AMONG THE RUINS AT PORT DESIRE, PATAGONIA.
At Port Desire the view of the settlement is disappointing. One hears in advance that sixty people live there. As the ship enters port one sees a long gray corrugated iron house that is two stories high in the middle, one story high at each end, and apparently one room deep. It stands on a little plateau on the left (south) just at the entrance of the harbor. Tower Rock, a Y-shaped natural column, rises a few hundred steps away behind it, and a tall-flagstaff, braced almost as well as a ship's mast, stands in front. Both tower and staff serve the mariner as landmarks in entering port. Then three leagues away to the south of this building is seen another. It is of the sort found in American mine camps—a wood and iron structure. Next, the old ruins under the precipice at the north shore come into view, and among them are seen two more iron roofs, the bodies of the houses being very well concealed by the old stone walls. Last of all, one sees close down to the water on the south side, and not far from the first house noticed, another iron structure that is low, but wide and long, and has a pile of very crooked firewood on the beach before it. And that is all one sees of the settlement of Port Desire.
This settlement cannot be said to be growing. Desire River furnishes excellent pasturage. Vegetables in abundance can be grown, and even grain, to a fair extent, with a little irrigation, while the range for sheep is said to be much better than in many parts of the territory down near the strait; but people will not come here because it is so far from any base of supplies which they can visit on horseback. The calls the Argentine naval transports make are irregular. There was one stretch of nine months in the last two years when no steamer visited the port. Of course, nobody went hungry or suffered for lack of absolute necessaries during that time, because the cattle, the guanacos, the panthers, and the ostriches supplied all things needful. With plenty of meat, a little salt, and the guanaco fur robes, the frontier ranchman of the Argentina does very well—so well that he will not take the trouble to raise even his favorite vegetable, the squash. But what worries him, when the steamer fails to come, is the inevitable famine of maté, the wild tea of Paraguay. The consumption of this herb is a remarkable feature of Argentine life, north and south, but in Patagonia there is no citizen but would take maté rather than a good dinner if he had to choose between the two. Then, too, wine and the native rum become exhausted, and so does tobacco. The traveller who looks at the settlement dispassionately will say that so long as famines of drinks and tobacco impend, there is no great hope for its future.
For the last three or four years the post of sub-prefect at Port Desire has been filled by Don Juan Wilson. Don Juan when a boy was known as Johnnie Wilson at Alexandria, Va., but his people emigrated to the Argentine, and the lad entered the naval school, where he was graduated with honor. Something of his subsequent career is worth telling to illustrate the Argentine way of doing things. Lieutenant Wilson has been in all the wars but one of the Argentine for a quarter of a century. He has a dozen medals which were given to him for services rendered, and he can show more scars obtained in battle than he has medals, but he is a Lieutenant still, although men who entered the navy after and below him, rank as Commodores and Admirals. That looks as if he had been treated very unfairly, but the truth is he can thank his lucky stars, as he says, that he is no worse off. He has been in every revolution against the Government but one, and every time but once has been of the losing party. He might have been shot lawfully several times, but because he was a conspicuously good fighter, and therefore sure to be very useful in case of a war with a foreign nation, his life has not only been spared, but he has been retained in the service. But because he was always ripe for a revolt they sent him down to Patagonia. He could not revolt there or help anybody revolting in Buenos Ayres, and in case he were needed to fight Chili or Brazil he could be had very quickly. The reason he failed to take part in one revolution—the last—was that he was in Patagonia while the revolt was in the capital. When talking to me about it he seemed to be very sorry that he had not been able to join his comrades, and that, too, though every one of them was in prison under sentences of from twenty years up.
Of the life naval officers in Patagonia lead I had a glimpse at Port Desire, where I had dinner and remained over night with Lieutenant Wilson. The barracks were found to be comfortable and even cheerful within, though as bleak as the desert without. At the table the Lieutenant sat at the head, with a junior officer and his wife on the right, and the Lieutenant's son, a bright lad of seventeen, on the left. Two boys waited on the table with a military precision of motion that was very funny to a non-military spectator. We had excellent fare—Italian soup, fish from the river, roast beef, and two vegetables, with bread and coffee and cigarettes after.
One of the waiters had a history. He was a full-blooded Tehuelche Indian. The Lieutenant, while leading a squad of sailors up the Rio Negro in General Roca's war of extermination, heard a curious cry in the thick boughs of a tree. A sailor climbed up, expecting to find some strange beast or bird, but brought back a boy baby not over two years of age. He had been hidden there in a three-prong fork by his mother as the Indians fled because she was too much exhausted to carry him further. No doubt many Indians did the same, but all the babies starved save this one because the sailors held the territory. When old enough to serve as an apprentice, the lad was shipped in the navy with his adopted father, Mr. Wilson.
Certainly no other sergeant in the world has had such a history as this one.
When we reached Port Desire we all went ashore to inspect the old ruins of a Spanish fort, and then a desert cattle man invited us all to dine with him.