For the most part the tribes use stone pipes of a very singular coffin-like shape. One Indian, however, possessed a silver pipe, the stem of which had begun life as a bombilla, or silver tube for drinking maté through. Musters mentions frequently seeing the men become insensible after smoking, which would lead to the supposition that they use some drug corresponding in its effects to opium. I never observed a single instance of this sort, although I smoked the camp-fire pipe on many occasions with Tehuelches. In fact, of those I met, two out of three were not smokers at all.

The language of these people is very guttural, and one word is used to signify a number of different things, which proves its elementary and simple character. In most of their camps Spanish is understood more or less, and with even a slight knowledge of this tongue one can get on very well.

Practically the Patagonian is governed by no tribal laws. He does not need their restraint, for, save when drunk, he seldom commits crimes of greater or less magnitude. In politics he is democratic apparently, for though it is true that a cacique is at the head of each camp, his authority seems limited to ordering the plan of the hunt. If any individual objects he can leave the community, an alternative extremely distasteful to so gregarious a people. Quarrels and fights are of very rare occurrence, except when there is drink in the tents. The natural peacefulness of the Indian is certainly commendable, for his muscular development is enormous. He can tear the skin from a guanaco after merely raising enough with his knife to give him a hand-grip.

Once it was a free and a happy life that they lived, with fortunes ruled by the changing of the seasons. In those days, five-and-twenty years ago, they were scattered throughout the country, moving along the Indian trail. Now, in the whole of my long travel through Patagonia, I came upon only three encampments of them, and I have reason to believe I visited nearly every one that exists at the present day. It is probable that I may be their last chronicler; they will be brushed off the face of the earth by the sweeping besom that deals so hardly with aboriginal races, and is known as "civilisation."

The cause of their disappearance is not far to seek. You may dust a savage people with Martinis and increase their manhood, if the punishment be not severe and too prolonged, but as sure as the whisky bottle—the raw, cheap, rot-gut country spirit—is introduced among them, a primitive people is doomed. In all sorts of places in the world I have seen this baleful influence at work.

The Indians, as I knew them, are a kind-hearted, docile and lazy race. In all the dealings I had with them I found them invariably most courteous. Treat them as you desire they should treat you, and not in the odious "poor-devil-of-a-heathen, beast-of-a-savage" sort of style, which obtains with some of our own countrymen abroad, I am sorry to say, and you will receive a grave and quiet consideration, and they will call you buen hombre, a good man.

Progress, the white man's shibboleth, has no meaning for the Patagonian. He is losing ground day by day in the wild onward rush of mankind. Our ideas do not appeal to him. He has neither part nor lot in the feverish desires and ambitions that move us so strongly. As his forefathers were, so is he—content to live and die a human item with a moving home, passing hither and thither upon the waste and open spaces of his native land. He is far too single-minded and too dignified to stoop to a cheap imitation. He does not shout aloud that he is the equal of the white man, as more vulgar races do. It has often struck me that the primitive races of the world might be put under two heads—the men of silence and the men of uproar. Among the men of silence we have the Zulu, the North American Indian, the Tehuelche, and some others. These silent peoples cannot exist, like the negroes, as the camp followers of civilisation. They have not the ya-hoop imitative faculty of the negro race. They are hunters, men of silence and of a great reserve. When they meet with the white man, they do not rush open-mouthed to swallow his customs.

The men of silence will, in the savage state, take a hint as quickly as an English gentleman; the men of uproar will only accept a hint when it is backed by a command. The Tehuelche will not remain at a camp-fire where he is not wanted. He lacks passion, perhaps, but appreciation pleases him. His dignified courtesy can best be exemplified by a story.

I am no wild admirer of the noble savage. He is, generally speaking, a highly objectionable person. But to see a race—so kindly, picturesque, and gifted with fine qualities of body and mind—such as the Tehuelches, absolutely at hand-grips with extinction, seems to me one of the saddest results of the growing domination of the white man and his methods of civilisation.

