We generally speak of Argentina and Chile as if they were compact topographical and political entities, instead of territories between two and three thousand miles long, covering zones on the surface of the globe comparable, as far as latitude is concerned, to one extending from nigh mid-Africa, through Europe into Scotland, with climate similarly varying. But this southern land has great possibilities. It has received a bad name, largely resulting upon the description of Darwin, who visited it in the voyage of the _Beagle_, a reputation which more recent travellers have shown not to be deserved. Darwin spoke of the "curse of sterility" and of the eternally "dreary landscape," but, like Siberia, Patagonia may prove to be a region desirable in many respects. Yet Patagonia strikes the traveller as huge and elemental, and settlement and development, as far as they go, are but the work of the few recent years. It offers great and abrupt contrasts of pampa and mountain, with rivers cutting across the plains from the Andes to the Atlantic. "On the Atlantic coastline it is four or five days' ride to the nearest farm. In the interior Nature enfolds you with her large, loose grasp. Who, having once seen them, can forget the Pampas? Evening, and the sun sloping over the edge of the plain like an angry eye, an inky-blue mirage half blotting it out; in the middle distance grass rolling like an ocean to the horizon, lean thorn, and a mighty roaring wind. This wild land, ribbed and spined by one of the greatest mountain chains in the world, appears to have been the last habitation of the great beasts of the older ages. It is now the last country of all to receive man, or rather its due share of human population. Out there in the heart of the country one seems to stand alone, with nothing nearer or more palpable than the wind, the fierce mirages, and the limitless distances."[40] However, farms and cattle ranges are springing up, and Nature has placed in one spot on the coast an important petroleum field, to say nothing of the valuable forests.