JOURNEY TO LAKE ARGENTINO
Dividing expedition -- Darwin's trip up the Santa Cruz --
Provisions -- Shoeing horses -- Pampa grass and marsh
grass -- Start for Lake Argentino -- Burbury and Bernardo
-- Visit various _estancias_ -- Negro -- Suspicious
wayfarers -- Hospitality -- _Cañadon_ of the Santa Cruz --
Dry pampa -- Sunsets -- Game and wildfowl -- Flamingos --
Sandflies -- Mystery Plain -- Lake Argentino -- River del
Bote -- Mount Viscachas -- Lonely lagoon -- Death-place of
guanaco -- Neigh of guanaco -- Large herds -- Thorny grass
-- Description of Lake Argentino -- A tragedy of wild life
-- Condors -- Numerous birds and beasts of prey --
Severities of winters -- Snowfall -- Burmeister Peninsula
-- Lake Rica or South Fjord -- Bad weather -- The Wild Man
of Santa Cruz.
I spent a few days in Santa Cruz making arrangements to divide my
expedition into two parts, leaving Scrivenor with the _peones_ to
collect fossils and specimens in the neighbourhood of the River Santa
Cruz, where most interesting deposits exist, while I with Burbury and
a _peon_, whom I picked up at Santa Cruz, recrossed the continent to
the lake-region.
In a huge country like Patagonia, to explore and to collect at the
same time is practically out of the question, but by dividing our
forces I hoped to achieve both ends more satisfactorily.
The lake which I now wished to visit is the last very large piece of
water in the long chain of Andean lakes and lagoons. It is a little to
the south of 50° S. lat. From this lake, Lake Argentino, the River
Santa Cruz flows eastwards and empties itself into the Atlantic, the
settlement of Santa Cruz being situated at the mouth of the river. It
was by following the course of this river upwards for some 140 miles
that Darwin made his only serious expedition into the interior of
Patagonia. His party found the passage of the river both dangerous and
laborious, and Captain FitzRoy decided to return to Santa Cruz on the
fifth day, after they sighted the snowy summits of the Cordillera.
Thus they never reached Lake Argentino.
We also followed the course of the river, but on horseback instead of
by boat, and thus for the early part of our journey we passed through
the identical country traversed by Darwin.
[Illustration: THE MAIN STREET, SANTA CRUZ]
I desired above all things to be able to move rapidly, and accordingly
cut down the amount and weight of our baggage as far as prudence
permitted. I append a list of the provisions, which I intended--with
the help of guanaco meat--to last us for the four months which
remained before we must return to the coast if we wished to escape the
severities of the Andean winter:
35 kilos fariña.
25 kilos oatmeal.
15 kilos sugar.
6 lb. tea.
12 tins cocoa.
Besides these we took a spare change of underclothing, one of the
tents, fifty rounds of 12-bore ball and the same quantity of shot
cartridges and 150 for the Mauser rifle.
We were able to put everything on two _cargueros_, and even then they
were not very heavily loaded. I took two _madrinas_, the Zaino mare
and Mrs. Trelew, with their respective troops, the horses numbering
in all twenty-one. During their rest in Santa Cruz they had attained
to quite fair condition, and were in consequence ready for the road.
It was necessary to shoe such as would permit the operation, as their
hoofs had been worn down by the basalt fragments which had strewed our
path from the north. The operation, by the way, was one which we had
to perform ourselves, as the blacksmith at Santa Cruz, on being asked
to do it, said he preferred the trade of building wooden houses, but
consented to lend us his forge and tools for three dollars a day. We
had some difficulty in finding shoes to fit, and I warn any future
traveller against the nails which they keep for shoeing purposes in
the settlement.
The short harsh grass usually to be had on the pampa is certainly a
very much better food for horses destined to travel long and hard
journeys than the beautiful meadowy _vegas_ of the Cordillera, which
look so inviting. The richer grass of the latter naturally fattens
them in a wonderfully short space of time, but the first hard day's
march cuts up their condition like so much butter.
