"October 13.—Mending waggon, no wood. At ten o'clock waggon mended but needed a rest in the sun till the hide of guanaco we had bound it with should dry. So I decided to take to-day as our Sunday and march to-morrow. Burbury is making a plum-duff. Served out tobacco this morning.
"Mock Sunday and at rest, a time for dreaming. Away at home the trees are browning. How one's heart turns to them and dreams of them! The men born out here wonder how we can look forward to the happiness of going home, perhaps for the sight of some village church hidden in English lanes and fields. Half the charm of this life we are living out here lies in thinking of our return to the land that gives us all comfort and a silent welcome of green springs. Went out to-day after the lion and found tracks, but the ground was too hard for following them up. He lives in a valley of grey dead bush. As we went away from the dead guanaco yesterday, a condor (Sarcorhamphus gryphus) appeared and dropped on the carcase almost before we left it.
GUANACO HOUNDS. (FATHER AND MOTHER OF THE AUTHOR'S HOUND, TOM.)
"October 14, Sunday.—We got away at nine o'clock and came fast. The muddy narrow Chico flowing through a land which looks as if it led over the edge of the world. It reminds one of a flowering wilderness. Last night we tied up the dogs, and dear old Tom howled till I had to get up and correct him. When up I let poor little Lady loose, the last service I was ever destined to do for her, for to-day the waggon went over her belly, and she lies dead on the track a few leagues back. She was six months old, always cheerful, and wagging her whip of a tail, always up to the march. Half an hour before she died I saw her hunting a young fox, her first. She had brown eyes and I had got fonder of her than I knew. Tom used to drive her from her food, biting her, and from the softest bed, and I am now glad to think I sometimes made him give way to her. Just before Lady's death, I shot a cavy (Dolichotis patagonica) with the Mauser. He gave me a nice shot sitting up on his haunches, near the track on the skyline of a low bare ridge. Yesterday we had a very fine puchero or stew, pickled eggs given me by Pedro at Camerones and two plum-duffs made with waggon-grease by Burbury, who is quite a chef at plum-duff. After our meal we had out the concertina and found that Burbury knew 'The Church's One Foundation,' and Jones a melancholy Welsh hymn.
"The two best of my horses have sore backs.
"We spent an hour trying to get the waggon up a steep ridge 100 feet high, and had to unload and all work at it. Made a long seven leagues and encamped at the foot of a ridge with 200 yards of dead bush between us and the yellow Chico. Going very pebbly, the ground here and there burnt up and arid. It is always in such places that the mirages are most common.
"October 15.—Got off 8.40. At 11 unloaded waggon, which was in great danger of turning over. Scrivenor photoed it. At 2.20 waggon horses unfit to go farther. Camped by the Chico; shot a yellow-billed teal.
"October 16.—Out of humour all day, first, because, I found one of the cameras put unprotected into the waggon among the tins of potted meat, &c. Wearily, wearily we wend our way towards the blue distant hills of our desires. Even as in life we wend towards distant ambitions, and, coming up to them, find new ones arise upon the horizon beyond, and so we travel all our days, looking longingly ahead. This valley of the Chico is a wild place, conical hillocks of sand have now taken the place of the bush-covered ones. The Chico remains yellow and winds greatly. Purple hills crown the distance. It is all high-coloured and clear-shaded as in a picture.
"To-day, coming round a bend of the Chico glen, I saw seven guanaco feeding in the valley. They had seen me and begun to move, so I galloped round the ridge, and as I jumped off my horse one passed and halted within seventy yards. The herd made a pretty picture standing on the bare, desert-brown hillside in the tearing wind. I clean missed the buck with the first shot, and only killed him as he ran off, hitting him low behind the shoulder. The wind was blowing hard to-day and full in our faces.
"A windy night, the sand of the river-bed driving and filling everything. Presently we shall crawl into our sleeping-bags and, with our feet to the wind, bid any weather defiance. A pipe is a mighty ally. Here am I in the little 4 ft. tent which Burbury and Scrivenor have pitched to sleep in, wrapped in a poncho a-reek with the smoke of Indian camp-fires, enjoying a pipe and writing this, and as it grows too dark to write and the wind roars and bellows louder down the river-bed, I shall sit here watching the red glow of my pipe and dreaming.
"October 17, 9 o'clock.—A month hence from to-day will be my birthday. Where shall we be? At the Lake Buenos Aires, I hope. Several horses this morning have sore backs, and Burbury, excellent fellow, has been doctoring them.
"How the face of this country changes with the weather! Bleak and windy even in warm sunlight, though fine and bracing; in evil weather it wears an aspect of forlornness. The farther you penetrate into Patagonia the more its vast emptiness weighs on you and overwhelms you.
"Eleven o'clock.—Where shall we be a month hence? Where, indeed? To-day we had a great disappointment, and I hardly know how to write of it. The natural difficulties of the country are very great, but with care, in spite of boulders and hard-going, it seemed as if I could get my waggon up to the foothills, and I looked forward to bringing back many specimens in it. But after 300 and odd miles of travel a particularly hummocky valley proved too much for its endurance. When the horses tried to move it this morning it broke up altogether, and here it lies!
"Total day's march, 200 yards. Burbury and Jones have ridden on towards Colohuapi, where there are some pioneers' huts, to try and get wood and bolts. What is to be done? I do not know. Take to cargueros? We could bring back no specimens to speak of in that case. One must wait and see what Burbury can get from the people at Colohuapi. The camp is in a valley and is surrounded by bare mud cones 100 feet in height, a few bushes shiver in the throat of the upper end of the gorge. In the gorge and round our camp-fire spreads a growth of rank lean weed, full of yellow flowers, and a few small wind-polished stones lie at the base of one of the ant-heaplike hills.
"'Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland! Oh, the weary, weary shore' (of the Chico)! I took my gun down to the river and shot five widgeon (Mareca sibilatrix) and six martinetas (Calodromas elegans).
"Late in the evening Scrivenor and I went up over the ridge of bare hills rather with the idea of shooting, if possible, a condor we had seen poised high up. Sight at back came off Scrivenor's Mauser.[4] We went on and saw a herd of guanaco, one much nearer than the rest, and we crawled towards him. The stones were a penance. The only cover was thorn, and little of that up there on the high pampa above the valley where our camp is. At two hundred yards I shot and hit him, but he went on, and presently swayed his neck and lay down. I crawled up and had a shot at his neck. Thereafter followed periods of cantering in a rickety way, followed by periods of lying down, and at last we went round over a rise and crawled down on him. I thought he was dead but for the shadow of his neck, and I crawled on with but one cartridge left in my gun. As I neared him, up he got and I fired again and hit him. He was growing very weak. Scrivenor shouted that he had no revolver, and so here were we with only our knives. I followed the guanaco and Scrivenor went round. I was upon him first but my knife was weak. Scrivenor, startled from his usual calm, and with a shout, leaped at the guanaco and caught him round the neck. So we bore him to earth and slew him. I examined him for wounds and found four. Two of the shots were vital, yet he had led us a chase of two and a half miles, and we had to carry the meat back to camp. Arrived there, and preparing a meal by the fire, in came Burbury and Jones. They had met a Gaucho trekking to Colohuapi, who told them that Colohuapi was yet twenty-five leagues away and that there were no bolts or wood to be had there. I went to bed and smoked, feeling pretty sad. There is but one thing to do. We must jettison some of the cargo and sew up the rest in the skins of guanacos, and go forward with pack-horses."
CHAPTER IV
THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES—(continued)