Patagonians

“ The astronomical knowledge of the Patagonians is surprising in a people ranking so low in the scale of civilization. Continually migrating over their arid land, they soon felt the necessity of directing their movements during the day by the position of the sun, during the night by the stars ”

“ The Tehuelches, or- 70 - Patagonians proper, exclusive of the Foot Indians of Tierra del Fuego—who are distinct, though they may be of the same original stock—are divided into two great tribes, the Northern and Southern. They speak the same language, but are distinguishable by difference of accent, and the Southern men appear to be, on an average, taller and finer men, and are more expert hunters with the bolas. The Northern range chiefly over the district between the Cordillera and the sea; from the Rio Negro on the north to the Chupat, occasionally descending as far as the Santa Cruz River. ”

“ As the Patagonians have most likely not degenerated within the last few centuries, we may infer from these various accounts that the travellers of the present day are less prone to exaggeration than those of more ancient times. ”

“ It is probable that within a generation Patagonia, which has long been synonymous for an unknown desert, and is still less than half explored, may be a land of much industrial importance. A word may be said on the interesting subject of the alleged gigantic stature of the Patagonians, or Tehuelches, for these are the only race to whom the term Patagonian properly applies. Authorities are practically unanimous as to the fact that they are tall, but as to how tall there is considerable discrepancy. ”

“ The most intelligent and progressive race of aborigines in southern South America, a tribe that raises to considerable extent the general low level of life that exists in that section, is the Patagonians. They live in well-constructed, portable tents, called “toldos,” made from guanaco skins, fastened to wooden supports by rawhide thongs, and staked to the ground with pieces of bone. ”

“ Sudden and severe squalls, often amounting almost to a hurricane, vex the navigation of the straits, and sweep over the coast with fearful fury.
The habits of the Patagonians, or at least of the tribe among whom I was cast, are migratory, wandering over the country in quest of game, or as their caprice may prompt them. They subsist altogether on the flesh of animals and birds. The guanaco furnishes most of their food, and all their clothing. ”

“ Their food consists of the meat of the ostrich, guanaco and deer, all of which abound in the territory inhabited by them.
Physically the Patagonians are a superior race, the average height of the men being considerably over six feet, and many of them are fully seven feet tall. They are well proportioned, deep chested and muscular. They have intelligent faces, regular features, aquiline nose, high forehead and square chin. Their facial expression is one of amiability and good nature. The complexion of the men, when their faces are clean of paint, is a reddish brown ”

“ At the southern extremity of South America spreads a sterile plain, sown with pebbles and blocks of porphyry: it is Patagonia. As we retrace our steps towards the north, the soil rises before us in terrace after terrace, till it reaches the base of the Cordilleras. In the northern districts the pebbly soil gives place to verdant meadows, where the Patagonians breed numerous herds of horses and cattle. Water is wanting in this country. The rains are rare, and the dry seasons very prolonged. The summer heat is overwhelming ”

“ For California—Pernambuco—Straits of Magellan—Trading with Patagonians—Their treachery—Four men made prisoners by them—Three escape; the author detained, with promises of release on paying ransom—Indian village—The chief and his household—Eating, sleeping, and adventure in a Patagonian wigwam—Find myself booked for an indefinite residence in Patagonia, and some natural reflections thereupon. ”

“ Uncle Jim—Dug 'em up, sir—dug 'em up speaking with more than usual moderation. I'd heard that yarn. The next voyage, I took the bo'sen and went ashore; we dug up 275 old Patagonians and measured 'em. They all measured exactly five feet nine inches and a half; no difference in 'em—men, women, and all ages just the same. Five feet nine inches and a half is the natural height of a Patagonian. They've always been just that. ”

“ In the winter there is no fear of want of water; but the fatigue of travelling is at all times great, and the horses are almost worn out by the time that the desert is passed. It serves, therefore, as a barrier, protecting Patagones from all danger of attack by the Indians from the south, who in their forays must descend the river. ”

