1833.] S SPANISH SETTLEMENT. 165 
plains and looking towards the interior, the view is generally 
bounded by the escarpment of another plain, rather higher, but 
equally level and desolate ; and in every other direction the hori- 
zon is indistinct from the trembling mirage which seems to rise 
from the heated surface. 
In such a country the fate of the Spanish scttlement was soon 
decided ; the dryness of the climate during the greater part of 
the year, and the occasional hostile attacks of the wandering 
Indians, 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 mis- 
fortunes. At Si. 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 occasionally a lizard darted from side 
to side. Of birds we have three carrion hawks, and in the val- 
leys a few finches and insect-feeders. An ibis (Theristicus me- 
I nops—a. species said to be found in central Africa) is not 
uncommon on the most desert parts: in their stomachs I found 
grasshoppers, cicadee, small lizards, and even scorpions{ 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 
gquanace, 
a . 
* JT found here a species of cactus, described by Professor Henslow, under 
the name of Opuntia Darwinti (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 finger 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 Nurth 
America (Lewis and Clarke’s Travels, p. 221), in the same high latitude 
as here, namely, in both cases, in 47°, 
+ These insects were not uncommon beneath stones. I found one cannibal 
scorpion quietly devouring another. 
