276 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: GEOGRAPHY. 



come generally to be known. A few years later the few remaining sur- 

 vivors were picked up by an English vessel and the colony was finally 

 abandoned. 



In 1669 the English under Sir John Narborough attempted to seize 

 Patagonia. That officer established a settlement and built a fort at Port 

 Desire, which had been discovered and explored in the latter part of the 

 sixteenth century by Thomas Cavendish and John Davis. This fort and 

 settlement were soon abandoned and nothing further seems to have come 

 of this early attempt by the English at the occupation and colonization of 

 Patagonia. Later the Spaniards made an equally unsuccessful attempt to 

 establish a colony at Port Desire and another at San Julian, a port some 

 one hundred miles farther south on the same coast. Ruins of both of 

 these settlements are still to be seen. 



Later Settlements. — Notwithstanding these and other early attempts at 

 settlement dating back to more than three hundred years, the first per- 

 manent settlement was made by the Chilians in 1 85 1 , at Sandy Point, Punta 

 Arenas, on the Straits of Magellan. First established as a penal colony, 

 it has survived the mutinies of the prisoners in 1853 and 1871 and is to- 

 day a city of some eight thousand inhabitants, with a branch of the London 

 & Tarapaca Bank, a rather imposing opera house, and numerous large mer- 

 cantile establishments. It has electric lights, but is without either water or 

 sewer systems. It derives its chief importance from being a port of call 

 for all steamers passing through the Straits for the west coast of America, or 

 for New Zealand. This makes of it not only the chief, but the only distrib- 

 uting point for southern Patagonia and the Fuegian Archipelago. Most 

 European, as well as American governments are represented at Sandy Point 

 by consular agents, or vice-consuls. Sandy Point is also the seat of govern- 

 ment for the Chilian Territory of Magellanes, which embraces the western 

 portion of Fuegia and southern Patagonia. From Sandy Point northward 

 there extends a chain of small but constantly growing settlements all 

 along the eastern Straits and the Atlantic coast. Among these may be 

 mentioned Punta Delgada, Gallegos, Santa Cruz, San Julian and Port 

 Desire. Of these, Gallegos is at present of much the most importance. 

 It owes this supremacy to its situation in the midst of the best wool- 

 growing district, lying immediately north of the Strait of Magellan, and 

 to the fact that it is the capital of the Argentine Territory of Santa Cruz. 

 There is established here a branch of the London & Tarapaca Bank and 



