Shortly after, on the 2nd of October, Isidoro came over to Pavon
Island, with his horses and some 250 lb. of ostrich feathers sewn up
in hides, which he was going to take down to Sandy Point to barter,
and I accordingly made the necessary arrangements for accompanying
him.
Never was a more unlucky trip commenced under more unfavourable
auspices.
I was extremely unwell, and my indisposition increased with every
hour. Isidoro, in crossing over to the island, had lost his whip in
the river, and he seemed to consider this a sure omen of misfortune.
The mishap threw quite a gloom over his mind, and he almost decided on
giving up the journey altogether. With great difficulty I persuaded
him to relinquish this intention, though I little thought as I did so
that I was indirectly drawing him to his ruin.
The weather, too, was unpropitious. Twice heavy showers of rain made
us turn back when on the point of starting. We had already unsaddled
our horses and put off our departure till the next day; but towards
midday the sun again shone out, and that finally decided us to make a
definite start.
As we calculated that our journey to Sandy Point would last about
eight days, we took but few provisions; and in order to spare the
pack-horse as much as possible, we left our tent behind, trusting to
the weather not to be too severe upon us. The cavalcade consisted of
Isidoro, Guillaume, and myself, twenty-eight horses, and five dogs.
Having said good-bye to Don Pedro, Garcia, and Maximo, who were
remaining at Santa Cruz, we mounted our horses, forded the river, and
got under route.
We had not gone far when the weather again changed for the worse. A
drizzling sleet--half rain, half snow--began to fall, and a thick mist
settled down on the hills, giving an indescribably mournful appearance
to the at all times gloomy country.
We rode along in the lowest of spirits and in the midst of a cheerless
silence, broken only by the patter of the rain or the splashing of our
horses' hoofs over the marshy ground. As we went on, my headache grew
more and more violent, and every movement of the horse made me wince
with pain; but not wishing to turn back now that we were once off, I
bore up as well as I could for several hours, till at last, burning
with fever and thoroughly exhausted with the efforts I had made to
subdue my sufferings, I fairly began to reel in my saddle, and,
finding it impossible to continue any longer on horseback, I called
out to my companions to halt.
Although we were just in the middle of a bare plain, there was
fortunately a little grass growing round the borders of a small sheet
of water near where I dismounted, or otherwise, on account of the
horses, we should have been obliged to continue till we got to the
next ravine, which was still a considerable distance off.
They made a bed for me under a low bush, and I was glad to be able to
lie down. I suffered intensely all through the night, tossing
sleeplessly about, and longing for dawn to appear.
The morning found me in such a state that, much to my own and my
companions' regret, it was quite impossible to continue the journey,
though, had I foreseen the consequences of that one day's delay, I
would have gone on, even if I had had to be lashed to the saddle.
It was altogether a very miserable time. It is pleasant enough to roam
over the pampa when you are strong and well, and can enjoy a good
gallop after an ostrich in that pure, inspiriting air, when the
coarsest food seems delicious, and you can sleep as soundly on the
hardest couch as on the softest feather-bed; but it is another thing
when you are sick and in pain, and miss the darkened room, the
tempting viands, the cooling drinks, and the thousand devices which
make sickness less trying. When, instead, you have to face the weary
pangs of illness, exposed alternately to the glaring sunshine and the
cold rain showers, stretched on the bare ground, a hard saddle for
your pillow, a miserable bush your sole shelter against the cutting
wind. Then, like me, you will probably lose a little of your
enthusiasm for the romantic life of the pampa, and sigh for the
comforts of humdrum civilisation.
The next day my anxiety to reach Sandy Point as early as possible,
urged me to declare that I felt well enough to continue the journey,
and enabled me to support the unintermitting pains the movement of the
horse inflicted on my sore body, which, without the assistance of so
strong a motive, I should hardly have been able to do.
However, I gradually got better, and by the time we reached Coy Inlet,
which was on the fourth day after leaving Santa Cruz, I felt all right
again. We found Coy Inlet River rather swollen, but the ford was still
quite passable, from which circumstance we concluded that that of the
river Gallegos would be equally so--a matter of congratulation for us,
as at that time of the year the snows melt in the Cordilleras, and the
rivers are frequently impassable for several days together.
We were in high spirits over that evening's supper, and already began
calculating how many nights we had yet to pass before we should be
able to go to sleep, heedless of wind or rain, under roof in Sandy
Point. It was the last cheerful evening we were to pass for a long
time to come, though we little dreamt it.
The following morning we started for our next stage, Rio Gallegos,
which is about fifty miles from Coy Inlet.
The pace we travelled at was a kind of amble, half trot, half canter,
though occasionally, when the nature of the ground we were riding over
permitted, we would break into an easy gallop. The horses of Patagonia
are remarkable for their endurance; seventy or eighty miles a day over
that most trying country, with its rapid succession of steep
escarpments, seems nothing to them, and if at the end of the day's
journey an ostrich starts up, they will answer to the spur and dash
away after it as fresh and as gamely as if they had just been saddled.
The guanacos seemed more numerous than ever in the plains we were now
crossing; some herds which swept past us, I think, must have numbered
quite six or seven hundred head. They gave us far more trouble than we
gave them, for every now and then the dogs, who with difficulty could
keep cool in the presence of such abundance of game, would make a dash
at some peculiarly tempting quarry, only to be brought back to their
masters' heels, after much whistling and shouting, thereby causing
considerable delay in our onward progress.
