Chapter Eighteen.
The Fuegian Dwarfs.
The great continent of South America, tapering like a tongue to the southward, ends abruptly on the Straits of Magellan. These straits may be regarded as a sort of natural canal, connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific Ocean, winding between high rocky shores, and indented with numerous bays and inlets. Though the water is of great depth, the Straits themselves are so narrow that a ship passing through need never lose sight of land on either side; and in many places a shell, projected from an ordinary howitzer, would pitch clear across them from shore to shore! The country extending northward from these straits is, as already seen, called Patagonia; that which lies on their southern side is the famed “land of fire,” Tierra del Fuego.
The canal, or channel, of the Straits of Magellan does not run in a direct line from the Atlantic to the Pacific. On the contrary, a ship entering from the former, instead of passing due west, must first run in a south-west direction,—rather more south than west. This course will continue, until the ship is about halfway between the two oceans. She will then head almost at a right angle to her former course; and keep this direction—which is nearly due north-west—until she emerges into the Pacific.
It will thus be seen, that the Straits form an angle near their middle; and the point of land which projects into the vertex of this angle, and known to navigators as Cape Forward, is the most southern land of the American continent. Of course this is not meant to apply to the most southern point of American land,—since Tierra del Fuego must be considered as part of South America. The far-famed “Cape Horn” is the part of America nearest to the South Pole; and this is a promontory on one of the small elevated islands lying off the southern coast of Tierra del Fuego itself. Tierra del Fuego was for a long time regarded as a single island; though, even in the voyage of Magellan, several large inlets, that resembled channels, were observed running into the land; and it was suspected by that navigator, that these inlets might be passages leading through to the ocean. Later surveys have proved that the conjectures of the Spano-Portuguese voyager were well founded; and it is now known that instead of a single island, the country called Tierra del Fuego is a congeries of many islands, of different shapes and sizes,—separated from one another by deep and narrow channels, or arms of the sea, with an endless ramification of sounds and inlets. In the western part—and occupying more than three fourths of their whole territory—these close-lying islands are nothing else than mountains,—several of them rising five thousand feet above the level of the water; and stepping directly down to it, without any foothills intervening! Some of them have their lower declivities covered with sombre forests; while, farther up, nothing appears but the bare brown rocks, varied with blue glaciers, or mottled with masses of snow. The more elevated peaks are covered with snow that never melts; since their summits rise considerably above the snow-line of this cold region.
These mountain islands of Tierra del Fuego continue on to Cape Horn, and eastward to the Straits of Le Maire, and the bleak islet of Staaten Land. They may, in fact, be considered as the continuation of the great chain of the Andes, if we regard the intersecting channels—including that of Magellan itself—as mere clefts or ravines, the bottoms of which, lying below the level of the sea, have been filled with sea-water. Indeed, we may rationally take this view of the case: since these channels bear a very great resemblance to the stupendous ravines termed “barrancas” and “quebradas,” which intersect the Cordilleras of the Andes in other parts of South America,—as also in the northern division of the American continent.
Regarding the Straits of Magellan, then, and the other channels of Tierra del Fuego, as great water-barrancas, we may consider the Andes as terminating at Cape Horn itself, or rather at Staaten Land: since that island is a still more distant extension of this, the longest chain of mountains on the globe.