We left Santa Cruz on January 22. I was accompanied by Burbury and a
Swede, Bernardo Hähansen, who proved in the event to be a useful and
courageous fellow. Our first march took us to Mr. Campbell's
_estancia_. We saw a good number of guanaco and some ostriches on the
way, which at first lay across the open pampa, afterwards diving into
a deep _cañadon_ some seven and a half leagues long. The little Blanco
showed his appreciation of the excellent food he had been enjoying by
behaving badly. On arrival we found Mr. Campbell was away from the
farm repairing fences, so we were obliged to await his return. When he
came, he took us up to the house, where we had some tea. We remained
at the _estancia_ for the night, and next day went on about three
leagues over good pampa to Messrs. Cressard and Dobree's. The manager,
Mr. John Noble, received us kindly. The cook at this farm, a former
New Zealand hand, had come with us to Puerto Madryn in the _Primero de
Mayo_, and said he would have applied to go with us had he known how
to cargo horses. As he cooked very well I should have been glad to
have received his application. On January 24 we reached Clementi's
_estancia_. We were accompanied on the march by an old Irish sailor
with a Hibernian cast of countenance. The _señora_ asked us into the
house and at once gave us hot milk and bread, which was very grateful
after a long day in the saddle. The valley near by was full of sheep,
and several healthy-looking children were playing about the buildings.
Here also I saw the first and only negro I met with in Patagonia. The
sight of his face gave me a sudden vivid recollection of Hayti. A
long-bearded Argentine patriarch, whom I descried first in the
half-lights of the kitchen during the evening, looked a very Abraham
and most venerable, but daylight on the morrow robbed him of all
romance.
[Illustration: FORD ON THE RIVER SANTA CRUZ]
On this day (the 25th) we pushed on to the Sub-prefecto's _estancia_.
It consisted of the usual corrugated iron shanty and barn. We marched
on the following morning and reached La Ultima Casa, where we were
hospitably entertained by Mrs. Hardy. She was indeed very kind. Her
husband had been an Englishman, but she herself was an Argentine. It
is certainly a fact in Patagonia that the Argentines are far more
ready to show hospitality than are our own countrymen. One hardly
wonders, however, at people being a little cautious and suspicious,
as the wayfarer is not always a wandering angel in Patagonia, or, for
that matter, in any thinly populated country that is being newly
opened up. Therefore we were the more grateful to our hostess of La
Ultima Casa. At the shanty of another farmer, a Scotchman, we had had
the door bolted against us, and been told to await his home-coming if
we wished to enter the house.
We ate our meal at Mrs. Hardy's sitting on up-turned boxes, and she
brought out some magazines for our reading. Hers was a strange
existence, poor old lady! She appeared to be regarded or--it comes to
the same thing--thought she was regarded a little in the light of an
Ishmaelite by her neighbours, who were trying (she told me) to acquire
her land. Her position did not seem to be prosperous. The _casa_ had
the usual corrugated roof, and her one window could boast no glass.
From this main building a sort of barn jutted out to the left. Later
on, I decided that this annex, which I at first took to be a barn,
must be the old lady's private sanctum, for from it she produced five
magazines, some lions' claws, a skunk-skin rug, some hen's eggs, and
the hen herself. A regular widow's cruse of a place. The blackened
roof of the kitchen was supported by four beams lengthways and four
across, these last shiny as if tarred with the smoke of many winters.
An old step-ladder in the corner answered the uses of a cupboard, cups
and so forth being kept on a couple of wooden shelves, and lumps of
sheep's fat decorated the room. We sat on the old wooden bedstead with
its pile of sheepskins for bed-clothes and wrote our diary. Our
hostess, who wore her hair in two plaits hanging down at each side of
her face, sat on a case and talked while she drank the inevitable
_maté_ through a _bombilla_. She asked us to remain over a second day,
which was most good of her, but we had to continue our journey.
