"In calling up images
of the past, I find that the plains of Patagonia frequently cross before my eyes; yet
these plains are pronounced by all wretched and useless. They can be described only by
negative characters; without habitations, without water, without trees, without mountains,
they support only a few dwarf plants. Why then, and the case is not peculiar to myself,
have these arid wastes taken so firm a hold on my memory? Why have not the still more
level, the greener and more fertile Pampas, which are serviceable to mankind, produced an
equal impression? I can scarcely analyze these feelings: but it must be partly owing to
the free scope given to the imagination. The plains of Patagonia are boundless, for they
are scarcely passable, and thence unknown: they bear the stamp of having lasted, as they
are now, for ages, and there appears to be no limit to their duration during future time.
If, as the ancients supposed, the flat earth was surrounded by an impassable breadth of
water, or by deserts heated to an intolerable excess, who would not look at these last
boundaries to man's knowledge with deep but ill-defined sensations?"
Charles Darwin.
The Uttermost Place on Earth
Argentina's Ruta 3 dribbles to an end at the southern edge of Isla
Grande of Tierra del Fuego, some 3200 kms south from Buenos Aires -- a distance
comparable to, say, that between England and the Black Sea, or Egypt and the Alps. This is
Ushuaia: on the northern shore of El Canal Beagle, an arabesqued, hand painted iron sign
seems to struggle with getting the right matter-of-fact tone as it proclaims the spot to
be "Fin del Mundo."
This is my second visit; this time around, I did not come by on Ruta 3. A big-bellied
Aerolineas Argentinas 727 flew me in from the Jorge Newberry airport of B.A. We made
a stop amidst the horizon-to-horizon windswept barrenness of Trelew; the stewardess opened
the rear door, and the two of us leaned far out of the fuselage, dizzy, smiling,
bracing each other -- she to blow her cigarette smoke far away into the chill
Patagonian air, I to train a camera at nothing in particular, of which, as Darwin would
say, there has always been a lot.
The refueling truck beetles away from us; everything is battened down again, and we leave
Trelew with Edwardian melancholy:
Yes, I remember Adlestrop --
The name, because one afternoon
Of heat the express-train drew up there
Unwontedly. It was late June.
The steam hissed. Someone cleared his throat.
No one left and no one came
On the bare platform. What I saw
Was Adlestrop -- only the name.
Another hour, and the fluttering windsock of Rio Gallegos, far below on the ground, is
behind us. The Straits of Magellan glint as we bank
and head inland. The southern Andean peaks detach themselves from the horizon, one by one,
and march up as we sink slowly towards Ushuaia. This is serious stuff; soon, the plane is
flying through what seems to be a deep canyon between glacial heights rearing up over and
around us.
The Beagle Channel appears; cloud shrouded white peaks fjord the banks.We yaw and pitch,
slipstream condensing milkily, as the wings catch gusts and rain from the sea. It is a
remarkable approach -- not, perhaps,for the fainthearted: a 90 degree bank scarcely 1500
feet from the ground, rolling, rolling to find the stubby runway jutting out into
the water, aluminum shuddering as we straighten out even as wheels begin to touch.
***
Del Cano, able lieutenant, who went on to complete that first circumnavigation after
Magellan himself perished in the Philippines, found the Southern passage populated
sparsely by the Yahgan, Tehuelche and Selk'nam. Even in the 55 degree South latitude
winters, the Yahgan wore little clothing -- small haphazard fires, carried all the way
into their whalebone-and-bark boats, kept them warm. At night, this looming land was
speckled with fireglow -- hence Tierra del Fuego.
For hundreds of years after Magellan, the cloud-shrouded black islands remained ignored,
save for sporadic missionary encampments and the minor mineral rush -- the international
boundary between Argentina and Chile in Tierra del Fuego being finalized only in 1984.
Sometime in the 1860s or so, Thomas Bridges, a Scottish orphan, was sent to the southern
Fuegian parts with a Missionary troupe, learnt Yahgan, and stayed.
Over the years, Thomas Bridges carved out a farm from the stubborn soil a hundred kms or
so south-east of Ushuaia, within view of oceanic vistas that finally lead to today's Ross
and Wedell Seas off Antarctica. He named it 'Harberton', after the birthplace of an
English bride who came out to join him a decade later. Their son, Lucas Bridges, wrote a
memoir of Fuegian life in the early part of this century, titled "The Uttermost Place
on Earth."
Estancia Harberton
The Bridges' place struggled along, livestock wiped out in harsh
winters, cottages occasionally blown away by southern gales. In 1962 or so, an Ohio
biologist, researching whales in the South Atlantic, came to see farm out of curiosity one
afternoon; she stayed for a month. Then, after returning to the States, she wrote to Lucas
Bridges' grandson asking if he would marry her.
