1833.] SPANISH SETTLEMENT. 157 



compelled the colonists to desert their half-finished buildings. 

 The style, however, in which they were commenced shows the 

 strong and liberal hand of Spain in the old time. The result of all 

 the attempts to colonize this side of America south of 41, have 

 been miserable. Port Famine expresses by its name the lingering 

 and extreme sufferings of several hundred wretched people, of 

 whom one alone survived to relate their misfortunes. At St. 

 Joseph's Bay, on the coast of Patagonia, a small settlement was 

 made; but during one Sunday the Indians made an attack and 

 massacred the whole party, excepting two men, who remained 

 captives during many years. At the Rio Negro I conversed with 

 one of these men, now in extreme old age. 



The zoology of Patagonia is as limited as its flora.* On the 

 arid plains a few black beetles (Heteromera) might be seen slowly 

 crawling about, and bccasionally a lizard darted from side to side. 

 Of birds we have three carrion hawks, and in the valleys a few 

 finches and insect-feeders. An ibis (Theristicus melanops a 

 species said to be found in central Africa) is not uncommon on the 

 most desert parts : in their stomachs I found grasshoppers, cicadfe, 

 small lizards, and even scorpions.f At one time of the year these 

 birds go in flocks, at another in pairs ; their cry is very loud and 

 singular, like the neighing of the guanaco. 



The guanaco, or wild llama, is the characteristic quadruped of 

 the plains of Patagonia ; it is the South American representative 

 of the camel of the East. It is an elegant animal in a state of 

 nature, with a long slender neck and fine legs. It is very common 

 over the whole of the temperate parts of the continent, as far south 

 as the islands near Cape Horn. It generally lives in small herds 

 of from half a dozen to thirty in each ; but on the banks of the 

 St. Cruz we saw one herd which must have contained at least five 

 hundred. 



They are generally wild and extremely wary. Mr. Stokes told 



* I found here a species of cactus, described by Professor Henslow, under 

 the name of Opuntia Darwinii (Magazine of Zoology and Botany, vol. i. 

 p. 466), which was remarkable by the irritability of the stamens, when I 

 inserted either a piece of stick or the end of my linger in the flower. The 

 segments of the perianth also closed on the pistil, but more slowly than 

 the stamens. Plants of this family, generally considered as tropical, 

 occur in North America (Lewis and Clarke's Travels, p. 221), in the 

 same high latitude as here, namely, in both cases, in 47. 



t These insects were not uncommon beneath stones. I found one 

 cannibal scorpion quietly devouring another. 