We marched until about three o'clock, when, coming up to an empty
shanty, we took shelter in it for a while, as it happened to be very
hot. Later we started again, and made a long march across a pampa
above the _cañadon_ of the Santa Cruz, which is here two miles or more
in breadth. Speaking of this _cañadon_, I cannot do better than give
Darwin's words: "This valley varies from five to ten miles in
breadth: it is bounded by step-formed terraces, which rise in most
parts one above the other to the height of 500 feet, and have on the
opposite sides a remarkable correspondence."
The river winds considerably as it flows through the _cañadon_, the
sides of which are very bare and grassless, excepting where springs
break through and flow down the cliff-side, their course being marked
by a line of vivid green. The pampa above, along which we travelled,
was made up of bare yellow levels, broken here and there by strips and
patches of a very dark green bush, so dark as to seem almost black. We
found a good deal of difficulty in getting to a camp with water, as
the pampa was very dry, so we prolonged our march till 7.15 P.M., when
we came upon a shallow and turbid stream running down in a southerly
direction from the _barranca_. In the end we had to descend into the
_cañadon_ of the river. Not far from the spot which we chose for
camping lay the bodies of some eighty guanaco with their skins on,
which had died during the previous winter.
The landscape immediately on the banks of the Santa Cruz is arid and
hopeless in the extreme, but one can never forget the glory of
Patagonia, its wonderful sunsets, which gleam out over the dull-hued
empty wastes in a splendour of colour. So on that night as I stood in
the shadow that steeped all my side of the river, the other bank was
lit up with a translucent glow of sunset as delicately yellow as if it
shone through the petals of a buttercup.
On January 27 we started along the _cañadon_, which continued to be
desolate and rather stony. We saw many guanaco, living and dead. After
a time we made for the pampa above, from where we looked once again
upon the Cordillera, gleaming very dim and faint on the horizon.
Finding a lagoon with some grass about it, we off-saddled for an hour.
Later we marched on rather more slowly than usual, and camped in such
a place as a wildfowler might see in dreams of the night. A lagoon of
sword-blue water, but in shape like an arrowhead, rimmed in with low
green rushes, above these yellow tussocks of coarse grass bending in
the wind, behind all a bare promontory arched over by a sad evening
sky. On the breeze came the "Honk, honk" of geese mixed with the
thinner notes of snipe. Ducks, too, were there, and the snipe in wisps
of thirty. Presently, as I sat writing, a guanaco came in sight, and
later a flock of cayenne lapwings (_Vanellus cayennensis_). I might
have been, as far as the aspect of things was concerned (save for the
guanaco) in Uist and going home to a warm fireside, instead of
journeying on and on for many days and weeks to come over the endless
pampa and into the distant Cordillera.
[Illustration: THE DRINKING-PLACE.]
At this lagoon also I saw a condor (_Sarcorhampus gryphus_), and
before this had seen a couple when at Mrs. Hardy's. It must have been
near this spot that Darwin shot his condor, which he speaks of as
measuring eight and a half feet from wing-tip to wing-tip, and four
feet from head to tail.
By the middle of the next day (January 28) we reached a lagoon with a
threshold of green meadowy marsh, a relief after a long pull over a
waterless and bare stretch of country, and there took a needed
half-hour of rest. On our second starting we managed to wander into a
desert of basalt or lava, and could only advance very slowly and with
difficulty.[22] Nor could we find water for a long time; at length we
came in sight of a big pool lying ruffled in the saffron lights of the
sunset. Upon its margin or in the water were flamingos (_Phoenicopterus
ignipalliatus_), upland geese (_Chloephaga magellanica_), thirty-four
bandurias (_Theristicus caudatus_). There were also guanaco within
sight. Here we camped, and found yet another deep and rocky lagoon, on
which were many divers which I could not identify. A heavy wind was
blowing, which died down at night and gave occasion for hundreds of
sandflies to rise and worry us. Each day, as we marched on, the
Cordillera seemed to be advancing, as it were, towards us.
