CHAPTER XIII

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.