CHAPTER IX

ROUND AND ABOUT LAKE BUENOS AIRES

Chain of lakes -- Size of lake -- Sterility and fertility -- Trips to Cordillera -- Bones of dead game -- Shores of lake -- Western shore -- Tracks in marshes -- Northern shore -- Rosy camp by Fenix -- Guanaco hunt -- Horses stray -- Cordillera wolf -- Vain search for huemul -- Return to Horsham Camp -- Trip to River Deseado -- Paradise of wildfowl -- Shooting ostriches -- Long-necked game of Patagonia -- No ruins or vestiges of older civilisation in Patagonia -- Hunting mornings -- Wounded guanaco -- Indian trail -- Trip to River de los Antiguos -- Meet ostrich-hunter -- Wandering Gauchos -- Wanton burning of grass -- Second visit to Rosy Camp -- Flamingoes -- Danger-signals -- Scrivenor returns to Horsham Camp -- River de los Antiguos.

At last we had arrived at Lake Buenos Aires, a time long looked forward to. The pampas were crossed and left behind, and the lower line of the Andes was reached, the foothills of the great range whose upper summits we had watched for weeks lying high on the sky-line, blue and white and cold, sending the message of a great wind from them to us. We were now upon the shores of the largest of the wonderful network of lakes and lagoons which stretches parallel with the Cordillera hundreds of miles to the southward, ending not far from the Straits of Magellan.

There was to me something infinitely romantic about Lake Buenos Aires. Its aspect was ever changing, and so often you came on a scene supremely beautiful. The wild light of sunset upon the snow-peaks, the grey turbulent water of the lake, and the bull-like wind charging down at us day after day--all these things gave the place an individuality of its own.

The lake is of considerable extent, measuring seventy-five miles in length from S.S.W. to N.N.E., and its waters wage a continual war upon the thorns and scrub growing upon the margin. Vast masses of milk-white timber, blanched by the influences of sun and water and eloquent of the mountain-land of forest whence they have been washed down, lie at the lip of the flood level. When I was there in the dry season the upper rim of timber was about 200 yards distant from the edge of the water.

The sharp contrast of fertility and sterility that one meets with in Patagonia is remarkable, the more so as they often lie in close proximity the one to the other. I have mentioned an arid spread of yellow mud and stones cut up by deep gorges which we crossed before reaching the lake. I do not think that any painter desiring to picture desolation could do better than descend the central gorge and there paint its gaunt and rugged outlines, tumbled together in a horror of barrenness that the eyes ached to look upon. Yet close to this place, within ten yards of it, a neck of land displayed green scrub, ay, and flowers--beautiful purple sweet-pea-like flowers in profusion! And on the farther side was a green gully with two blue peaty waterholes.

Near by, as I have said, we established a base camp, from which we made four expeditions towards the Cordillera, which lie on the westward of the lake, while, singularly enough, the continental divide appears to be to the eastward of it. On our trips we took with us merely a horse apiece, and carried provisions on our saddles. Meantime the remainder of the troop, which had suffered somewhat on our journey from Bahia Camerones, were turned out to rest and luxuriate upon the marsh grass, that extended in a broad strip for a couple of miles under the ridge, while downhill from the camp towards the south this rich _pantano_ spread still farther.

Around the lake lay piled the skulls and bones of dead game, guanaco and a few huemules. These animals come down to live on the lower ground and near unfrozen water during the cold season, and there, when the weather is particularly severe, they die in crowds. We saw their skeletons, in one or two places literally heaped one upon the other.

During our stay in this neighbourhood I took the opportunity of examining most thoroughly the shores of the lake. The ground which descended to them was cut and intersected by _pantanos_ of wet or drying mud and sand. Upon the eastern shore rose dunes, covered with dense low strips of scrub. In the _pantanos_ the tracks made in the end of the winter, when the snow has melted and the ground is soft, remain visible for five or six months. And thus these hardened marshes offer a study of considerable interest.

Although the Indians declared that guanaco rarely visited the lake, this proved to be incorrect. In the winter a considerable number must live upon and about the shores, for their unmistakable tracks were always to be found. Towards Mount Pyramide on the western side, the number of these tracks was distinctly less--rheas, pumas, the animal known locally as the red fox or Cordillera wolf (_Canis magellanicus_).

A few huemules (_Xenelaphus bisulcus_) exist upon the northern shore. In the winter upland geese seem also to favour this spot in large numbers. So strongly does the mud retain the impression of tracks that I was able to follow the trail of a horse, which must have been ridden by one of Mr. Waag's party six months before, for a distance of a couple of miles.

