404 SOUTH AMERICA— THE ANDES EEGIONS. 



unhappy settlers, besieged by tbe Patagonians and abandoned by the whites, 

 had no resources except fishing. Within three years all had perished of 

 famine or exhaustion. Cavendish, who had followed in the wake of Drake, 

 found nothing in the ruined settlement except frozen bodies. "Port Famine," 

 the name given by him to the ill-fated colony, was adopted by the Spaniards 

 themselves. 



After the English came the Dutch corsairs, Mahn, Cordes, Sebastian de 

 Weert, Olivier van Noort, who also ventured into the Fuegian waters without 

 adding much to the geographical knowledge of the archipelago. Nearly a 

 century had elapsed since Magellan's voyage, and Tierra del Fuego was still 

 supposed to form part of a great Antarctic continent, although both Hoces 

 and Drake had seen the "land's end." But the Ainsterdam trader and geo- 

 graphical student, Isaac Lemaire, being convinced of the popular error, and 

 firmly believing in the existence of an open sea, sent two ships in quest of it. 

 They set sail in 1615 under the command of his son Jacob Lemaire and 

 Schouten, and on reaching the southern extremity of the continent, having 

 lost one ship on the way, they penetrated with the other into marine waters 

 where a strong swell rolled up from the south-west, and where they met large 

 schools of whales. From these indications they concluded that here was the 

 sought-for passage, the " royal highway " between the two oceans. This was 

 in fact the strait which has ever since borne the name of Lemaire. Eastwards 

 they left the long Staten Island, believing it to form part of an Austral conti- 

 nent, and then far to the south doubled Cape Horn, supposing it to be a headland 

 of Tierra del Fuego. 



Thus was reached the Pacific Ocean and the western entrance to Magellan 

 Strait, whence they sailed on the return voyage to the Moluccas. As a natural 

 consequence of the then prevailing system of monopolies, Lemaire and Schouten 

 were, on their arrival in Java, arrested by their fellow-countrymen and deprived of 

 their vessel, as having infringed on the privileges of the Dutch East India 

 Company, which claimed the exclusive right to explore the South Seas. 



After the Dutch discoveries the Spaniards could not fail to revisit the southern 

 waters, with a view to ascertaining whether it might be possible to close this 

 " royal road," which offered such easy access to their Pacific colonies. Hence, 

 Nodal was sent to Tierra del Fuego, to carefully study the coasts and survey the 

 new passage. He circumnavigated the Staten Island group, but he was fain to 

 recognise the impossibility of defending these waters by fortifications, and in 1624 

 the Dutch Admiral, L'Herraite, sailed through with a fleet in the hope of 

 conqiiering Chili and Peru. 



But his geographical work was more important than his military exploits. He 

 discovered the Gulf of Nassau, and found that Cape Horn belonged to a distinct 

 group of islands which still bear his name, modified by the Spaniards to Ermita. 

 He determined their insular character, and it was henceforth known to all sea- 

 farers who ventured into these waters that here the Atlantic and Pacific inter- 

 mingled over a wide expanse. 



