CHAPTER XIX

FIRST PASSING THROUGH HELLGATE

Rumour of important undiscovered river -- Wish to settle question -- Dr. Moreno's description of Lake Argentino -- Start for Hellgate -- Description of Hellgate -- Squall -- Sunshine -- Scenery -- Icebergs -- Danger-dodging -- Absence of life on banks -- West channel of North Fjord -- Events of voyage -- Giant's Glacier -- Camera -- Second glacier -- Deep water -- End of west channel -- Return to North Fjord -- Icebergs -- In difficulties with launch -- Escape from a reef -- Land on peninsula -- Guanaco -- Fish -- Fish and fariña -- Heavy gales -- Photographs -- One more attempt to go up North Fjord -- Driftwood -- Driven back -- Return to Cow Monte Harbour -- South Fjord -- Storms -- Mount Avellaneda -- Small fjord -- Trouble with launch -- Squalls -- Launch driven ashore -- On fire -- Fine weather -- Glacier calves -- Thousands of square miles of forest unexplored.

"An important river flows into the end of the north fjord (of Lake Argentino) with clear waters--a sure sign that it proceeds from another great lake still unknown."

In these words, taken from the _Journal of the Royal Geographical Society_ for September 1899, under the head of "Explorations in Patagonia," by Dr. Moreno, you have the idea which was the spring of all our efforts in bringing down the launch to Lake Argentino and the aim of the subsequent voyages made in her.

The opening to the north passage or fjord is locally known as Hellgate, so called on account of the rough weather which usually prevails there. The spot is the opening of a long winding channel that, running up between beetling cliffs and forested mountain-sides as it were into the heart of the Andes, becomes simply a vast funnel through which the winds and storms discharge themselves upon the lake at all times and seasons. I cannot give a better description of Lake Argentino than by using the following extract from Dr. Moreno's account:

"Lake Argentino ... extends sixty miles to the west; and the fjords of the extreme west divide into three arms, which receive the waters of large glaciers from Mount Stokes up to the vicinity of Lake Viedma. An important river flows into the end of the north fjord, with clear waters--a sure sign that it proceeds from another great lake still unknown. The western end is closed by the main chain of the Cordillera with its glaciers, which cross to the Pacific fjords of Peel Inlet and St. Andrew's Sound, and one can distinguish peaks more than 10,000 feet, as Mount Agassiz (10,597 feet)."

On March 11, having mended the launch to the best of our ability, we intended to make a start from Cow Monte Harbour. As we rode down from Cattle's, driving my troop of horses before us, the calm weather which had attended the period of repairs broke up and a strong wind began to blow out of the south-west. A start was, therefore, rendered impossible. We accordingly camped beside the launch, to be ready for an early departure. All night long the wind held, and the sheepskins in the after-hatch, where I was sleeping, took in water. It needed little waking, therefore, to get me out in the morning. The false dawn was still lingering in the sky when the wind fell and we were off in double quick time, heading in a northerly direction, and steering by a clump of _Leña dura_ bushes on a promontory, behind which lay Hellgate.

The swell of the previous night was yet big upon the water, and the launch crawled over it at about three knots. The entrance to Hellgate is possibly one of the most menacing and sinister-looking spots in South America. The great grooved cliffs tower over the yeasty cauldron of water, and down the channel between them, as I have said, the wind hurtles as through a funnel. On this particular morning a squall had darkened the great and houseless unknown beyond. Several icebergs were huddled together, stranded upon the shallows of the eastern shore.

After running through the black throat of Hellgate we put in, beneath a big rock, in order to take shelter from the squall that was fast coming down upon us. We had started on a _maté_, and so, while we waited, a roast was got under way. As we were eating, the squall that had brooded so ominously in the west broke over the lake, and after raging for a few minutes passed with a shiver that you could follow with the eye, till it lost itself in the distance of the early morning waters. Then the sun glowed out suddenly, as if some gigantic power had lifted an extinguisher from its glory. The farther and middle distances were peopled with snow-peaks, rising in minarets above their girdles of dark forest, which last stretched downwards until they lipped the black water at the mountain bases. For a moment after the outburst of radiance the water alone remained black and angry, and then the squall flicked away its skirts and passed from view, leaving a picture of cold and austere purity extending to the rim of sight. In words I cannot give you any reflection of the scene, and no photograph could ever do more than reproduce its outlines, and yet I suppose few human eyes will ever look upon it.

