Speaking of card playing reminds me that we saw much of it on that steamer, especially on the way home, but poker was not the game. They used the Spanish cards in which swords and cups take the place of spades and diamonds, and the game was like that known in the States as Banker in which the king was high. The lowest bet on this game was a dollar currency, and, of course, money changed hands rapidly, but the greatest win of any night's play was $150.
The prevailing winds of that region in April are found between west and south. The _Ushuaia_ bunted and bobbed her way through a head sea for five days before the high alluvial cliffs that mark the entrance to New Gulf loomed through the chilled mist of a storming morning. Then the wind shifted and came on in scurrying squalls. We had theretofore travelled on with the utmost care for the safety of everything about the ship, but now the captain made sail to help the steam, until the masts groaned under the strain. She was a slow tub--good for eight or eight and a half knots in smooth water, but under the press of canvas she drove across New Gulf at more than ten. The passengers looked on in delight and wonder. Soon after noon we rounded to before a landscape that was made up of low, white alluvial cliffs, alternating with sloping brown stretches of sage brush and sand, behind which rose a range of hills to complete a picture for all the world like those to be seen in the deserts of southeastern California. Then, even before the sails were furled, the captain ordered a boat lowered into the water, and he was hastily rowed to the shore.
Later I got ashore myself. The captain met me at the landing. Would I like to meet the agent of the little railroad running down to Chubut? I would. He was a Welshman, who, of course, talked English, and had lived in the country twelve years. We walked over the desert sand to a long shanty of vertical boards roofed with galvanized iron. The captain walked in through an open door as one who felt at home might do. The room was a marvel of neatness, considering the surroundings, and there was a piano in the corner. While the captain enjoyed my admiring glance, a door to an adjoining room opened, and a most attractive girl of perhaps seventeen came in.