LITMIR.BIZ

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the colony of Trelew is to-day in a more or less flourishing condition and very Welsh, a grave danger menaces it. In fifty years time how will it be with the racial element? Will there be as many Welsh then as now? I fear not, and the result is difficult to foresee. The danger takes the form of the dark-eyed Argentine maiden, who is rather apt to "make roast meat of the heart" of the Welsh youth. While the Welsh girls do not take very readily to Spanish-speaking husbands, the Welsh boys fall very much in love with the daughters of the South. So it is to be concluded that the language difficulty will settle itself, or, at any rate, become more easy of arrangement with each succeeding generation. If the girl you love speaks only Spanish, it is quite obvious you must learn Spanish in order to be able to talk to her, and, under the circumstances, you will not find the task a very hard one. Then children nearly always show a preference for the mother's tongue and speech in contradistinction to that of the father. Probably, if these prophecies were uttered in Trelew, the men of to-day would scoff at them. But onlookers often see most of the game. In 1865 the Welsh, in deep sorrow, left their own land to escape the tyranny of the English law, as they considered it, which sought to force upon them the English language. Their desire was to preserve their own tongue. And flying from Scylla they will fall (and to some degree have already fallen) a prey to Charybdis. But it is a very pleasant Charybdis, typified by a dark-haired, dark-eyed, lissom maiden, who will bear them sons no longer of the old pure-bred Welsh stock, but of a mixed race. And so the effort of the forefathers, who fared overseas to found a new home, shall be made null and void.

      Now and again it is the fate of frontier towns to be stirred to their depths by some incursion from the old world they have left behind them. Trelew was still recovering from such an experience when we arrived there. The settlement, in short, had been suffering from a plague of lords. First appeared an aristocrat, who wished to travel in the interior, and he bought up horses with a lavish hand, and generally made preparations which, no doubt, filled the purses of the inhabitants. This gentleman's projected tour, however, fell through for some reason, and he departed whence he had come into the unknown world outside of Trelew's daily cognisance.

      Presently after him followed a second "lord," who gave his name as Lord Reed, and who was received with open arms by an enthusiastic community. A run of lords appeared to be setting in, and was regarded by the Trelewians as a distinct dispensation in their favour, which it was their happy duty to work out thoroughly to their own advantage. By some mistake Lord Reed had left his ready money behind him, and, therefore, borrowed pretty extensively from the kind-hearted Welshmen. After a time Lord Reed vanished, and upon inquiry being made it was discovered that no such title as Lord Reed was to be found in the Peerage of Great Britain. When this fact became established, more than one Welshman is reported to have gone out after Lord Reed with the family gun, and, I believe, he was finally caught with a lasso! But the incident was not without its bearing on our personal affair, for the Bank of Trelew would have nothing whatever to say to my Cook's letter of credit. In vain I recited my credentials, and gave such proof of genuineness as was in my power to give. They would none of me. The bank evidently argued that it was easier to pretend that you were a bona-fide traveller than that you were a lord. Lord Reed too; it was rather a taking title. I could not at first understand where the humour of the question, put to me by several people I met in Trelew, of "Are you not Lord Prichard?" came in. In fact, it was disconcerting; but later on, when I heard the above story, I did not grudge the colonists any fun that might be got out of the situation, for certainly Lord Reed, taken all in all, had been far from a subject of pure amusement to them.

      We remained six days at Trelew making those last few purchases which were necessary with the small stock of extra money that I had left myself as a margin. It was directly owing to Lord Reed that I finally set forth into the interior with but thirty dollars in Argentine notes and large drafts on Cook and Son, which were quite useless. Although the wilderness does not seem a likely field for spending money, yet, before our travels were at an end, I was glad to sell horses to supply the needs of our party.

      The journey which lay before us to Lake Buenos Aires was about six hundred miles in length, and this distance might be subdivided into three stages: the first, from Trelew to Bahia Camerones, where the expedition became complete; the second, from Bahia Camerones to the Lakes Musters and Colhué; and the third, to Lake Buenos Aires itself. My instructions gave me an entirely free hand, within reasonable limits, as to the number of men I might take with me.

      I had from the first been convinced that the smallest number possible would also be, in our case, the wisest. The immense extent of the country to be traversed, and the difficulties which must inevitably lie in our way to hinder and delay us, as well as the practical emptiness of the country, which requires that an expedition shall be self-supporting, were salient facts; and our plans had to be made and modified in relation to these facts. The mobility of the party was the main point to aim at. Hence it was necessary to cut down the personnel of the expedition to as low a number as possible, and it was further most important to have plenty of horses and to spare.

      The difficulty of feeding several men when travelling through such a country was obvious, and therefore not to be thought of, as, besides the four horses each individual needed for riding, the extra animals for carrying provision and bedding, clothing, tents, &c. had to be taken into account. No pack-horse should be allowed to carry his load two days consecutively, and, in fact, one day's work in three is enough. If waggons are taken, each should be allowed three teams of six horses each.

      With such ideas in view, those arrangements were made which, in fact, enabled us to cover the distances we achieved. Any expedition of this sort is killing work for the horses, and it stands greatly to Burbury's credit that we lost but one out of nearly sixty during the months we spent in Patagonia, and that one was a colt that died of eating poison-shrub.

      There is not the slightest doubt that the policy that spells success in Patagonian travel is summed up in the words, "Cut down your men and your stores, and take enough horses to enable you to move lightly and rapidly."

      On September 21 we left Trelew in the afternoon. The weather was magnificent. Our caravan at this period consisted of a couple of waggons as well as the horses. Two estancieros, Messrs. Greenshields and Haddock, accompanied us, as our way led past their farms. I sent the waggons ahead and rode on afterwards with Burbury and Humphrey Jones senior. When we came to the place fixed on for our first camp we found the men had gone on, for there was no water there. We pushed forward in the dark, and presently the fire of the encampment glimmered out in front of us; it seemed to be quite near, but it took a good while to reach. We heard an occasional fox, and as we sat round the fire a few birds passed in the dark, calling. The first night in camp is like the first night at sea, a gloomy time.

      THE FIRST GUANACO

      The next day we again had a bright sun with a strong west wind. We chased some pampa foxes and an ostrich (Rhea darwini) and killed two of the former. Jones and Burbury caught a cavy (Dolichotis patagonica). So we marched on over the rolling downs day after day, sometimes catching a glimpse of the sea, sometimes journeying across pampas where the far horizons met in pale blue sky and puffed white clouds above, and below grass and endless scrub. We saw Cayenne plover (Vanellus cayennensis) at an early stage of our travels.

      THE START OF OUR LONG TREK

      I have already mentioned the herds of guanaco that roam the interior. This animal belongs distinctively to South America, and is to be found nowhere else in the world. Darwin writes of it as follows: "The guanaco, or wild llama, is the characteristic quadruped of the plains of Patagonia.... It is an elegant animal in a state of nature, with a long slender neck and fine legs." In colour the guanaco is of a golden-brown with white underparts, the hair upon the sides being somewhat long and fleecy. Enormous herds of from three to five hundred live upon the pampas, and we were aware that we should chiefly depend for meat on those we might chance to shoot during many months to come.

      One evening, when I was riding ahead with the troop of horses, I saw my first guanaco.

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