CHAPTER II 



Patagonia and the Pampa 



At Puerto Madryn we walked ashore over the only 

 pier in a Patagonian port; but before we could get any of 

 our baggage or freight we had to pay a landing charge of 

 a cent a pound for the privilege of using this pier. Estab- 

 lished in the "Hotel Britannia" under the supervision of 

 the genial Captain Ross, we explored the sheet-iron town, 

 which during the building of the pier had grown to a popu- 

 lation of 1500. At the completion of that structure, how- 

 ever, and with the reduction of the amount of manual labor 

 in the unloading and hauling of stuff from the beach, many 

 of the people left, and we found fully a third of the houses 

 vacant and the numbers of inhabitants not over 700. 

 But hope springs eternal in the soul, especially of the 

 dweller in boom towns; and we were assured that this 

 would soon be the leading port of the south, and that the 

 government was planning to make Bahia Nueva a great 

 naval harbor. There is no doubt that the harbor is big 

 and deep, and that the entrance to the bay could be easily 

 protected across its narrow mouth. 



We were at last in Patagonia, which name covers the 

 four southern territories of the Argentine Republic, Rio 

 Negro, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Terra del Fuego; a coun- 

 try 1,000 miles in length, and averaging about 400 in 

 width. Generally the land rises, either right out of the 

 sea, or within ten to twenty miles from the shore in an 

 escarpment up to a level about 800 feet above the sea, 

 and then stretches away as a vast plain, or pampa, for 

 some 300 miles inland to the foothills of the Cordilleras, 

 where the broken forested country begins. This great 

 southern pampa is entirely treeless, but covered with 