In summer the north shore of Lake Buenos Aires is one of the poorest game centres in Patagonia. During the first fortnight of our stay there we shot but two guanacos. Sometimes for a week one would see nothing save an old ostrich, which was often observed at the far end of the marsh where the horses fed, but he was a wary bird with an experience of human methods, and he would never allow us to approach within shot.

It seemed probable, from the evidence of the tracks, that at the beginning of the hard weather the guanaco trekked down to the level of the lake. For one track made in November there were twenty made in July. The foregoing remarks only refer to the northern shore of the lake; on the eastern and southern sides things were very different, and about them we enjoyed good sport.

On November 21, Scrivenor, Jones and I made a little expedition to the River Fenix where it enters the lake, and there we came upon the most favourable camping-ground we had yet seen in the whole country. We pitched our camp--afterwards called Rosy Camp--in the midst of high yellow grass beside the narrow river that wound between banks, on which green low scrub ran riot, and enormous califate-bushes made impenetrable patches of thicket. Jones and I, on our arrival, went to examine the mouth of the river. Our camp was quite drowsy with the humming of insects, for, sheltered as it was from the wind by trees and by the cliffs of a lonely hummock, it gave us a delightful feeling of comfort and well-being after our many very different experiences of camps among the high dunes and rocks over which the wind whistled.

On the way Jones shot a Chiloe widgeon and I an upland goose. We found many tracks of puma and some of guanaco and huemul. As we walked towards the lake, I saw upon the outermost promontory of land a guanaco outlined against the evening sky. Hurrying on as fast as we could, which was not very fast, as I had poisoned my knee and was lame, we found the herd on a neck of land, to escape from which they would be obliged to pass within a hundred yards of us provided they did not take to the water. So we decided not to stalk them, but simply showed ourselves; as we expected, they broke landwards, passing within about seventy yards with their ears laid back, swaying their long necks and leaping and jinking among the stones. I pulled one over as she ranged up the side of the cliff. She turned out to be heavy with young, and the buck with her stopped at the top of the hill, but when I went towards him he fled. We were delighted at thus getting meat, especially as this guanaco was the fattest we had yet shot. Her flesh was, however, very strong.

When we were returning Jones, who was in front, suddenly said, "There go the horses!" It was so. They had stampeded, leaving us to get home as best we could. We threw off our coats, laid down our rifles carefully, and ran. Jones' horse was in hobbles, but being used to them kept up with his companions; we were, however, lucky enough to catch them after a couple of miles, and making bridles out of our waist-scarves rode them into camp. Scrivenor said the horses had suddenly started madly, broken their _cabrestos_, dashed together and then made off. We thought at the time they must have winded a puma, but this proved to be a mistake, for in the night two of them again escaped, and Jones retrieved them when the first streaks of dawn were etching the landscape in black and white. He woke me and we discovered that a wolf must have come into camp and stolen our duck and goose. This wolf had also eaten both my rifle-slings within three yards of where we were sleeping. While we were discussing our ill luck and lamenting the fact that we had carefully plucked the duck and goose upon the preceding evening, I observed the author of our misfortunes calmly watching us from under a bush. Revenge was, of course, uppermost in my thoughts. I killed her with a Mauser. She proved to be an old female 3 ft. 8 in. from the top of her teeth to the end of her tail.

It was beautifully warm all day in Rosy Camp, as we had named it, and we lay on the ground after making much-needed toilettes in the river.

The next night we had a visit from the mate of the wolf we had killed. It is a singular fact that the horses were at the least as much afraid of these wolves as they were of the pumas. While I was writing my diary and nursing my knee, which had swollen to a great size, the wolf crept within ten yards and had a look at me. I got up and limped across for my gun, but my movements did not in the least seem to discompose his serenity. He even advanced nearer, and showed not the smallest fear of me. This quality of fearlessness is very marked in the Cordillera wolves, which possess it in a greater degree than the pampa foxes. On one occasion when a wolf thus came to investigate our camp, my large deerhound, Tom, ran at him, and was met with a devastating bite. Indeed, I had to go to Tom's help. In the present instance I took up the shot-gun and gave the brute a charge of No. 4. He leaped straight upwards into the air, howling and snarling, and sank down quite dead.

