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SOUTH AMERICAN PICTURES COLLECTIONS | COLLECTIONS |
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Seventy years ago A F Tschiffely was a household name. His book popularly known as 'The Ride' sold in its thousands. Why such success? In three years from 1925 to 1928 Tschiffely rode with two horses Gato and Mancha northward through the Americas from Argentina to Washington. It was an endurance challenge which 'couldn't be done' Tschiffely succeeded and was welcomed by the US president Calvin Coolidge in the White House. The National Geographic Society honoured him with a lecture in the Washington city auditorium. In New York Tschiffely and his horses paraded down Fifth Avenue |
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FROM
SWITZERLAND TO THE END OF THE EARTH Aimé
Tschiffely from an old Swiss family was educated in Berne and chose
a career as a teacher. But deep in side him an adventurous spirit demanded
excitement. He left Switzerland before he was twenty to join a school
in southern England only to break his teaching life with spells as a
professional footballer and boxer. Then he decided to move on to Argentina.
Once in Buenos Aires he settled back into teaching and used his long
vacations to take horses and explore the pampas, the immense
flat lands stretching for hundreds of kilometers south and west. Tschiffely
enjoyed these open spaces and the warm company of ranchers. A wealth
of experiences led him to attempt 'The Ride', a solo journey which to
this day remains one of the longest of its kind ever made. His book
was so successful that he settled in London, married, became an accomplished
author and one of the most sought after lecturers of the 1930s.
 With
his wife Violet, Tschiffely lived in Chelsea one of the fashionable
parts of the city; their flat [apartment] was in Jubilee Place
a narrow street of fine town-houses within a few steps of the King's
Road. [In the 1960's this road was famous as the heart of 'swinging
London' ] In 1937 Tschiffely returned to Argentina to make another journey. This time he wanted to head in the other direction, south to Patagonia and onwards to Tierra del Fuego more than 2,200 kms away from the capital. Argentina is a country which stretches from the tropics to the Antarctic ice. In the 1930s the southern lands were inhabited by hardy sheep farmers living on great estancias, [ranches] together with a few settlers and the last of the true native people. The name 'Patagonia' came from an early account of the people who supposedly had 'big feet' - the patagones- and Tierra del Fuego or ' land of fire' was so called after stories of dozens of camp fires burning in the night and seen for the first time by the Portuguese navigator Magellan. In 1518 Magellan was sponsored by the King of Spain to find a route to the Spice islands or 'Moluccas' and at the foot of South America he discovered the way to the Pacific through a narrow strait, today named after him. Modern southern Argentina has changed little except the towns have grown, and the native people have gone. The tribes died and their customs have been lost. The ranches are still there although many owners live in the capital or even overseas. The scenery is remarkable and the emptyness stunning which adds up to one of the worlds' great tourist attractions. Daily air links connect even the most distant towns with Buenos Aires taking away the magic of the isolation experienced by Tschiffely. Literary
Deserts......
Tschiffely
felt these romantic and remote southern lands were 'literary deserts'because
since the 19th century accounts of exploration little had been written
about them. A biblical quote at the beginning of his fifth book sums
up his feeling at the time 'Get up this way southward and go up into
the mountain; And see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth
therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many.....' Numbers
XIII , 17, 18 Tschiffely's
'This Way Southward' was first published in 1940 Gato and Mancha were 28 and 30 and living in retirement at an estancia outside Buenos Aires when Tschiffely called to see them. Even after twelve years there was some recognition and they remembered a few tricks he had taught them. He enjoyed being back in great open spaces of Argentina and from his account he was once more at home with the gauchos and country folk. He called at wayside inns and food stores making friends. His journey had to be by road because he had just a few months free and wanted to avoid the harsh winter in the south. Tschiffely travelled in a car supplied by the Ford company in Argentina and his route was almost directly south across open desolate plains.