“ So much is421 certain, that the Patagonians are a fine athletic race of men, with remarkably broad shoulders and thick muscular limbs. The head is long, broad, and flat, and the forehead low, with the hair growing within an inch of the eyebrows, which are bare ”

“ After a successful day’s sport, and the contentment consequent on a hearty meal, they will ask with great satisfaction, ‘Muy buena Pampa? No?’ really meaning ‘Is not the wild life the best?’ But English readers, who have derived their idea of a Pampa from Head’s delightful work, or from other experiences of the unlimited grassy or thistle covered plains which roll away for miles in the Argentine States, and offer no obstruction to the stretching gallop of the untiring gaucho, must not transfer that pleasing picture to Patagonia. ”

“ Beyond this district there is a practicable track, sometimes followed by the Indians, leading northward, probably used as a route to the Chupat; but from that line to the sea the country is so impassable that the Indians say it would require two years to proceed by the sea-coast from Santa Cruz to the Rio Negro. The existence of such tracks as these, and the desolate Travisias encountered near the coast, have probably caused Patagonia- 89 - to be described as an arid, almost waterless country ”

“ As we watched a solitary guanaco standing on a hill above us, and- 127 - every now and then uttering its shrill warning neigh, ‘Ah,’ said Gallegos, ‘you are a queer animal; you have the neigh of a horse, the wool of a sheep, the neck of a camel, the feet of a deer, and the swiftness of the devil.’ The Rhea Darwinii, called by the Indians ‘Mekyush,’ and by the Spaniards Avestrus or Ostrich, which name is universally applied to it, is peculiar to Patagonia, few being met with north of Rio Negro, and none being found that I am aware of in any other part of the globe ”

“ You see, Patagonia is a series of vast terraces from the Atlantic Ocean to the foot of the Andes. On these well watered steppes, Patagonian Indians, mainly the Chennas, raised their cattle, allowing them to rove at will. But the winters there are most severe, especially when a pampero blows; so, during the winter months, they drove their immense droves of cattle to the northward into the foothills of the Andes, where it was warmer. ”

“ Both fear evil spirits, which they fancy live in particular localities. It is indeed a far cry from Greenland to Patagonia, but if you substitute the horse for the kayak and the seal for the guanaco, you will find that, although separated by space and race and circumstance, a certain resemblance between the people of the Far South and of the Far North exists. And of both races little evil can be said.
These primitive peoples, living close to nature, divided from man's original state only by the thinnest and filmiest of partitions, attain in a wonderful degree the art of doing without things. ”

“ Such a place is Patagonia. This great southern desert gives perfect freedom to its roving sons. It is a wondrous solitude. One rides away from the valley of the stream in which he has left his ship, until the crest of a hill shuts out the view of the water, and then finds himself alone utterly. Pebbles red and brown, that have been rounded by the waves, [Pg 232] with the gray and yellowish sand of attrition, are under his feet. On every side are scattered clumps of stiff, gaunt gray bushes. Further away the land rises in knolls and ridges. ”

“ The coast of this remote region was not visited in those days, except at rare intervals. Some few adventurous navigators had explored the seas and inlets to some extent; but to most of the natives whom we met, we were as strange a race as though we had dropped from the sky.
Many erroneous ideas were then, and are to the present day, entertained with regard to the inhabitants of Patagonia. They were represented as of gigantic proportions, herculean strength and ferocious and cannibalistic propensities. Nothing of the kind. It is true, they are a very tall race. ”

“ It is not difficult to leave civilization behind in Patagonia. For hundreds of miles in the interior there are few pioneers and only an occasional tribe of wandering Indians. Otherwise it is absolutely unpeopled. Near the Cordilleras it is practically houseless; scarcely a human inhabitant can be found, and little animal life flourishes under the snow peaks and [144] in the unmeasured spaces of virgin forest. There are hundreds of square miles of forest land, gorges, open slopes and terraced hollows, on which the eye of a white man has never yet fallen. ”

