The Gold Diggings of Cape Horn

t be deterred from visiting Patagonia

ests resound continually with the cries of birds and animals, where butterflies and humming-birds fill the air, and the insects are seen or felt in countless thousands, then, comparatively speaking, the fauna is limited. And yet there were-and are-some forms of life in Patagonia-insects, for instance-which, if Darwin had happened along at the right time, would have made him think the country about as full of life as it needed to be to keep a human bein

and had killed two, which were brought on board and hung up while I was writing in my diary down below. I afterward saw guanacos cantering over the hills unsuspicious of danger, and also fleeing toward a far country because certain that danger was near. They were even seen from th

s those of a deer, are really thicker, and seem thicker than they are, at least in winter, because of the length of hair. The color of the body of the full-grown beast is the red of a red cow, but the pelage is wool rather than hair until the animal is well on in years. However, the pelage of the legs is hair at all ages. In youth the wool is a light, almost a fawn color. At all ages the color of the back shades into white on the belly, while in extreme old age the guanacos are said to turn almost white all over. The track of the guana

orse. But more interesting than all this was a habit which he believed it had when about to die. Along the Rio Santa Cruz he found the ground under the brush actually heaped up with the bones of the guanaco. Animal after animal had crawled in under the brushy shrubs, and, lyi

the inferior creatures than the superstitious observance of human beings, who have knowledge of death and believe in a continued existence after dissolution; of a tribe that in past times had conceived the idea that the liberated spirit is on

cemetery, but they did not understand me. So I got Hudson's book and showed them the picture of the dying guanaco, and translated as well as small

s not

bones are there-thou

out d

s not go there to die, or to escape an

over the snow. Every place on the mesa is covered. To escape the cold storms the guanacos seek the shelter of the bushes. The storm continues many days. They can find no food; they cannot leave

agonian wallows are often much larger than any I ever saw in Kansas or Texas. The gauchos say this is because the guanacos resort to them in considerable herds-from thirty to one hundred-and at night sleep in them standing, heads out, in a ring, while the kids stand within the circle. This habit protects the young from the wild-cats and foxes. The guanaco has no eff

nd contenting himself by browsing on the scant herbage he finds about him. At times, however, the guanacos live in vast herds, and then all the older males remain on the higher knolls as sentinels. Their sense of smell is very keen. It is well-nigh impossible to get within half a mile of the sentinels by travelling down wind-some say they can smell a pa

lee side of a herd, can toll them within pistol range by simply waving the cloth in the air at brief intervals. It is likely that the ani

he nearest declivity, and in the mountains this sometimes means a drop of hundreds of feet. If the animal is one of the leaders the whole herd with it will follow, sheep fashion. A gaucho, who had guided an English hunter from Punta Arenas up into the cordillera, said one

ge of perpetual snow, and are quite at home in either locality. Their food is grass and twigs, but they are not found in the woods, save o

attle. But in the mating season, after the third year, they become so vicious that it is dangerous for women and children to keep them about. The females are then particularly ill-tempered toward women. They show their dislike by jumping t

he mainstay of life. From the hide of the full-grown animals he makes his tent, and from the skins of the very young-preferably those of the unborn-with their silky fur he manufactures the great blanket-like wraps that form his distinctive dress. The skin of the hind legs is readily turned into an easy boot, and the skin of the long neck is dressed and cut into strips which form cor

xcellent leather, well adapted for valises and such uses, while that of the younger ones would serve admir

omething like a stone, but can be readily broken. It is said to possess medi

rely can one read a story of the panther in the States without seeing something about its terrible ferocity toward human beings, while the stories of the panther that comes out of the woods to play with the lonely wayfarer as a cat plays with a mouse, that it may at last crush and eat him, are enough to make the flesh of the unlearned reader creep on his bones. On the desert of Patagonia there are more panthers in proportion to the area and the numbers of other kinds of animals than in any other region of the world. The lonely wayfarer is not often found there afoot,

ide to side, and makes no end of kitten-like motions, and all because of the exuberance of its youthful spirits. I know that the average reader, accustomed to the Fenimore Cooper sort of novel

