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CHAPTER XIV.
THE JOURNEY ALONG-SHORE 260

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

MAP OF THE CAPE HORN REGION Frontispiece

GOLD-WASHING MACHINES. PARAMO, TIERRA DEL FUEGO 14

PUNTA ARENAS, STRAIT OF MAGELLAN 30

YAHGANS AT HOME(1) 48

THE MISSION STATION AT USHUAIA(1) 92

USHUAIA, THE CAPITAL OF ARGENTINE TIERRA DEL FUEGO(1) 108

AN ONA FAMILY(1) 128

ALUCULOOF INDIANS(1) 134

GOVERNMENT STATION AT ST. JOHN. (FROM A SKETCH BY COMMANDER CHWAITES, A.N.)(1) 138

A TEHUELCHE SQUAW(1) 158

TEHUELCHES IN CAMP(1) 166

GAUCHOS AT HOME 228

AMONG THE RUINS AT PORT DESIRE, PATAGONIA 270

SANTA CRUZ, PATAGONIA(1) 276

THE GOVERNOR'S HOME AND A BUSINESS BLOCK IN GALLEGOS, THE CAPITAL OF PATAGONIA(1) 282

Note 1: Reproduced by permission of Charles Scribner's Sons, from an article, by the author of this book, in Scribner's Magazine, entitled "At the end of the Continent."

THE GOLD DIGGINGS OF CAPE HORN.

CHAPTER I.

AFTER CAPE HORN GOLD.

If any of the readers of this book have an unrestrainable longing for wild adventure, with the possibility of suddenly acquiring riches thrown in as an incentive to endurance, let them pack their outfits and hasten away to the region lying between Cape Horn and the Straits of Magellan to dig for gold. Neither Australia nor California in their roughest days afforded the dangers, nor did they make the showings of gold—real placer gold for the poor man to dig—that have been, and are still to be found in Tierra del Fuego, and the adjoining islands. Nor is the gold in all cases too fine to be saved by ordinary rude sluices, for "nuggets as big as kernels of corn"—the ideal gold of the placer miner—have been found by the handful, and may still be had in one well-known locality if the miner is willing and able to endure the hardships and escape the dangers incident to the search.

But because of the hardships and dangers it is a veritable tantalus land. 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.

The story of the Cape Horn gold diggings is especially remarkable in this, that the gold there should have remained undiscovered during the centuries that passed after the first navigators landed in the region. Consider that Magellan first saw Patagonia and the strait that bears his name more than 350 years ago. Consider further the character of Magellan, and the host of explorers that followed him. They were all admirals, or bore other titles of high rank, and we call them famous, but they were almost to a man notion peddlers—men who started out with stocks of gewgaws and trifles which they were to swap for valuables. Magellan went out, not to make himself famous as a navigator, but to reach the Spice Islands by a shorter, and therefore more profitable, route than that by the Cape of Good Hope. He was out for fortune, and the fame of making discoveries was an incidental matter. And so for the rest. They were not very particular or nice as to how they got gold to ballast their ships. They plundered harmless people on the African coast and elsewhere; robbed ships found under other flags than their own; even sacrificed innocent human lives in their thirst for gold. Not one of these greedy sailors and pirates but would have gone almost wild with joy at the finding of a mine of gold.

And yet here, in the streams that empty into the Straits of Magellan, even in the streams near Port Famine, where Sarmiento's colony starved to death, and in the sands of the coast of Patagonia, were gold diggings—the genuine placer diggings, as said. These navigators sailed along with their eyes on the gold-bearing shores. They even filled their water casks in the gold-bearing streams. It is likely that the time came when scarcely a day in the year passed when some sailor's eye was not on