1833 



ANEGADA BAY LOS CESARES. 



287 



Be this as it may, there is now a mass of banks extending far 

 to seaward, which make the coast from Blanco Bay to San 

 Bias extremely dangerous; more particularly, as the adjoining 

 shore is almost a dead flat, and so low, that in many parts it 

 can only be seen when the observer is among, or upon, the 

 shoals. The space between Union Bay and San Bias was very 

 appropriately named by the Spaniards Bahia Anegada (dried 

 up bay), because it is so shallow, and the inner parts are rather 

 drowned land than actual water, being only covered at half 

 tide. Falkner says (p. 77), that a Spanish vessel was lost in 

 this bay, the crew of which " saved themselves in one of the 

 boats, and sailing up the river arrived at Mendoza." Whether 

 this ship was called ' Los Cesares' I am not aware, but as 

 there is an islet in the 'Bahia Anegada"* named in the old 

 Spanish charts, ' Isla de los Cesares,"* I suspect that such was 

 the fact, and incline to connect this story with the many 

 rumours of a settlement, ' de los Cesares,' somewhere in the 

 interior of Patagonia. Falkner says, that " the crew saved 

 themselves in one of the boats but there were few Spanish 

 vessels about that coast in the early part of the eighteenth 

 century whose whole crew could have been saved in one of 

 their boats.-|- If the remainder had formed even a temporary 

 encampment about San Bias, or near the river Negro, it would 

 have been described, with much exaggeration, by Indians of 

 the west, as well as by those of the East country. A few men 

 might have been admitted into a tribe of Indians who improved 

 their habits and dwellings, so far as to have given rise to the 

 curious reports so much circulated in South America, during 

 the last century and even in this — of a colony of white people, 

 with houses and gardens, in the interior of the continent, some- 

 where about the latitude of forty degrees ; according to. some 



* " In the year 1734, or thereabouts (within how many years after or 

 before that time ?), the masts and part of the hulk were seen," (Falkner, 

 p. 77.) The so-called * Isla de los Cesares' is closely attached to, if not a 

 part of the main land at the west side of Anegada Bay. 



t Reports of the Cesares began to be circulated in the early part of 

 the eighteenth century. 



