Through the Heart of Patagonia

rdillera wolf-Vain search for huemul-Return to Horsham Camp-Trip to River Deseado-Paradise of wildfowl-Shooting ostriches-Long-necked game of Patagonia-No ruins or vestiges of older civilisation in Pa

Horsham Camp-Rive

at range whose upper summits we had watched for weeks lying high on the sky-line, blue and white and cold, sending the message of a great wind from them to us. We were now upon the shore

came on a scene supremely beautiful. The wild light of sunset upon the snow-peaks, the grey turbulent water of the lak

wing upon the margin. Vast masses of milk-white timber, blanched by the influences of sun and water and eloquent of the mountain-land of forest whence they have be

LAKE BU

we crossed before reaching the lake. I do not think that any painter desiring to picture desolation could do better than descend the central gorge and there paint its gaunt and rugged outlines, tumbled together in a horror of barrenness that the eyes

to the eastward of it. On our trips we took with us merely a horse apiece, and carried provisions on our saddles. Meantime the remainder of the troop, which had suffered somewhat on our journey from Bahia Camerones,

o live on the lower ground and near unfrozen water during the cold season, and there, when the weather is particul

ted by pantanos of wet or drying mud and sand. Upon the eastern shore rose dunes, covered with dense low strips of scrub. In the pantanos the tracks made in the end of t

t live upon and about the shores, for their unmistakable tracks were always to be found. Towards Mount Pyramide on the western side, the

spot in large numbers. So strongly does the mud retain the impression of tracks that I was able to follow the trail of

e Spying

gravure, Ly

kneels on his sheepskin saddle. Here is depicted the extreme position which would be assumed to show

e we shot but two guanacos. Sometimes for a week one would see nothing save an old ostrich, which was often observed at the far end of the

e level of the lake. For one track made in November there were twenty made in July. The foregoing remarks only refer to the n

yellow grass beside the narrow river that wound between banks, on which green low scrub ran riot, and enormous califate-bushes made impenetrable patches of thicket. Jones and I, on our arrival, went to examine the mouth of the river. Our camp was quite drowsy with the hum

he herd on a neck of land, to escape from which they would be obliged to pass within a hundred yards of us provided they did not take to the water. So we decided not to stalk them, but simply showed ourselves; as we expected, they broke landwards, passing within about seventy yards with their ears laid back, swaying their long necks and leaping and

the horses had suddenly started madly, broken their cabrestos, dashed together and then made off. We thought at the time they must have winded a puma, but this proved to be a mistake, for in the night two of them again escaped, and Jones retrieved them when the first streaks of dawn were etching the landscape in black and white. He woke me and we discovered that a wolf must have come into camp and stolen our duck and goose. This wolf had also eaten

as we had named it, and we lay on the ground a

I got up and limped across for my gun, but my movements did not in the least seem to discompose his serenity. He even advanced nearer, and showed not the smallest fear of me. This quality of fearlessness is very marked in the Cordillera wolves, which possess it in a greater degree than the pampa foxes. On one occasion when

k is brought into the neighbourhood of the Cordillera, generally remaining by their quarry after dayligh

that day, but shot four bandurias, locally called by the Welshmen "land-ducks." This is the black-faced ibis (Theristicus caudatus). I was very eager to secure a specimen of the huemul in his summer coat, and to observe as m

RSES R

the blue-winged teal (Querquedula cyanoptera), and what I took to be the red shoveller (Spatula platalea). But this last-named bird I did not shoot, and so I cannot speak with absolute certainty upon the point. Besides these, I saw flamingoes (Ph?nicopterus ignipalliatus) and

worthy of the attention of the still-hunter. The male is sometimes killed with a rifle when attending to the chickens, towards whom-with the exception of laying the eggs-he stands in place of a mother. At such times he will, when approached, pretend to be wounded and limp away with wings outspread to attract the hunters after him. An ostrich when shot through the body will always run from thirty to forty yards before dropping. This first ostrich, which I shot, was about four hundred yards away, and I should

n. This in a ca?adon off the River Deseado. At a later date I saw f

naco, but was quite a useless trick in the case of ostriches. The Cruzado was by this time an A1 shooting-horse. He would stand anywhere and wait my return, he would al

rass to grow-over their old camp-fires, but never altering or marking with any permanent mark the face of this old land. No, though Patagonia is in a sense the oldest of all, for here we come face to face with prehistoric times-the skeletons of the greater beasts, the flint weapons of primitive man with practically nothing save the years to intervene. A lean humanity, untouched by aught save nature, has run out its appointed course until very recent years; and there is little to testify to its wanderings but the brown trail of generations of footsteps, which ten years o

pon the high ground above the lake will never, I think, be forgotten by any of us who shared them. It

rge herd, including several guanaco chicos, were to be seen from the heights dotted about upon the faded greenish grass of the valley beneath us. The sun, newly risen, had just begun to suck up the balls of white mist that rolled up a

un to straggle in a long line up the bare side of a range of round bald-headed hummocks, but we were not in time to get a shot before they disappeared over the sky-line. When we reached the top of the hills the guanacos were, of course, nowhere to be seen, but after an hour's tracking we again located them among the hummocks in a depression filled with dry thorn. This time we sep

TO NORTH OF L

and two supplementary bucks. Emerging upon the other side we set off after our guanaco and enjoyed one of the most glorious gallops that ever fell to the lot of man. I could not help admiring the way in which Jones, who was a born rider, and, like most Gauchos, had lived all his life on the outside of a horse, picked his way among the

erved fresh tracks of a wild bull, which was heading north-west towards the Cordillera. Although we followed these tracks for twent

inent. I have given a description of the trail in another place. It is in its way as remarkable a highroad as the Grand Trunk Road in India. Were it not for the tracks of horses, and the occasional dead camp-fire to which it leads you, it wo

khausen returned with the news that they had found the trail s

this respect in our former expeditions, I decided to penetrate into the gorge of the River de los Antiguos.

swered them. By here and there burning a bush we signalled to the unknown, and in this way drew together. It was upon the yellow shores of a dry lagoon that we met with the first white

lad hunters of the Bad Lands of North America. By habit and by choice the Gaucho is a nomad. It is not too much to say that, grumbler as he is when upon the pampas, there is a deep-seated instinct in his heart ever leading him back to that peculiar mode of life which has become second nature to him. There is an idea in England that Patagonia is as untrodden as the Polar regions. But this is a fallacy. The tides of civilisation are moving slowly westwards, and will so continue to move until they are thrown back by the great natural barrier of the Andes. But as the tide will often fling a little wreath of foam far ahead of its advance-a wreat

were careful that it should burn but one bush, and not spread to scar and disfigure the face of the country, this irresponsible little being, who had, as it were, ridden to meet us out of the nowhere, persistently lit his reckless fires among the best grass, so that they burnt huge areas. It was a remarkable, and in its way a painful, reflection that this puny bit of humanity with h

n order to recall his companions. As the man was, after the fashion of the pampa, our guest, there was nothing more to be said on the ma

ashes of our camp-fire. I shot it, to the great delight of the small man, from whom after breakfast we parted. We had not advanced a mile before the little demon was again sending up a smoke to heaven. Burbury,

n that they were the work of the small man, whom we had nicknamed "the Snipe," especially as the smokes were lit at a distance from the position of Horsham Camp, and if anything serious had happened, it seemed most probable that the two men left in charge there would have lit their si

arckhausen and I rode on towards the