To describe the kaleidoscope of colours and the scenery through which we passed in that north-west passage of Lake Argentino would merely leave me a beggar in adjectives. Suffice it to say that for that day at least the mist and gloom of the clouds shared short watches with the gold and white of flying sunshine. For the first time in our experience of her the launch played us no tricks, and our progress went on at a steady three knots. Soon a gigantic glacier showed in the channel, seeming to block all farther advance. The Fjord looked full of icebergs; there must have been three thousand of them lying, an inanimate fleet, in their mountain-bound harbour of wind and mist.

A nasty squall caught us as we dodged among the ice, the smallest ripple set us gripping our frail craft, and I am afraid that a moderate sea would have drowned her fires and sent us to explore downwards rather than onwards. Indeed, our entire life on the launch was one long history of danger-dodging. I do not give the details, because some of the same sort have already been written, and repetition is needless. I grant there was more risk in taking the launch and using her in such waters than, perhaps, wisdom would have approved. Without her, however, we could have had no chance of exploring the North Fjord and solving the mystery of the "river with clear waters." Moreover, those who accompanied me went of their own free will, and I must here record my gratitude to Mr. Cattle, who willingly risked his life on our voyages in the launch, and also to Burbury--who accompanied me on my first journey--as well as to Bernardo, who was with me throughout the whole of my Lake Argentino experiences. Wherever I may travel in the future, I can wish for no better companions.

Bernardo, the most willing of men, kept our nerves in a state of less than pleasurable excitement. He drove the launch, when I took my eye off him, with 145 lb. of steam in her worn-out boiler--her safety-limit at the best of times had been 130 lb. On shore he succeeded in firing off my jungle-gun by mistake, narrowly missing killing himself at close quarters and myself at some few feet distance. But even after this involuntary attempt at manslaughter one could not be angry with him, he was so genuinely sorry, yet one could not help foreseeing that he was eminently likely to do something of the sort again. He was, to use slang, such a "decent chap," he never grumbled when he had nothing to eat, or a bout of bitter cold labour when we were obliged to turn out in the night to get up the anchor or do some other job. He was also a glutton of the first water for work, but we were all persuaded that he would end by slaying us, in which case I have not the slightest doubt he would have said to me as we were being ferried across the Styx, "By good, Mr. Preechard, I am sorry, the old launch she bust up!" From looking on the launch, as he did at first, with considerable awe and respect, familiarity with her bred contempt, and all her parts lost their novelty to him, save the whistle. When he blew that his face would betoken the intensest satisfaction. In many ways the placid Swede caused us much amusement.

One of the most singular things to be observed during that day was the absence of life in the forest which bordered the shore. It was strange to sail along under the vast masses of vegetation and rarely to see or hear any sign of life. On March 12 we continued our advance, and finding that the Fjord here split up into three or four channels, we chose the most westward of them. Our progress was very slow owing to the west wind having packed the ice. In the evening we made our camp among some dead trees upon the margin of the water, and I wandered off into the thickets, where I saw a Cordillera wolf. I picked up a stone and threw it at him, but this had no effect until I hit him with a small twig, which made him growl. Finally he took refuge in a bush.

It was while at this camp that we cut for the first time some _Leña dura_ as firing for the launch. It proved better than califate and gave at least three times the amount of heat to be had from _roblé_-wood. Afterwards, whenever possible, we burned no other fuel than _Leña dura_.

The following is from my diary:

"_March 21._--During this trip we have had a collapsible canvas boat in tow of the launch, which boat has saved us many a wetting in boarding and in leaving the launch. We go ashore in relays, one man remaining on the launch. This evening, while Cattle, Burbury and I were on the beach wood-cutting and tent-pitching, I heard Cattle shout, and, looking round, saw, to my disgust, the canvas boat already some twenty yards out and drifting quickly away from the beach. The wind had caught her broadside on, and she was being blown out into the current beyond the calm of our sheltering promontory. Cattle and I ran down to the shingle, casting off our clothes as we went. I thought we were in for a long swim, no pleasant prospect in that ice-cold water among the floes. But, as luck would have it, there was a little point of land projecting from the cliff of the promontory, and to this we made our hurried way, leaving behind us a spoor of shed garments. We arrived in the nick of time to secure the boat, and Cattle rowed her round to the beach beyond the camp.

