Before they became independent of Spain, and whilst the people of Buenos Ayres possessed in the Banda Oriental more waste lands than they wanted, safe from any incursions of the Indians, and better adapted perhaps than any other in South America for the rearing of cattle, at that time their only object, they had no particular inducement to extend their possessions further than the River Salado; all beyond was left to the Indians, and little or nothing was known of their country, except what they chose to communicate, until Falkner published his account of Patagonia in a country town in England in 1774. The appearance of that book produced results which the author perhaps little anticipated, for it stimulated the Spanish Government to make a general survey of the coast of Patagonia, and to form settlements upon it, the history of which to this day has never yet been made public. It is of those measures, and the information derived from them, that I purpose to give some account in this chapter. Father Falkner, the author above alluded to, was an Englishman, who, from a very early age, seems to have had a passion for travelling. Brought up to the medical profession, he went in the capacity of a surgeon on board a trading-vessel to Cadiz, where he embarked in one of the Assiento ships, bound on a slaving voyage, eventually to Buenos Ayres: there he was induced to enter the order of Jesuits, in which, as a missionary, he afterwards made himself conspicuous for the zeal with which he devoted himself to the conversion of the Indian inhabitants of the unexplored regions of that part of the world. Forty years he passed amongst them, and, but for the expulsion of his order from South America, he would probably have ended his days there. On his return to England, he wrote his book, to this day the only authentic account we have of the manners and customs of the Indians of the pampas, whilst the map it contains, compiled partly from his own observations, and partly from Indian accounts, has furnished the principal, if not the sole data for all those which have since been published of the interior of their country. One of his principal objects avowedly was to point out how vulnerable by any hostile naval power were the Spanish possessions in those parts; and hardly had the book appeared when the Spanish Government, taking alarm lest his suggestions should be listened to in England, sent secret orders to the Viceroy of Buenos Ayres to have the whole coast of Patagonia carefully surveyed, with a view "to the formation of such new settlements upon it as might secure the King of Spain's rights, and forestall the English in their supposed intention of appropriating to themselves the valuable fisheries on the southern part of the coast."