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Updated: June 4, 2025
It crosses the southern part of Tierra del Fuego in an east and west line, and in the middle is joined at right angles on the south side by an irregular channel, which has been called Ponsonby Sound. This is the residence of Jemmy Button's tribe and family. Three whale-boats and the yawl, with a party of twenty-eight, started under the command of Captain Fitz Roy.
These facts are of high geological interest with respect to the climate of the northern hemisphere, at the period when boulders were transported. I will not here detail how simply the theory of icebergs being charged with fragments of rock explains the origin and position of the gigantic boulders of eastern Tierra del Fuego, on the high plain of Santa Cruz, and on the island of Chiloe.
On the opposite side they could distinctly see the Tierra del Fuego, and at different points tall columns of smoke rising up into the still air denoted the presence of native encampments, just as Magellan had seen them four centuries ago, when he gave to the island, on that account, the name it still bears.
We know how violent at the present day the earthquakes are, we have seen how great an area is now rising, and the plains of tertiary origin are of vast dimensions; an almost straight line can be drawn from Tierra del Fuego for 1,600 miles northward, and probably for a much greater distance, which shall intersect no formation older than the Patagonian deposits; so equable has been the upheaval of the beds, that throughout this long line, not a fault in the stratification or abrupt dislocation was anywhere observable.
The guanaco, by some supposed to be the llama in its wild state, is found on the eastern side of Tierra del Fuego. Its range extends to the farthest southern point by the Straits of Lemaire; and, strange to say, it is there of a much larger size than on the plains of Patagonia, with a rougher coat and a longer tail.
Such are the Quao of Rhamgur, the Sumatran dog, the Poull of New Ireland, the dogs of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego those of the South Sea Islands; and the Waht that inhabits some of the ranges of the Himalayas. It is reasonable to suppose that there is not a nation upon earth, hardly a tribe civilised or savage that does not possess some variety of the canine race differing from all the others.
Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego know the honest knights of the Unchained Lion no more; yet to an unsophisticated mind no stately brotherhood of sovereigns and patricians seems more thoroughly inspired with the spirit of Christian chivalry than were those weather-beaten adventurers.
In New Zealand, before the introduction of the potato, the roots of the fern were largely consumed; at the present time, I believe, Tierra del Fuego is the only country in the world where a cryptogamic plant affords a staple article of food. The zoology of Tierra del Fuego, as might have been expected from the nature of its climate and vegetation, is very poor.
Now, it happened that, shortly after the Chilian squadron had invested Antofagasta, the small corvette Magellanes arrived at Valparaiso, having returned from police duty in Tierra del Fuego. She was thereupon immediately ordered by the Chilian authorities to proceed northward and join Admiral Williams's fleet.
The old man fancies, because the coast of Fuego trends to the north-west, that the land will fall away from us, as fast as we draw towards it. I hope he may live long enough to persuade all hands that he is right!"
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