OCR Text |
Show IN PATAGONIA WILDS. A TRAVCLER SPENDS AN HOUR ON STRANGE SOUTHERN SOIL. Alimo lu it Oiinril of Half Crny Men. A:til to Drink to uml Shout for France. Startling Experience In a Chilian Convict Con-vict .Set tlmncnt. We arrived at Punta Arenas at about 8 o'clock in the morning. It was very dark, and overhead the stars iu countless count-less millions stood in relief agiint their inky b.'ic'iround like brilliant gems in a vast :.ettiti.'t of somber black. It was a night (if solemn s' illness, unbroken save iy t!t( occasional barkings of a dog on the beach, and tlie weird cries of tho penguins and otlu-r wild sea fowl as tho r.hip silently stole among them and disturbed dis-turbed their slumbers. Tlie shore on either side was Hanked by great towering tower-ing walls of frowning granite, whosn dim shadows, like giant sentinels standing stand-ing against tho sky. appeared to guard the entrance, to another world beyond. We were in the IStraits of Magellan, and had come, to enchor off Punta Arenas, Are-nas, a t'hiiiiit-' convict settlement, about lil'ty miles distant from tlio, Atlantio coasit. I l..id taken passage from f Vuvk about a moctli before on the 1'a-ci'io 1'a-ci'io Mail steamship Cily of Panama, en rout'.' for San Francisco. 1 learned from the engineer that we wero to remain at anchor for 3ix hours, and th"ii the wild desire seized me to go on shore. To sot foot on Patagonian soil was, to my youthful mind, an 'object me, ana i vts seized and dragged to a place near the fire. Tho smoke was stifling, and my eyes smarted so that I could scarcely see. Tho men wero talking, talk-ing, as near as I could make out, a mixture mixt-ure of French and Spanish. Their garb showed that they were convicts. INSIDE THE HUT. "Hero's a go," I thought, as one of them roughly seized my arm and flourished flour-ished a knife in my face, at tho same time asking mo in French (which I understood), un-derstood), "What do you want here?" With the l)est French I could muster 1 told my story, and then added thattha smoke was suffocating me, and that I desired to go out. After a consultation among the men I was handed a large black bottle and told to drink to the welfare of "La France." I took a swallow swal-low of the stuff, which burned like sulphuric sul-phuric acid. "La France, la France, vivo l.i France!" they all shouted, and I yelled "Vive la France!" in response. I was bundled through the little passageway passage-way and landed outside more den,! than alive. Tho dawn has just begun to break, and when I reached the beach 1 saw that tho boat was gone. I shouted to the ship, which lay about half a milo from Ihe shore, and rushed frantically about, trying to attract their attention. "What if rbe ship should leave without me," I thought, and then to add to my dismay I could hear the men on board at work on the anchor. I had about given up in despair when I saw a boat put off from tho ship. "The captain has ic in for you," said one of tho sailors, as the boat drew near. When 1 reached tho ship the captain amused himself for sometldmr like twentv niin- utes in generally abusing and swearing at me, but I was on board once more, and didn't mind it. Besides ! had been ashore in Patagonia. I have never learned what tho men I saw in tho log cabin were doing there, at that hour of tho night. They may have been escaped convicts. For all I know being tmoked out may be a popular form of amusement iu that part of tho world. -New York Herald. worthy of any sacrifice. The ship's ofli-ecrs ofli-ecrs were all forward, while from the davits, near tho stem of tho vessel, tho "captain's gig" was swung ready to be launched. I was a powerful young fellow fel-low then, aud, though it was a risky job to undertake alone, I resolved to try it. Pl'I.LEl! FOR Tljf SHORK. It was easy enough, l.'c.vever. to lower tho boat into the water, and beforemany minutes had elapsed I was rowing rapidly rapid-ly away from the ship into the darkness. "Here, yon young scoundrel," I heard the captain shout, and then followed several pistol shots in rapid succession. Thi captain had missed the boat, and rightly surmising that I was the one in it, had shouted after me, but without effect. ef-fect. His voice reached me, but fortunately fortu-nately his bullets, evidently intended to frighten me, fell wido of their mark. After a half hour's hard pull the boat prounded on tho beach and I jumped out. Hauling the boat well up on shorn 1 proceeded in tho direction of a light which I saw in the distance. Arrived at the spot I saw that the light came from a small door or opening, something liko the entrance to an Esquimaux Es-quimaux hut. The building itself was a low, square structure of logs and rough boards, without windows, and having no other opening than the small entrance before mentioned. From the loud voices and sounds of revelry coming from within, I concluded that a party of sailors were inside having hav-ing a jollification. "Here's an advent-nro," advent-nro," I thought, and dropping on my hands and knees I began to crawl iu. I bjiw a log fire, burning in the center of the room, which was filled with smoke. Around the firo were a dozen villainous locking men. That was all I cared to sec, so I started ; to go out, but having lecn seen by on j of the men a general rush was made for j |