The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1898-10-23

as we turned to the eastward. They
rise almost precipitOuSly for a distance
of 1,500 feet, and when the air is clear
they are in sight for many miles. Be-
ginning here the strait runs southeast
to Cape F'rOward. 1t then turns to the
northeast, widening here and there as
it goes, until it ends at the Atlantic
between Cape Virgin and Cape Holy
Ghost The channel is 365 miles long
and its width varies from two to TWEEN
ty-fOur miles. At times our vessel has
been within a stones throw of the
shore, and again in the misty air, where
the channel Widened the waters SEEM
ed to almost bound the horizon. This
is so only in the eastern parts of the
channel, on both sides of which the
lands of Patagonia and TERRA del
FuegO are low.
In the west there is little else than
mountains, which are now snoW-dust-
ed and in many cases loaded with vast
glaciers slowly sliding down them to
the sea. Below the Strait of Magellan
there is vast archipelago Of islands,
the smaller of which are mountain
peaks rising above the waves and the
largest the island of TERRA del Fuego.
The last is bigger than many of our
American states. and it has mountains
and valleys, vast forests and extensive
plains which have lately been trans
formed into some of the biggest sheep
farms Of the world. North of the
strait lies the end Of Southern Pata-
gonia on the east, and on the west
continuation of the archipelago of
TERRA del Fuego. These islands. as
we'll as the strait and almost all of
TERRA del Fuego, belong to Chile. She
has an area of land here, which she
calls the territory of the Magellan, of
$4,000 square miles, half again as large
as the state Of New York and almost
vii h. rNfN
chilean naval vessels are now here en-
gagged in surveying the channels and
harbors, but the greater part of this
region is almost as unknown as it was
when fernando Magellan, a Spanish
navigator, discovered the strait in 1920.
The land and the people have been mis-
represented by passers-by from OAR
win down to within recent years and
1t is only lately that opportunities have
been offered for careful investigation
Even now the saVages I see here are less
known than the tribes of central At
RIGA, and only the coasts of a few of
the islands have been explored The
sheep farmer, the gold digger and the
government vessels are, however, MAX
ing Roadway, and within a few years
this great archipelago will be a terra
1ncOgnita no longer.
SOUTHERN PATAGONIA.
The generally accepted belief regard
ing Southern Patagonia and TERRA del
Fueg'o is that they are something like
the coast of Greenland or those of the
Arctic seas. The biographies represent
them as wastes Of ice and snow, desc
late, forbidding and terrible to the
traveller. For the past four days have
been winding in and out of the chan
nelS along the west coast of lower
Patagonia. My sail has been through
series of scenic panOramas that can
not be surpassed in the world We en-
tered the archipelago by what is known
as the Smyth's channel route, about 400
miles above here, and coasted slowly
along through one channel after an
other until we came into the strait
proper at DesOlatiOn island. Darwin
compared the glaciers of Sarmiento in
TERRA del Fuego to 100 frozen Niagaras.
The waters along the lower end of
western Patagonia present cOmbina-
tiCnS which make you think of a hun
dred Lake COmOs, Lake GeneVas and
Lake Lucernes tied together in one
ever widening, ever-changing river.
Here are the beauties of the Thou
sand islands of the st. Lawrence. added
to by snow-capped mountains kissed by
the sun, and mighty glaciers sliding
down into masses Of dark green vege-
tatiOn. Here . re giant rocks, cathedral
shaped CO d with moss, rising
straight upward from the water for
LOCO feet; mountains, their heads lost
in the clouds, dropping almost precipi-
tously into the sea; narrow gorges, in
which the steamer must tack this way
and that as it winds through islands of
green and islands of rock. Here are
fields of floating ice, through which the
boat crashes; narrow fiords, in which
the black water is 5000 feet deep, and,
in short, such a variety of scenic Won
ders Of clouds, mountain and sea that
I doubt whether their like can be found