalhães assembled his fleet at San Julian on the Patagonian coast, Easter Eve, in the year 1520. Here he spent the few months of southern winter, from April to October. During this time he first saw, and his historians first described, the pampa Indians whom, because of their loosely booted feet, they gave the ill-fitting name of Pata-gones: a name which all the world of women should detest, for it means clumsy-hoofed. From this first designation given to the people the entire country from the Plata to the Strait, has been given the name of Patagonia. Patagonia, then, fully translated, means the land of the clumsy-hoofed people. This is unkind when, in reality, the Indians of this region have feet which are not only smaller, but far neater in shape than those of Europeans of the same size and weight. At this anchorage Magalhães had some trouble with his officers who committed the unpardonable crime of differing from him in their opinions. To one of these men a letter was sent with a messenger who had instructions to stab him while reading. Other officers were executed with similar despatch. Magalhães was evidently a good representative of the saints of his day, upholding the church with one hand, and committing the blackest deeds of Satan with the other.
OSGOOD ART COLORTYPE CO., CHI. & N. Y.
Fuegian Boys
On October 21st, Magalhães entered the Strait for which he had searched and, though he had killed some of his officers but a short time previous in a manner which would now be considered premeditated murder, he honoured the saints by calling the channel Canal de Todos los Santos—Canal of all the Saints. The cape on his starboard, as he entered, was named the Cape of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, in honour of the day on which it was discovered, St. Ursula’s day. Succeeding generations have thought less of the saints and more of Magalhães, and have named the canal in honour of its discoverer, but even the discoverer’s name has changed with time, for to-day we write Strait of Magellan, and not Magalhães. The cape has also suffered a change by the later and less religious geographers. Eleven Thousand Virgins, even as a name, is too flowery for a Cape Horn sand-bank, and furthermore it was the hunting ground of a people among whom the term virgin would be useless. Just at present this point of land is charted Cape Virgins, and its virgin soil is being broken by thrifty gold diggers.
Returning to our present voyage and to the less sentimental, and less brutal, but I fear less religious modern times, the Belgica has not only no one to fill the chaplain’s duties, but, so far as I know, only one Bible (which is kept under cover) and no prayer book. Religion is apparently not one of our missions. But then I must hasten to add that on expeditions of this kind land pilots are more necessary than “sky pilots.”
At noon we rounded the low sandy bar extending southward from Cape Virgins terminating in Dungeness Point, and entered the historic Strait of Magellan. The eastern beach was strewn with fragments of iron from the hull of the iron vessel Cleopatra, which was one of the many vessels wrecked here. The skeleton of the Cleopatra was still fighting the sea some distance off shore, and presented a picture which would run into delight under the brush of an artist. The western shore of the point was strewn with fragments of wooden vessels, and two hulls well ashore rocked like cradles, but were apparently not much injured. This point seems to be a convenient graveyard for marine crafts.
To our south under a dark bank of cumulus clouds was the white cliff of Cape Espirito Santo, which, like Cape Virgins, is the termination of a long range of hills on Tierra del Fuego. The waters were alive with innumerable forms of life, many of which were new to us. Whales, seals, porpoises and penguins were darting about in the sea like birds in the air, while resting on the glassy surface, hovering over the land, rushing over and around the Belgica were strange members of the feathered tribe; among these, albatrosses, gulls, petrels, ducks, and geese were most numerous. The profusion of animal life around us, the blackness of the lowlands to each side, and the encouraging prospect of the channel before us, furnished a sort of wild fascination which is probably as great in our day as in the time of the early pioneers.
Passing westward we had, by midnight, reached the entrance of the first narrows. Here we anchored for the night. For three long months we had gone steadily and persistently southward in one general direction; such a monotony of course draws the Atlantic out into an unimaginable length, but now we were headed westward, away from the Atlantic with its fickle winds to the more friendly Pacific; and our course in the future will be more varied—a circumstance which seems to arouse an agreeable train of thoughts. These thoughts, with the peculiar and continual interest of the scenes around the ship, kept us awake for a large part of our first night in the Strait.