CHAPTER VII
TEHUELCHE METHODS OF HUNTING

Hunting season—Surefooted horses—Description of big hunt—Ring round game—Splendid riding of Tehuelches—Horses dislike jumping—Game killed and spared by Tehuelches—Difference of their hunting methods from those of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego—Artistic perception of Onas—Ill-faith of early settlers—Indian trail—"No place for us"—Deterioration of horses—They prize piebalds—Method of breaking in—Perfect riders—Helpless on foot—Staying powers of horses—Dogs—Evil of liquor trade—National sin of permitting this traffic—Picture of trader—Drinking bout of Tehuelches—Gambling for horses—Fatal weakness of Tehuelches—Another instance.

During the latter half of October and during November, which is the Patagonian spring, the Tehuelches hunt the guanaco chicos, or young guanaco.

At this period the young have not all been dropped, and the most prized pelts are those of the unborn young, which are obtained by killing the mother. These pelts, being very soft and fine in texture, are used to make the most valuable capas or robes, and if sold out of the tribes at the settlements, bring in the highest prices.

At this season the Indians move to their favourite hunting-grounds; it is, in fact, to them the most important period of the year. Two requisites are necessary to make their hunting a success: the first is plenty of game, and in this there is rarely any disappointment; the second is good ground on which to hunt it. As long, however, as the guanaco do not take absolutely to the crags, the Indians, with the help of their sure-footed unshod horses, are able to levy a heavy toll on the herds.

The method of hunting adopted by the Tehuelches is interesting enough to call for description at length. On the morning of the hunt, the Indians saddle up a good long-journey horse apiece, they also catch each man his fastest mount, upon which he puts a bozal and cabresto, as well as a bit in his mouth. The hunter rides the former horse, and leads the latter for use later on.

Holding his weapon by the shortest of the three sogas, or thongs, and while going at full gallop, the Indian launches it at the long neck of the guanaco; a doe is always selected if possible. Extremely expert in its use, the rider's weapon probably reaches its mark, and the quarry, maddened by the tightening of the sogas, bucks and rears, until she becomes hopelessly entangled.

I have mentioned that the Tehuelches hunt in pairs. The companion of the Indian who has thrown the bolas then leaps to the ground and despatches the guanaco. Meantime his comrade has dashed forward at the tail of the herd, and has probably secured another animal. The dogs, too, do their part, and as the storm of the chase sweeps across the pampa, it leaves the ground in its path dotted with the yellow-brown forms of the slain.

The chase tails itself out for many miles, and may be followed over desolate leagues marked by lines of dead guanacos and dropped boleadores which have failed to carry home. I should be afraid to say how many animals are killed at one of these singular battues. To see the Indian hunt the guanaco is to see the art of rough-riding exemplified. How they gallop! Down one sheer barranca, or cliff, and up another. The roar of loosened stone behind them. The guanaco jink and dodge and break back, always making for the highest ground in the vicinity.

The dexterity with which the horses of the hunters keep their feet is truly wonderful. They will go at full gallop anywhere, and hardly ever fall or miss their footing. There is, however, one thing which they universally dislike, and that is jumping in any of its forms. Here and there in some parts of Patagonia the pampa is cut and scored with fissures a few feet in width. To have your horse stop dead, both feet together, on the edge of one of these and violently shy away at an acute angle is no uncommon experience. Generally, however, a certain amount of inducement and coercion at length takes them over in a complicated buck.

When the chase has run itself out, the lean dogs are fed upon the grosser parts, the pelts of the young are pulled off, and the meat, such of it as is wanted, is cargoed or packed upon the horses, and the hunting-party jogs back to the shelter of the wigwams, made from the skins their fathers and their grandfathers slew before the white men began to move southward and to overrun the land.