“ The solitude of Patagonia, its peculiar characteristic of lack of human life in the present and the past, was borne in upon one under that high dome of foliage, and in those aisles abysmally vast, stretching north, south, east and west. In any other country legends would have gathered round these places, some touch of man's presence and adventure humanised them, so to speak. In Patagonia the fancy had nothing to grip, to grow upon, no story of joy or of sorrow. Solitude reigned alone, and nature spoke only by the awful uninterpreted tongues of God's elements. ”

“ Chilian Patagonia is a narrow strip W. of the Andes, with a broken coast-line, many rocky islands and peninsulas. Its climate is temperate but very rainy, and much of it is covered with dense forests which yield valuable timber; coal is found at Punta Arenas on the Strait. The population (3) consists chiefly of migratory Araucanian Indians and the Chilian settlers at Punta Arenas. Eastern or Argentine Patagonia is an extensive stretch of undulating plateaux intersected by ravines, swept by cold W. winds, and rainless for eight months of the year. ”

“ To begin with, Patagonia can boast of a fine climate, for, though the winters are certainly hard, no endemic disease exists. The country is exceptionally healthy, nor are there any poisonous reptiles to endanger life on its far-reaching pampas. There are few parts of the earth of which so much can be said.
A large portion of the land is eminently suited for the support of sheep, as the enormous and prosperous sheep-farms to be found along the east and south coasts bear witness. ”

“ When that famous naturalist had climbed the porphyry hills back of Port Desire, and, gazing away over the brown mesa, had seen little worth mentioning even by a naturalist save "here and there tufts of brown, wiry grass," and "still more rarely some low, thorny bushes," he went back to his diary in the cabin of his ship and wrote "the zoölogy of Patagonia is as limited as its flora." ”

“ On the western side the Andes range of the Cordilleras stand out against the sky like a mighty barrier. They are a tumult of mountains ever climbing upwards, their lofty gorges choked with glaciers, their hollows holding great lakes of ice-cold blue waters, and about their bases stretch thousands of miles of forests of which only the mere edge has been explored. Thus it is that the vast extent of Patagonia offers the most extreme and the most abrupt contrasts. ”

“ In calling up images of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by negative characters: without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains, they support merely a few dwarf plants. Why then—and the case is not peculiar to myself—have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? Why have not the still more level, the greener and more fertile pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an equal impression? ”

“ The zoology of Patagonia is as limited as its flora, and greatly resembles in its character that of the mountain regions of Chili, or of the Puna or high table-land of the tropical Andes of Peru and Bolivia, the height of which varies from 10,000 to 14,000 feet above the level of the sea.
In all these countries, situated in such different latitudes, the explorer is astonished to find not only the same genera, but even animals of the same species. The forest-loving race of monkeys is nowhere to be found in treeless Patagonia. ”

“ Empty leagues upon leagues surround you on every side, "the inverted bowl we call the sky" above.
Who, having once seen them, can forget the pampas? Evening, and the sun sloping over the edge of the plain like an angry eye, an inky-blue mirage half blotting it out, in the middle distance grass rolling like an ocean to the horizon, lean thorn, and a mighty roaring wind.
Out there in the heart of the country you seem to stand alone, with nothing nearer or more palpable than the wind, the fierce mirages and the limitless distances. ”

“ The tides of civilisation are moving slowly westwards, and will so continue to move until they are thrown back by the great natural barrier of the Andes. But as the tide will often fling a little wreath of foam far ahead of its advance—a wreath that disappears for the moment perhaps, but yet its fall has marked a spot that in course of time will be swept over by the rising water; so in Patagonia these few wanderers break away from the settlements upon the coast, and set out with their little store of flour, fariña, and maté, their troop of horses, and their half-dozen hounds. ”