We woke to find the next day pale with thin sunlight glinting across
the prospect of basalt, low bushes and far horizons. We were now well
beyond Mystery Plain, which formed the limit of Darwin's expeditions
up the river, and which he named with a strong desire to push on and
find out what lay on its farther side.
On the 29th we made a long march. After some couple of hours' going we
saw ahead of us clear pampa instead of the rocky stone-strewn surface
of the region we had been passing through of late. Over this pampa,
though it was tussocky and uneven, we were able to advance at a good
rate towards a line of hills that rose in the west. As we approached
we saw that they stood up ridge behind ridge, and over these we rode,
passing many good camping-grounds and seeing herds of guanaco, but no
wood or bush for fire. At last we got to the top of the last ridge of
all, and there, standing in the teeth of a strong wind, we looked down
upon Lake Argentino lying below us, and backed by the peaks and snow
summits of the Cordillera.
Although there were many _cañadones_ and grass of the richest, we
could find no water, and so went on and on.
Presently, as we were descending towards the lake, we reached a
lagoon, but found no feed there for the horses, so we were forced to
leave it behind, although the troop was tired and we had been for
several hours in the saddle. I perceived traces of horses at some
distance, and we therefore left the bank of the lagoon and cut across
the pampa heading for them. We wandered on through bare hills, which
fell in perplexing folds, curve within curve, and at last we reached
the River del Bote, which has but one ford by which we could cross.
This we found, worked the troop over, and then encamped.
[Illustration: MAP OF LAKE ARGENTINO AND DISTRICT.
_SHOWING ROUTES._]
Day by day we had been leaving behind us the seemingly limitless
pampas and were now drawing close to the full blue range of
minaret-shaped mountains. Each march was adding to their height and
making clearer the details hidden in the hedge-sparrow-egg hue of
their distances. First we came in sight of Mount Viscachas one morning
when, bearing a little too far out upon the pampa, we struck a tract
of very bad going. The ground was covered with thorny bushes and
basalt fragments, and here and there harsh tussocks of grass sprouted
from the blackened wilderness of stones. The night we passed beside
the lagoon on the high pampa left an impression on my mind as one of
the most desolate and forbidding of camps. Flocks of flamingos were
standing in the upland pool, and round about upon the little
promontories that thrust out into the wind-whipped water bandurias
were huddled in close order, while as the evening began to fall a wisp
of snipe flew over, wailing most mournfully. Few things, indeed, seem
to me to bring out into keener prominence the loneliness of a place
than the cry of snipe heard in the windy gloaming. There is some
suggestion of human sorrow in the sound.
So we had journeyed westward, having always upon the south the yellow
pampa, and beside us on the north the river running through its deep
_cañadon_, while every dawn the vast phalanx of the Andean peaks
seemed to have moved nearer, as though the great mass of mountain was
marching slowly and surely towards us like the battle-front of some
destroying army.
Again we came upon a second death-place of guanaco, which made a scene
strange and striking enough. There cannot have been less than five
hundred lying there in positions as forced and ungainly as the most
ill-taken snapshot photograph could produce. Their long necks were
outstretched, the rime of weather upon their decaying hides, and their
bone-joints glistening through the wounds made by the beaks of
carrion-birds. They had died during the severities of the previous
winter, and lay literally piled one upon another. A brown, almost
chocolate-coloured, lagoon washed close to the front rank of the dead,
and those in the rearmost line had evidently lain down to die while in
the very act of descending the tall _barranca_ for water. The
mortality among guanaco in a really hard winter is tremendous. They
die in batches, absolutely in hundreds. At that season they come down
to the lower grounds for warmth and water, but desert them in the
summer and take to the high pampa, where, as I have described in
another place, the Indians hunt and slay them in great numbers for
their pelts. The cry of the guanaco is a noise unique. It is something
between a bleat, a laugh, and a neigh. Often the old _macho_ of a herd
would come to the high ground nearest to our camp, and from it neigh
defiance at us, while the rest of the point would satisfy their
curiosity by staring from a safer distance.
