Speaking of the flowers in front of this club-house reminds me that Punta Arenas is the greatest town for flowers I ever saw. Every house has window gardens, and many houses have bays and rooms set apart for great masses of potted flowers and shrubs. It has many more flowers in proportion to the population even than the tropical cities like Rio. Flowers grow wild there in great profusion, too, among which the wild fuschias make the most profuse display, while the ferns and lichens are something to delight the eye of even the least observant.
For the rest, Punta Arenas claims a population of 3500. It is not unlike some United States towns in the matter of a local census, but after making due allowances for local pride and enthusiasm, it still is found a live and growing village. Lots in the business part of the town now sell for pounds sterling where paper dollars would have sufficed ten years ago. Indeed, a lot was sold while I was there for £500 that changed hands in 1886 for $400 national currency. The old settler goes about the street bewailing the fact that he didn't buy when he first came, and saying it is too late now. But those who buy now point to the growing traffic through the straits, and refer to the line of huge steam tugs now building in England that will tow sailing ships through the narrow waters and against the winds that vexed and baffled the early navigators; they speak confidently of the spread of sheep ranches on Tierra Del Fuego, and the apparently unfailing discoveries of new gold-fields among the islands to the south; they talk of the increased demand for the wood of the straits. They balance against the frosts and cold rains of midsummer the many Indian summer days of winter, and tell stories of invalids regaining health that would make both Denver and Los Angeles green with envy. They find, in fact, no end of signs of future prosperity for their austral metropolis, and if somebody does not dig a canal from the Caribbean Sea to the Pacific they are very certain to find these signs well founded. Even if such a canal is made, only one element of the prosperity of the place will be injured—the traffic through the straits—and that probably will not be wholly destroyed, while the other elements can scarcely fail to improve continually.
Mr. Julius Popper wrote in 1888 of Punta Arenas, that it was "a town that opened its doors at 11 a.m., and was more concerned about picnics and dances than business." Mr. Frank Vincent said in 1889, that it was a community scarce one of whom "would be willing to stay if he could get away." The people there say these remarks were libellous when written. I am bound to say that in 1894, if a man wanted to get to windward of a Punta Arenas man in the matter of business, it was necessary to get up in the morning before crow peep. And as for the people wishing to get away, one would have hard work to find a citizen there who could be driven away with a shotgun.
In spite of its climate and its government, it is a blooming and booming community, and because of the enterprise of its citizens it deserves all the prosperity the free pastures of the pampas and the waves of the sea are bringing to it.
CHAPTER III.
CAPE HORN ABORIGINES.
This is the story in part of one of the most interesting and most unfortunate tribes of Indians known in the history of American aborigines—interesting because of their remarkable qualities of mind and body, and unfortunate because they have been almost exterminated by changes in their habits, wrought by Christian missionaries. It begins with what was said of them and their country by the early explorers, and it ends where the missionaries began what was intended to be the work of civilizing them. It tells of the race as God made it. What the white man did for it will be told later.