Away, away the good ship flew to round the far-famed Cape Horn. Stern and majestic it rose on our starboard-hand; its hoary front, as it looked down on the meeting of two mighty oceans, bore traces of many a terrific storm. Now all was calm and bright, though the vast undulations of the ocean over which the ship rode, as they met the resistance of the cliffs, were dashed in cataracts of spray high up in the air, and gave evidence of what would be the effect when a storm was raging across them. There was something more grand in the contemplation than in the actual appearance of the scene, when we reflected where we were—on the confines of those two great seas which encompass the earth, and which wash the shores of nations so different in character—the one having attained the height of civilisation, the other being still sunk in the depths of a barbarism too terrible almost for contemplation, as I afterwards had good reason to know. Then there was that strange, vast, dreamy swell—the breathings, as it were, of some giant monster. It seemed as if some wondrous force were ever acting on that vast body of water—that it could not for a moment rest quiet in its bed, but must ever go heaving on, in calm and sunshine as well as in storm and tempest. There was likewise in sight that wild weather-beaten shore, inhabited, as report declared, by men of gigantic stature and untameable fierceness; while to the south lay those mysterious frost-bound regions untrod by the foot of man—the land of vast glaciers, mighty icebergs, and wide extended fields of ice. On we sped with a favouring breeze, till we floated calmly on the smooth surface of the Pacific off the coast of Chili.
With regard to Patagonia, old Knowles told me he had been there, but that, as far as he saw, the people were not much larger than the inhabitants of many other countries. Some were big men; a few nearly seven feet high, and proportionably stout. They are capital mimics—the very parrots or magpies of the genus Man.
“I say, Jack, bear a hand there now,” exclaimed one, repeating the words after a sailor who had just spoken.
“What! do you speak English, old fellow? Give us your flipper then,” said Knowles, thinking he had found a civilised man in that distant region.
“What! do you speak English, old fellow? Give us your flipper then,” repeated the savage with a grin, putting out his hand.
“I should think I did! What other lingo am I likely to speak?” answered Knowles, shaking the Patagonian’s huge paw.
“What other lingo am I likely to speak?” said the savage, with perfect clearness.
“Why, I should have thought your own native Patagonian, if you are a Patagonian,” exclaimed Knowles, examining the savage’s not over-handsome physiognomy.
“If you are a Patagonian!” said the savage, looking in like manner into Knowles’ face.
“I—I’m an Englishman, I tell you!” cried Tom, somewhat puzzled.