Over the Sea and Far Away; Being a Narrative of Wanderings Around the World (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: QUARANTINE. 47 CHAPTER III. Quarantine?The Deiw ex machind?The Pampero at night?Start in the ' Eothen'?' Seeing the New Year in' at sea?Cruelty in hoisting cattle?The Straits of Magellan?Sea-birds and wonders of the Kelp?The tragedy of Saudv Point?Snow Mountains and Glaciers?Cape Pillar?Albatrosses and bad weather?Coronel?The Gardens and Smelting Works of Lota?Arrival at Valparaiso. How were we to get away from Buenos Ayres ? That was the question. Day by day we found ourselves more and more entangled in the toils of quarantine. The 'magnificent' steamer 'Luxor' had proved a delusion and a snare; and the agents of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company admitted that they had no means of putting passengers on board their own ships calling at Montevideo. We discussed the alternative of going to Rosario and Cordova, or Rio Quarto, with the view of crossing the Pampas and the Cordillera of the Andes to Santiago and Valparaiso. But this would rob us of the famous Straits of Magellan, which we were particularly anxious to see; and while the idea was in course of discussion, the news came that, so to speak, our own familiar friend had lifted up his heel against us, and that the provincial towns on the Parana were themselves imposing quarantine on the inhabitants of the supposed-to-be-plagne-stricken metropolis. Last of all we found, that even if we ' escaped to the mountains,' the Chilian outposts on the passes of the 48 HOW TO ESCAPE ? Andes would prevent the entrance of anything unclean into their Republic. What was to be done, without the misery and humiliation of enduring three weeks in a quarantine establishment, full of Spanish and Italian emigrants whose overcrowding was in itself a natural stimulus to disease? The Deus e.t machind appeared in the person of Mr. Ash...