The Washington times., 1901-10-27
IN UNKNOWN PATAGONIA.
Something About the Strange Home
of the Giant SIoth.

ent condition in night. A very few years
ago it was entirely given up to Indians
| and guanacos. Now there are farms upon
its coasts, and settlements-Gallegos with
| its S,OoO inhabitants, and Sandy Point
still more populous with 11,00o
| Curious places these coast settlements
| frontier towns of Patagonia, one might
| call them, very like frontier towns in
other parts of the world. The inhabitants
are the foam of the tide of humanity;
many of them have drifted there and
remain there upon the desolate coast.
The chief industries of Patagonis-to
| borrow the words of the geography prim-
| er-resolve themselves into one word
| sheep. From beginning to end of Pata-
gonia, along certain lines of longitude il
is sheep-sheep eternally. To escape sheep
you must either sail out upon the Allan
tic or else lose yourself in the pampas.
The story of the country can be sum-
med up in these sentences:
The Falkland Isles proved good for
sheep.
The islands becoming too full, the over
flow tried Patagonia.
Sheep throYe in Patagonia.
The people are of varied race in Pata-
gonia-the blood of every nation is pour
ed into her veins. Life-failures many of
them, but there you don't find the broke
army man or the Eton and oxford gone
astray. Patagonia is too little known to
attract gilded misfortune or to be much
sought out by the legion of the damned.
Farther north you find them.
But down there upon the beaches OF
Ultima Thine, at the worlds end, the
wanderers of many lands have been flung
by the gales Of the seven oceans. Fair
haired Swedes, bull-necked Norwegiaus.
lads from the Fife hills, red-capped Ital-
ians. smart Spaniards. fat Portuguese,
bearded Russians, cunning Germans,
Hollanders Chileans, Orientals, Chinese
Ia few, Informative Frenchmen, Irish
men whose bitterness has been washed
away by the contemplation Of wider pros
poets; Austrians with unpronouncable
names. and Poles ending in ski" every
known nationality. and a good many un-
known mixtures.
And these folks all talk sheep. Sheep,
sheep. all day long and over the evening
pipe-sheep, and yet sheep.
Behind the narrow fringe of farms, the
country, which is of immense extent is
divided into pampa and CordiIlera-plain
and mountain. From the Sierra Nevada
stretch to the sea stretch the pampas,
all grass, thorn. guanacos, and mirages.
On the western rim of the pampa the
Cordilleras stand against the sky a tu-
mutt of mountains climbing upward, their
hollows holding great lakes. iee-cold. ice
blue. and about their bases thousands of
square miles of shaggy forests, of which
but the bare edges have yet been explor-
ed.
The two make up Patagonia. and give
with hardly a visible unduIation, noun
tains almost inaccessible owing to their
steepness. Side by side they lie. crossing
many degrees of latitude. the contrast de-
scendiBg to the smallest particulars,
mountain against plain, forest as oppos-
ed to low thorn bush. rain against sun.
The west wind only belongs to both
more or less, though It is more prevalent
upon the pampas. The east of the coun-
try belongs to the ArgentiRes. the west to
the Chileans; between them an enormous
acreage OF Cordillera yet to be explored
This land is the home of big distances
The Boer bnasted that he could not see
the smoke of his nefghbors chimney. On
the coast land of Patagonia It is often
three. four, or five days ride to the next
farm. They measure their holdings. not
by the acre, but by the square league.
One farm alone Is 400 square miles in ex-
tent
The distances are at first appalling A
man accustomed to cities would here feel
forlorn indeed. You stand face to face
with the elemental. AS you travel into
the interior, Nature, with her large loose
grasp, enfolds you. There is no propping
up by ones fellow man. Empty leagues
Upon leagues surround you on every side.
the inverted bowl we call the sky" above.
Who, having once seen them. can forget
the pampas? Evening, and the sun sloD-
ing over the edge of the plain like an an
cry eye. an inky-blue mirage half blotting
IL out, In the middle distance grass rolling
like an ocean to the horizon, lean thorn,
and mighty roaring wind Th5.n comes
the dark, like the turning down of a lamp.
Out there in the heart of the country you
seem to stand alone, with nothing nearer
or more paipable than the wind, the fierce
and iimitless distances.
This wild land. ribbed and boned by one
OF the greatest mountain chains in the
world, appears to have been the last
habitation Of the greater beasts of tbr
older ages. 1t is now the last country of
all TO receive man, or rather its due share
of human population.
1t must not be forgotten that II is the
nearest known bulk of land to the Ant
arctic continent. 1t thrusts forth its great
mass far into southern waters, and be-
yond lie a covey Of islands, large and
small, upon the uttermost Of which is the
famous Cape Horn.
On the Antarctic continent there is no
life to speak of. only birds. In Pataeo-
mia, the nearest large land, the human
race was. through the centuries. repre-
sented by few thousand nonad Indians.
who in their long rovings followed certain
well-known trails. from which only a very
rare and venturesome individual thought
Of deyiating. For outside these paths
dwelt, according to the native imagina-
tion, dangers and terrors unknown. You
can follow the same trails today Picture
to yourself dozen or twenty field paths
running side by side, obiterated by the
fingers of the Spring and invisible under
your feet, but strangely growing into dis
tinctness half mile ahead, waving on
ward across the pampas. Such Is the In
dian trail.
People in England, one finds, are divided
into two groups as to their opinions of the
Patagonian climate. One group main
tains that the country must be tropical
since it is included in the continent of !
South America: the other that 1t is an
lce-bound region, for the good reason that
ii lies close to TERRA del Fuego. Oddly
enough both are in a degree justified. For
the summers there are very hot but the |
severity of the winter time when snow
lies deep on the country. and cutting |
winds blow down from the frozen heights |
during those months that bring to us our |