The Indians kill no bird save the ostrich, and this is a curious fact, because the lagoons and pools literally swarm with great flocks of upland geese (Chloephaga magellanica), which are very fair eating. Perhaps the reason why they spare the geese arises from the fact that they have no weapons suitable for killing them. On one occasion when I shot a brace of geese, the Indians seized upon them and pronounced them "good." Also, they kill few animals but the guanaco and the puma. Had the guanaco a reasonable amount of fat upon it, the life of the Indians would be idyllic, but in this the guanaco fails. Of lean meat he supplies plenty, for he is a large beast, but though he lives in a land where sheep grow fat and well-liking, the long-necked Patagonian llama retains his leanness and his running condition.

Although it may be slightly outside the province of this book, I cannot help contrasting the very different methods employed by the Onas of Tierra del Fuego, who are after all only separated from the Tehuelches of Patagonia by the narrow Straits of Magellan, in hunting the same animal. The Onas do not use horses, and kill the guanaco with bows and arrows. When they perceive a herd, they surround it as the Tehuelches do, but, of course, the circle is on a much smaller scale. It is their aim to remain invisible to their quarry, for which purpose, during their stalk, they are in the habit of wrapping themselves in the skins of the animals which they have formerly killed. Once the herd is surrounded, it is with the same accompaniment of screams and shouts that the hunters rush in to secure their prey.

The dissimilarities between the Tehuelches and the Onas are numerous.[17] While the Tehuelches are peaceful, the Onas are warlike. There is a story current that the only white man who has ever lived in the very primitive dwelling of boughs, which are all the Onas have to shelter them from a bitter climate, was a Scotchman whom the Indians had captured. He was with them three weeks, and his face was adorned by a singularly luxuriant crop of orange whiskers. The Onas are reported to have amused themselves by pulling these out in instalments by the roots. Might not some anthropologist base a treatise upon "The Artistic Perceptions of the Onas of Tierra del Fuego" upon this occurrence?

The Onas are also a tall people, although not equalling in height my friends the Tehuelches, and their physical development is less conspicuously remarkable. The Ona woman does not, as does the Tehuelche china, form an attachment to a white suitor, appearing to have no desires outside her own race and people, but under certain circumstances the women have shared the hearthstone of the foreigner. Polygamy is allowed and practised among them. There is something of the spirit which characterises the Gipsy of Europe about this people; they are quite ready to take all they can get from the alien, while they at the same time maintain a bitter rancour against the hand that gives. But this is not, as it is in the case of the Gipsies, the continuance of an original dislike and implacability, but rather the result of the infamous ill-faith which leavened the dealings of the very earliest visitors to the coasts of Tierra del Fuego.

I must confess that all my sympathies are on the side of the primitive races, who on coming into contact with the white man suffer those outrages on their best feelings which, I am sorry to say, are only too common. You must understand, however, that I in no way refer to the settlers of this generation. My remarks must be taken to refer to the first pioneers. At the present day—so Burbury, who has had a great experience of Tierra del Fuego, informed me—the Indians there are treacherous and absolutely implacable, and do endless harm in their periodical raids upon the "white guanaco," as they call the sheep. They do this not only when hunger presses them, but at all times out of a spirit of revenge. Sometimes they drown the sheep and leave them in the ice, where they keep good for weeks, during which time the Onas feast on them.

Patagonia bears upon its length the clear-cut and long-drawn initial of the Tehuelche race. By this I mean the Indian trail, which can be followed from water to water, from good camp to good camp, stretching from Punta Arenas in the south to Lake Buenos Aires in the north and beyond it. Up and down this trail and along others, less extended, generations of Indians have wandered with their wives and children, their tents and horses. We struck it when travelling south from Lake Buenos Aires, in the early January of 1901. It was hard to distinguish the Indian road from any parallel series of guanaco-tracks, which here line the country in numbers, and, indeed, it was only by keeping a sharp look-out for the hoof-prints of horses that we were able to follow the trail at all. It runs along under the Cordillera at a varying distance of about twenty or thirty miles from their bases. It was a sad remark that an Indian made to us while talking about the ancient wanderings of his people. "Once," he said, "we had the sea upon the one side of us, and upon the other the Cordillera. But this is not so now. The white man is ever advancing upon one side and the Cordillera remains ever unchanging upon the other. Soon there will be no place for us; yet once the land was ours."

