Hotel Las Torres in southern Chile recently glanced back an 1880 book called Across Patagonia by Lady Florence Dixie (1855-1905), an adventurous British aristocrat who undertook the first tourist expedition to Torres del Paine.
A few passages and illustrations from that classic travel book offer one of the earlier descriptions of Torres del Paine:
“The background was formed by thickly wooded hills, behind which again towered the Cordilleras — three tall peaks of reddish hue, and in shape exact facsimiles of Cleopatra’s needle, being a conspicuous feature in the landscape…⁣
“The suddenness with which this novel scenery burst upon me considerably heightened its effect. But yesterday we had stood on the plains, with their eternal monotony of colour and outline; last night we had gone to bed, as we thought, in a similar dreary waste; and now, as if by magic, from the bowels of the earth, a grand and glorious landscape had sprung up around us…”

Across Patagonia is available on Amazon Books and you can download it for free from the Project Gutenberg website. Even if you’re not into her florid, Victoria-era writing, the is worth browsing for the illustrations — the outside world’s first glimpse of a landscape that would one day become South America’s most astonishing national park.

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