A LONGITUDINAL JOURNEY THROUGH CHILE 



273 



would just about stretch from New York 

 to San Francisco. 



Besides its sheep-farms and placer 

 mines, Chilean Fuego has its coal de- 

 posits, of a rather poor quality, and an 

 abundance of peat which can be used for 

 fuel. Its lakes are all salty, some so 

 rich in pure salt that the deposit is taken 

 out by the spadeful and shipped to Punta 

 Arenas for table use. When these is- 

 lands, the tops of a submerged mountain 

 range, rose from the sea the salt water 

 remaining in the hollows formed lakes. 



The wind here reaches a terrible ve- 

 locity, being at its worst in the spring 

 (our autumn). 



Fuego is approximately 1,000 miles 

 farther south than Cape Town, in Africa. 



The forest is rich in conifers and 

 beeches — a dark, gloomy, dripping for- 

 est, on the whole, yet the haunt of in- 

 numerable beautiful birds. I cannot here 

 name them all. The albatross, penguin, 

 pelican, cormorant, and their like seem at 

 home here ; but I had not expected to 

 find a woodpecker (Ipocrantor magcl- 

 lanicus) and a thrush (Turdus magel- 

 lanicus) peculiar to this region, or one 

 of the parrot family so far south. 



Great flocks of gorgeous flamingoes 

 arrive from the north, followed by their 

 inseparable companions, the white, black- 

 throated swans. When startled, the 

 flamingoes whirl aloft in a scarlet chain, 

 forming a perfect triangle in the azure 

 sky, and the devoted swans follow. An 

 occasional sight is that of a number of 

 tall wading birds, their legs imprisoned 

 by the freezing of a lake, released only 

 with the midday thaw. 



A BLOODY PAGE IN CHILES HISTORY 



In 1904 we still were able to find some 

 of the original Fuegians. The Alacalufs, 

 canoe Indians, used to inhabit the west- 

 ern reaches of the Strait ; the Yaghans 

 lived nearer Cape Horn. The Onas were 

 to me the most interesting of the three 

 groups. During the last years of the 

 nineteenth century and the first fifteen 

 years of this century these Fuegians 

 steadily decreased and are now prac- 

 tically exterminated. It is a bloody page 

 in Chile's history. 



I am glad that I went there in time 

 to see a little of the Onas, hunters and 

 fishermen of no mean ability, with round, 



smiling, Mongoloid faces, elaborately 

 painted, their hair bobbed. They wore 

 fur caps and guanaco-skin garments, fur 

 side in. 



Poor souls ! They got as far south as 

 the continent permitted, but even then the 

 white man crowded them off ! 



Cape Horn, on Horn Island, is Chilean, 

 the tip end of South America. The cape, 

 rising about 1,400 feet above the sea, 

 withstands the pounding of the tem- 

 pestuous surf. Only about one-third of 

 the days of the year here are free from 

 rain or clouds. Few voyagers see the 

 cape, since ships steer a course well off 

 shore. In southern Tierra del Fuego, 

 mighty glaciers, reaching the sea, slowly 

 break off and form icebergs which float 

 toward Antarctic waters. It is, in truth, 

 the dropping-ofl place of the Andes. 



CROSSING THE ANDES IN WINTER 



We have made three visits to southern 

 Chile. On the last journey, instead of 

 sailing around into the Atlantic, we re- 

 turned to Valparaiso and crossed the 

 Andes via the Transandine Railroad to 

 Argentina. It was not, however, an un- 

 eventful journey in a Pullman coach, in 

 the season when this trip of 888 miles 

 can be made, very comfortably, in 48 

 hours. 



Winter had set in. Avalanches in the 

 mountains had blocked the road. After 

 many fruitless trips to Los Andes, at the 

 foot of the Cordillera, we at last joined 

 a party of restless pilgrims determined to 

 cross the Andes that very month aboard 

 a valiant mule. We lived to tell the tale. 



Two long days there were of it be- 

 tween the rail heads on either side of the 

 mountains ; two days of scaling icy 

 ledges, plunging through snowdrifts. 

 Our trail lay, not over the, old summer 

 wagon-road, past the Christ of the Andes, 

 in the Pass of Uspallata, but through the 

 two-mile railroad tunnel, 10,000 feet 

 above the sea, which connects the sister 

 republics. 



Chile we left with its snowfields 

 glistening in the sunlight ; Argentina we 

 entered in a wild snowstorm. That long, 

 silent ride through a damp, inky, inner 

 world left a deep impression, a feeling 

 of awe of those stupendous heights, 

 those mighty mountains we had followed 

 throughout the length of Chile. 