One would imagine that a people so dependent on their horses for the very necessities of life would give attention and care to the breeding and improvement of the stock. But this is far from being the case. The Tehuelches appear to be, like other far less intelligent races of uncivilised peoples, incapable of much forethought. They live for to-day and make little provision for to-morrow. As a case in point, they are allowing their horses to become very deteriorated. The animals are, almost without exception, to use a Spanish term, mañero, which means of a spoiled temper. In some localities they have been crossed with the horses of the settlers which have a strain of English blood, and the result is animals of spirit and of character, but muy mañero. The Tehuelches prize white horses, and overos, or piebalds, exceedingly. The backs of their horses are generally badly galled, but this is no matter for surprise, as they often ride upon a sheepskin flung anyhow across the beast. The method of breaking-in or taming is simple and severe in the extreme. It consists of leaping on a raw colt and galloping him to exhaustion. One reason why their horses are falling below level certainly is that the Indians have a foolish trick of riding two- and three-year-olds both hard and far. A colt of this age once fairly "cooked" by an over-long ride will never be of very much use afterwards.

And yet these people are peculiarly dependent upon their horses. They will not walk ten yards if they can ride them. And they have undoubtedly carried the art of riding to the last perfection. I never knew what riding really meant until I went to Patagonia and saw the Indians on horseback. We once asked an Indian what he could do if he were left on the pampa without his horses. "Sit down," he said. This man, however, was not a Tehuelche but a Pampa Indian.

The horses are far from large, the average running to about thirteen hands, but they are wiry, untiring beasts, and some show extraordinary speed. The manner in which they carry the heavy well-developed Indians is wonderful. They are entirely fed on grass. When the camp is made, they are simply turned out to graze upon the pampa, where frequently the grass is sparse and poor enough, though near many of the Indian camping-grounds good vegas of rich grass exist. In winter, of course, the tropillas become very thin and in poor condition, but at that season they have infinitely less work to do, as there is hardly any hunting, and the camp is usually stationary for the coldest months.

The hounds of the Indians are something like our lurcher breed. In the tents they lie about among the rugs and bedding. They are irreclaimable thieves and very cowardly. A good guanaco hound is, however, of very great value, for a pair of accomplished hounds, skilled in the chase, represent a capital upon which an entire family can live.

One of the strongest feelings which I brought away with me from Patagonia was a hatred of the trader who battens upon the failings of the Tehuelches. If he hears of a festival or any tribal ceremony, he arrives upon the spot with drink. He sells liquor in exchange for horses, and when his customers are well steeped in the poison he brings, he makes some magnificent bargains. His influence is far-reaching and fatal as far-reaching to the picturesque and harmless race out of whose degradation and death he makes his living. Savage races may survive war and internecine struggles, and the decimation not infrequently caused by a cruel rule such as was T'Chaka among the Zulus, but they never survive the Civilisation of the Bottle. The horrors of the wars of history would pale beside the cold-blooded slaughter, the gradual, malignant, poisoning processes which the most self-satisfied and religious nations of the world allow to continue year after year, I should say century after century, among the aboriginal tribes, who live nominally under their protection. The pioneer trader with his stores of cheap maddening liquor is free to sell as much as he pleases, although it is a well-known fact that such trading means ruin and extermination to the unhappy ignorant folk who buy. The sin after all is national rather than personal, for the trader has his living to earn, whereas the nation which is responsible for allowing him liberty to traffic puts out no hand to stay the evil. I do not in the least bring any charge against the Argentine Government; we British are guilty of the same crime or carelessness, and in some of our dependencies terrible object-lessons of precisely the same kind can be observed.

