Terra del Fuego

“ The inhabitants of the Terra del Fuego are as fair as any Europeans, as was concluded by seeing a young child; but the grown-up people disguise themselves strangely, painting themselves with a red earth after many fanciful devices, some having their heads, others their arms, their legs and thighs red, and other parts of their bodies white. ”

“ I now gave up all hopes of finding any more land in this ocean, and came to a resolution to steer directly for the west entrance of the Straits of Magalhaeus, with a view of coasting the out, or south side of Terra del Fuego round Cape Horn to the strait Le Maire. As the world has but a very imperfect knowledge of this shore, I thought the coasting of it would be of more advantage, both to navigation and to geography, than any thing I could expect to find in a higher latitude. In the afternoon of this day, the wind blew in squalls, and carried away the main top-gallant mast. ”

“ The matter was of a remarkably bright green colour. They have many enemies, even in the water; one called the killer, a species of grampus, which makes terrible havoc amongst them, and will attack and take away the carcass of one from alongside a boat. But man is their greatest enemy, and causes the most destruction to their race: he pursues them to all quarters of the globe.
VISIT FROM THE NATIVES AT TERRA DEL FUEGO.
During our stay, we had, at various times, visits from the natives. ”

“ Blinded by smoke and flame, made frantic by the red death that was sweeping the forest, confused, terror-stricken, weakened by gas and fumes, the poor beasts had finally crowded together and perished under the onrushing wave of fire. ”

“ Meanwhile on every side the flames shot up around the stakes, and glared with hideous brightness, and sent up huge tongues of waving light, and each stake became a torch of hell, and black smoke swirled around them, and groans and cries of anguish arose which were drowned in bursts of music and laughter and ribald songs. And all the while the moon was silvering the rich foliage, and the stars shone down with peaceful rays over that revelry of hell, and the smoke and flame were to those poor sufferers as chariots of fire and horses of fire to bear their souls to heaven. ”

“ The lightning darts here and there with splendour of light and scathing flame, the thunders explode with deafening crashes, reverberating with terrible sounds among the army of woods, the black clouds roll over and darken the prospect; and as cloud becomes involved within cloud, in the shifting pale light, we have a last view of the wild war, we are stunned by the fury of the tempest, and the royal rage of the forest, when down comes the deluge of tropic rain—which in a short time extinguishes the white heat wrath of the elements, and soothes to stillness the noble anger of the woods. ”

“ But not the shadows that brood her fall
May check the sweep of the desert fire,
Nor a dead man lift up a crumbling wall,
Nor a spectre steady a falling spire.
Death fires rise in the desert sky
Where the armies of Sargon reeled ”

“ Scores of thunderbolts, red and flaming, leaped out of the blackness of cloud above, and, hissing as they came, wrought awful death among the mobs upon which they descended. The smell of burning flesh filled the air, making a new horror.
The thunder and rumble beneath the earth increased. The whole surface of the city heaved like the swell of a storm-tossed sea. Chasms, fissures, gulfs yawned every-where, and thousands of people toppled into the opened earth. ”

“ As the inhabitants of regions which the fire had freshly invaded rushed to escape, they plunged into winding alleys overarched by meeting flames, or their flight was impeded by smouldering ruins, or they were overwhelmed by the thunderous fall of some huge building, many, losing their heads altogether, stood stupefied with despair, and the smoke stifled them, or the fire scorched them, until the streets were filled with charred corpses. ”

“ Ye gods, that we escaped is miraculous! Literally, we traveled over an ocean of fire, an egg-shell between. Had faith in the Propellier's speed, but—I say, boys, look back at the earth's summit!" It looked like a monstrous explosion, great masses of rock flying in all directions, while column after column of fire belched to the sky, then poured in torrents down the mountain side, a flood of boiling, seething lava. ”

