CHAPTER V. 



Camp at Coy Inlet ; By horseback to Sandy Point ; Rio Chico ; An acci- 

 dent ; Ooshi Aike ; Posada de la Reina; Cabeza del Mar ; Cape 

 Negro; Sandy Point; Return to Gallegos ; Make preparations for a 

 trip into the interior. 



HAVING completed our work at Corriguen Aike, on November 

 second we moved camp to the point of land directly south of 

 Coy Inlet at the mouth of Coy River. Considering the impor- 

 tance of the shipment we had just made by the "Patria" and that we 

 were quite unknown to the parties to whom we had consigned them in 

 Sandy Point, we decided that it was best I should go myself to Sandy 

 Point and personally look after their reshipment to New York. I was 

 further influenced in favor of this decision by the hope that there might 

 be letters from home awaiting us at that port, for though we had now 

 been absent more than nine months and had written regularly giving full 

 instructions as to how we were to be addressed, not one line had either 

 of us received from those at home in whose health and welfare we were 

 most deeply concerned. Accordingly on the following morning, No- 

 vember third, leaving Mr. Peterson to continue the work at our new camp, 

 I set out on horseback for Sandy Point, distant some two hundred and 

 twenty-five miles on the northern shore of the Straits of Magellan and 

 about midway between Capes Virgin and Pillar. I succeeded the first 

 night in reaching Killik Aike, where I found Mr. Felton and family at 

 home, and experienced for the first time their generous hospitality. They 

 were astounded when I told them I was on my road to Sandy Point, and 

 assured me that with one horse I would never be able to reach my desti- 

 nation, even going so far as to offer me the loan of another. Accustomed 

 in our own country to making trips of from five hundred to a thousand 

 miles with one horse, I felt no alarm at undertaking so insignificant a 

 journey as this seemed, more especially as I had been assured that at no 

 point along the way was there a greater distance than fifty-five miles 



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