After we became accustomed to this appearance of cheapness and unstability which characterised the place, we found much of interest and some things absolutely astonishing. Punta Arenas has a character and a life which mark it at once as one of the most peculiar towns on the globe. We were boarded long before we came to anchor by agents of provision houses, boarding-houses, hotels, saloons, and health officers; but strangely enough no custom officers paid us even a friendly visit. Our business arrangements and not a few social arrangements had been made by Mr. Racovitza, who had preceded us, and shortly after we came to anchor we made our headquarters in the little French Hotel where a welcome bag of correspondence awaited our arrival. CHAPTER VI PUNTA ARENAS, THE SOUTHERNMOST TOWN USHUAIA, Dec. 22, 1897. We decided, before we left, that Punta Arenas, as a town, is very extraordinary in many ways when you come to know it. Aside from the fact that it is the world’s southernmost city, the metropolis of the lower end of the American continent, the dumping ground for so much of discontented humanity, the capital of Chilean Tierra del Fuego and Patagonia, and a host of other large sounding, but small meaning, names,--it is one of the most cosmopolitan towns of the universe. Its life and its business are absolutely astonishing. There is a sort of effervescent interest which one quickly acquires in this little speck of bright life and its gloomy wilderness. The interest begins with its misty history and ends, perhaps, to-day with the modern re-discovery of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego by sheep-farmers and gold-seekers. After Magellan discovered the Strait, and led the way across the jewelled waters of the Pacific, the enterprising Spaniards, with the important permission of the Pope, gathered easily and peacefully the accumulated wealth of the fertile islands and opulent empires of the South Sea. Any competition from other nations was forbidden by the Pope and prevented by the supposed danger of passing through the Strait. Both of these dangers were braved by the bold half-pirate, half-explorer, but entire seaman, Francis Drake.