I fully understood that no amount of hospitable intentions could enable Dr. Fenton to give me quarters in his house, and he assured me that the governor, Don Francisco Sampayo, was no less restricted as to accommodation. One resource, however, seemed available: the German consul, Herr Meidell, had returned for a visit to Europe, and it was thought that, on application to his partner, a room might certainly be obtained in his house. My dark-haired friend, who had reappeared on the scene, and who turned out to be a native of Gibraltar, kindly undertook to arrange the matter, and, after an early dinner at Dr. Fenton’s hospitable table, I proceeded with him to present my letter to the governor. The great man had not yet returned to shore, but I made the acquaintance of his wife, a delicate Peruvian lady, who sat, wrapped in a woollen shawl, in a room without a fire, of which the temperature must have been about 45° Fahr. On leaving the governor’s house, we again encountered my envoy, whose countenance at once proclaimed that he had failed in his mission. Mr. Meidell, being a cautious man, had locked up most of his furniture and household effects before going to Europe, and had left strict injunctions that no one was to enter the part of his house used as a private dwelling. As we stood consulting about further proceedings, a tall figure approached, and I learned that it belonged to the stranger who occupied the solitary room available for visitors to Sandy Point.
I speedily made the acquaintance of Signor Vinciguerra, one of the group of energetic young Italian naturalists whose head-quarters are at Genoa. He belonged to the expedition commanded by Lieutenant Bove of the Italian navy, and had remained at Sandy Point to investigate the zoology of the neighbouring coast, while his companions proceeded to Staten Island, or Isla de los Estados, at the eastern extremity of the Fuegian Archipelago. Community of pursuits and several mutual friends at once cemented cordial relations, and Signor Vinciguerra kindly undertook to make room for me in his rather restricted quarters. We proceeded to the house close by the landing-place, and I was in the act of arranging the matter with the landlord, when the British vice-consul appeared. He had overcome the scruples of Mr. Meidell’s partner, a mattress and some coverings had been found, a room was at my disposal, with a bed on the floor, and the lodging difficulty was solved.
Not without some regret at being separated from an agreeable companion, I accepted the offered quarters, and had the needful portion of my luggage carried to my temporary home. As the sun set before four o’clock, it was already dark before I was installed in my new quarters, and the evening was spent under the hospitable roof of Dr. Fenton, from whom I received much interesting information as to the region which he has made his home, and the indigenous population. On my way to his house I saw the first specimens of the Patagonian Indians, who at this season frequent the settlement to dispose of skins, chiefly guanaco and rhea, and indulge in their ruling passion for ardent spirits. Two ladies of large and stout build, attired in shabby and torn European dress, and both far gone in intoxication, were standing at a door of a shop or store, and indulging in loud talk for the entertainment of a circle of bystanders. The language was, I presume, their native dialect, with here and there a word of Spanish or English, and the subject seemed to be what with us would be called chaff, as their remarks elicited frequent peals of laughter. I was suddenly reminded of a drunken Irish basket-woman whose freaks had been the cause of mingled alarm and amusement in my early childhood.
PATAGONIAN LADIES.
During the day the streets of Punta Arenas were deep in mud, but as I went home at night, the sky was cloudless, a sharp frost had set in, and the mud was hard frozen. I had not before enjoyed so fine a view of the southern heavens. The cross was brilliant, nearly in the zenith, and I made out clearly the dark starless spaces that have been named the coal-sacks.
I was on foot before daylight on the 11th of June. The benevolent German who managed Mr. Meidell’s establishment sent up a cup of hot coffee, and a brazier with charcoal, which was grievously wanted to dry my plant-paper. The sky was still clear, and the sun, rising blood-red over the flat shores of Tierra del Fuego on the opposite side of the Straits, was a striking spectacle. I had arranged overnight to take with me a boy having some knowledge of the neighbourhood, and was just starting for a walk when I met the governor, who at this early hour was on his way to call upon me. After a short conversation with this courteous gentleman, and accepting an invitation to dine at his house, I pursued my course in the direction of the now disused coal mine. For about half a mile I followed the tramway which was erected some years ago to carry the coal to the port. It runs along the low ground between the hills and the shore, and then enters a little flat-bottomed valley between the hills. Heavy rain had recently fallen, and the flat had been flooded, but the surface was now frozen over. Before long we found the tramway impracticable; it had been allowed to fall to decay, and, being supported on trestles, the gaps were inconveniently frequent. I then attempted to continue my walk over the flat, and found the ice in some places strong enough to bear my weight, but it frequently gave way, and I soon got tired of splashing through the surface into the ice-cold water, and resolved to betake myself to the adjoining hills. The weather showed itself as changeable on this day as it usually is in this singular climate. For about half an hour the sky was clear and the sun so warm that I could not bear an overcoat. Then a breeze sprung up from the north-west, the sky was soon covered, and some rain fell; again the sky cleared, and, if I remember right, four or five similar changes occurred before nightfall.
VEGETATION OF SANDY POINT.
At this season I could not expect to see much of the vegetation of the country, but I found rather more than I expected. Two Compositæ, both evergreen shrubs, were abundantly clothed with fruit, and among other characteristic forms I collected two species of Acæna, a genus widely spread through the southern hemisphere, allied to, but very distinct from, our common Alchemilla. From its ancestral home in south polar lands, many descendants have reached South America, and some of these have followed the Andean chain, and thus got to Mexico and California. From the same stock we find representatives in New Zealand, Australia, Tristan d’Acunha, and South Africa, while one has travelled so far as the Sandwich Islands. The seeds are provided with hooked beaks, which may have attached themselves to the plumage of oceanic birds, and a single successful transport in the course of many ages may have introduced the parent of the existing species to new regions of the earth. It was not without interest to find two cosmopolitan weeds, our common shepherd’s purse and chickweed, both flowering in winter in this remote part of the world.
From the summit of the hill I enjoyed a good view of the flat-topped range—apparently from 2500 to 3000 feet in height—that separates the Straits of Magellan from Otway Water. This is a landlocked basin nearly fifty miles long and half as wide, connected with the sea by a narrow sound that opens on the western side of the Straits near Port Gallant. The lower slopes of the intervening range are covered with forest, and the summit apparently bare, but in this season covered with snow. If the extreme difficulty of penetrating the forests were not well known, it would be a matter of surprise that no one has ever crossed the range, and that the eastern shores of Otway Water, not thirty miles distant from Punta Arenas, are yet unexplored.
In returning to Punta Arenas I passed through the remains of the burnt forest that once extended close to the houses. In the summer of 1873, either by design or accident, fire seized the forest, composed of large trees of the antarctic beech, and raged so furiously for a time as to threaten destruction to the entire place. After the first efforts at averting the immediate danger, no further interference was attempted, and I was assured that the conflagration was not entirely exhausted until the ensuing winter, nearly six months after it commenced. I passed the charred remains of hundreds of thick stumps, many of them over three feet in diameter, but I was surprised to find several trees much too large to have grown up since the fire, which in some unexplained way escaped destruction. Unlike most of the beeches of the southern hemisphere, this has deciduous leaves, so that the branches were bare; but many of them were laden with the curious parasite, Myzodendron punctulatum, the structure of which plant and its allies was long ago admirably illustrated by Sir Joseph Hooker.[35]