Page:The birds of Tierra del Fuego - Richard Crawshay.djvu/15



TIERRA DEL FUEGO

a land of mystery is Tierra del Fuego, even to its very name!

It was by accident, and not by design, that I came to realize this remote extreme of the Earth.

On my landing at Punta Arenas from the "Milton" in August, 1904, for the purpose of travel in Patagonia, that country proved weather-bound and impenetrable in one of the worst winters ever known. I had not reconciled myself to remaining where I was in idleness for two months, when a welcome alternative was offered me by Mr. Moritz Braun, Director-General Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego, who suggested my seeing something of that island under exceptional facilities generously afforded by him.

Nothing loath, I embarked overnight in a little coasting steamer, the "Magallanes," proceeding thither; and the following morning landed at the head of Useless Bay.

My first sight of the island was weird and unearthly indeed, coming as I did direct from the tropics and summer in the northern hemisphere, as it gradually unfolded itself in the slowly-coming blue-grey light of a winter's morning. Grey sky, grey sea, grey beach, the land while, and the black rocky crests of snow mountains standing out in threatening relief suspended between earth and heaven. What a study the seashore, here, where the two greatest oceans meet and sweep round the tail of the greatest continent! What tremendous force of wind and water! Piled up in such confusion as to make one stand aghast in contemplating it are masses of sea-weed with rocks attached, mussel and limpet shells, the bones or entire carcases of Whales—large and small, the carcases of sea lions