[70] Notes of a Naturalist in South America.
[71] It is hardly necessary to refer for information regarding the Fuegians to the classic book of Charles Darwin, the Voyage of the Beagle, in which the genius for observation and speculation of that great man was first made known to the world.
[72] Fagus (or Nothofagus) betuloides, or Fagus antarctica.
[73] He is called Settaboth in the record of Sir Francis Drake's voyage (The World Encompassed, p. 487, Hakluyt Society Edition). (I take this reference from Robertson's edition of Pigafetta.) "Sycorax my dam," "the foul witch Sycorax," does not appear in Pigafetta, and comes from somewhere else: the name sounds Greek. As to Caliban and the Patagonians, see the notes to Dr. H. H. Furness's monumental edition of the Tempest, p. 379. Every one remembers Robert Browning's Caliban upon Setebos, or Natural Theology in the Island. The Settaboth mentioned in Drake's voyage is probably a mere repetition from Eden, for the Indians to whom Fletcher (in narrating that voyage) refers were encountered on the Chilean coast in lat. 38° S., a different set of people altogether. Fletcher's account is in many points hardly credible. See Barrow's Life of Sir Francis Drake, p. 121.
[74] The guanaco is the only large wild quadruped of these regions. He belongs to the same genus (Auchenia) as the llama, alpaca, and vicuña, but is bigger than any of them. Pigafetta describes him as having "the head of a mule, the body of a camel, the feet of a stag, and the tail of a horse."
[75] The steamers of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company began to run through the Straits about 1840.
[76] The enormous herds of fur seals which existed a century ago in the islands of South Georgia, the South Orkneys, and the South Shetlands have vanished. 300,000 are said to have been killed within five years in the South Shetlands alone.
[77] I reckon Oakland and Berkeley as, for this purpose, parts of San Francisco.
[78] The population of the Republic is about 7,000,000, and that of Buenos Aires 1,300,000.
[79] The English, adopting this term, talk of the rural parts of Argentina as "the Camp," an expression which at first puzzles the visitor.