On the night of 23 September 1884 the French steamship Arctique ran aground off the northern coast of Cape Vírgenes, on the Atlantic side of the entrance to the Strait of Magellan. Harold is the one to ask about the ship. I am interested in what happened on the beach afterwards: men working the salvage found gold in the shingle, and the Tierra del Fuego rush began by accident, as most of the good discoveries do.

Unromantic work, all of it. Late September down there is the tail of winter, a few degrees above freezing with a wind off the Atlantic that does not pause for lunch. The gold was flour-fine, scattered through wet gravel, which means shovelling, sieving, rocking a cradle, and rinsing again. What they actually had: shovels, wooden sluices and riddles, mercury, hides or fleeces laid in the sluice to catch the finest flakes, oilskins, and boots that were never once dry. Most of the sifting was done by Chilote labourers from the islands north of there, alongside Dalmatian miners who had come a very long way from the Adriatic, plus Chileans, Argentines and assorted Europeans who had read one optimistic newspaper too many.

The rush ran to about 1906. It built the first towns in the archipelago and a good deal of Punta Arenas, and when the gravel gave out the people who stayed turned to sheep and fishing. It also drove settlers and prospectors deep into Selk'nam land, and contributed greatly to the destruction of the Selk'nam people. That belongs on the same page as the gold.