Patagonia is a desert region very much like certain parts of the United States. One may travel hundreds of miles without seeing a drop of sweet water, and yet with a shovel water a-plenty may be had by him who knows where to dig. Don Gregorio, having landed his provisions, put a man at work digging in the sand not very far from the surf in search of water. Whether he found water or not tradition does not tell. The story tellers all forget about the water as they relate how, when the digger had gotten down about three feet, he began to throw out a layer of black sand such as no one of the crew had seen before--a black sand that was dotted all over with little and big dull yellow particles. That was such an odd-looking sand that Don Gregorio and the digger and all hands had to take a proper look at it. And when they had taken this look, they almost went crazy with excitement, because those yellow particles were pure gold. But, as I said, neither this discovery nor the gold that was dug from Las Minas creek at Punta Arenas, nor the stories of these doings which were carried to England and to California by ships passing that way, had any effect in creating a rush to the diggings near the straits. In explanation of this indifference, it may be said that the diggings, even of Las Minas creek were, on the whole, rather lean. Instances of considerable finds are mentioned by the old timers of Punta Arenas. Men cleaned up the stuff by the ounce, in spots, but the run of what men got was "mere day wages." The find of Don Gregorio's sailors was not considered of any importance--the tiny nuggets were supposed to be a stray deposit, and not indicating any bed of gold-bearing sand. The stuff lay in the sand of the beach, and who had ever heard of such a thing as placer diggings in the sand along the shore? In 1877 as many as 120 men worked the sands of Las Minas creek and made day wages at it. In the United States the fact that 120 men with hash bowls could wash out even "mere day wages" would create a rush to the region, while the finding of an occasional nugget "of the weight of 300 grammes," as occurred in Las Minas creek, would create a stampede, of course, but in the Spanish-American countries the conditions and the people are different.