These wolves kill young guanaco, and I have observed them pursuing a huemul. They kill sheep when a flock is brought into the neighbourhood of the Cordillera, generally remaining by their quarry after daylight. I have never observed them farther from the Cordillera than the northern shores of Lake Buenos Aires.

On November 24, Scrivenor went back to the base camp, as he had toothache. Jones and I rode south across the Fenix. Although we saw the track of a huemul in the sand we failed to catch any glimpse of the animals themselves on that day, but shot four bandurias, locally called by the Welshmen "land-ducks." This is the black-faced ibis (_Theristicus caudatus_). I was very eager to secure a specimen of the huemul in his summer coat, and to observe as much as possible of this beautiful deer, but no luck attended us then in that particular. Finally, we went back to Horsham Camp still unsuccessful. During our absence Burbury had killed a large Cordillera wolf near Horsham Camp.

On November 28, Barckhausen and I camped in the _cañadon_ or valley of River Deseado, a swampy, reedy spot, tenanted by great numbers of upland geese, flocks of Chiloe widgeon (_Mareca sibilatrix_) and brown pintails. I also observed here the rosy-billed duck (_Metopiana peposaca_), the blue-winged teal (_Querquedula cyanoptera_), and what I took to be the red shoveller (_Spatula platalea_). But this last-named bird I did not shoot, and so I cannot speak with absolute certainty upon the point. Besides these, I saw flamingoes (_Phœnicopterus ignipalliatus_) and the black-necked swan (_Cygnis nigricollis_). A flock of parrots were flying about the heights, but of these I was unable to procure a specimen. The reedy pools and backwaters in this _cañadon_ were, without exception, the most glorious paradise of wildfowl that I have ever seen.

On our way back from the River Deseado I secured the first _Rhea darwini_ shot during the expedition. With the exception of wild cattle, the ostrich is the most difficult to procure of Patagonian game. These birds are always on the alert, and generally make off when you are still a mile away. They never pause save upon commanding ground. The most usual method of obtaining them is to run them down with dogs or to _bolas_ them after the manner of the Indians and Gauchos on horseback. They are indeed a quarry well worthy of the attention of the still-hunter. The male is sometimes killed with a rifle when attending to the chickens, towards whom--with the exception of laying the eggs--he stands in place of a mother. At such times he will, when approached, pretend to be wounded and limp away with wings outspread to attract the hunters after him. An ostrich when shot through the body will always run from thirty to forty yards before dropping. This first ostrich, which I shot, was about four hundred yards away, and I should not have secured him had he not allowed me to get my range with a couple of preliminary shots. Down he went at last, and, immediately afterwards, as I was congratulating myself, appeared an ostrich running low through the grass. I thought it was the one I had shot and struck back for my horse. While I was galloping after the fast-disappearing bird, I rode right on to the first bird, which had been shot through the lungs. On measurement I found him to be five feet in height and three feet high at the shoulder.

The greatest number of adult ostriches I ever saw together was seven. This in a _cañadon_ off the River Deseado. At a later date I saw forty-two together, but this included many small and immature birds.

The long-necked game of Patagonia is difficult to stalk owing to their having such a field of vision. The ruse of tying up one's horse in full view gained me many a guanaco, but was quite a useless trick in the case of ostriches. The Cruzado was by this time an A1 shooting-horse. He would stand anywhere and wait my return, he would also allow me to fire quite close to him, but he would never allow any white object to be put upon his back. If this was done, he would at once rear and throw himself back.

There is one thing which strikes me forcibly with regard to Patagonia. Here is small vestige of the elder peoples, and little of any older civilisations.[19] Even in the hearts of deserts in the old world are to be found traces of ancient cities, where men lived long ages ago. But nothing that bears farthest resemblance to a ruin, to the "one stone laid upon another" that tells of man's settled home, exists in Patagonia. Yet though the ruined cities of other countries are old, Patagonia is older yet. The nomad tribes have roamed here through the centuries, leaving the grass to grow-over their old camp-fires, but never altering or marking with any permanent mark the face of this old land. No, though Patagonia is in a sense the oldest of all, for here we come face to face with prehistoric times--the skeletons of the greater beasts, the flint weapons of primitive man with practically nothing save the years to intervene. A lean humanity, untouched by aught save nature, has run out its appointed course until very recent years; and there is little to testify to its wanderings but the brown trail of generations of footsteps, which ten years of disuse would blot out for ever. You cannot there gaze over the ruins of a once populous city and say, "Here lived a dead people." No, you can but think by lonely river or lagoon, "The bygone Indians may here have had their camp, or the greater beasts their lair." The netted lakes, the gaunt Cordillera, the limitless pampa and the unceasing wind--that is all. _Cañadon_ follows _cañadon_, pampa succeeds pampa, you have the Atlantic to the east of you and the Andes to the west of you, and between, in all the vast country, beside the Indian trail, the only paths are game-tracks!