Let me draw a picture of one of these traders for you. A lean stooping man of Paraguayan extraction, dressed out in store clothes which he but half filled. A plump face of the caste peculiar to the lowest type of the Latin peoples, with a full greasy-lipped animalism stamped upon it, after the manner of his kind. The lean body and fat face formed a contrast that struck you with repulsion as an actual deformity. This fellow played a very old trick upon a batch of Indians and considerably enriched himself thereby.

The Indians had come in upon the outskirts of a coast-town, rich with the sale of a six-months harvest of ostrich feathers, guanaco-skins and other such merchandise as they gather from the pampas. After some drinking and a variety of games of chance, our friend the trader started an argument as to which of the Indians owned the swiftest horse. A race was soon decided upon, the trader most liberally offering a prize in the shape of a bottle of drink. The race was to be ridden bare-back, as is usual in contests of this description among the Indians. The trader further suggested that the race should be run off in heats. A horse with a white blaze and a very fine head won, and his proprietor, a tall Indian in a black poncho, received the prize, which he, with help, soon disposed of. After this the talk fell naturally upon the merits of the respective horses.

"Your picaso is a good horse," said the trader to the tall Indian, "but I have a horse in my troop that could leave him far behind."

At first the Indian laughed, but the trader's boasting and insistence presently stung him to resent the aspersion on his mount, and he said he should like to see the thing done.

The trader jumped at the opportunity. The Indians had had sufficient drink to destroy their ordinary cautiousness, and were ready to take up any challenge.

"The loser to forfeit his horse to the winner," continued the trader, who had laid his plans beforehand. He then called a Chileno lad, who soon appeared leading a big lean alazan. It was easy for any seeing eye to recognise that the animal had been tied up the night before and was in quite fair racing trim; besides which, the Indian's picaso was already tired with the previous races. The Chileno boy swung up and the two horses came thundering along their course. The Indian's weight also told as compared with the lightness of the Chileno boy, and the result was altogether a foregone conclusion.

There are many Indians who avoid the coast-towns, but although these do not go to the trader, the trader, as I have mentioned in another chapter, comes to them.

Throughout Patagonia, upon the rim of civilisation, are scattered boliches, or frontier drink-shops, whose liquor sales consist chiefly of "champagne cognac," whatever that potion may be. These establishments hold out a perpetual temptation to the passing Indians. The frequent presence of silver gear, such as the Tehuelches possess when fortune smiles upon them, that is almost always hanging from the ceiling of the neighbouring store, tells its own tale. An Indian has rarely enough money to "look upon the wine when it is red," or rather upon the unwholesome jaundice tinge of "champagne cognac," so he pays in kind; and when once the craving for drink grips him he will gamble away everything to satisfy it. This infatuation appears to lay a fatally strong hand upon the uncivilised peoples. They have no principles to stay them, no scruples to overcome, they have found a short cut to a wild species of happiness, and one cannot wonder that they seek its extraordinary pleasures as often as possible. So it is that liquor has destroyed whole races, wiped them clean off the face of the earth. Some one has written:

and it is certainly a terrible truth in this connection.

I can call to mind two Indians, whom I saw ride up to a boliche near Santa Cruz. They offered a contrast to one another which it is not easy to forget. The first was an Indian with a close-shut mouth and the dark and ponderous dignity of the big Tehuelche. His gear was richly studded with silver, and his saddle covered with embroidered cloths. His head was bare, save that his brows were bound with a band of red finery. He made a picturesque and imposing figure as he cantered up on his white horse with its glinting eyes. Followed the second. He, too, was an Indian, but his gear was guiltless of silver, his bozal was worn and blackened with age. The best thing he possessed was his horse. He wore an ancient tail-coat, once black but now green, this in conjunction with a chiripa, or Indian loin-cloth, gave him an appearance sufficiently incongruous. Instead of the quiet dignity of the first man, his face expressed little save vacuity. He was a pitiful object in the strong pampa sunshine, his health evidently broken by frequent orgies. And no doubt he had been a self-respecting Indian enough—before the trader came within the province of his knowledge.

