Guayaneco Archipelago
The Guayaneco Archipelago () is an archipelago in southern Chile. It consists of 2 main islands, (to the east), (to the west), and many smaller islands. It was heavily glaciated during the most recent ice age. These glaciers dissected these mountain islands into a series of deep river valleys and glacial troughs. Today these glacial troughs are deep channels and fjords. The islands of the Guayaneco Archipelago comprise a series of elongated islands and deep bays that are the traces of a drowned coastal range. A number of deep channels are traversing generally north to south through the islands . These include the Messier Channel in the lower left portion of the image, and the Fallos Channel near the center of the image. Forests cover the lower slopes of the mountains throughout the many islands. Human settlement on these islands is scarce. History. The archipelago is thought to have been a cohabitational contact zone between different canoe-faring indigenous peoples living north and south of it. John Montgomery Cooper points out that it possibly made up a "meeting ground of quasi-friendly bilingual tribes". The islands were first reached by Jesuits based in Chiloé in 1613. In 1741 HMS "Wager