138 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



bays. For a couple of hours the scenery was 

 as beautiful as it had been during any part of 

 the two days, especially when we looked back 

 at the mass of snow-shrouded peaks. Then the 

 lake opened, the shores became clear of woods, 

 the mountains lower, and near the eastern end, 

 where there were only low rolling hills, we came 

 to the little village of Bariloche. 



Bariloche is a real frontier village. Forty years 

 previously Doctor Moreno had been captured 

 by Indians at this very spot, had escaped from 

 them, and after days of extraordinary hardship 

 had reached safety. He showed us a strange, 

 giant pine-tree, of a kind different from any of 

 our northern cone-bearers, near which the In- 

 dians had camped while he was prisoner with 

 them. He had persuaded the settlers to have 

 this tree preserved, and it is still protected, 

 though slowly dying of old age. The town is 

 nearly four hundred miles from a railway, and 

 the people are of the vigorous, enterprising 

 frontier type. It was like one of our frontier 

 towns in the old-time West as regards the diver- 

 sity in ethnic type and nationality among the 

 citizens. The little houses stood well away 

 from one another on the broad, rough, faintly 

 marked streets. In one we might see a Span- 

 ish family, in another blond Germans or Swiss, 



