assisted by two Chilean ships: Indefatigable and Meteoro. In 1867, President José Joaquín Pérez issued a decree offering land grants in an effort to get Chileans or foreigners to settle around Punta Arenas. The first British immigrants arrived in 1867, and their number increased as sheep farming grew in the Chilean Magallanes. The greatest immigration continued to be by the British until 1906, when Croatians surpassed them in numbers. An 1877 mutiny, known as El motín de los artilleros (Mutiny of the Artillerymen), led to the destruction of a large part of the town and the murder of many civilians not directly associated with the prison. In time the city was restored. The growth of the sheep farming industry and the discovery of gold, as well as increasing trade via sailing ships, attracted many new settlers, and the town began to prosper. Economic boom Between about 1890 and 1940, the Magallanes region became an important sheep-raising region, with one company (Sociedad Explotadora de Tierra del Fuego) controlling over . In 1910, Sociedad Explotadora merged with Sociedad Ganader, resulting in a company possessing 3 million hectares in southern Chile and Argentina, with over 2 million head of sheep. The headquarters of this company and the residences of the owners were in Punta Arenas. The Sarah Braun Museum is now established at the former Braun-Menéndez mansion, in the centre of Punta Arenas. The Punta Arenas harbour, although exposed to storms, was considered one of the most important in Chile before the construction of the Panama Canal. It was used as a coaling station by the steamships transiting between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Today it is mostly used by tourism cruises and scientific expeditions. Modern city The city is often a base for Antarctic expeditions; Ushuaia (Argentina) and Christchurch (New Zealand) are also common starting points. Demography In 2012 Punta Arenas recorded a population of over 127,000 inhabitants for the (2012 Census) by the National Statistics Institute. The population grew by 5.1% (5,830 persons) between the 1992 and 2002 censuses and further rose to 127,454 at the 2012 Census. The city was populated by many colonists from Spain and Croatia in the mid-nineteenth century, and many of their descendants remain. Other national ethnic groups represented are German, English, Italian, Swiss and Irish. Croatian immigration to Punta Arenas was a crucial development in the region of Magallanes and the city in particular. Currently,