Produced by Adrian Mastronardi, Josephine Paolucci and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net. (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) [Illustration: MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION.] THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN A STUDY OF LIFE IN TIERRA DEL FUEGO AND PATAGONIA BY JOHN R. SPEARS ILLUSTRATED G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS NEW YORK 27 WEST TWENTY-THIRD STREET LONDON 24 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND The Knickerbocker Press 1895 COPYRIGHT, 1895 BY G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS _Entered at Stationers' Hall, London_ The Knickerbocker Press, New Rochelle, N.Y. TO ALL WHO LOVE THE RED ABORIGINES OF THE AMERICAS AS GOD MADE THEM. PREFACE I am impelled to say, by way of preface, that the readers will find herein such a collection of facts about the coasts of Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia as an ordinary newspaper reporter might be expected to gather while on the wing, and write when the journey was ended. It was as a reporter of _The Sun_, of New York, that I visited the region described. And instead of giving these facts in the geographical sequence in which they were gathered, I have grouped them according to the subjects to which they relate. So it happens that the work is what may be properly called a collection of newspaper sketches rather than the conventional story of a traveller. I make this explanation the more freely for the reason that book-buyers as a rule, so book publishers have repeatedly told me, do not take kindly to newspaper sketches bound in book form. They resent as an attempted imposition, it is said, the masking of such writings in the garb that belongs to literature, just as they would resent the sale of cotton-seed oil under the name of lard. However this may be I am bound to avoid even the appearance of any such deceitful intent. On the other hand there are people who depend almost entirely on the newspapers for their reading matter. They seem to prefer the style of the newspaper writers. Perhaps a book that is avowedly the work of a reporter will meet their approval. At any rate I should be particularly sorry to have any of them think, when the book is offered to them by the bookseller, that it is anything different from what it is.