The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and PatagoniaSpears, John Randolph
History
The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia
Spears, John Randolph
Patagonia (Argentina and Chile) -- Description and travel
Gov. Mayer's name is not unknown to American history. Just for the love
of adventure and free republican institutions he came to the United
States to help during the war of the rebellion. He commanded a negro
regiment with conspicuous success. Afterward, while down on the Rio
Grande, he crossed over to help patriotic Mexicans overthrow Maximilian.
Although small in the number of its houses and its people, Gallegos is
in full plumage as a territorial capital. A two-story frame building was
in course of construction that will eventually be the White House of
Santa Cruz territory. Besides the Governor, there was the usual list of
other officials necessary for the dignity of such a place. As at
Ushuaia, already described, no official had anything to do worth
mention. Indeed, the Captain of Police, who in a United States
territorial capital would need to be a man of nerve and muscle, was here
a cripple who could neither sit on a horse nor walk unaided the length
of the town's one street. Still, courts were held sometimes to decide
conflicting claims of shepherds, and a gaucho who had slashed a comrade
in a drunken brawl was arrested just before I arrived. Gallegos will be
a favored stopping place for criminals when the country gets filled up,
I guess, for it is very handy to the Chili line, and extradition
treaties between two such countries as Chili and Argentine are of little
value.
A peculiarity of the climate is the southwest wind of summer. It begins
at 8 in the morning and increases in violence until after noon, when it
occasionally blows hard enough to lift a man from the saddle. At 3 in
the afternoon it moderates, and at 6 o'clock and thence on through the
night there is usually a calm. This wind blows every day in spring and
summer, and on many days it brings hail and sleet that no man can face.
The winter season, though colder, is by far the most pleasant of the
year. But in spite of wind and cold, Patagonia is pre-eminently a
healthful region now. Every human being that I saw there carried the
glow of health in his face and the spring of youth in his muscles. But
there are zymotic diseases just as there are in Yankee villages, because
of the juxtaposition of wells and cesspools, and these diseases will
prevail wherever settlements are made, because of the utter indifference
of Spanish-Americans to the rules of hygiene as applied in such matters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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