In the meantime the Duncan was proceeding at a remarkable rate. She cut the Tropic of Capricorn, and her prow was headed toward the strait of the celebrated geographer. Now and then the low shores of Patagonia were seen, but like an almost invisible line on the horizon. They sailed along the coast for more than ten miles, but Paganel’s famous telescope gave him only a vague idea of these American shores.
The vessel soon found herself at the head of the strait, and entered without hesitation. This way is generally preferred by steam-vessels bound for the Pacific. Its exact length is three hundred and seventy-six miles. Ships of the greatest tonnage can always find deep water, even near its shores, an excellent bottom, and many springs of water. The rivers abound in fish, the forest in game, there are safe and easy landings at twenty places, and, in short, a thousand resources that are wanting in the Strait of Lemaire, and off the terrible rocks of Cape Horn, which are continually visited by storms and tempests.
During the first hours of the passage, till you reach Cape Gregory, the shores are low and sandy. The entire passage lasted scarcely thirty-six hours, and this moving panorama of the two shores well rewarded the pains the geographer took to admire it under the radiant beams of the southern sun. No inhabitant appeared on the shores of the continent; and only a few Fuegians wandered along the barren rocks of Terra del Fuego.
At one moment the Duncan rounded the peninsula of Brunswick between two magnificent sights. Just here the strait cuts between stupendous masses of granite. The base of the mountains was hidden in the heart of immense forests, while their summits, whitened with eternal snow, were lost in the clouds. Towards the southeast Mount Taru towered six thousand five hundred feet aloft. Night came, preceded by a long twilight, the light melting away insensibly by gentle degrees, while the sky was studded with brilliant stars.
In the midst of this partial obscurity, the yacht boldly continued on her course, without casting anchor in the safe bays with which the shores abound. Sometimes the tips of her yards would graze the branches of the beeches that hung over the waves. At others her propeller would beat the waters of the great rivers, starting geese, ducks, snipe, teal, and all the feathered tribes of the marshes. Soon deserted ruins appeared, and fallen monuments, to which the night lent a grand aspect; these were the mournful remains of an abandoned colony, whose name will be an eternal contradiction to the fertility of the coasts and the rich game of the forests. It was Port Famine, the place that the Spaniard Sarmiento colonized in 1581 with four hundred emigrants. Here he founded the city of San Felipe. But the extreme severity of the cold weakened the colony; famine devoured those whom the winter had spared, and in 1587 the explorer Cavendish found the last of these four hundred unfortunates dying of hunger amid the ruins of a city only six years in existence.
The vessel coasted along these deserted shores. At daybreak she sailed in the midst of the narrow passes, between beeches, ash-trees, and birches, from the bosom of which emerged ivy-clad domes, cupolas tapestried with the hardy holly, and lofty spires, among which the obelisk of Buckland rose to a great height. Far out in the sea sported droves of seals and whales of great size, judging by their spouting, which could be seen at a distance of four miles. At last they doubled Cape Froward, still bristling with the ices of winter. On the other side of the strait, on Terra del Fuego, rose Mount Sarmiento to the height of six thousand feet, an enormous mass of rock broken by bands of clouds which formed as it were an aerial archipelago in the sky.
Cape Froward is the real end of the American continent, for Cape Horn is only a lone rock in the sea. Passing this point the strait narrowed between Brunswick Peninsula, and Desolation Island. Then to fertile shores succeeded a line of wild barren coast, cut by a thousand inlets of this tortuous labyrinth.
The Duncan unerringly and unhesitatingly pursued its capricious windings, mingling her columns of smoke with the mists on the rocks. Without lessening her speed, she passed several Spanish factories established on these deserted shores. At Cape Tamar the strait widened. The yacht rounded the Narborough Islands, and approached the southern shores. At last, thirty-six hours after entering the strait, the rocks of Cape Pilares were discerned at the extreme point of Desolation Island. An immense open glittering sea extended before her prow, and Jacques Paganel, hailing it with an enthusiastic gesture, felt moved like Ferdinand Magellan himself, when the sails of the Trinidad swelled before the breezes of the Pacific.
X
The Course Decided
Eight days after doubling Cape Pilares the Duncan entered at full speed the Bay of Talcahuana, a magnificent estuary, twelve miles long and nine broad. The weather was beautiful. Not a cloud is seen in the sky of this country from November to March, and the wind from the south blows continually along these coasts, which are protected by the chain of the Andes.
Captain Mangles, according to Lord Glenarvan’s orders, had kept close to the shore of the continent, examining the numerous wrecks that lined it. A waif, a broken spar, a piece of wood fashioned by the hand of man, might guide the Duncan to the scene of the shipwreck. But nothing was seen, and the yacht continued her course and anchored
