Last of the Incas: A Romance of the Pampas

Patagonia is as little known at the present day as it was when Juan Diaz de Solis and Vicente Yanez Pinzon landed there in 1508, sixteen years after the discovery of the New World.

The earliest navigators, whether involuntarily or not, threw over this country a mysterious veil, which science and frequent relations have not yet entirely removed. The celebrated Magalaës (Magellan) and his historian, the Chevalier Pigafetta, who touched at these coasts in 1520, were the first to invent these Patagonian giants so tall that Europeans scarce reached their girdle, who were upwards of nine feet high, and resembled Cyclops. These fables, like all fables, have been accepted as truths, and in the last century became the theme of a very lively dispute among learned men. Hence the name of Patagonians (great feet) was given to the inhabitants of this country, which extends from the western watershed of the Andes to the Atlantic Ocean.

Patagonia is watered, through its entire length, by the Rio Colorado in the north, and the Rio Negro in the east-south-east. These two rivers, through the windings of their course, agreeably break the uniformity of an arid, dry, sandy soil, on which prickly shrubs alone grow, or dispense life to the uninterrupted vegetation of their banks. They wind round a fertile valley overshadowed by willow trees, and trace two deep furrows through the midst of an almost level country.

The Rio Negro runs through a valley surrounded by precipitous cliffs, which the waters still wash at places; wherever they have retired, they have left alluvial soil covered with an eternal vegetation, and formed numerous islets covered with willows, and contrasting with the mournful aspect of the naked cliffs.

Monkeys, wild asses, foxes, and red wolves constantly traverse the desert in every direction, together with the cougar, or American lion, and the imbaracayas—those ferocious and formidable wild cats. The coasts are thronged with amphibious carnivora, such as sea lions and elephant seals. The guya, concealed in the marshes, utters its melancholy cry; the guacuti, or stag of the Pampas, runs lightly over the sand; while the guanaco, or American camel, sits pensively on the summit of the cliffs. The majestic condor soars amid the clouds, in the company of the disgusting cathartes. Urubús and auras which, like it, hover round the cliffs on the seaboard to dispute the remains of corpses with the voracious caracaras. Such are the plains of Patagonia, a monotonous solitude empty, horrible, and desolate!