The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-02


 Every afternoon. immediately upon coming to anchor so as to make the most of the short twilight, the captain of our steamer allowed his passengers to go ashore, himself selecting the best landing places. Sailors were detailed to take care of the picnickers, and to build huge fires by billing brushwood around some tall pine tree. so that we might roast in it's hot ashes the mus sels that literally line the rocks. On these uncanny excursions nobody ven tured far inland, deterred as much by fear of skulking Patagonians as by the deep, wet moss. There are neither rep tiles nor dangerous beasts to be encoun- tered here, for animals know better than to make their homes so near the inhospitable south pole. But one has reason to be afraid of the indigenous human species, though rarely met, un- less ones party outnumbers theirs One windy afternoon, in the half-hour between sunset and darkness, wan dered alone a short distance from the signal fire, and came upon a cluster of deserted huts, set close to the beach, each surrounded by mighty pile of mussel shells. The nomadic Indians of this section, subsisting almost entirely upon raw sea-food, roam from place to place, according to season. They build huts in favorite localities for use when ever they return thereto,-skeleton houses. made by planting both ends of 1.-the poles, iliterlaced, in the ground, on top of which skins are spread when
 
 Each hut is about three feet high by perhaps five feet across, shaped pre- cisely like aa inverted basin. Trying to fancy how it would feel to be q Pat agonian, I cl;awled into one of them, and was rewarded for my lowly -mind edness by finding bag-like basket of woven reeds and a fshing-spear made of long bone, notched on one side like saw-teeth.
 When we rounded Cape Forward which, as every sehool-boy knows, is the southernmost point on the western hemisphere, Cape Horn being on tiny island two hundred miles farther south the usual snow storm prevailed, for we were months too early in these wa ters for a pleasant trip. On the right gleamed a stupendous blue-green gla- cier shining like glass between snowy mountains; on the left, line of won- derful craggy peaks, snow-crested all, looking like stucco work against win- i try sky, or a series of gigantic images done in plaster. Just ahead, dark mass of rock loomed up from the wa l ter's edge to a height of twelve hun | dred feet, joined to the range by low l strip of land. And that black mass ic
 Cape Froward the tip-end of the south- | ern continent, place familiar enough l by name in school-day annals. but which few of us expected to behold
 with our mortal eyes. Directly south os us Mount Sarmiento, the most striking island of the whole | archipelago, rears it's almost perfect pyramid seven thousand feet into the blue. A little farther eastward is | Mount Darwin, a peak as lofty, if not so famous; and south of both runs Dar- l win Sound, on whose southern shore is | an English mission station, where few devoted men and women are striving
 (but without pronounced success), tc
 Christianize the benighted Tierra del
 Fuegoans.
 At dinner one day the captain hap
 pened to remark that this was our very
 last evening within sight of the Andes
 for the ships course would change dur.
 ing the night so that those mountains
 would no longer be visible. We felt as if he had said that some old-t time friend
 was about to bid us final adieu; ai16 though snow was falling and a bitter
 wind coating everything with ice I stole out alone from the well-warmed cabin where others were waltzing to the mu. sic of zither and guitar for last hali hour with those glorious heights whicf for two years have been ever-present companions-a perpetual delight and in
 spiration, and an unfailing solace wher dangers threatened or homesckness as. sailed. They have taught us what the ] Psalmist meant when he said T vii look unto the hills whence cometh my help"
 From sailing due southward we haG
 turned to the northeast, so that the SUI appeared to have sunk in our wake while a halo of crimson and gold ye fingered on the distant Andes-transfig
 ured mountains now, no longer barrel
 and icy, but clothed in rosy tints likt
 a true land of the sky But not fol long. In less time than it takes to tel it the brilliant eolors faded and the,
 became mere ghosts of mountains
 shodowy and pale wrapped in mist, shrouds. In the deepening twilight the, \ seemed to be keeping tryst with on, | who loved them well, standing on tip
 toes and peering over the shoulders Q one another, to return my mute farewell 1 till darkness hid them from view.
 The following morning we found our
 selves at anchor off the coast of tn
 nineteenth province of Chili, opposit Punta Arenas, the southernmost city ol the face of the earth; the home of tn penguin, the sea-lion and the guanacc
 where wind and storm and cold prevai during the greater portion of the year And here we disembark, armed an,
 equipped with sundry letters of intro duction to the governor, the consul an other persons in authority, purposing t spend three or four weeks here (,lntj the next steamer of the line come , along and picks us up) in explorin l what we can of southern Patagonia an + the Islands of Tierra del Fuego. Tn ! ssite of Punta Arenas--which is Spanisl wa