The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn: A Study of Life in Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia — John Shaqi
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
Last of all came the one industry that was to make Punta Arenas the
antarctic metropolis. Mr. H. L. Reynard, an Englishman living in Punta
Arenas, rented Elizabeth Island early in the seventies, and brought some
sheep there from the Falklands. The sheep took kindly to their new home,
and increased so rapidly that Mr. Reynard soon had to move some of them
to the mainland. They say he now owns over 100,000 sheep, besides horses
and cattle galore, and enjoys--really enjoys--an income of not far from
L400 per week.
The people of Punta Arenas did not wait until Mr. Reynard became rich
before following his example. They began to invest in sheep as soon as
they saw that sheep were profitable, and so far as I could learn every
man there who had gone into the business and had given it ordinary care
had made money. So the sheep spread far and wide over the region, and
men came to care for them and Punta Arenas was the point to which all
these men came for supplies. And, as has happened elsewhere, so here the
rearing of cattle and horses goes along with the rearing of sheep.
It appears that during the early years the garrison in charge of the
convicts numbered on the average sixty soldiers of the line. Besides
these the government employed a lot of men to hunt the guanaco and the
cattle that ran wild in the Cordilleras, in order to keep the garrison
supplied with meat, and, incidentally, to help the soldiers hunt runaway
convicts of whom not a few were found brave enough to face the terrors
of the Patagonia desert for the sake of liberty. Such tales as may be
gathered of the doings and sufferings of these runaways are almost
beyond belief. To follow the beach to the Santa Cruz River, a journey of
from two to three weeks, subsisting on the few raw fish that might be
cast up by the sea, and passing two days at a stretch without water,
were matters of common experience. To wander inland and perish miserably
while striving to reach a mirage lake often happened.
However, it was not so much for the love of liberty that men fled from
the Punta Arenas prison, as it was because they could not endure the
sufferings peculiar to their situation. It was because officers as well
as soldiers of the line and convicts were in exile, and because the
worse instincts of the officers were brought out by the hardships they
endured. In such a penal settlement as that was matters naturally went
from bad to worse, and a second mutiny was inevitable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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