2 THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



the last century by Darwin had something to do with this omission. 

 He spoke of it as a land having " the curse of sterility '' upon it. He 

 dwelt on its desolate appearance, its "dreary landscape," and it 

 would seem that his undervaluing of the country of which, after all, he 

 had but a short and curtailed experience, influenced the whole circle 

 of the nations, with the result that only during the last thirty years 

 or so have the peoples who desire to colonise been discovering how 

 desirable and profitable is the great neglected land of the south. 



Patagonia has grown to its present condition very rapidly. 

 Not so long ago it was almost entirely given up to Indians and 

 the countless herds of guanaco. Now there are farms upon the 

 coast, and a few settlements, such as Gallegos with its 3000 in- 

 habitants, and Sandy Point or Punta Arenas, still more populous 

 with 11,000. Behind this narrow strip of sparsely inhabited 

 coast-land the immense extent of the interior lies vacant. 



Patagonia strikes the traveller as huge, elemental. Its natural 

 conformation is stamped with these characteristics. From the 

 River Negro on the north it tapers gradually to the Straits of 

 Magellan on the south. Three great parallel divisions, running 

 north and south, of plain, lake and mountain, each strongly 

 marked, make up the face of the country. From the shores of 

 the Atlantic the pampas rise in gently graduated terraces to the 

 range of the Andes, while between them are strung a mighty 

 network of lakes and lagoons, some connected by rivers, others by 

 channels, many of which shift and alter under the influence of 

 climate and other local causes. From the sea to the Sierra 

 Nevada stretch the pampas, all tussocky grass, thorn, guanacos 

 and mirages. On the western rim of the pampas the Cordillera 

 stand against the sky, a tumult of mountains climbing upwards,, 

 their loftier gorges choked with glaciers, their hollows holding 

 great lakes, ice-cold, ice-blue, and about their bases and their 

 bastions thousands of square miles of shaggy forests, of which but 

 the mere edges have yet been explored. 



Within its 300,000 square miles of surface Patagonia offers 

 the most extreme and abrupt contrasts. Flat pampa with hardly 

 a visible undulation, mountains almost inaccessible in their steep 

 escarpments. Side by side they lie, crossing many degrees of 