On December 2 we were again short of meat, therefore Jones and I went hunting. These early mornings upon the high ground above the lake will never, I think, be forgotten by any of us who shared them. It was a vivid and pulsating life, and the hunting was carried on under conditions unique to Patagonia.

In the slight depression through which the River Fenix winds, herds of guanaco were to be found, each point containing any number between half a dozen to forty head. On the morning I write of we were not long in finding our game. A large herd, including several guanaco _chicos_, were to be seen from the heights dotted about upon the faded greenish grass of the valley beneath us. The sun, newly risen, had just begun to suck up the balls of white mist that rolled up and down the cuplike hollows, and as the light strengthened it brought out the gold and white colouring of the guanacos feeding in the valley. The horse I was riding had done no work for three weeks, and was fit to gallop for his life.

The herds were in a place quite inaccessible to stalking, but it was certain that they would break for the hills to the south. Immediately they saw us they took to flight in the direction we expected, and we dashed away to cut them off. The Patagonian horse soon begins to take an interest of his own in galloping game. We arrived within two hundred yards of where the herds had begun to straggle in a long line up the bare side of a range of round bald-headed hummocks, but we were not in time to get a shot before they disappeared over the sky-line. When we reached the top of the hills the guanacos were, of course, nowhere to be seen, but after an hour's tracking we again located them among the hummocks in a depression filled with dry thorn. This time we separated and Jones showed himself at the far end of the gorge, while I made a circuit and lay down upon the top of a hill towards which I thought they were likely to break. This they did the instant they saw Jones, who got a shot, breaking the leg of one. I killed another as they passed. We jumped upon our horses to overtake Jones' wounded guanaco, that was keeping up with the herd.

My horse, the Alazan, had recently received some jumping lessons, and being an animal with no sense of proportion, had been seized with a mania for jumping everything. Jones nearly fell off his horse with laughing when the Alazan valiantly charged a califate-bush, eight feet high and full of thorns, through which he dashed in one jump and two supplementary bucks. Emerging upon the other side we set off after our guanaco and enjoyed one of the most glorious gallops that ever fell to the lot of man. I could not help admiring the way in which Jones, who was a born rider, and, like most Gauchos, had lived all his life on the outside of a horse, picked his way among the great fragments of rock that filled the hollows. The Alazan jumped them, and proceeded upon his appointed path to his own evident satisfaction, the infinite amusement of Jones, and the terror of myself. However, though one might take exception to his methods, the Alazan had a turn for speed and bore my fourteen stone nobly to the front.

Presently the guanaco we were pursuing dashed across a shallow lagoon and fell upon the farther side of it. As we dismounted we observed fresh tracks of a wild bull, which was heading north-west towards the Cordillera. Although we followed these tracks for twenty miles and came upon ample evidence of their being quite recently made, evening fell upon us and we were obliged to turn campwards.

On our arrival we had a look at the horses and sat up late expecting the return of Barckhausen and Burbury, who had gone to look for the Indian trail, which the Indians told us led under the foothills of the Cordillera to the end of the continent. I have given a description of the trail in another place. It is in its way as remarkable a highroad as the Grand Trunk Road in India. Were it not for the tracks of horses, and the occasional dead camp-fire to which it leads you, it would be impossible to distinguish it from a series of guanaco-tracks running parallel. Nevertheless, many an ostrich-hunter has by its aid found his way into the settlements, when without it he would have wandered far and wide upon the pampas.

It was not before the next day, however, that Burbury and Barckhausen returned with the news that they had found the trail some twenty leagues away near the _cañadon_ of the River Deseado.

I have mentioned my great desire to shoot a huemul (_Xenelaphus bisulcus_), and, as we had been disappointed in this respect in our former expeditions, I decided to penetrate into the gorge of the River de los Antiguos. We made arrangements for an absence of some duration from the base camp, leaving Jones and Burbury in charge.

On the 5th we started, and, while riding to Rosy Camp, saw columns of smoke arising from amongst the hills on the other side of the Fenix. We thought they were signals of Indians and answered them. By here and there burning a bush we signalled to the unknown, and in this way drew together. It was upon the yellow shores of a dry lagoon that we met with the first white man we had seen since leaving Colohuapi. This man and his errand were so typical of the country and its methods of life that I do not apologise for sketching his portrait at full length.