"There is one enormous glacier visible almost due north. It had evidently been throwing many bergs of late. We called it the Giant's Glacier. This glacier is marked with double lines of brown reaching from the clouds right down to the margin of the water, for all the world like the tracks of the chariot wheels of some giant. We are now very much in the kingdom of the ice. Away beyond the immediate foreground of the shores and forests is spread a panorama of unnamed peaks. The silence is seldom broken save by the scream of the wind or the crashing fall of some mass of ice from the glaciers.

"I find my camera has been damaged. This is unfortunate, but hardly to be wondered at. It is a difficult matter to prevent mischief when the launch rolls and everything gets adrift, and one's time is taken up with keeping one's balance, steering, or in doing the myriad little jobs that crowd one upon the other. Although the camera reposed in the sheltering care of various rugs in the after-hatch, the heavy weather defeated all our precautions. In this difficulty a novel of Miss Marie Corelli's has been of the utmost assistance, and saved us from the misfortune of being unable to take photographs. The colonial edition of the 'Master Christian' has a thick red cover, and with the help of some flour paste we have succeeded in making the camera light-proof. Thus I owe a second debt of gratitude to Miss Marie Corelli, beside the pleasure of reading her book."

The next day broke clear and still, raising our hopes as to our progress through the ice. I must say that we took our fine blue weather--little of it as we were blessed with--with a hearty pleasure, and enjoyed it most thoroughly. We might be cold and wet an hour later, but between the squalls it was not so disagreeable, and we made the best of the breaks.

It was not long under these favourable circumstances before we reached the last curve of the channel, and were confronted by another glacier of considerable size, coming down through a depression in the midst of a mountain. Below the glacier the shoulders and base of the mountain were covered with dark forests. All round under the cliffs was, as I have said, deep water, how deep I do not know, as we had no means of taking soundings of such depth.

As there seemed little to be gained by landing at the foot of the glacier we ran back to the camp of the previous night, where the harbourage was at any rate somewhat better. While we were yet ashore, a squall began to grow up in the sky to the west and came down upon the water in an angry spatter of rain. It subsided, however, as quickly as it had arisen, so we got afloat again. Running back through the narrow throat of the channel, we found that the wind, which had veered several points to the north, had almost blocked it with a fleet of icebergs, that were grinding together on the swell of the water. These we managed to make our way through, and it was with some thankfulness that we presently reached the farther shore on the east of the main Fjord. We had no sooner arrived than it began to blow in heavy gusts, and five minutes after the first of them--so quickly do the seas rise upon this lake--we had to shift our anchorage.

In an hour or two, having in the meantime laid in a good store of firewood, and the heavy wind being succeeded by a series of cold showers, we took advantage of the lull and headed up the main Fjord to the north. But the wind, that had temporarily dropped, soon resumed its fury, and the launch was hard put to it to keep her position, far less to make any headway, and then, as was usual in moments of need, the pumps ceased working altogether, and Burbury shouted that no more than ten minutes' steam remained in the boiler. There was nothing for it but to turn her and to run for the land. We found, however, small hope of anchorage, for a bare fifty-foot cliff rose sheer out of the water and so continued for a long distance ahead. Seeing we were unlikely to discover a suitable position, we decided to cross the lake, but we had not gone far when the propeller wheezed into silence. Strong squalls caught us and made the launch roll and heave. Cattle got into the canvas boat with the idea of trying to tow her, and I forward, put out the long oar, which we generally used as one of the bulwarks--and we both endeavoured to keep her from turning broadside on to the waves, in which case she would have been swamped.

Cattle shortly gave up his attempt to tow her; in the sea then running such an effort was hopeless. The wind increased. Cattle came aboard, not without difficulty, and tried rowing with a short oar. Meantime Burbury was baling water into the boiler with a cooking-pot. The launch was rolling in a manner which made rowing a difficult matter. Presently the oar I was using broke off short and the launch was drifting ominously near to a reef. It was a race as to whether we should get up steam before we were cast upon it. We watched the index of the register slowly beginning to quiver, and when it marked 30 lb. we were not much more than a score or so of yards from the rocks. This was, however, enough to enable us to get way on and forge slowly out of danger.