“ But the sun, which has been like a huge glittering and red, flashing shield, is now only showing a flaming edge of fire behind the apparently tallest peak, making it look like the flame bursting from a volcano; the landscape is deepening in huge shadows, which we can see are cast by the mountains, half obscuring it from view; the blaze is fainter—it is extinguished; a few moments of red, fiery glow where it sank, and anon a great, rushing group of clouds, and the blackness of night closes in, and the fierce rush of the Alpine wind is upon us. ”

“ With a shock that shook the earth till it rocked and trembled under them, the pillar of smoke and fire towered aloft in the hush of the midnight, blasting and hurling upward, in thunder that pealed back from rock to rock, lifeless bodies, mangled limbs, smouldering timbers, loosened stones, dead men flung heavenward like leaves whirled by the wind, and iron torn up and bent like saplings in a storm, as the mass of the barricades quivered, oscillated, and fell with a mighty crash, while the night was red with the hot glare of the flame, and filled with the deafening din. ”

“ The flames have often risen to the height of a mile above the summit of the mountain, their red blaze lighting up the darkness of the night, and casting a glare over the waters of the bay, while the earth was moaning and trembling, as if in pain and fear.
And the forces that have wrought such destruction are active still. For two thousand years this volcano has been smoking, and yet it is not exhausted. Its fury is still unspent. Far down in the heart of the earth still glow the eternal fires. ”

“ While there was no wind, yet a hundred fires originating at different points quickly grew into sheets of towering flame and spread to adjacent buildings, burning with demoniacal fierceness as if possessed by some unseen mysterious power, pouring forth red hot smoke until the prostrate city was melted into ruin by the intense heat of a veritable hell. ”

“ It frequently happened that the guides, in dashing their torches against the ground, set fire to the dried thorns and withered grass, and the blaze ran along the earth like wildfire, to the great alarm of poor L**, who saw in every burning bush a stream of lava rushing to overwhelm us. ”

“ Now a shower of blazing sparks rushed as from [98] a volcano, up, up, high into the gloomy cloud, piercing its black depths with their lurid beams, and immediately the flame seemed dulled; a moment after, they burst out again, with a fiercer fury, and with a doubled volume; fragments of burning timber were hurled into the air with a giant’s strength; flames red, blue, and yellow, and vapours of every conceivable colour from white to black, rose and fell, and mingled and separated, like an army of many nations fighting for mastery ”

“ When, after successive convulsions, vast clouds of black smoke rose from a mountain and overspread the sky, when the brightness of noon was rapidly replaced by the darkness of midnight, when the air grew thick with stifling dust and a rain of stones and ashes fell from it on all the surrounding country, when streams of what looked like liquid fire poured forth and desolated gardens, vineyards, fields and villages—then did men feel sure that the gods were angry. ”

“ But did Resina, Portici, and Torre del Greco, ever live? Did these windows, these doors ever open? Were there ever people in these houses, in these streets? Like an immense colossus [55] the pine of smoke rises on the mountain, and everything is shut out from our sight on account of the ashes, clouds, and vapors filling the air. Only the lightning is visible, the thousand flashes cutting the livid and opaque gray. And life is only there on the mountain of horrors, whilst here nothing more is living. ”

“ And sometimes there came by pinnacles a thousand miles high that from base to summit were fire, mountains of pure flame that had no other substance. And these explosive mountains, born of thunder and earthquake, hurling down avalanches the size of our continents, and drawing upward out of the deeps of the Sun new material for splendour and horror, this roaring waste, this extravagant destruction, were necessary for every tint that our butterflies wear on their wings. Without those flaming ranges of mountains of iron they would have no red to show ”

“ Only now and then a lurking stillness, as if invisible hands were uplifting the holy monstrance above the whole nation and the whole globe, but only for an instant,—once more a pall of deadly anguish heaves across the whole sky, the air thrills with shrieks of the slain and the murdered, and above the city pillars of fire blaze high up in a tornado, burst in the middle, writhe along the ground, and with greedy tongues of flame lick up pools of blood. ”

