Cryolite is a mineral from which common soda is easily extracted, and also from which the light silver-like aluminum was formerly prepared. The mines near the village of Ivigtut furnish practically the world's supply of this mineral. Formerly it was carried to Philadelphia, but in recent years not much is used. The fisheries are a monopoly of Denmark, and each station is visited from one to three or four times a year. CHAPTER XV WHERE THE TWO GREAT OCEANS MEET Perhaps there is no section of the globe about which most well-informed persons know so little as the southern part of South America. Judged by the reports of early discoverers and explorers, this region until recently has been considered a desolate stretch of snow mountains, barren plains, and extensive morasses, sparsely inhabited by a few thousand human beings of the lowest type and worthless to civilized man. Such a picture is but partly true. Many of the highest mountains are snow-capped throughout the year and are scored by immense glaciers which are constantly moving down their grooved sides; but there are also heavily forested slopes flanked by valleys and plains covered with rich grasses, making most excellent pasturage. The best land, comprising a large area, is now occupied as grazing grounds principally by sheep farmers. In the early part of the sixteenth century it was rumored that a water passage traversed the southern part of South America. This rumor was proved true in 1520, when Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese navigator in the service of Charles V of Spain, sailed through the strait which now bears his name. He called the passage Todos los Santos--literally, "All Saints"--but later the name was changed to commemorate the bold captain who discovered the route. Magellan was the first not only to sail through the strait, but to cross the broad Pacific Ocean, which was so named by him on account of the quietness of its waters. Because he saw the fires built by the natives blazing on the islands along the south side of the channel, he called them Tierra del Fuego, meaning "Land of Fire." The Strait of Magellan varies from three to seventy miles in width. The scenery along its shores, low and treeless in the eastern part, elsewhere is mountainous and heavily wooded--mainly with beech. In various places lofty precipices rise abruptly from the water's edge; throughout most of its extent the shore line is rock-bound and studded with islets. A more picturesque route, and one abounding in the grandest and most stupendous scenery in the world, is that from the Pacific by way of Smyth Channel, the entrance to which is four hundred miles north of the entrance to Magellan Strait. By this route one follows a series of channels and reaches the strait proper near Desolation Island. On account of the dangers besetting this course, underwriters refuse to insure vessels taking it.