This grandson, Tomas, white-bearded, red-faced, dressed in blood-spattered overalls,
dances around in excitement on the tiny Harberton jetty as my catamaran from Ushuaia draws
gingerly in. From the water, Harberton is very pretty -- green dumpy hills, white fences,
a crab-apple tree, the cottage garden and gate arched by whale-jawbone. I step off the
gangplank, and we shake hands; a shy man, he looks acutely uncomfortable, but answers my
pleasantries in English as well as Spanish-- he has spent time in Scottish schools. Mail
and provisions -- a sobering amount of the latter -- are unloaded from the boat. For long
parts of the year, the roads from Ushuaia(hardly a supply depot itself) are snowed in, so
everything has to come by sea.
We go into the farmhouse. Afternoon tea and scones are being served. Bony, hungry-looking
farmhands -- all Chilean -- have gathered in the courtyard behind, talking, rolling
tobacco, dusting chaps, rinsing their enamel mugs at the pump. There are introductions and
smiles all around. Kathy leads me to a framed page on the wall -- "the National
Geographic was here, eight, nine years after I first came, and they wrote an article about
Harberton and Ushuaia." "January 1971", Tomas chimes in, hovering around at
my elbow. There is a profusion of cats underfoot all over the cottage.
We take a walk around the farm, Tomas showing me his pet projects. He has a tentative,
engaging manner -- and is a little vague on numbers. Maybe 6000 sheep? All on that island
there. Merinos. And horses too. Two hundred, perhaps? Lost a lot this winter, the worst in
living memory ... don't have no place to bring them in, yearlings just starve if snow
covers everything.
His eyes light up as he shows me the 'radio shed'. A short-wave mast. A TV antenna.
Generator. Usually, the farmhouse does not use electricity (the TV works on lead-acid
batteries.) The generator powers the radio,as well as motors for the pneumatic shearing
and clipping machines. Later, the Chilean farmhands talk about shearing records (animals
sheared in a day), older ones reminiscing, younger ones feigning incredulity. Eh, Abuelo,
didn't the world shearing record used to be held by an Australian, in your day?
Daylight lingers on till past 10 pm. As the farm goes about its cleaning-up, clearing-out,
end-of-day bustle, I watch a cloudy, turbid sunset over clamoring penguin rookeries. It is
very cold. My sleeping quarters are with the cook, in his lean-to shack down the
hill from the farmhouse. The oil-fired furnace has been giving trouble, we have to light a
fire. Sapo brings in fresh brush to spread on the floor, lest we stir up dust and spoil
the drying sheeps' intestines dangling down in neat rows off the roof.
At night, I learn about wool. The coarse underbelly wool, the choice part from the back,
the hard-to-get whorls from the forehead. Working the clippers in a sinusoid trace.
Sometimes they will shave off just one side of a Merino completely, and, if made to stand,
the animal will keel over, dragged by the weight of the unshaven side. "Sheep are
stupid", Sapo spits into the fire.
At one corner of the shearing room hangs a stuffed condor, wings spreading out 8 feet or
so. A farmhand found her on the hills, wings twisted, half dead, perhaps a close encounter
with a Fuerza Aerea jet. "We kept her alive for weeks. Tomas folded the wings into
place and held them down with wax poultices.We took turns spoon-feeding her with sheeps'
blood ..."
"I'd probably be broke if it was only farming." Tomas says. Once it's the height
of summer, people come to see the farm -- "turistas, como vos." Harberton
becomes a stop on the Beagle Channel circuit. "We get five or six pesos per visitor
-- some tea and scones, a visit to the Harberton graveyard, a few even try their hand at
shearing." He also gets a cut from Harberton pictures, postcards of which sell in
Ushuaia kiosks.
***
Back in Ushuaia, at the Hostal Cabo de Hornos, the owner is curious. "Hijo de
Indios?" he asks, expansively opening a bottle of tart Chilean wine. In his office
hangs an impressive, framed collection of currency notes from all over. Will I remember to
send him some Indian ones?
On Avenida Maipu, in front of the Legislatura Provincial, a lone workman paints names on
the curbside parking spaces. Senor Rinaldi. Senor Villanova. Senor Gomez, who probably
owns a truck, because he gets ten feet more. A Hilaire Belloc jingle, perhaps very
unfair here in Ushuaia if not everywhere else in Argentina, comes to mind:
The accursed power which stands on Privilege
(And goes with Women, and Champagne, and Bridge)
Broke -- and Democracy resumed her reign:
(Which goes with Bridge, and Women, and Champagne).
***
At twilight one day, the barometer starts falling and dust storms whip up. The streets
empty as skies close in. Wandering around, I ingest
mouthfuls of grit and sand; the camera chokes as well, and, fiddling with it, I manage to
deep-freeze my hands. The waiter at the corner
restaurant on San Martin speedily brings out a champagne-tub of hot water, and I thaw out
painfully over half an hour. Later, I gorge on oven-fresh empanadas, and ham-egg-cheese
sandwiches, and fresh OJ. Outside, a lighted Tio Burguer sign comes tumbling down in the
wind, and sparks fly everywhere as the wires short.