With this preliminary understanding of the causes for the metropolitan life of the Strait of Magellan, one is not so greatly surprised at the first glimpse of the strange street scenes. We naturally looked for some marks of nationality in the people we first met, but quite in vain. Spanish is the language of the place. At one street corner, however, one hears English; at another, German; at another, French; and at still another, Italian. Negroes are few, but Indians are quite numerous. One of our new acquaintances took us about town. He was, I believe, a German by birth, but he talked with us in French, and took us to a bar where he talked English; to a magazine where he addressed the clerk in Spanish; to the church where he addressed the Holy Father in Italian; and others told us that he could speak the various Indian tongues, and was not puzzled with Latin and Greek, though he never had had a college education. The streets are ordinary country roads, in very bad order. They are most remarkable for their number of stagnant pools of water, and the various heaps of ashes and debris. Stumps of trees, broken carts, tin cans, packing boxes, dead dogs, and a host of other refuse serve to ornament and pave the sandy bottoms. Scattered about these, and usually not far from a bar, are groups of visitors in various attitudes. The most numerous of these are the cowboys or gauchos, as they are called some on horses with ponchos over their shoulders, and wearing huge, broad-brimmed hats, and loose pantaloons; others steeped in alcohol with a soft bed of sand for a couch, and a boulder for a pillow; and still others, in new suits, moving about like a girl in an Easter bonnet to display their annual acquirements. But the gauchos move in groups to themselves, discussing sheep and squaws and the hunting sports of the pampas. In another group one finds quite different types of humanity. Here are the gold-diggers, men of extremes, either without a copper or with a fat bag of gold, according to the luck of their past season. Unlike the cowboy, who is usually in neat attire, the miner is careless of dress, and, rich or poor, is rigged in rags; but he is a bit of a lion in his way. If he has found rich deposits, his pocket is the ambition of the local tradesmen, and his information is eagerly sought by all the loafers of the town. He discusses pay-diggings, nuggets, methods of washing gold, the relative qualities of food and drinks, and his last feminine acquaintances in Sandy Point. And then there are the groups of sailors, soldiers, and of tramps. The citizens of the town one rarely sees; they are always occupied within doors, for everybody who is anybody in Punta Arenas keeps a store and owns one or more sheep-farms.