Upon the high pampa, across which, bearing north-west, we passed, we
found guanaco to be extraordinarily plentiful, and fatter than any we
had hitherto met with in our wanderings through the country. Upon this
pampa was no firewood at all, nothing save rolling grass which pricked
you with minute thorns, so that a walk through it left your putties
spined like a porcupine. To stalk in this grass, where the guanacos
were unusually wild, and long periods of crawling were necessary to
attain success, one had to carry a piece of guanaco-skin in the left
hand, which took up the grass spines that must otherwise have entered
the palm of the hunter.
Our first glimpse of Lake Argentino was a strongly-marked and vivid
picture as seen from the rim of the high pampa when we surmounted it.
A great eye of blue water--for the sun was bright--set beneath white
pent-house brows of the mountain range. A tremendous wind was blowing
out of the north-west, and we could see the great southern lake was in
a turmoil of short and angry seas. Deep channels cut away into the
depths of the Cordillera at the western end, and at the eastern side
the waters flowed out into the swift current of the River Santa Cruz.
Farther along the northern shore the _cañadon_ of the River Leona was
also visible. We could not then guess how glad we should one day be to
reach the haven of that river mouth. Beyond the lake, and partly
surrounding it, the Cordillera raised their jagged line of peaks
against the sky. From the bases upwards towards the higher altitudes
the mountains were black with forests. Three large icebergs floated on
the water at the farther side, one of which had drifted into shallows
near the shore. No sign of life was to be observed anywhere in the
great hollow stretching beneath us.
To my mind Argentino is a far more beautiful lake than Buenos Aires.
After a long look we began to descend into the lower land by a sharp
cleft that led down into a deep _cañadon_. It was, owing to a recent
landslip, a nasty piece of travelling, and the horses, disliking it,
broke back more than once, the _Zaino overo_ taking the lead as usual.
[Illustration: FIORD OF LAKE ARGENTINO, SHOWING FOREST ON MOUNT
AVELLANEDA]
Emerging from this cleft we came on one of Nature's tragedies. Upon
the side of the slope was a guanaco, fallen (when I first caught
sight of it) upon its knees, and making frantic efforts to rise. Three
huge condors were poised a few feet above the head of the unfortunate
animal. I galloped towards them, and as I came near the guanaco fell
over upon its side, still moving convulsively. At once one of the
condors lit on the ground beside it. I cannot have been more than a
minute approaching, and as I came close the condor rose into the air
to some distance. A thin stream of blood was trickling down the
surface of the rock upon which the guanaco lay, and the poor creature
was jerking its legs and body. During the moment which I had taken to
ride up the condor had torn out its eyes! The guanaco was evidently
dying of scab, and had thinned down into a mere skeleton.
I own to a horror and a loathing of the condor. Seen against the pale
hue of the sky, its stately flight and grand spread of motionless wing
made it seem a noble bird, but near by it shared the repulsive
appearance of other carrion-eaters. In size it is enormous. I shot one
off Hellgate measuring nine feet three inches across the outstretched
pinions. It rivals the vulture in its ability to quickly discover and
arrive upon the scene of a feast, and is in the habit of gorging
itself until it becomes practically powerless, and it is possible to
slay it afoot with a stick. It is one thing to be well mounted on a
good horse and to watch, as you ride along, the far specks in the
intense blue, or to admire them wheeling in wide graceful circles with
quiescent wings, but quite another aspect of them would be borne in
upon you if your horse chanced to stumble, and left you, say, with a
broken leg upon the empty pampa; long before help might come, or,
indeed, if you were alone, would be at all likely to come, you would
make a terribly close acquaintance with the methods a condor adopts
when meat--be it dead or wounded--falls under his power of beak and
claw.
