Through the Heart of Patagonia. Hesketh Vernon Hesketh PrichardЧитать онлайн книгу.
therefore led us to conclude that no animal such as the Mylodon is at all likely to be existing among them. This is presumptive evidence, but it is strong, being based on deductions not drawn from a single instance but from general experience.
Still I would not offer my opinion as an ultimate answer to the problem. In addition to the regions visited by our Expedition, there are, as I have said, hundreds and hundreds of square miles about, and on both sides of the Andes, still unpenetrated by man. A large portion of this country is forested, and it would be presumptuous to say that in some hidden valley far beyond the present ken of man some prehistoric animal may not still exist. Patagonia is, however, not only vast, but so full of natural difficulties, that I believe the exhaustive penetration of its recesses will be the work not of one man or of one party of men, but the result of the slow progress of human advance into these regions.
I have recorded some of my observations upon the habits of Patagonian game, and have written somewhat fully upon that most interesting race, the Tehuelche Indians, but I have abstained from very lengthy appendices, for these would be of purely scientific interest.
It is my hope to be able to return to Patagonia and to go further into the many interesting subjects to which my attention was drawn. In any book that may result from this second journey, I look forward to including lists of various zoological, palæontological, and botanical collections, all the materials for which have not at the moment of writing arrived in England.
I would very cordially acknowledge the unfailing help which Dr. F. P. Moreno has accorded to me in every way, and would specially thank him for the photographs and maps he has allowed me to use in the following pages. My thanks are also due to Dr. A. Smith Woodward, F.R.S., for his kind permission to reproduce his description of the Mylodon skin and other remains discovered at Consuelo Cove by Dr. Moreno; to Dr. Moreno for permitting me to reprint his account of that interesting discovery, and to Mr. Oldfield Thomas, F.R.S., for allowing me to make use of his description of Felis concolor pearsoni, the new sub-species of puma which we brought back. I further offer my acknowledgments to the Zoological Society, in whose "Proceedings" the two first-mentioned papers originally appeared.
My best thanks are also due to the Royal Geographical Society, who lent us instruments and gave us every aid in their power, and also to Dr. Rendle and Mr. James Britten, of the Botanical Department of the British Museum, for their kindness in preparing a botanical appendix.
I must record my indebtedness to Mr. John Guille Millais for the pains he took with his illustrations for this book. Before I started, my friend, Mr. Millais, drew me some sketches of huemul, guanaco, and other Patagonian animals. These I showed to the Tehuelches, and was once taken aback by being offered a commission to draw an Indian's dogs. He offered me a trained horse as payment. The praise of the "man who knows" is, after all, the great reward of art.
My thanks are also due to Mr. Edward Hawes, who kindly overlooked the proofs of this book to correct the spelling of the Camp-Spanish. And I would add the name of Mr. Frank A. Juckes, who saw to the outfitting of a medicine-chest.
I would not omit grateful mention of Señor Garcia Merou, the late Minister of Agriculture of the Argentine Republic, of the late Señor Rivadavia, the then Minister of Marine, to Señor Josué Moreno, to Messrs. Krabbé and Higgins; also to Mr. Ernest Cattle, Mr. Theobald, of Trelew, and to the many kind friends who live in the Argentine Republic.
I am indebted to my friend, Alfred James Jenkinson, Scholar of Hertford College, Oxford, for his kindness in preparing photographs for reproduction.
Most of all I owe a debt (a debt which runs yearly into compound interest) to my mother, who is accountable for anything that is worth while in this book, and who has collaborated in its production.
H. HESKETH PRICHARD.
THE PAMPAS (SHOWING FIRST DIVISION)
CHAPTER I
PATAGONIA
Physical features of Patagonia—The pampas—Climate—Discovery of Patagonia by Magellan—Description of the natives—Sir Francis Drake—Other travellers—Dr. Moreno—Coast-towns—Farms—Gauchos—Emptiness of interior—Route of expedition.
Patagonia forms the southern point or end of the South American continent and extends, roughly speaking, from about parallel 40° to the Straits of Magellan. Up to very recent times the geography of this southern portion of the New World has been in a nebulous condition. Vast tracts of the interior of Patagonia are as practically waste and empty to-day as they were in the long-past ages. It is certainly curious that this land should have been left so completely out of view when the great overspill of European humanity looked overseas in search of new homes where they might dwell and expand and find ample means of livelihood.
ONE OF OUR GAUCHOS
Perhaps the description of Patagonia given in the earlier part of the last century by Darwin had something to do with this omission. He spoke of it as a land having "the curse of sterility" upon it. He dwelt on its desolate appearance, its "dreary landscape," and it would seem that his undervaluing of the country of which, after all, he had but a short and curtailed experience, influenced the whole circle of the nations, with the result that only during the last thirty years or so have the peoples who desire to colonise been discovering how desirable and profitable is the great neglected land of the south.
Patagonia has grown to its present condition very rapidly. Not so long ago it was almost entirely given up to Indians and the countless herds of guanaco. Now there are farms upon the coast, and a few settlements, such as Gallegos with its 3000 inhabitants, and Sandy Point or Punta Arenas, still more populous with 11,000. Behind this narrow strip of sparsely inhabited coast-land the immense extent of the interior lies vacant.
Patagonia strikes the traveller as huge, elemental. Its natural conformation is stamped with these characteristics. From the River Negro on the north it tapers gradually to the Straits of Magellan on the south. Three great parallel divisions, running north and south, of plain, lake and mountain, each strongly marked, make up the face of the country. From the shores of the Atlantic the pampas rise in gently graduated terraces to the range of the Andes, while between them are strung a mighty network of lakes and lagoons, some connected by rivers, others by channels, many of which shift and alter under the influence of climate and other local causes. From the sea to the Sierra Nevada stretch the pampas, all tussocky grass, thorn, guanacos and mirages. On the western rim of the pampas the Cordillera stand against the sky, a tumult of mountains climbing upwards, their loftier gorges choked with glaciers, their hollows holding great lakes, ice-cold, ice-blue, and about their bases and their bastions thousands of square miles of shaggy forests, of which but the mere edges have yet been explored.
Within its 300,000 square miles of surface Patagonia offers the most extreme and abrupt contrasts. Flat pampa with hardly a visible undulation, mountains almost inaccessible in their steep escarpments. Side by side they lie, crossing many degrees of latitude, the contrast descending to the smallest particulars, mountain against plain, forest as opposed to thorn-scrub, rain against sun. The wind only is common to both more or less, though it is felt to a far greater degree upon the pampa. The contrast extends to the coasts. The eastern coast is a level treeless series of downs with few bays to offer shelter to shipping; the western coast, on the contrary, is grooved and notched with fjords, and the beetling headlands loom dark with forests.
AMONG THE ANDES
Roughly speaking, the country to the east of the Andes belongs to Argentina, that on the west to Chili: between them lies a long strip of disputed territory. From this great