"It didn't take us long to see the whole of Sandy Point," said Fred, in the account of their visit, "as the sights of the place can be exhausted in a very little while. There is a beach in front of a high ridge of hills, and some rising ground intervening between beach and hills. The town straggles along this beach, and back on the rising ground behind it; it consists of a fort, a church, some government barracks, a custom-house, and one or two other public buildings, together with a lot of one-story houses disposed in lines to form streets. It has a population of eight or nine hundred—possibly a thousand—and presents a woe-begone appearance, like that of a half-deserted village.
"There were Germans, Swiss, French, and Italians among the people we met in the streets; the rest were Chilians and Patagonians, together with some Fuegians who had paddled over the strait from their native shores. The Europeans were much like the same people elsewhere, and we paid no particular attention to them; we were more interested in the Patagonians and Fuegians, and I prevailed upon some of them to stand to be sketched under promise of half a dollar each for their trouble. Their countenances are not prepossessing, and by no stretch of the imagination could they be called handsome. In fact, I consider them about the ugliest people I ever saw.
PATAGONIAN DRESS.
"The Patagonian dress is a poncho or mantle of guanaco skins, which hangs from the shoulders and has a hole in the centre for the head; sometimes it is gathered at the waist by a belt, especially when the wearer is on horseback, and in cold weather those who can afford it have a smaller garment of nearly the same sort underneath a larger one. The men pluck out their beards when they have any, and as the dress is the same for both sexes it is next to impossible for a stranger to distinguish men from women in a group of natives. I made a sketch of a girl who was said to be about twenty years old; she was considered a belle, but I do not believe any belle of New York would be jealous of her good looks.
A PATAGONIAN BELLE.
"This Antipodean Langtry wore a guanaco robe which was by no means new; her black hair was greasy and unkempt at the sides, but cut rather short on the top of the head; her nose was broad and flat; and her mouth extended almost from side to side of her face. Her eyes were black and piercing, and her self-satisfied smile as she stood for her picture told that she knew how handsome she was.