We left on November 3, and accomplished a very long march in the face of somewhat trying conditions. The Indian rode ahead with his dogs on the look-out for ostriches. A mighty wind from the west, cold with the snow of the Cordillera, blew in our faces, bringing with it showers of sand that stung us sharply. We could hardly persuade the horses to meet the wind, and their hoofs kicked up still more sand for our benefit. We were off shortly after nine o'clock, and about noon I would have given much to say "Camp." When fighting with the elements one goes through three distinct stages. First, there is the stage exultant, during which you feel the joy of battle, and struggle rejoicingly. The second comes when the irresistible tires you down, however strong you are, and forces the sense of your puniness so plainly upon you that you feel a sort of hurt despair, and a half impulse to give in before a force so far beyond you. Last of all, you go on enduring until you become, as it were, acclimatised, and inclined to laugh at the despair you experienced a while previously. So it was on this day's march. About noon I said to myself as we were crossing the high pampa above the barranca of the River Chalia—a desolate spot, rough and tussocky, and gambolled over by Titanic winds—"We will camp at four sharp." The decision at the moment was a comfort, but in the end we did not camp until close upon seven o'clock, blind with sand, and our hands bleeding from the cold and the harsh friction of the cargo ropes.

It was as we approached this camp that I saw beside a lagoon of snow-water two American oyster-catchers (Hæmatopus palliatus) which, no doubt, had nested in the vicinity, as, on my going closer, they rose and circled with their darting flight above my head, but I failed to find the nest. There were many guanacos about, and I was not surprised to hear that this lagoon, Laguna La Cancha, was a very favourite encampment of the Indians. The scenery surrounding the pool is peculiarly inhospitable. Some one remarked that it reminded him of Doré's illustrations to the Inferno, adding, "If you were to put heat to it, it would be Hell." Huge rolling downs, bare hills, and no vegetation save a few tussocks and scattered meagre shrubs. The Indian said the winter hits this land very hard, and the whole district is buried under snow, only the high, bald tops of the hills being visible.

The next day was Sunday, but not on this occasion a day of rest. One thought of the bells ringing far away at home and the concourse of people moving along the winter roads. Here was wind, cold, and a march, cargo to be fixed and refixed to the day's end, then a windy camp-fire, and after a short sleep till dawn. Hitherto the toil had been hard, but we were nearing the lake, and looked forward to a time of rest and hunting.

We were rich in meat with the cow, sheep, a Darwin's rhea caught by the Indian's dogs, and three geese. The hounds of the Indian proved themselves to be troublesome thieves. Burbury and I were obliged to sleep beside the meat. Besides being cunning thieves the dogs were cowards. They were to all intents and purposes wild as regarded their habits. Yet good guanaco-hounds represent very sterling value to their owners, whose livelihood they procure. The best at the work I met with in Patagonia were those which belonged to this Indian guide. We called the man Como No because, whatever question was put to him, his invariable reply took the form of "Como no?" or "Why not?" You said perhaps, "It is not far to the next camping-ground, is it?" "Como no?" he would answer. After some three hours at an amble, you would repeat your inquiry. "Is it much farther?" "Como no?" The most impossible queries met with precisely the same response.

However indeterminate Como No may have been in his mental attitude, his dogs were definitely good ones. He owned a big brindled dog, a small black one and a couple of yellow pups. Como No had a habit of riding far ahead of the general troop of men and horses, his figure making a far-off outline etched in black against the cold blue horizon of the pampa. Sometimes, when he lost sight of us for any length of time, he would burn a bush to give us our direction by the smoke, and we would follow on, driving the pack-horses and those free ones which were not being used either for riding or cargo at the time. Presently, perhaps, when rounding a low thicket, we would come suddenly upon him, squatted on his haunches beside a dead ostrich, from which he had stripped the feathers. These feathers, though far inferior to those of the African ostrich, or of Rhea americana, are worth anything from two to four dollars.

