I left the Rio Negro and went on south to Port Madryn.
A hundred and fifty-three Welsh colonists landed here off the brig Mimosa in 1865. They were poor people in search of a New Wales, refugees from cramped coal-mining valleys, from a failed independence movement, and from Parliament’s ban on Welsh in schools. Their leaders had combed the earth for a stretch of open country uncontaminated by Englishmen. They chose Patagonia for its absolute remoteness and foul climate; they did not want to get rich.
The Argentine Government gave them land along the Chubut River. From Madryn it was a march of forty miles over the thorn desert. And when they did reach the valley, they had the impression that God, and not the Government, had given them the land.