Our steam did not last much longer than to allow us to find shelter under the lee of a line of low rocks, which thrust themselves out and served as a little breakwater in the lake. We remained there while Burbury again filled the boiler, and, having got up steam, we made the mouth of a deep inlet which afforded us good harbourage. Here we landed, and found ourselves upon a peninsula shaped like a spoon, the handle that connected it with the land being very narrow. At its upper end it joined the moraine of the great glacier which I had called Giant's Glacier.

As we came in to the beach, three guanacos cantered down and stared and neighed at us. The sight of these animals brightened the prospect, as it was pleasant to see living creatures in what had hitherto seemed to be an empty amphitheatre of hills. The bay where we had anchored was a shallow lagoon, into which flowed a little stream that wound away out of sight through a thin belt of forest over land comparatively flat. This peninsula carried a light soil and good grass, but bore the appearance of a spot that the winter would strike with peculiar severity. The wood was all _roblé_ and _Leña dura_ and the scrub included califate-bushes, from which last, however, the purple berries had long since departed, much to our sorrow. Huemules, guanacos, pumas, and the red fox gave evident signs of their presence. I observed a pigmy owl (_Glaucidium nanum_) and several caranchos. In the evening, when speaking upon the subject, Cattle informed me that several kinds of fish were to be found in Lake Argentino. Often as we used to make our meal of fish and fariña (a compound in the concoction of which for good or evil Bernardo stood alone), I used to regret my inability to bring back specimens of the fish from this lake, but I had no means of preserving them.

"Fish and fariña," indeed, became a standing joke with us. We might threaten to blow each other up by the agency of the launch's peculiar engines, and the threats would pass as nothing; but the expressed intention of any one of us who proposed to go and catch fish with a view to preparing a meal of "fish and fariña" soon became too much for the strongest and bravest among us. As a matter of fact, the fish was far from tempting, having a muddy flavour and being full of small bones, which mixed themselves up inextricably with the fariña.[28]

That night shut down with a gale and much rain. The trees groaned, and one close to us was blown down. It was with a very thankful heart that I woke up in the middle of the storm and reflected upon the glorious safety of our new-found harbour. Next morning I was awakened sometime in the dusky grey of dawn because a couple of Chiloe widgeon had come in close to the launch, and roasted duck was voted good by the wakeful Burbury. I sleepily thought the widgeon might have waited, and after all something scared the ducks and they flew off to a distance of a couple of hundred yards. My stalk only resulted in my securing one of the birds.

The ice we had observed earlier in the mouth of the most westerly channel had by this time completely blocked the opening. We spent the day wandering about upon the peninsula, and I tried to get some photographs, but the attempt was rather hopeless in the mist and rain. Indeed, although advantage was taken of every lifting of the weather, four pictures were all that this trip allowed of my completing.

The following day, in spite of bad weather, we made a third attempt to head up the North Fjord, at the end of which we hoped to find the "river with clear waters" mentioned by Dr. Moreno, and at the end of that again the unknown lake. We made two hours very slow progress, the north-west wind quickly beating up a troublesome sea. We observed bits of wood travelling faster than is usual in cases of drift, and now made sure that, could we but reach the end of the Fjord, we should find the river whose current we believed to be responsible for the comparatively rapid movement of the wood.

Our hopes were on this occasion destined to disappointment, for, in spite of all our efforts, we were unable to go forward or to make head against the bad weather, which continued for some days. Besides this, the injector of the launch failed to perform its office, and as the machinery was badly in need of repairs, and the cracked plate was letting in water, I thought it better to run before the wind to Cow Monte Harbour, which was, in fact, our headquarters, and where such tools as we had were stored. One point that was always in our favour while making these attempts to force our way up the North Fjord, lay in the fact that the prevailing winds from north-west or south-west, as the case might be, helped rather than hindered us on our return passages.