As he rode forward again, his dogs would range on either side of him. By-and-by they would again start an ostrich or a guanaco, and pull it down within 500 or 600 yards. Whereupon Como No would ride up, drive them off, kill and cut up the quarry, giving the hounds the liver, strip the feathers if it happened to be an ostrich, and then mount and ride on once more. This performance would be repeated over and over again during the course of the march, until, before we saw the last of him, his saddle had become an enormous bunch of feathers, from out of which his body and shoulders protruded in a quaint manner.

At night these dogs, however, were a terrible nuisance. They would forage about the camp for food, and pull down the meat we had placed on bushes and devour it. Such was eventually the fate of the last remnants of the mutton we had with us, and the loss was all the harder as we knew that the stolen mutton was the last we were destined to taste for months. After that we lived on lean guanaco.

By this date we had gradually climbed to some 1200 feet above the sea-level, and the temperature was extremely cold. Our reindeer-beds became a great comfort.

The 5th began with an hour of welcome sun, but it passed only too soon, and the wind rose more piercingly cold than ever. It penetrated to one's very bones. We, however, made seven leagues, and reached the River Genguel, which here makes a great curve. We camped in a narrow shute, strewn with big stones and giving upon the river, the cañadon being very wide and devoid of shelter. The water was broken into small sharp waves by the wind, and we were glad to collect what firewood was obtainable—bushes being scarce at that spot—and make a fire. The Indian burned a bush and warmed himself. His dogs had, unaided by him, killed a small guanaco and a fox (Canis griseus). We lay by the fire and the wind came down bitterly chill from the Sierra Nevada, while Jones cooked, and we learnt the delights which, in a cold climate, are to be found in mutton fat! After food to bed, and then a cold sleet set in. It was a nasty night, but in our reindeer bags we were, of course, untouched by the cold.

Next day nine leagues were achieved. Very long marches these, but we were pressing on to reach Lake Buenos Aires. Cañadon and pampa and high ground succeeded each other as we rode along, sometimes bare, sometimes sandy, sometimes thorn-covered, often stony and strewn with fragments of basalt. Generally overhead a pallid blue sky, and below wind, wind, perpetual wind. So we toiled on past little chill lagoons, ruffled with the keen breeze, until in the afternoon I came up with Burbury and the Indian on a rise, and there lay our goal before us—a great stretch of water wonderfully blue and cold-looking beneath the Sierra Nevada, whose summits were crowned with snow above their dusky purple.

The Tostado kicked off his cargo during the day, and among the scattered contents of Jones' kit I picked up a broken looking-glass. I had not seen myself since leaving Colohuapi, and confess I found no cause for vanity in the sight of a distinctly dirty-looking pirate with smoke-reddened eyes, a peeling face and nose, and with enough beard to put a finishing-touch to the horrid spectacle.

On the 3rd I discovered a scorpion in my bed in spite of the cold. By the 6th we reached the River Fenix, and, crossing to an island, camped in the sleet, the temperature reading that night being 30° F. From there we pushed on to the farther bank, and marched to the camping-ground of the Indians, which, though the nearest of their old camps to Lake Buenos Aires, was still a good distance from it. The Azulejo had been lost, but was brought in quite spent, by Barckhausen. Poor little beast! He lay down more dead than alive under a bush, a pathetic little figure enough. After reaching camp, Jones and I had to turn out again, pretty tired as we were, to look for food. We rode for hours, and saw only a herd of guanaco. At this season the country round about here is rather devoid of game, the ground is stony, with thorn and dry, blackened bushes. We were disappointed in our hunt again on the second day, seeing only two guanaco, lion-tracks, and a couple of pigeons, but we did not shoot them, and I am unable to speak with any certainty of the species to which they belonged. I have never seen a district so bare of life. We had come, as it were, to the world's end.

I sat in my tent-door and wrote my diary. Far away I could see the Cordillera, splendid giants, with the sun shining upon them; below, the lake that reminded me strongly of the picture in which Hiawatha sailed into "the kingdom of Ponemah, the Land of the Hereafter." That scene was just so wild, and so remote, with a great red sunset burning over it, and round about it rock and sand and marsh, with a pale wide rim of dead-wood, swept down by floods from the neighbouring forests.

