Darwin Slept Here - Eric N. Simons [15]
Although there was no settlement then at Port San Julian, the harbor had managed to cram a lot of history into its short, unhappy life. It was discovered in 1520 by Ferdinand Magellan and his fleet of five ships. Just north of Port San Julian, Magellan encountered the Tehuelche natives of the region and of them his chronicler, Antonio Pigafetta, wrote, “One of these men, as tall as a giant, came to our captain’s ship to satisfy himself and request that the others might come. And this man had a voice like a bull’s.” Magellan’s ship then encountered a ferocious storm, emerged unscathed and sailed into Port San Julian on March 31, 1520, to spend the next five winter months. Pigafetta continued his note-taking. “We saw a giant who was on the shore, quite naked, and who danced, leaped, and sang, and while he sang he threw sand and dust on his head.” Magellan sent crew members out to lead this giant back to him, which they did. “And he was so tall,” Pigafetta wrote, “that the tallest of us only came up to his waist.” Magellan named these giants “Pathagoni,” a word that, according to a footnote in the R. A. Skelton translation of Pigafetta’s work, means “dogs with large paws” in various Romance languages. The name for their land became Patagonia.
Almost immediately after arriving in the harbor, the masters of the other four ships mutinied. The mutiny failed, meriting scarcely a mention by Pigafetta, and Magellan beheaded two of the lead mutineers. Then, for good measure, he had them drawn and quartered. He hung their remains on wooden crosses as a warning to o t hers, smack in the middle of an island in the harbor, which became known as “Magellan’s Gibbet” (a gibbet being a useful little device, often cross-shaped, for hanging or displaying remains). He named the island Isla de la Justicia, the Island of Justice.
When the long winter came to an end, Magellan trekked to the top of the highest mountain in sight, planted a cross on top, and claimed the land for the King of Spain. He sailed on to “discover” the Pacific Ocean, give it a name, and then get hacked to death by an angry mob in the Philippines. (A sadly recurring theme for the great explorers; Pigafetta’s description of Magellan’s death—a confusing melee in which the captain fell on the beach as he was repeatedly stabbed—is a tableau familiar to fans of Captain Cook.)
Sixty years later, in 1578, the English pirate Sir Francis Drake sailed into the harbor at San Julian. Drake, too, had a suspected mutineer on board, so he called together a jury of forty sailors from his various ships, and the jury found the man guilty. Drake had him beheaded and hung, also on the Island of Justice, and etched a few w ords commemorating the deed into a rock on the island.
The bay continued to attract famous visitors: English circumnavigator George Anson came in 1741 and made it his base of operations in case of an attack by the Spanish. Spanish city-founder Antonio de Viedma, who helped colonize much of Argentina, tried (and failed) to establish a city called Floridablanca here in the 1780s.
Darwin arrived on January 9, 1834. For a week, the Beagle had explored the coast, and while sounding the sandbars in the harbor, FitzRoy let Darwin off the ship to examine the geology. A few days later, he went out walking and made two discoveries he could not easily explain: “a Spanish oven built of bricks, & and on the top of a hill a small wooden cross.” “Of what