LITMIR.BIZ

      MR. LANGLEY'S ESTANCIA ON THE ROAD TO BAHIA CAMERONES

      On the 25th we passed a farm that was quite English in appearance—wire-fences enclosing sheep and lambs on downs that descended in undulations to the sea. By evening we were in broken country patched with red rock. The horses were rather troublesome; Hughes, one of the Gauchos, rode an untamed mare and gave a good exhibition of horsemanship. Among the sheep and the hills an Indian rode down from the high ground; he wore a poncho of red and black, tinted like autumn trees. His camp consisted of a little fire of three or four sticks, by which squatted his china. He took his place beside her, and watched our line of waggons and horses wind away out of sight.

      From Trelew to Camerones the country was for the most part like the bare deer-forests of the Scottish Highlands, brown bracken being replaced by espinilla (thorn, a general term) and the green shrub called by the Welshmen "poison-bush," the same blue sky above, the same occasional lochlike lagoons. For the first two days or more the pampas stretched to the rim of the horizon, empty and somewhat harsh even in the sunlight. Now and then mirages like squadrons of cavalry hovered along the edges of them. A few guanaco and ostriches, a sprinkling of cavy, and many pampa foxes seemed to eke out an existence there. It was a land of vast prospects, a scene laid forth with a sort of noble parsimony, which—as in the case of a miser so miserly that for the very exceedingness of his vice you respect him—was yet stupendous in its one or two grandly simple salient features, and drove the spectator to that admiration which verges upon fear. Picture one such characteristic vision of Patagonia. As far as eye could reach a spread of wind-weary grass, roofed by a wind-blown sky, an eagle poised far off, a dot in the upper air. Nothing more.

      A man alone within this vast setting seemed puny. Lost here, without a horse, he would be the most helpless of things created. It was across this gigantic primordialism that our way led us. Three times we made our camp upon the bare pampas, three times in one or other of the many cañadones before reaching Bahia Camerones. You may be voyaging at an easy jog over the pampa, seeing the land roll apparently quite level to the horizon, when suddenly you come upon a spatter of white sand, a track leading between the shoulders of the pampa, you dive down and are lost to sight in a moment; then, perhaps, for four miles or for fourteen you are riding a couple of hundred feet below the level spread of the pampa, and as you pass the guanaco on the cliff tops watch you uneasily. To be lost in such a land is the simplest possible matter.

      On the 27th we arrived at the Estancia Lochiel, where Mr. Greenshields most kindly entertained us. This estancia is situated at the head of a cañadon, which drops away to the sea eight leagues distant. It consists of a small colony of wooden houses with corrugated iron roofs. The Lochiel Sheep Farming Company, of which Mr. Greenshields is manager, have 15,000 sheep and forty square leagues of camp. "Camp," you must understand, in Patagonia means land.

      The day after our arrival Scrivenor and Burbury accompanied Mr. Frederick Haddock to his farm, eight leagues away, in order to bring back the horses I had purchased by contract in Trelew. I remained behind as Mr. Greenshields' guest, for a puma was reported by the shepherd to have killed five sheep upon the edge of the farm during the previous night.

      Macdonald, the Scotch shepherd, Barckhausen and I set out to see if we could find the puma. On my way to the spot I shot my first guanaco. He appeared upon the skyline doing sentinel, possibly against the very puma we were after. We rode under the hill on which the guanaco was watching, and he began to move uneasily. At the bend of the hill was a small hollow, and, as we rode through this, I told my companions to ride on and threw them my cabresto (leading-rope of a horse). I slid off the horse and crawled up the hill. Upon the bare face of it was a thicket of poison-bush, and into this I ultimately made my way. The sentinel guanaco was there above me, stretching out his long neck, and every now and then giving his high neighing laugh. When one hundred and twenty yards off he saw me, and I had to snap him quickly. Swing went his neck, and away he galloped with his swift, uneven gait. I thought I had missed him, when, to my delight, he began to slacken speed, and finally lay down in an ungainly attitude, his long neck crooked in a curve in front of him. I crawled nearer, and up he got and was off again. I ran down to my horse and mounted, and Macdonald let Tom, my hound, loose. We galloped the guanaco up. He was very sick indeed, and inside of three hundred yards Tom pulled him down again. The Mauser bullet had hit him two inches behind the shoulder about half way down the body. It had not come out. How he managed to get so far I cannot understand. We then went onwards, and saw by the way several herds of guanaco. I did not shoot any more, however, as they were uncommonly tame, and there was, of course, mutton at the estancia. We reached the spot on the hills above the puma's kill, low thorn bushes, vast mountain and blue sea, but no sign of the puma was to be found. These animals will often travel four or five leagues after a kill.