Punta Arenas

“ Punta Arenas has one residence which would be considered a mansion in Washington city. This house, however, is the only one of its kind in Punta Arenas. Most of the dwellings are one-story structures which in the United States could be built for from $500 to $2,000. Many of the poorer houses are occupied by rich men; indeed, Punta Arenas has as many rich men as any frontier town of its size. ”

“ The possibilities, thus afforded, have brought the people and the capital to America’s southern end, and have made Punta Arenas the centre of a population of pioneers, mostly rich in profitable land and in sheep, but poor in worldly comforts. ”

“ In 1877 there was another similar mutiny, and then Chile withdrew the guards and let Punta Arenas get along as a commercial place.
The free port regulations followed, merchants came dropping in, fur trading became profitable and then came the sheep industry and Punta Arenas graduated into the really modern city it is. Where it is possible to make [158] money there you will find people these days, for the rovers of the earth are just as active as ever and neither cold nor heat, sickness nor desolation will stop the march of commerce. ”

“ Lowry-Corry, who now joined the Expedition after successfully completing his work in India.
Punta Arenas, with which we became so well acquainted, is a new and unpretentious little town, but it is the centre of the sheep-grazing districts, and its shops are remarkably good. Anything in reason can be purchased there, and on the whole at more moderate prices than elsewhere in South America. The beautiful part of the Straits is not yet reached, and save for some distant views the place is ugly, but it gives a sensation of cleanliness and fresh air, and our detention might have been worse. ”

“ Dearest Clara:
I have made arrangements with our friends in Ancud for you to come to Punta. We can leave Punta very soon because I have made a fortune for you. Then we will go home. I have located a claim that I have called after your mother—the Isabella. It is so rich that gold can be washed by hand on the barranca—but you do not understand such things. I am living now in a big white house on the plaza that you will like.
The name signed to the letter was Señor Juan. On the envelope Dave saw an inscription:
From John Bruce, Cuerpo de Bomberos, Punta Arenas. ”

“ While the straits are several miles wide in places, there are dangerous narrows which can only be passed at slack water. English Narrows are less than a quarter of a mile wide and the channel affords room for but one ship at a time.
The only settlement worthy of mention here is Punta Arenas, the most southerly town on the globe. The region is too far south for agriculture, but garden vegetables can be grown in sheltered places. There is some gold digging carried on, but sheep raising has become an established industry. ”

“ As the abundance of food affects the increase of wild animals, so the certainty of earning a living affects the growth of a human population.
But Punta Arenas grew from one cause that had nothing natural about it, save as some seafaring people seem to be naturally of a devilish disposition. One of the most prominent promoters of the growth of Punta Arenas was the hard-fisted Yankee skipper—he who commanded the sealer and whale ship fitted out in New London or New Bedford to skin the rookeries of Staten Island and others farther south. ”

“ Last of all came the one industry that was to make Punta Arenas the antarctic metropolis. Mr. H. L. Reynard, an Englishman living in Punta Arenas, rented Elizabeth Island early in the seventies, and brought some sheep there from the Falklands. The sheep took kindly to their new home, and increased so rapidly that Mr. Reynard soon had to move some of them to the mainland. They say he now owns over 100,000 sheep, besides horses and cattle galore, and enjoys—really enjoys—an income of not far from £400 per week. ”

“ Although cold and cheerless most of the time, yet millions of sheep are raised in this southern land and Punta Arenas is the shipping point. A kind of coarse grass grows here that is nourishing and sheep thrive and live for weeks alone on the open plains. Wool, hides and meat are brought to this port and shipped to the outside world. Of course all clothing, building material and machinery must be brought in for there are no factories in Punta Arenas.
Santiago, the capital of Chile, is located in a valley that has been called the "Garden of South America." ”

“ Shepherds, gold-diggers, traders, adventurous wanderers, and striplings from the world’s population—a heterogeneous mixture—came to rest here as a last resort. The semi-Yankee life of Punta Arenas takes its origin from this mass, and the town owes its growth, very largely, to the fact that its site is a terminal morain to a restless stream of human life.
With this preliminary understanding of the causes for the metropolitan life of the Strait of Magellan, one is not so greatly surprised at the first glimpse of the strange street scenes. ”

“ The short end reaches out into the Atlantic and the long end into the Pacific. The short right end is barren of fine scenery, the grandeur of the hills being reserved for the long or western end. Down at the point of the latter is Cape Froward. Coming from the eastern end there is about fifteen miles of rugged scenery before you make the turn to the northwest. Punta Arenas, or Sandy Point, as the English call this hustling, modern city, is about two-thirds down the eastern side on a broad stretch of water known as Broad Reach. ”

“ South of Punta Arenas there is only one settlement of any importance, and that is Ushuaia. This town is situated on the Argentine side of Tierra del Fuego, and, small as it is, it is the capital of that territory. It stands nearer to the South Pole than any other civilized village in the world. The barriers created by nature are almost insurmountable. To the south is the unknown Antarctic, to the north the impassable barrier of snow-clad peaks, and in all other directions are the fathomless channels separating it from the other islands. ”

“ Indeed, before this fleet arrived here it is probable that not one person in a hundred in the United States knew where Punta Arenas was, and those who had some vague idea about it had an impression that it is one of those reformed penal colonies where the driftwood of humanity huddle together, tolerate one another because they are birds of a feather and eke out a miserable existence in trafficking with Indians, herding sheep, looting wrecks and spending their spare time in low ceilinged saloons gulping down liquor that would put knockout drops to shame. ”