----A tea shop in the Chubut valley
From
Trelew Tschiffely continued south into a barren wilderness which in
places is a desert. The Andes mountains are close at hand and rainfall
on the western, Pacific side drains the air of moisture long before
it reaches Patagonia. The rugged foothills are forested and the river
valleys are filled with low trees and bushes. The mountains are ice
capped and glaciers reach downwards to beautiful lakes. Tschiffely spent
much of his time on the estancias where even today millions of
sheep are reared. He heard of a legendary hidden city known as 'The
City of the Caesars' inhabited by a group of lost Spanish explorers
and local native Americans. The story dated from the 17th century. Then
Tschiffely heard tales of an ancient animal, the giant ground sloth
which was said exist in the wilderness. According to science its species
roamed Patagonia about three million years ago. Finally Tschiffely ventured
even further south crossing the narrow Magellan Strait to reach the
huge island of Tierra del Fuego where he stayed with more ranchers and
watched the wildlife.
The last of the Original people........ At the time of Tschiffely's journey the remnants of the original native American people were in sharp decline. While in the south he met Lucas Bridges of a missionary family whose life had been spent with the native Americans. At one time five tribes and sub tribes inhabited the region, some like the Tehuelche were in the desert with territory reaching north to beyond the Chubut river and among other animals they hunted guanaco a wild relative of llamas - the Andean humpless camels. The Ona [Selk'nam] occupied much of Tierra del Fuego, while the Yaghán [Yámana] and Alacaluf [Kawéskar] lived around the coasts and among the islands of the remote south by gathering wild berries, fishing. Another group the Haush [Mannekenk] occupied the east and south of the island of Tierra del Fuego. Charles Darwin the Victorian naturalist who travelled in Tierra del Fuego in the 1830s saw Yaghán living naked in the forests during the depth of winter and they were, he said 'the most abject and miserable creatures I anywhere beheld'. In a bay not far away an Indian woman came alonside his ship suckling a recently born child. She remained there 'out of mere curiosity while the sleet fell and thawed on her naked bosom'. The Ona fires spotted by Magellan were made by the timeold method of striking flint stone and pyrites a naturally occurring metallic ore. Sparks were caught on bird down or dried fungus. The people travelled by canoe and they carried their fires from place to place on a hearth of stones and shells. It was about a century later when Lucas Bridges and Tschiffely became great friends and the native Americans were on the verge of extinction. Bridges' was able to give the traveller a good snapshot of their situation. In one example alone Bridges could see how the Yaghan had dropped from two to three thousand people in the late 19th century to fewer than 30 in 1933. Intrusion by settlers such as sheep farmers and gold prospectors was responsible for the decline together with introduced diseases. Measles and smallpox were the chief culprits. Tschiffely thanked his friend for 'so patiently allowing him to pick his brain'. Tschiffely met the people and found the Onas and Yagháns the most interesting - 'fortunately their amazingly rich languages have been recorded' he said. He heard of their legends and in particular one about the slaughter of the women. According to the folk story the women had a special power over the men, perhaps a kind of witchcraft which was passed around at special gatherings. No man was allowed near these events where the women learned how to cause sickness, sudden pain and death. The men retaliated and killed all the women except for the girl babies. The legend, just once of many has all the folk qualities of magic and mystery. 'Not all the women died, some were able to transform themselves into other beings and one young damsel ran towards a waterfall known as Okal Warren. Before the men could catch her she plunged into the water and was transformed into a fast swimming duck with wonderful plumage' . This folklore was perpetuated in a semi religious rite, the 'Kina Rite' when the men secretly painted themselves and wore conical masks of bark or sealskin. They danced where the women could see them while threatening all manner of penalty for those who would not submit.
From
Patagonia Aimé Tschiffely returned to Buenos Aires which he said
'changes rapidly' noticing the abundance of skyscrapers. His old haunts
were being modernised, 'the Casino' a music hall which
very rancher and visitor knew had lost its atmosphere. So too had the
Phoenix Bar, better known as 'Fanny's bar', once filled with tobacco
smoke and aging hostesses, 'mostly Polish and on the wrong side of fifty
or sixty'. According to Tschiffely one had the nickname
of 'Aunt Lucy' and resembled the matron in the largest English college
in Argentina. Time was undoubtedly moving fast. World War II was on
the horizon with the 'Battle of the River Plate' incident not far behind.
By the time the war was over the original people of the south would
be gone. Another piece of the human pattern would be lost forever and
the world much poorer. The damsel, the waterfall and the duck would
be just another story. Will the last person out please turn-off the
light?
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