On this day I was particularly struck with the change in the
temperature, which had been gradually growing colder since we left
Santa Cruz, and which was now already unpleasantly raw and severe.
Over the plain, too, there was a keen wind blowing, which seemed to go
right through one, and we were glad when we at last reached a long
ravine called the Ravine of the Squaws, which leads down from the
plains into Gallegos valley. It bears this name because, when coming
from Coy Inlet, the Indian women always enter the valley by that
route. As they then form in single file, the hoofs of so many horses
following in each other's wake have gradually worn several deep but
narrow trails into the soil. The men ride down anywhere, without
reference to the movements of the squaws, who always approach their
camps from exactly the same points. The Indians change their camps
with tolerable regularity according to the time of the year. They
generally pass the winter together in Coy Inlet or Gallegos valley,
and in spring, after the young guanaco hunting is over, they break up
and disperse; some going to the Cordilleras, others to Santa Cruz, and
others again to Sandy Point, though the latter settlement is never
honoured with their presence long, as there is not sufficient
pasturage for the horses in that region, and the dogs, too, have to
subsist on very short rations, as ostriches are rather scarce in the
vicinity of Sandy Point, and guanacos do not range so far south.
Presently a turn of the ravine brought us in full view of the valley,
though the river itself was as yet invisible. A few minutes would now
settle all doubts as to the state of the ford. We broke into a gallop,
craning our necks anxiously to get a glimpse of the water, in rather
dubious suspense. It was of material importance for me to take the
steamer of the 15th of that month, and if the river was unfordable I
knew we might have to wait for at least eight days before the waters
would subside, and that delay would cause me to lose my steamer.
Suddenly Isidoro, who was some way ahead, drew in his reins and
stopped short, turning round with a look of blank dismay on his brown
face, which told but too plainly that our worst fears were realised.
With drooping reins we rode slowly on till we got to the river, now no
longer the shallow stream which in summer one can wade over knee-deep,
but a broad torrent, which eddied, swirled, and foamed, as it dashed
rapidly over its stormy bed through banks which were already growing
too narrow for its swollen waters. In the middle we could still see a
single tuft of long grass, which was bending with the current, and
this, Isidoro told me, grew on a little island, which when the river
is fordable, is several feet above the water's level. Twenty-four
hours ago it had doubtless been high and dry. We had arrived just a
day too late--the day lost on account of my illness!
We stood for some time in silence, staring blankly at the obstacle
which had suddenly sprung up to bar our progress, with a feeling of
utter disgust and helplessness; and then, the first shock of the
disappointment over, we began to discuss the chances in favour of a
speedy fall of the water. Isidoro was of opinion, from previous
acquaintance with the river at that season, that in eight days at the
most, it would have sunk to its ordinary level, two or three
consecutive days of frost being quite sufficient to arrest the thawing
of the snows on the Cordilleras, and to cause the river to fall as
rapidly as it had risen.
But even eight days seemed a long time to look forward to; eight days
to be passed in tiresome inaction and constant exposure to the
weather, and we now bitterly regretted not having brought the tent
with us. Our provisions, too, had only been calculated for a ten-days'
trip, and were already almost exhausted. Though, of course, we need
never want for meat, still lean meat, without salt or any farinaceous
adjunct, is not the kind of diet to keep up one's strength in cold
weather, and under all sorts of exertions and hardships. All these
disagreeables, however, seemed slight ones, compared with the
misfortune of having lost the steamer of the 15th, by which, for
pressing reasons, I ought to have immediately proceeded to Buenos
Ayres. There was now no other chance of leaving Sandy Point till the
30th. Isidoro, too, had some reason to be concerned at the delay, for
if he did not reach the settlement soon, he knew the price of feathers
would have fallen considerably, and he would make but a bad bargain.
Altogether, it was with heavy hearts that we slowly turned from the
river, in search of some suitable spot for camping at. In that respect
we were unfortunate also, not being able to find a sheltering bush
anywhere. Gallegos is the favourite camping-place of the Indians
during several months of the year, and consequently any bushes which
may formerly have existed in the immediate neighbourhood of the
valley, had long been broken up by the squaws for firewood. Finally,
we had to camp on the open, about three miles from the river,
sheltered slightly on one side by the tall escarpment which bounds one
side of the valley, but exposed on all others to whatever wind might
choose to blow, and if it should happen to rain we had of course no
means of keeping anything dry.
Another inconvenience of not having some bush to camp under was that
the fire was completely at the mercy of the wind, and flared away
without emitting any warmth, blinding those who sat round it with
smoke, and making it very difficult to cook anything properly. With
the packages containing Isidoro's feathers we managed to rig up a kind
of makeshift to obviate this difficulty, and then we all three set
about looking for firewood, to collect which we had to wander about
for a long time, as the whole country round seemed to have been swept
bare of that necessary by the Indians.
We were not very cheerful over our dinner that evening, as may be
imagined. The fire burned badly, the air was cold and damp, and soon
after our meal we rolled ourselves in our furs, and prepared to pass
the first of the many nights we were fated to sleep through on the
banks of the river Gallegos.