On our way to the shores of the lake we had passed through a stretch of extraordinary aridity, a white and yellow spread of mud and stones that filled a valley between two scrub-covered hills. From far off it looked level, but in reality we found it to be intersected and veined with mighty gashes, which formed winding gorges. There the wind blew, and at times the sun beat down; very cold it was, and very hot by turns, but never temperate.

We had expected to find plenty of game in the vicinity of the lake, but in this, as I have said, we were disappointed, the consequence being that our supply of meat ran short. There was nothing for it but to kill the eighteen-months old colt of one of the madrinas. But before we did this we hunted for three days, during which time I shot a couple of upland geese, which made the sum total of our bag. In a new country one has always to buy experience. We were buying ours at this period. Owing to the wildness of our horses the journey from Trelew had been an especially trying one, although, under other circumstances, the difficulties need not be great.[18] The breakdown of the waggon at so early a stage had entailed a large amount of extra labour, and by the time we reached Lake Buenos Aires we were, both men and horses, pretty well done up.

On the third day of our hunting I took Barckhausen instead of Jones, who had been out with me on the two previous days. We passed along through the stony thorn-lean gorges towards the east. Here nothing lived save the strong birds of prey, and lions, whose tracks we observed leading to the rocks. Death lay nakedly there in all directions, skull and backbone, with rain-polish and snow-polish upon them, picked clean years ago by now-dead caranchos and chimangos.

During our ride we saw two monster owls, two condors, many caranchos, and so pushed on over hill rising behind hill, stony, dark, with wind-lifted wisps of sand turning and twisting upon them.

In the early afternoon we came upon a more pleasant land, and to a little marshy pool in a hollow of the hills, crowded round with forest-bushes, and upon this pool from far away I spied two upland geese. I dismounted, took my gun, and began a stalk. While I was still well out of range a bough broke under my foot, and the geese were away. We lay up for a time, but the birds did not return, so we took a turn westwards in the hope of getting some coots I had observed the day before upon another lagoon, close to Lake Buenos Aires. Upon the shore of the lake a smart shower of sleet, hail, and rain overtook us, and we had to lie down in the lee of a thorn-bush. I saw one golden guanaco racing along a hill-top against the sunset. Some coots were on the lake; I shot four, but contrary winds drove them out into the water too deep to venture after them, and we turned campwards empty-handed.

As we galloped over the hills the clouds broke on the western side of the lake, and made a scene ominously beautiful. The rifted dusky blue, the long pale gleam of water shining like an angel's sword, the white snow-peaks, the purple-black belly of the rain-storm, all cast together formed a picture that affected the senses strongly.

Yet the next day (November 9) none of us went a-hunting after all. We were fairly played out. Personally I had had not one day's rest since starting two months before, as upon me principally fell the duty of providing for the pot, so that upon coming in of an evening on the close of a long march it was usually necessary to saddle a fresh horse and ride a further distance from five to fifteen miles in search of game.

So we killed the colt to provide for our wants while men and horses enjoyed well-earned repose. I had formed a base-camp about five miles from the shores of the lake, intending to make short expeditions, lightly equipped, round and about the vicinity. As for the camp, three large thorn-bushes were Nature's contribution towards it, and what a relief even the shelter of a thorn-bush can be in the Kingdom of the Winds, you could only learn by an experience such as was ours. Below the camp, which stood on a ridge, the ground fell away in a three-mile slope to the usually angry water; eastwards was a pantano or swamp of yellow reeds, which ran a long way below the scrub-grown ridge. The tents huddled back-to-wind, as much under the lee of the bushes as possible. We made an oven, but it turned out a failure, the earth being too soft for our purpose. Round the fire was a hedge of thorn hung with horse-blankets, red, yellow and black, which gave a rather festive air to the camp. The only sounds were the neigh of a horse, the hooting of night-birds, and the never-silent wind.