While preparing the map, posted yesterday, with Muster's itinerary across Patagonia during his 1869-70 ride from Pavón Island on the Santa Cruz River to Carmen de Patagones on the Negro River, I reread parts of his book, and came across a strange event he jotted down. Today's post will look into this incident.
The Burning Ground
In Chapter 8, the entry is titled "Burning Ground". I quote the text in full (see pages 252 and 253):
"About a mile below the encampment, where the sandy plain narrowed and sloped down to a low-lying grassy valley, a singular phenomenon presented itself. The morning after our arrival, when going out to look for the horses, a furious easterly gale whirled the dust aloft in dense clouds, and, to my great surprise, the sand, which was driven into our faces, was as hot as when the fire so nearly encircled us. Almost blinded in forcing our way through this curtain of driving sand, we rode right into a hollow, where the earth appeared to be on fire; as the horses plunged through the heated surface the hair was burnt off their fetlocks, and they were nearly maddened with fright, so that it was a difficult feat for the riders without saddles or stirrups to keep their seats. Once I was somewhere near my horse’s ears, but, more by good luck than good management, just escaped being thrown as it were into the fire. After the gale had partially moderated, I proceeded to inspect this place, and found that, although not, as I at first thought, absolutely on fire, the ground was smoking as if from internal combustion. The surface presented a crust of baked yellow clay, which, yielding to the horses’ feet, disclosed a black subsoil; there was no flame, but a thin white vapour issued from the ground. When I incautiously ventured a step on the treacherous crust it gave way, but I managed to extricate myself with no further damage than burning my potro boots. The Indians stated that the fire had been originally caused some years previously by their having kindled the pasture higher up the valley, and that the ground had been burning ever since. It was impossible to discover whether there was any subjacent bed of combustible matter which might thus have been ignited; but, as there are hot wells and springs in the same range not many miles distant to the south-east, it seems more probably due to volcanic agency. The principal hot spring was described as a circular basin of about six feet in diameter, the water, of a temperature not so hot as to scald the hand, bubbling up through numerous holes in a clay bottom. In many of the surrounding hills there are lava and pumice of not extremely ancient formation; some of the hills have also an appearance of having been at a recent period the outlets of eruptive forces, which have scattered large shattered masses of rock over the sides of the extinct craters."
Musters' reference to "as hot as when the fire so nearly encircled us" is about an earlier fire he experienced (See page 137); a wildfire lit by the natives that nearly burned him.
Where was this spot?
Musters' notes on this leg of his trip are not as clear as those of the first leg from Isla Pavón, to Geylum. He recognized the fact: "I am conscious that the description of this part of the journey is not likely to give a very clear idea of the country traversed; and that the directions of the successive ranges, and the general character of the ground, are left too much to the reader’s imagination; but, in deprecation of criticism and censure, it is pleaded that I was under the impression that this district had been traversed, and accurately surveyed and described, by a savant employed by the Argentine Government; and that I was deprived of the assistance of my compass, which had been presented to Foyel. The notes taken at the time were very scanty, and my recollections were confused, inasmuch as I was labouring under a constantly-recurring attack of sickness."
There was no governmental scientist, so all we have are Musters' recollections.
Let's follow his journey from the first campsite at Geylum (see this interactive map for guidance - in a sparate post I uploaded Musters' Itinerary map).
Nowadays, a railroad and a national highway (Ruta Nacional 23) cross the meseta (plateau) of Río Negro from the Atlantic to Lake Nahuel Huapi and Bariloche. But modern highways and railroads have grade requirements that horse riding natives didn't need. The modern routes are longer and follow the lower inclines. The natives, following ancestral trails laid down by the foot indians (they walked across this territory long before they adopted the horse introduced by the Spaniards in the mid 1500s) would have used shorter routes, even if it meant climbing steeper inclines, and marching along canyons and gullies.
I propose a route between Geylum and Oerroe (yellow line in map) that does not follow the modern Ruta 23 but is closer to the railroad alignment.
On the first day, Musters saidwrote that "the counterslope of which we descended, a hurried march led us through a very barren rocky country entangled in broken irregular hills, with scarcely a bush to shelter under, and little or no pasture. We encamped, or rather reached the camp after it was pitched, in a cañon containing a small spring and a very little green pasture."
The first stop on this leg was at Oerroe, which historian Rodolfo Casamiquela places 5 km NE of Neneo Ruca (see Oerroe (A) on the map) and de Brito and Kuhlmann locate ("at coordinates 41º07.766S - 70º23.207W, just 8 kilometres south-west of National Route 23, near to a country road that accompanies the railway from there"), named Oerroe (B) on the map.
Then they marched eastwards on the Second day of their journey: "The next day a long march of twenty miles brought us to an encampment on the western verge of a broad plain, watered by a brooklet."
I have not found any "broad plains in this area except for the region at the foot of the basaltic highlands east of Ingeniero Jacobacci and the Cari-laufquen Lakes, big, and small. The map below shows three possible routes to the lower terrain of th plains. Note that Musters mentions a lake with 3,000 guanaco in his itinerary, it is one of the Carilaufquen lakes. Casamiquela says it is the small one, marked (1) on the map; the big one is further north (2). See map below (Source with full size map). Also in the interactive map, marked with red, blue and orange lines.