Patagonia is certainly a wonderful country for birds and beasts of
prey. You may travel leagues upon leagues and see no sign of life save
chimangos (_Milvago chimango_), caranchos (_Polyborus thaurus_), and
condors (_Sarcorhampus gryphus_) in the air and upon the bushes, and
at your feet the tracks of lion and of fox and of skunk. Sometimes
this fact strikes you with peculiar force. The landscape made up of
thorny bushes and spike grass jagged rocks, and white and grey slime,
in which live the puma, the wild-cat, and the fox; the air inhabited
by birds of prey. What do they live upon, these creatures, there are
so many of them? How do they eke out existence? Sparse herds of
guanaco (I am now alluding to the sterile portions of the country,
such as lie about the north shore of Lake Buenos Aires and also part
of the north shore of Lake Argentino), a few small birds, and abundant
rodent life of the smaller species--that is all. Curiously enough, in
the richer lands of Patagonia, it seemed to me that, though there was
more game, there were fewer birds and beasts of prey.
In the winter and in the spring the country, as far as wild life is
concerned, is but a thin and gaunt place. Nothing that wanders carries
any fat, for the food has been reduced to a minimum. It is on this
sterile battlefield of nature that living creatures enter into a
death-grapple with the conditions of life, and swing to and fro in a
contest whose outcome is only decided when the dark days of storm are
over; for at this season the richer lands are often under snow, and it
is about the bare margins of lakes and lagoons that the game gathers
and remains.
All the way up the River Santa Cruz we were able to recognise the
points marked and named by Darwin, until finally his party was forced
through lack of provisions to turn back just when he had arrived
within reasonable distance of the great lake. He named this last
prospect he looked out over in Patagonia, "Mystery Plain." Now it no
longer is mysterious, but Darwin's map remains to this day the best
chart made of the river.
His description and his opinion of the country are sufficiently
dismal, but he passed through a waste and empty land, before
colonising on the coasts had reached its present state, or much of the
country within reach of the sea had been partitioned, as it now is,
into sheep farms. And it must be admitted that the neighbourhood of
the Santa Cruz is somewhat sterile, and would be likely to give a
false idea of Patagonia as a forbidding land to a stranger who knew no
more of the country than the coast and this boulder and sand-strewn
river valley. This _cañadon_ is, in fact, covered with glacial
detritus.
[Illustration: END OF SOUTHERN FIORD OF LAKE ARGENTINO]
Leaving the shore of the lake well to our right we rode parallel
with it for some miles, crossed the Rivers Calafate and de los Perros,
and finally arrived upon a peninsula which culminates in Mount Buenos
Aires. This peninsula is called the Burmeister Peninsula. Here, many
days' ride into the interior, and under the very shadow of the Andes,
lives an English pioneer, Mr. Cattle, whom we visited, and who was
kind enough to help me in every way and to give us hospitality.
During the first night we spent upon the shores of Lake Argentino
there was a heavy snowfall on the tops of the nearer mountains.
[Illustration: _ESTANCIA_ OF MR. E. CATTLE]
Our first move was in the direction of Lake Rica--so-called locally.
Upon the maps we had with us it was marked as a separate lake
connected by a river with Lake Argentino. We soon proved this to be a
mistake, the so-called Lake Rica being an arm of the large lake,
connected with the parent volume of water by a channel of considerable
width, which is occasionally blocked, or nearly so, by icebergs. I
should mention that we had left England before the publication of Dr.
Moreno's excellent map, in which this and many other errors had
already been set right.
Taking our horses, we made our way to the south-west along the shores
of Lake Rica. We were forced to make détours, as the steep banks were
cut up by innumerable rifts, at the bottom of nearly every one of
which streams of varying size emptied themselves into the fjord. Heavy
forests clothed the slopes of the hills almost to the margin of the
water. Very little animal life was to be observed. I picked up a
number of iron-ore stalactites on the shores and also from the mud of
the shallow water near them. When approaching the end of this South
Fjord--as Lake Rica should properly be called--of Lake Argentino we
crossed a river or rather, I should say, a torrent, that after a
riotous course between very steep cliffs flowed over a rocky bed into
the South Fjord. This river would have been, I should say, impassable
at an earlier date in the season.
