A number of years ago a steamer was wrecked on these shores, but the crew managed to save sufficient provisions to sustain all those rescued for some time. While sinking shallow wells they discovered a strata of black sand that sparkled with particles of gold. Their reports led to great excitement over the discovery of gold on Tierra del Fuego. Although adventurers had sailed through the Straits for centuries, looking for the wealth that they might obtain either honestly or dishonestly, yet the gold deposits remained undiscovered until 1867. Their covetous eyes had gazed upon the gold-bearing shores, and they had even filled their water-casks in the gold-bearing rivulets without seeing the wealth. In the few years following a number of Argentine explorers visited that region, and found the source of some of the gold. The gold was almost exclusively found in free particles in a layer of black sand, which was found under the surface sand. As soon as the report of their find reached the settlements, a number of expeditions were fitted out and sent to that region. The best payings were found right on the beach, which was washed by the waves of the sea at a high tide and during storms. It was also found that the tides brought in fresh gold-bearing sands from the seas. The miners used to sit down and smoke their pipes until the storms passed, and then dig up the black sand with the gold in it after the surf had gone down. It all seemed to be pockets, so that where the gold would be found in considerable quantities for a while, it would soon become so scarce that mining it under the crude conditions prevailing became unprofitable. The prospectors sailed in and out of the stormy and dangerous bays, and many of them lost their lives. The hidden reefs and whirling tornadoes form combinations that made navigation in the small catboats that were used extremely perilous. Many, who were wrecked, were obliged to live upon whatever wild food they could find for weeks, and others were killed by the hostile Indians. The original stories said that nuggets as big as kernels of corn were plentiful, but they were not true to fact. No gold quartz veins were ever discovered, but in all the finds it was simply particles mixed up with the black sand. Gold mining to-day is not prosecuted in that region as much as it was a couple of decades ago, although some gold is washed each year. If the whole story was known, it would probably be found that there were more skeletons of dead miners left on those inhospitable shores than records of wealth acquired in Tierra del Fuego. Most of those who did find wealth got no farther than Punta Arenas with it, for that city was to that region what San Francisco was in the early days of California, and mining prospectors are the same the world over.