The red line is the alignment of Ruta 23 and the railroad, blue and orange lines are alternative routes into the lower ground.
de Brito places this spot "They were crossing terrain adjacent to National Route 23, at coordinates 41º12.434S – 70º10.351W, to the north of National Route 23." Which I have named CAMP 2 (B). I marked another spot, 20 miles east of Oerroe, following the current railway and Ruta 23, CAMP 2 (A).
But the natives could have taken an even shorter route (pale violet line in map) to CAMP 2 (C).
One mile east of CAMP 2 was the "Burning Ground" site.
They marched on the third segment, to a place called Telck (see the green markers on the map with the spots marked by Casamiquela and de Brito as locations of this spot). Musters describes the itinerary from CAMP 2 to Telck: "Our march lay up the valley, and the circle was formed on the surrounding volcanic hills, the sides of which, besides the vesicular lava, presented large masses of the ironstone noted as having been observed at Santa Cruz. Shrubs were sparsely scattered on these hills, and game was exceedingly scarce. Towards evening we encamped on the borders of a stream in a place called by the Indians Telck."
However the location given by de Brito and Casamiquela for Telck seems to be too close to CAMP 2!
Volcano?
I used the Hoja Geológica 4169-III (Geologic Sheet) that covers this area (online here, text and map) and it only mentions four holocene lava fields (last million years), of which two have been active close to Musters' route (Basalto Cerro Horqueta, and Basalto Huahuel Niyeu), both are relatively close to the site of Camp 2 (I marked them with orange volcano icons in the map).
The area has many lava fields but these are even older than 1 My. There is no recent reports of volcanic activity in this area during historic times or in the past few thousands of years. Though, the Geologic Sheet states that the lava has not been dated. An example of recent lava flows recorded by science and native lore can be found at Achen Ñiyeu close to lakes Currhue, Epulafquen and Lolog, with lava flows that took place 475 ± 35 years BP.
Subterranean Fires
The other option is a subterranean fire like the ones noted at Centralia, Pennsylvania, US, where coal seams have been burning underground since 1962; the coal at Burning Mountain in Australia, that has been ablaze for 6000 years, or the Darvaza crater in Turkmenistan, where natural gas has been burning since 1971. Even peat in bogs can burn (Smoldering Combustion and Ground Fires: Ecological Effects and Multi-Scale Significance)!
The US National Park Service defines a type of fire known as "Ground fire - Fire that consumes the organic material beneath the surface litter ground, such as a peat or coal seam fire. Tree roots burning could also be classified as ground fire. In peat or coal seams, ground fires may burn for decades and are notoriously difficult to put out as they can move underground."
However, the geologic sheet text does not mention any coal seams, peat, oil, or natural gas in this quadrant. Maybe the roots of the Patagonian bushes were the cause.
I have not been able to find any references to hot springs in this area either! The ancient natives knew much more than we do nowadays! Yet Musters mentions them twice (the second time on page 259: "At night we encamped under a barranca or steep rising to the eastward. On his arrival Hinchel informed me that- 259 - we had passed the vein of ore previously spoken of, and the hot springs, the Indians having shortened the journey by deviating from the usual line of march.")
I have not found any other reference to this burning ground site in contemporary journals or later studies of the area. Its location remains, a mystery.
Closing Comments
I believe the natives were right, and that it was a fire burning in the roots of the steppe's bushes. In Australia, with a similar arid environment, this is a well known phenomenon (Source): "A subterranean fire burns through a tree stump or a tree and it burns what you can see, but what you're not seeing is that it is burning underground through the root system... The moisture levels are at record lows in south-east Queensland and so a fire will travel underground... Superintendent Gillespie warned that these sort of fires can then "pop out" of the ground days or even weeks later. The root systems of these trees can go for many, many metres into unburnt country and pop out three days later, five days later, three weeks later and start another fire," he said.
While underground fires are rare, it would not be the first time such a fire has happened in Queensland."
Who was Musters?
George Chaworth Musters, pictured, (1841-1879) was a British sailor and explorer who traveled in 1869 to the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands and from there to Punta Arenas in Chile. He rode from this spot to the southernmost Argentine outpost located on an island (isla Pavón) on the Santa Cruz River, ran by Luis Piedrabuena, who traded with the Southern Tehuelche (Aonikenk), and did some sealing in the area, for oil, and pelts.
Musters (picture) used Piedrabuena's contacts with the natives to secure a slot in a long ride they were going to do, to the north. He spent several months riding with them, following an ancestral native trail across Patagonia.
His experience resulted in a book At Home with the Patagonians (online)
Some Argentine sources state that he was a British spy, exploring the until then empty and unoccupied Patagonia (by both Chile and Argentina) to evaluate if it there was potential for British colonization. However, it seems unlikely.
He received a gold watch from the Royal Geographic Society for his expedition.
He returned to South America in 1873, with the idea of setting out from Chile southwards to visit Sayhueque, the Mapuche Chief, head of the Manzanas tribes, whom he had met during his first ride, and who had invited him to return. But the Mapuche turned him back (they controlled most of the territory south of the Bio Bio River. He visited Valdivia, in the Chilean Patagonia. Where he was captured by the natives but managed to escape (his book, Journey in Araucania)
He maried Herminia Williams in England (June 1873) who was from Sucre in Bolivia. They returned to Bolivia and he travelled extensively across the country (1874-76). Back in Britain, he was named British Consul in Mozambique (1878). Shortly before leaving for Africa, he was operated for an abcess, and the ensuing infection killed him at the young age of 38. These were the days before the discovery of antibiotics. Sepsis was usually mortal.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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