During this interval, while waiting for a second opportunity of attempting to gain the extreme end of the North Fjord of the lake, we arranged to make a short voyage down the South Fjord, or, as it is locally known, to Lake Rica. By doing this, moreover, we should complete our circumnavigation of Lake Argentino. Before we left, reliable news came up from the settlements with some belated Christmas and other papers. We were very relieved to learn that the Franco-Russian combination was no more than a camp-scare, nor was Russia advancing on India, as the last rumours had told us. When one has lost so large a slice of the general history of the world as we did during the months passed on our expedition, it is hopeless to imagine one can ever make up the loss. The events of that period must always remain blurred and hazy in the mind, only a few ever attaining an accurate outline. And then how greedy one becomes of news after an abstinence so prolonged as ours from that daily mental excitement of civilisation! It is difficult to describe how one grips the strayed journal or periodical when one has been cut off for months from these "curses of modern life."

On April 11 we left Cow Monte Harbour and steamed westwards down the Punta Bandera Channel. In a short time the pump broke down and we had some trouble in putting it right again. In defence of our engineering skill I must say that we had against us the fact that a part of the pump had been taken away for repairs to Buenos Aires by the Commission. We camped at the mouth of a river coming down out of Mount Avellaneda. Above us the bare volcanic summits of the mountains rose starkly out of their circling forests, that were now turning crimson with the brilliant colours of autumn. We could also see the great glacier on the western side of the Canal de los Tempanos. Many deer-tracks were visible, but we saw only one huemul buck in the edge of the forest.

We made an early start next day, which luckily was calm, for the pump gave us a good deal of bother. We proceeded down a smaller fjord lying under Mount Avellaneda, which took us in a westerly direction, but presently curved southwards and ended in a large mountain covered with forest, which I named Mount Millais. The chief hindrances in these winding passages were the constantly veering winds that we encountered. Day and night we were obliged to keep up a constant struggle against them. This was all very well during the daylight, but to anchor the launch snugly and then to be waked by her bumping and straining at her cable perhaps ten times in the night, and to have to turn out in just what you happened to have on in the way of sleeping apparel supplemented only by "the mantle of the night,"--for there never was a moment to be lost at these junctures--was an experience which quickly became monotonous and wearing to strength and temper. During this South Fjord trip the launch certainly did herself proud in this direction; she seldom gave us a couple of hours' quiet rest, often forcing us to face the biting cold a dozen times between dark and dawn.

The forests about this part of the lake were immense, and contained trees and plants unknown in the outer Cordillera or, rather, I should say, the foothills.[29] A bush resembling holly was conspicuous, fuchsias also abounded.

I quote a short description of this region from my diary: "The mountains go in and out of the mist, now seen, now lost. The mist shrouds them at one moment, and the greyness reaches up to heaven and down to earth--into a man's soul it often seems; the next instant there may be gleams of a sad blue sky shining through the torn banners of the haze, and glaciers assume a wonderful goblin hue, a pallid violet." There was some sameness in our days, but the launch kept us alive with anticipation. She seldom lacked the chance of giving us some surprise. Often we asked each other, "Will she drown us after all? And when and where?" A cold death and a deep grave she had it in her power to give. The one good side to the situation was that when we landed, as we often did, in a sleety drizzle on a swampy camp, we forbore to grumble, but were, on the contrary, filled with a strong thankfulness to have escaped from her even for a little time.

We had one particularly bad night, when a series of squalls came down on us, and we spent the greater part of our sleeping-hours in poling the launch off the shore, but at last the wind got the better of us and literally hurled her on the beach.

How we managed to get her off it is impossible to describe; we did it somehow. The next morning was still windy, but we steamed along the Canal de los Tempanos under Mount Buenos Aires, and there it was that a fire broke out on the launch. This was an accident we always dreaded, for, having no room elsewhere, we were obliged to pile the fuel round her engine, with the result that it occasionally became dangerously heated.

Landing at the end of the Canal de los Tempanos we found ourselves in forests of magnificent timber. The vegetation was rank and luxuriant, a mass of decay under a forest of life. From the swampy dank ground tall stems sprang up straight and branchless as palms, while at their feet grew a carpet of ferns.