As he came riding towards us we perceived that he was seated upon a saddle of sheepskins, and rode a yellow horse, whose condition told its own story. In Patagonia one gets into the habit of noticing the horse before the rider. The practised eye can learn from its appearance and condition the answers to at least three questions. The rider was a very small Argentine, and he had, he informed us, come up from San Julian. You who do not know Patagonia may think it strange that one should meet with one's fellow creatures miles from anywhere, but the Patagonian Gaucho is in his way unique. He is as much a pioneer of civilisation as were the fur-clad hunters of the Bad Lands of North America. By habit and by choice the Gaucho is a nomad. It is not too much to say that, grumbler as he is when upon the pampas, there is a deep-seated instinct in his heart ever leading him back to that peculiar mode of life which has become second nature to him. There is an idea in England that Patagonia is as untrodden as the Polar regions. But this is a fallacy. The tides of civilisation are moving slowly westwards, and will so continue to move until they are thrown back by the great natural barrier of the Andes. But as the tide will often fling a little wreath of foam far ahead of its advance--a wreath that disappears for the moment perhaps, but yet its fall has marked a spot that in course of time will be swept over by the rising water; so in Patagonia these few wanderers break away from the settlements upon the coast, and set out with their little store of flour, _fariña_, and _maté_, their troop of horses, and their half-dozen hounds. They say that they are looking for good ground or, as they call it, good camp to settle upon, but few of them actually carry out this final intention. It is the free life that they love, the wild gallops after the ostriches and the guanacos, the sound slumbers under the stars, and the absence of all control.

Such a wanderer was our small friend. He had, he said, two companions, whom he had lost when running ostriches. As we sat there upon our horses and looked from the man to the great clouds of smoke which were arising from the direction of the Fenix, of which he was the miserable author, one felt inclined to throw him in his own fire. For whereas, whenever I or my men lit a smoke, we were careful that it should burn but one bush, and not spread to scar and disfigure the face of the country, this irresponsible little being, who had, as it were, ridden to meet us out of the nowhere, persistently lit his reckless fires among the best grass, so that they burnt huge areas. It was a remarkable, and in its way a painful, reflection that this puny bit of humanity with his box of cheap matches could do more harm in half an hour than he would be likely to be able to repair during a lifetime. The fact is, a fire will burn a very small area upon the pampas near the coast, where there is little for the flames to take hold upon, while here in the high grass, near the Cordillera, it may rage for two or three days, devastating and blackening the landscape.

Rather annoyed with the small man, I directed Barckhausen to ask him why he had lighted so many smokes. He replied that he had done so in order to recall his companions. As the man was, after the fashion of the pampa, our guest, there was nothing more to be said on the matter, but had I foreseen how much trouble his mania for raising smokes was yet to cause us, I should probably have remonstrated with him.

That evening, as we rode into Rosy Camp, we saw a number of flamingos upon the lagoon, and shot an upland goose. The following morning I woke up in the grey of the dawn to see a Cordillera wolf nosing among the ashes of our camp-fire. I shot it, to the great delight of the small man, from whom after breakfast we parted. We had not advanced a mile before the little demon was again sending up a smoke to heaven. Burbury, who met him afterwards, said he believed that he carried a cargo of nothing but matches in order to be able to indulge to the utmost his passion for destroying the country through which he happened to be passing.

On December 7 we arrived above the River de los Antiguos, and, as we were about to descend the _barranca_, saw two columns of smoke rising some two miles off. Two columns of smoke close together were our danger-signal, and meant "Something very wrong, come at once." I was morally certain that they were the work of the small man, whom we had nicknamed "the Snipe," especially as the smokes were lit at a distance from the position of Horsham Camp, and if anything serious had happened, it seemed most probable that the two men left in charge there would have lit their signal-fires on the hill close behind the camp, instead of riding to some distance for that purpose. However, there was nothing for it but to send Scrivenor back, with instructions to show a smoke upon the shore of the lake behind an island in our view if my presence were really required.

While he returned to Horsham Camp, Barckhausen and I rode on towards the _cañadon_ of the River de los Antiguos.

FOOTNOTE:

[19] I believe, as does Dr. Moreno, that a race of Indians, now extinct, once dwelled among the foothills of the Cordillera.