“ The tide of pastoral life from the thriving southern farms round and about Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan, and Gallegos on the Atlantic coast, is setting strongly north and west. The crying want of the country is capital to open up means of communication with the interior. At present there are no railways or other settled lines for the transport of produce, although I believe a steam-launch has lately been placed upon the River Santa Cruz. ”

“ There are many more skeletons of dead miners than authentic records of wealth acquired in Tierra del Fuego, while those who have now and again struck it rich and gotten clean off with the dust usually have gone no further with it than Punta Arenas in the Straits of Magellan, for Punta Arenas is to this region what San Francisco was to California and Virginia City to the deserts of Nevada. ”

“ For the rest, Punta Arenas claims a population of 3500. It is not unlike some United States towns in the matter of a local census, but after making due allowances for local pride and enthusiasm, it still is found a live and growing village. Lots in the business part of the town now sell for pounds sterling where paper dollars would have sufficed ten years ago. Indeed, a lot was sold while I was there for £500 that changed hands in 1886 for $400 national currency. The old settler goes about the street bewailing the fact that he didn't buy when he first came, and saying it is too late now. ”

“ Chili is ruled, as all Latin-American countries are, by the army. Punta Arenas is ruled by an army officer sent from Santiago. [Pg 40] The town ordinances are backed by bayonets. The Texas town marshal in all his glory could not keep the peace as soldiers can. The government has decreed that there shall be no gambling-houses in Punta Arenas of the style found in United States mine camps. Neither shall there be dance-houses. Instead of these, drinking saloons are permitted in unlimited numbers, and one or two young women can get a license for a saloon as readily as a man can. ”

“ The first thing that strikes a newcomer in Key West is the distinctly and unmistakably foreign aspect of the city. In spite of the English names on many of the sign-boards over the shops, the American faces on the streets, and the crowd of American officers and war correspondents smoking or talking on the spacious piazzas of the Key West Hotel, one cannot get rid of the impression that he has left the United States and has landed in some such town as San Juan de Guatemala or Punta Arenas, on the Pacific coast of Central America. ”

“ We left Punta Arenas shortly after noon on the day following that of our arrival, still with no sign of the Kingfisher, and, being lucky enough to get a fine little slant of wind, safely accomplished the dangerous passage and entered the Pacific on the evening of the succeeding day. The slant of wind held long enough to enable us to gain an offing of a trifle over a hundred miles, and then it died away and left us becalmed and rolling gunwale under on the long Pacific swell. ”

“ Early that morning a certain Carlos Michaelis from Punta Arenas had left the Termas on foot for the summit of the volcano, so after we had gazed with astonishment upon the awe inspiring works of Nature just described, we turned our attention to the higher slopes of Chillán to see if we could see him, for up to now we had seen no sign of him. We finally saw a black spot high up on a snow-field which with binoculars proved to be a man. He was plodding upward through the thick snow laboriously, and at every few steps he would stop. ”

“ The principal club is the Cuerpo de Bomberos, which means the Society of Firemen, and was organized as a volunteer fire department. Most of the buildings are cheap one-story affairs, frequently being built of the corrugated iron so common in this land. Punta Arenas is a free port, and this fact has aided in its prosperity. All the vessels passing through the Straits call there for supplies and coal, and this business, together with the trade in whaling products, wool and furs, furnish the inhabitants with employment. ”

“ Punta Arenas has no custom house. It is a free port,—a very wise policy considering that its trade is of an international character, selling to the passing ships and buying from them only such articles as are needed for local consumption. The commercial movement reaches $2,250,000 per year, the exports exceeding the imports by $250,000. The export commerce is of wool, hides, tallow, ostrich feathers, foxskins, guanaco and vicuña rugs. The imports are alcohol for the Patagonian Indians, cereals, and general merchandise. The best fur store is kept by a Russian woman. ”

“ Punta Arenas isn't pretty in any sense and even the well-to-do are content to live in one-story houses with corrugated iron roofs, but it is a hustling, busy place where every comfort and luxury can be secured, and it has a pronounced twentieth century air about it. It resembles strongly a western Kansas or Nebraska town. Its climate is always cool but never seriously cold. The lowest recorded temperature in this place, which corresponds in latitude to Labrador in the Northern Hemisphere, is 20 degrees Fahrenheit above zero. ”

“ It is a very mixed population. You can hear Spanish, English, German, Italian, Russian and even the Chinese mingled with the guttural tongues of the Indians. The Scotch are probably the most thrifty of the inhabitants, and many of them have lived there two or three generations.
There are many rough characters in Punta Arenas, some even who have drifted from the mining camps of our western states. It is said to be bad policy to ask a man where he came from, or what his name was before his arrival, as it might be an embarrassing subject. ”

“ Don’t you think our growth has been remarkable and quick?” One must naturally answer in the affirmative, and to the average European the phenomenon is wonderful; but to an American it is wonderful in quite another direction. The town is in most respects a miniature reproduction of the mushroom town of the western states: a wilderness of low wooden and sheet-iron huts which are quickly and cheaply constructed and as quickly destroyed. Punta Arenas has been building for thirty years. ”

“ Signs of civilization appear in a lighthouse at San Isidro, and near it at a small harbour on the mainland to which a few whalers resort, boiling down into oil the produce300 of their catch. Presently the masts and funnels of vessels lying off shore at anchor rise out of the sea, and we heave to and disembark at the little town of Punta Arenas on the Patagonian coast, which English-speaking men call Sandy Point. This is the southernmost town not only in Chile, but in the whole world, twenty degrees further from the South Pole than Hammerfest, an older and larger place, is from the North Pole. ”