Through the Heart of Patagonia. Hesketh Vernon Hesketh PrichardЧитать онлайн книгу.
sea-rim, a low brown line. Above it a sky of steel-blue gleamed coldly and below a wash of grey sea. This was our first view of Patagonia. All day we crept along the grim, quiet, solitary-looking cliff, until at last the Primero de Mayo was swallowed up in the vast embrace of the Golfo Nuevo. It was between evening and night when we approached our harbourage, Puerto Madryn. The half-lights were playing above it, and the afterglow of the sunset still shone feebly behind the land. We saw only raw cliff capped by dark verdure—the rim of the vast pampas which roll away in rising levels league upon league towards the Andes.
The sea was cold, the wind was cold, the land looked forlorn and a-cold. Presently from it a little boat put out containing a figure wrapped in a long military cloak. This was the sub-prefect, who thus welcomed us to these desolate shores, for Patagonia from the sea is a desolate prospect indeed. It would be difficult to give an adequate idea of the dismal aspect presented by Puerto Madryn upon that evening. Suffice it to say that the settlement consists of half a dozen houses and a flagstaff; the first crouch on the lip of the tide and the second shivers above on the bare pampa-rim.
There seals and divers haunt the sea, a few guanaco-herds live upon the coast-lands, and there, in inhospitable fashion, the little colony of human beings clings, as it were, upon the skirts of great primordial nature. In the evening lights the cliffs showed curiously pallid above a strip of dead sand and shingle, only the sky and the water seemed alive.
Next morning we hoped to get our baggage ashore and were moving early with that object in view. But the trend of public opinion in Puerto Madryn appears to be towards the conviction that there is no sort of reason for hurry under any circumstances. Hence the cargo disgorged itself slowly, and after interminable waiting we found our particular share of it would not be reached that night. It was, in fact, not till the afternoon of the second day that we achieved a partial recovery of our belongings from the holds and took the first consignment of it ashore. The morning had broken clear and fine, but mid-day brought a change. And by the time we had our boatload completed and rocketed away shorewards at the tail of the Primero de Mayo's steam-launch, a beam sea was flying in spray high over us.
There was an anxious moment when the launch slipped the towing-cable and the sailor in the bows flung a rope, which dropped short of the black wooden jetty, and we were swept some boat-lengths away by a big broken sea. To be swamped at the moment of landing!—the thought was too disastrous to be dwelt on; half our rifles and a box of instruments were on board. It cost us a long hour and a half of hard work before everything was safe ashore. And while we toiled a dozen seals came and stared at us with their doglike faces, and lazy, solemn eyes.
T. R. D. BURBURY
When all our property had been brought to land, luckily without mishaps of any kind, I left Scrivenor with our peones to bring up the heavy baggage and went on with Burbury to Trelew by the miniature train which plies to and fro between the Welsh colony and the coast. From Trelew a ten-days ride takes you beyond the farm of the last settler and into the waste places of the pampas.
Trelew is a new and pocket Wales, but very much Wales all the same. To prove the accuracy of this statement it is only necessary to say that the waggon which set us on the first leagues of our way belonged to a Jones, that another Jones accompanied the expedition to the Cordillera, that I negotiated with a third Jones for a supply of mutton to take with us for use on the first part of our journey, that I was introduced to several Williamses and did business with various Hugheses. And all this in a day and a half.
Trelew itself is a bare settlement of raw-looking houses and shanties, which has started up on the emptiness of the pampas. It cannot lay any claim to picturesqueness, and a pervading impression of being unfinished adds a suggestion of discomfort to the place. All round about the mud houses the pampa rolls away to the distances, harsh, stony, overgrown with little humpy bushes of thorn and dotted here and there with wheat-land. All through and over the settlement you are never out of hearing of three languages—English, Welsh and Spanish.
WELSH SETTLEMENT OF TRELEW
For thirty-five years the Welsh have lived in this little colony of their own founding. Exactly all the reasons which led them to forsake their far-off homes for Patagonia it would serve no purpose to set out in detail, but the root of the matter appears to have lain in the fact that they objected to the laws relating to the teaching of English in the schools; and, having the courage of their convictions, they came several thousand miles across the sea to escape the régime they disliked. At present, however, they seem to have slipped from the frying-pan into the fire, for they like still less the Argentine code, by which every man born in the Republic is subject to conscription and Sunday drilling.
Some time ago the colonists of Trelew appealed to England to intercede for them with the Argentine Government with a view to obtaining release from these disabilities. But as the Welsh had of their own free will deliberately placed themselves under the Government of the Republic, it was impossible for England to interfere, and this fact was notified to the suppliants, much to their disappointment and disgust. Even when I was there they remained rather sore over the matter, complaining that England had taken all the money subscribed for the expenses of the appeal and given them no redress in return.
The difficulties and hardships which must inevitably have beset the commencement of their settling in Patagonia, contrasted with their present condition, show the Welsh to be splendid people. The resolute spirit that drove them to emigrate across the seas has served to make their township there, though perhaps not particularly inviting to look at, a flourishing one in its quiet pastoral way. They have laid a railway, as has been said, to the coast at Puerto Madryn and established a telephone. Spanish and Welsh live here as neighbours. The Spaniard keeps the store while the Welshman farms, growing a certain amount of grain, but his chief business lies in breeding horses, cattle and sheep.
The Welshmen are not wanting in keen business quality. Any one who has tried to buy horses in Trelew will bear me out in this statement. The mere fact that a stranger has arrived in their colony, who wants to invest in horseflesh, awakens all their commercial instincts, and they are not at all behind the rest of the world in knowing how to form a combine for the purpose of plundering the Philistines. Quite right too. A man who can resist making a bargain over a horse whenever he gets the chance is, like "the good young man who died," over-perfect for this corrupt old world.
From their first settlement the Welsh have spread south through the coast-towns of Patagonia, and six weeks' journey from Trelew they have formed another settlement in the Cordilleras to the north-west which they have called the "16th October Colony." Thither waggons are always trekking, and waggon-drivers and others who return bring with them glowing and rosy descriptions of the young settlement of the interior. The adaptability of the Welsh to the peculiar needs of colonisation is very remarkable. They have certainly stepped into the "larger life" with success.
OUTFITTING IN A PATAGONIAN STORE
The influence of the new conditions of existence, so different from that of the Welsh peasant in his own country, is very noticeable in several ways. The older and the younger generation are unlike each other now, and will probably continue to become more so as time goes on. Physically the younger people are far better developed than their elders, red-faced, open-eyed, straight-backed boys in big felt hats, each with a bright-coloured handkerchief knotted round his neck and the guanaco-wool poncho hanging from his shoulders. They are very picturesque and look their best on horseback. In this matter of riding also there is a wide difference between the styles of the old and the young men. The latter, who are Patagonian born, seem to be part of their horses, but the elders, however excellent long practice has made them, never attain to the proficiency of their sons.
HUMPHREY JONES, JUN.
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