“ Climb the tall mountain like a rolling flame,
Push wide their wings, high bannering bright the air,
And move to fight as comets cope in war.
The smoke falls folding thro the downward sky.
And shrouds the mountain from the Patriarch's eye,
While on the towering top, in glare of day,
The flashing swords in fiery arches play.
As on a side-seen storm, adistance driven,
The flames fork round the semivault of heaven,
Thick thunders roll, descending torrents flow,
Dash down the clouds and whelm the hills below ”

“ From the beginning our land has been scourged with lightning above all other lands, and with the floods of rain that accompany the lightning. In the old days the Great Place of the King was out yonder among the mountains, but every year fire from heaven fell upon it, destroying much people: and at length in a great tempest the house of the King of that day was smitten and burned, and his wives and children were turned to ashes. ”

“ How pure the flame that bursts from their glowing hearts! And yonder the features of a villain writhing in the fire that shall torment him to eternity. My holy men, my pious and angelic women, stand like martyrs amid the flames, their mild eyes lifted heavenward. Ring out the bells! A city is on fire. See!--destruction roars through my dark forests, while the lakes boil up in steaming billows, and the mountains are volcanoes, and the sky kindles with a lurid brightness! All elements are but one pervading flame! ”

“ But who has seen the vivid lightnings, and heard the roaring thunder of the rolling conflagration which sweeps over the deep-clad prairies of the West? Who has dashed, on his wild horse, through an ocean of grass, with the raging tempest at his back, rolling over the land its swelling waves of liquid fire?” What! “Aye, even so. Ask the red savage of the wilds what is awful and sublime—Ask him where the Great Spirit has mixed up all the elements of death, and if he does not blow them over the land in a storm of fire? ”

“ Now and then, with a muffled explosion, a sap-filled palm burst. Here, or yonder, some brighter flare showed where the fire had run at one clear leap right to the fronded top of a fern-tree.
Fire-brands and dry-kye, caught up by the swirl, spiralled through the thick air and fell far in advance of the main fire-army, each outpost colonizing into swift destruction.
Already the nearer portion of the opposite cliff-edge was barren and smoking, swept clean of life as a broom might sweep an ant-hill. Tourbillons of dense smoke obscured the sky. ”

“ But this was a cloudburst of steel, an avalanche of iron; the pouring upward of the earth in sudden geysers, choked with trees and rocks and the fragments of houses; a continuous, mighty thunder in which [47] were mingled the throaty roar of multiple discharges, the moan of the shells through the air, and the shock of the explosions at contact with the objective. It was an overwhelming noise filling all spaces.
Seicheprey! It was then a jagged scar. It must be now, after this fresh surge of the human flood, an open wound. There I saw heaven touch hell. ”

“ The square was filled with men, as with a sea, and when the fiery flashes of the ordnance lit it up as with a momentary conflagration, the commotion following upon each, made him think of those surges of fire which roll in the crater of a volcano, and of the billows of blood that dash upon the shores of hell. A more infernal spectacle could not, indeed, have been imagined; and when the harsh yells of the pagan myriads were added, the tophet was complete, and man appeared,—as he yet appears,—the destroyer and the demoniac. ”

“ People, returning home from the town, see a roseate sheen playing over roofs and walls, a long crimson cloud sailing high overhead. Those walking on the Plein behold an apocalyptic heaven and a transfigured earth, a firmamental conflagration, eruptions of scarlet flame through incarnadined cloud, runnels of fire darting across the melting gold and translucent green of the horizon ”

“ There's a place, far away from here, where a blaze like that comes from the ground sometimes when a camp fire is built too near it. But the wind whisks the flames out and then there's nothing but a smell. ”

“ Against that curtain of blaze, strangely beautiful in its sinuous strength, I watch the black silhouettes of men running hither and thither like rats, gutting the houses, looting the stores, tearing the hearts out of the homes. The fire seems a great bird, and from its nest of furnace heat it spreads its flapping wings over the city. ”