Adventures in Patagonia : $b a missionary's exploring trip

"Adventures in Patagonia" by Titus Coan is a missionary travel narrative written in the late 19th century. It chronicles an 1830s exploratory mission to Patagonia and the Falkland Islands for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, blending seafaring adventure with firsthand observations of the land and its indigenous peoples. Expect storms, landfalls, and camp life alongside candid notes on culture, language barriers, and the practical challenges of starting a mission at the world’s edge.

The opening of the narrative frames Coan through an admiring introduction by Henry M. Field, sketching his New England roots, physical stamina, and later, extraordinary success in Hawaii, which led friends to urge him to publish this earlier Patagonian episode. A brief preface explains the work as plain notes from a visit, supplemented with references to FitzRoy, Darwin, and others. The story then begins with the American Board’s urgent call, fueled by Captain Morrell’s rosy reports of western Patagonia; Coan’s prayerful decision at Auburn Seminary (with his fiancée’s resolute consent); ordination; and departure. In New York, new testimony overturns Morrell’s claims, sending the party instead to Eastern Patagonia with only a tenuous pickup plan. After a hard voyage in the schooner Mary Jane—calms, equatorial heat, seabirds, and a terrifying pampéro—they anchor in the Strait of Magellan, land at Gregory’s Bay, and part from their ship. The final pages recount first contact and then immersion in an inland camp: hunger and hunting guanaco, occasional horse meat, carding fungus for food, children and dogs underfoot, the bolas and saddles in use, skin tents, clothing, and the watchful leadership of a young chief called Louis—all rendered as immediate field notes from the very start of their stay. (This is an automatically generated summary.)