These people were at one time periodically deported for inciting to
commit or committing overt violence in connection with labour strikes.
They were mostly anarchists of the type which tyrannical Governments all
the world over persist in regarding as criminal. These men were put on
board boats bound for their native countries, the police of which were
telegraphically advised of their departure and intended destination.
Needless to say, the anarchists took good care to contrive to leave the
boat before she reached what was for them a danger zone. Usually they got
out at Montevideo and soon were back again at their old work of stirring
up strife in Buenos Aires.
At last the National Government had enough of this procedure and Congress
passed a law whereby any person having been sentenced to deportation
is, on being subsequently found in the Republic, liable to a term of
penal servitude; and the fact that Tierra del Fuego would be the penal
settlement to which recalcitrant anarchists would be sent was duly
and insistently made public. This had a very beneficial effect for
the Government and peaceable citizens at large. Dangerous anarchists
thenceforth ceased to return to Argentina after deportation. They knew,
or at least had read or heard, what the climate of Tierra del Fuego
is; and that for people like them, used to fairly comfortable living,
confinement there most likely meant burial there also.
Not quite half of this charming island, over which the winds blow
straight from the South Pole, belongs to Argentina and forms the
National Territory under discussion. The other half of it belongs to
Chile. Geologically most of this island is a prolongation of the Andes.
On the Atlantic side of its forest-clad hills are sloping plains, the
continuation of the Pampean formation. On these a peculiarly hardy breed
of sheep graze, finding some shelter in valleys and hollows, and give a
wool which fetches a good price in European markets. Grazing of a rough
kind does also maintain cattle and horses on the Northern parts of the
island. Fish and shell-fish of a multitude of kinds and good quality
abound on the coast and afford material for a profitable industry, as
also do the seal and whale fisheries, and penguins are hunted for their
oil. All these fisheries are supposed to be under Government supervision,
regulated by special laws; but, in fact, the practical difficulties of
adequate supervision result in an enormous amount of highly destructive
poaching.
The official estimate of the total cultivated area of Argentine Tierra
del Fuego is 110 hectares, of which 90 are stated to be planted with
potatoes and other table vegetables. The number of sheep is given by the
same authority (Señor Emilio Lahitte, Director of the Department of Rural
Economy and Statistics in the National Ministry of Agriculture) as over
2,500,000 and cattle at about 15,000.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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