Some of the details of their condition from time to time remind one of the Yankee frontier settlements. They began their religious life in the colony with union services, and got on comfortably until they prospered. Sectarians floated in on the waters of the irrigating ditch, so to speak, and there was a burst of zeal in building up denominations that brought a growth in church outfits quite equal to that in the area planted--rather larger, in fact. Among the 2000 people of 1883 there were two independent congregations with ordained ministers, who held regular services in chapels, of which "the walls were baked brick, the roofs were wooden, with a layer of mud on top, and the wooden benches had good backs to them," as one of them described the places of worship. They had also a stone-walled chapel in a third place, and held regular services in school-houses in other places. The Methodists had a brick church with an ordained minister, at Rawson, and held services in the upper valley. The Baptists had a fine chapel at Frondrey, one of the little villages that sprang up, and an ordained minister for it. In fact, there were, in all, seven ordained ministers in the colony, and in 1884 the Episcopalians brought out the eighth. Every one of these had his 240 acres of land, and every one worked his own farm and got rich, as his neighbors did, raising wheat. It is a significant fact that up to 1884 the colony did not have a single physician. It scarcely needed one. Still some one was sure to break a limb every two or three years, and the colonists were right glad when, in 1885, a man with a diploma came there and took up the usual allowance of land. In 1883 a number of Welsh prospectors came from Australia to Chubut and went as far back as the Andes. They found several croppings of lignite, which at first were thought to be good coal, and that made a stir. The stuff is now used for fuel to some extent in the houses, and it is to be found that five tons will serve for about two tons of Welsh coal. Then they found gold and went to work filing claims. The gold, however, lies only thirty-one leagues from a port on the Chili coast where a German steamer calls once a month, so that the diggings, which include placer as well as quartz workings, will hardly benefit Chubut save as a market for produce may be created. About $50,000 gold has been invested in the workings. The Yankee traveller is sure to be informed, too, that "a Texas cowboy named Marshall has a store at the camp, and he says the diggings beat California."