At Ushuaia, the capital of Argentine Tierra del Fuego, a small village in Beagle Channel, I fell in with Harry Hansen, a Punta Arenas prospector, who for six months had been cruising about the islands to the south of the channel, and was on his way home very much disgusted with the life of a prospector. He, with a brother, had faced every kind of a storm known to the Cape Horn region. They had been obliged to live for weeks, as the Indians do, on limpets and clams only. Their only home had been the tiny cabin of a 25-foot sloop. As a result of the six months of hardship and work they had about twenty-five ounces of gold dust. So they sold their sloop and took passage with us for the Gallegos River. As we steamed along they told stories of gold hunting around Cape Horn. Lennox Island is just now the centre of interest in that region. Lennox has high banks and sandy beaches, exactly like those of Cape Virgin, and the gold is found in a layer of black sand that crops out below sea level, and is washed up within reach by the waves. But, according to the Hansens, the best of the diggings there were worked out. There was no longer any fresh, unworked ground, with its layers of dust that could be scraped up with a table knife at the rate of three kilos a day, and so Lennox was not worth the attention of any enterprising prospector. The plodders who were willing to carry mercury to put in the sluices, and to sit down and wait for the storms to bring up fresh sand could make a couple of guineas a day easily enough, but the Hansens did not want any such wages as that. Under the point of New Island, very appropriately called the Asses' Ears, a wide beach was pointed out as the location where an extraordinary find was made. A party from Punta Arenas had landed there, and had sunk a wide shaft several feet into the sand, looking for the gold-bearing layer, but without finding it, although the indications along shore were good. They abandoned the spot after a day or two and went away. Then another party came along some time later, and just for luck concluded to sink the well a little deeper. That was the luckiest conclusion they ever came to. Within one foot they struck pay dirt, took out over 100 pounds weight (48 kilos) within a month, and sailed away content. Their story, when told at Punta Arenas, sent a host of eager fellows down there to get what was left, and, singular to relate, about every man who went there among the first three boat-loads did well. But when I was passing this point only the smoke of the camp-fire of one lone gold-digger could be seen faintly beneath the Asses' Ears. He was the last of the plodders, according to the Hansens, and was likely to become as rich and as mean as some folks they knew in Punta Arenas--men willing to get rich by saving and scrimping out of a paltry $10 a day.