Our advance was finally stopped by cliffs which descended clear to the
water's edge. We camped on the shingle at the foot of the cliffs just
short of the spot where their bases plunged under the level of the
water, and all night long we could hear the rushing thunder of masses
of ice breaking from the parent glaciers and crashing down into the
fjord.
The weather now completely broke up. Rain fell in, close steady lines
all across our outlook over the western fjord, and the drenched
forests behind us tossed and creaked in the wind. Nothing more dismal
and depressing can be imagined than this forest-land dim with lowering
skies and a downpour of rain. For four days the heavy rain, sometimes
mixed with sleet, continued to fall, and through it we rode back to
the Burmeister Peninsula.
It was upon the shores of Lake Argentino that a great Gaucho, perhaps
I should say the greatest of all Gauchos, one Ascensio Brunel, at one
time found a hiding-place. We visited the spot later on, but here I
may as well tell some part of the story of his life. He was very
generally known for many years as the "Wild Man of Santa Cruz," and
his history was an extraordinary one--one of those smears of high and
vivid colour which circumstance occasionally paints in upon the dull
humdrum picture of the daily life of a district.
Let us set out his antecedents.
He and his brother were Gauchos. They lived in camp, and were partners
in a small business. Cattle, sheep, and horses formed their stock.
Once they went together on a long journey, and became acquainted with
a lady, whom we will call Bathsheba. They both loved her; yet she was
another's.
[Illustration: THE WILD MAN.]
The two brothers descended upon that other and slew him. Then they
made off with the lady to the wilder districts. There they quarrelled
about her. Ascensio waited until his brother happened to be away
tracking horses in a particularly wild part, and then he rounded up
the remainder of the stock, and he and the lady fled yet deeper
into the interior. For a space they covered their tracks and escaped
the brother.
In the course of time the lady left her lover, as ladies will, and he,
his brain turned by some strange passion, went mad.
When we strike his trail again he was known as the "Wild Man of Santa
Cruz."
He began to steal horses, found the sport to his liking, and stole
more. Unable to use or keep them, he merely drove them to some sleepy
hollow, where he killed them in hundreds. (We once counted
eighty-three of these skeletons in one place.) He dressed in the skins
of pumas from head to foot. His saddle was of puma-skin, and armed
only with _boleadores_ he ranged the land stealing. His career was a
long one, and he became such a Gaucho as has never been known. To-day
he might be heard of as lifting a dozen horses on the Santa Cruz
River; a week later he was spiriting away _tropillas_ in Chubut.
He had the run of 300,000 square miles, the whole of Patagonia was his
farm, his stock what he could steal.
You may remember that I described a meeting with Indians, a tribe who
lived in tents of guanaco-skins on the River Mayo. The Wild Man paid
them a visit, and stole a hundred mares; and they, discovering it,
rode down his trail and caught him. They took him alive and haled him
as a prisoner to the nearest settlement, where he was put in gaol.
He escaped, made straight back, and lifted another big batch of the
Mayo Indians' horses.
Again they pursued him, but he was fain to escape, being mounted on a
very good horse. At last, only one Indian continued to hold on his
trail, and he, when he neared the wild figure clad in puma-skins, grew
afraid and turned back.
The Wild Man rode on, and also out of our story and all human ken.
That was four years ago. He has not been heard of since. But I daresay
that the Mayo Indians could finish off the story with a different
ending.
FOOTNOTE:
[22] A guide who applied to me at Santa Cruz warned me that, if we
went without him, we would have great difficulty at this point. He
asked ten dollars a day for his services, which I, however, declined.