beasts of prey came to feed on the thinly-covered bodies, a circumstance that added greatly to the terror and distress of the people. Nevertheless, hunger increased so much that many ventured out into woods along the river seeking edible roots, and with some success. Among these was a young woman named Maldonada, who, getting lost, was found and carried away by the Indians. Some months later, peace having been restored, Don Rui Diaz, the Captain of the soldiers, learned that Se?orita Maldonada was alive, and thereupon he persuaded the Indians to restore her. He did this, not to relieve her from her slavery, but that he might

noci, y la llamaban la Maldonada, que mas bien se le podia llama la Biendonada; p

anslated

hey called her Maldonada (ill-bestowed), whom they could better have called Biendonada (well-bestow

e or dogs it runs with tremendous leaps a short distance. It gets tired out quickly, and then leaps into the middle of the largest clump of thorn brush at hand. There it sits up and snarls and looks like a fierce cat. It will claw the life out of any dog it can get hold of very quickly, but the moment a lasso drops over its neck it gives up, and ly

asted it tastes like young pig. It is particularly esteemed because usually fat. The Patagonia plainsmen, as well as the Indians, consume fat as an Eskimo does. This is not because the weather is col

vering fur and flaming eyes it leaps at its victim. Two mighty bounds, no more, no less, and it lands on the back of the guanaco, and with a sweep of its right paw it dislocates its victim's neck. Down the two go in a heap, and then the panther

he guanaco hears or smells its enemy in time to leap away in safety. The panther nev

h that may be afar off, and claws the air, first with one paw, then with another, and then with both. Up will come its hind legs next, or its tail will stand erect, with the tip wavi

t. Indeed, no living being of the desert except man escapes its appetite for murder, one may say, for it claws down the whirring partridge as she springs from her nest, which it afterwards robs of its eggs; it kills the ostrich as he sits on his nest, and then, after hiding his body, it returns to the nest and eats the eggs with gusto; it snatches the duc

even ill-temper shown toward a human being. The shepherds and gauchos agree that the panther is always a kitten at heart, so far as man is concerned, but it has an instinctive dislike for dogs an

sile tail dragging uselessly behind it, lives as comfortably, and makes just as good a roast, as ever it did where the pawpaws grow. That it has lived thus for ages on the treeless mesa no one need doubt; but when by chance one is transported from the plain to a region of trees, to the valley of the Rio Negro, for instance, the old tree-climbing

the size of a small meadow mole. There are bushes on the desert large enough to serve these little fellows as trees, and they are, therefore, able to follow their instinctive desire to climb and

er North American beast, and it certainly has a remarkably beautiful pelage. Its flesh is very good to eat, but it is chiefly hunted for the fur. The feature of this animal, however, that at once attracts the attention of a stranger is the location of the nipples of the mother

acks like wolves when hunting, and are said to have the most malignant and devilish faces of any beast

to a rather larger size than in the United States, but he is remarkable for being very short-winded. At least, he is easily tired out. A race of a few hundred yards with a desert horse uses him up, and he falls

often serve the Indians as food when larger game fails. It is an interesting fact, too, that the Indians capture them when you

told that a skunk's bite is supposed in parts of the United States to cause a ma

ut by day because the cats of the desert persecute it most at night. Near the settlements, where, by the way, it thrives best, it is abroad at night, because man persecutes it in the day. Slow moving, as it seems to be when the traveller sees it at sunset, it overtakes the serpents of the region in a fair race, and kills them by squatting on them and sawing its body to and fro so that the edges of its protective shell cut the snake to pieces. It captures mice by sneaking on them cat-fashion and throwing its body over them like a trap. It grubs for worms; it robs nests of eggs and fledglings. Now, although it eats a great many things that are repulsive to civilized tastes, the armadillo is itself a mos

the prairies and deserts of the United States. They prefer animal food; they are good scavengers. They do no harm to crops, but on the contrary aid materially in destroying insects and other crop enemies. Indeed, they are so

als, besides birds, all live without water. I do not know this to be true, but every plainsman with whom I have talked said it was so. The panther, of course, finds a substitute in the blood he drinks, but there are others that do not have even a liquid food. They live on fle

y is, indeed, about as scant, numerically, as the flora; but here, as in all other things, there is a universal law of compensation