We had some marvellous days of fine weather in the Cordillera, where on the mountain slopes, as winter drew on, the crimson shades crept deeper to mingle with and finally change the green. In due time we reached the South Fjord by water. The account of a previous visit on horseback has already been told. Then we turned homewards, and on the way I secured some good photos of the great glacier of the Canal de los Tempanos. As we passed down the canal, a big berg broke off from the glacier ahead of us and plunged into the water, sending up a huge wave, which luckily only touched us slightly. It was well we were no nearer. We witnessed after this the fall of several lesser pieces of ice, the noise of which resounded loudly among the gorges.

Our return voyage was eventless. While Bernardo was making our camp-fire upon landing, he called to me to come with my rifle. He said he had been attacked by a large Cordillera wolf, which snapped at his legs. He retaliated with an axe, but it got away. Following in the direction he indicated, I caught a glimpse of the animal crossing a patch of moonlight, and fired, hitting it far back.

There are many thousands of square miles of unexplored forest in Patagonia. It is a region unknown and mysterious, which has never been deeply explored by man. As has been said, no man lives in them, and it is a question whether man has ever lived there, for the one all-sufficient reason--the practical absence of game on which he might subsist.

I well remember my first sight of the forests, and the intense longing that took hold upon me to make my way into their virgin fastnesses. It is one of the traveller's most unquenchable desires, this hankering to go where no other man has yet been. It springs, I suppose, from the undefined thought that in the unknown everything is possible, though few things perhaps come to pass.

From afar the forests appear to rim the slopes and spurs of the Cordillera with a seemingly impenetrable mass of blackness, reaching towards and often running up into the snow-line; as you approach the colour assumes its true hue, a deep dense green, a green that seems to have the quality of absorbing light, so that, as you gaze upon the expanse of foliage stretching back into the distances, fold beyond fold, where the valleys and mountain-sides close in behind each other, an impression of gloom and mystery lays hold upon your mind. Upon still nearer inspection you find the trees ranked in heavy phalanxes, while between their close-set trunks has grown up an under-tangle of thorn. Old storms have overthrown many of the giants, so that they lie in tens and twenties, or lean against their yet quick companions awaiting the slow decay of things. But it is very hard to give any adequate idea in words of these vast and nameless tree-kingdoms. Most common among the trees was the antarctic beech. I observed also redwood and cypress.

There are some wild cattle and huemules to be found in the outskirts of the woodlands; we also saw parrots, hawks and owls in some of our wanderings, while in other spots there seemed no sign of life at all save a few small rodents, and even those, as we pushed farther into the thicker recesses, disappeared. And then we came under the sway of that curious silence which broods among these forest depths.

The aspects of the various forests and the trees of which they were composed varied greatly. Some were bare and devoid of undergrowth as a northern forest; others were absolutely tropical in their heavy luxuriance. In one, a majestic place, the tall antarctic beeches were draped with long trailing Spanish moss, and on the carpet of moss beneath them lay here and there a dead tree.

Few places are more mournful than this region when rain is falling. After the rain ceases, mists arise and circle round you, shutting you in, these in their turn often being dissipated by a sudden fierce squall. In summer the climate is very humid, and many of the plants have the fat damp aspect seldom observable save in the tropics. The huge masses of rank vegetation seem to stifle you; once you have been in that great black insatiable woodland you can never quite shake off its influence.

In that particular forest was one glade by the outrunning of a little brook where the ground was thick with orchids.[30]

One reads of "virgin forests," but one must behold them to comprehend the reality that underlies the wording. For days you saw no living thing, heard no human tones, nothing but the immense voices of the thunder, the glacier and the everlasting wind. The solitude of Patagonia, its peculiar characteristic of lack of human life in the present and the past, was borne in upon one under that high dome of foliage, and in those aisles abysmally vast, stretching north, south, east and west. In any other country legends would have gathered round these places, some touch of man's presence and adventure humanised them, so to speak. In Patagonia the fancy had nothing to grip, to grow upon, no story of joy or of sorrow. Solitude reigned alone, and nature spoke only by the awful uninterpreted tongues of God's elements.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] Two kinds of fish came under my observation, but I understood there were four.

[29] I hope in a future volume to publish a list of the plants we collected. At the moment of writing all have not reached England.

[30] There were also orchids growing about the foothills of the Cordillera. Those I brought back are now under the care of the Curator of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. They should flower before this book is in print.