14 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: NARRATIVE. 



Argentine friends that after a few days in Buenos Aires we were fully 

 prepared for and anxious to commence our voyage to the south. 



We were constantly urged by all our acquaintances, that, since winter was 

 just setting in, we should do well to postpone our start until the following 

 spring, some even declaring it impossible for us to withstand the rigors of 

 a Patagonian winter. However, we had tented it for many years on the 

 wind-swept plains of Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas, often with 

 the thermometer far below zero, and had no uneasiness as to our ability 

 to survive successfully whatever blizzards Patagonia might have in store 

 for us. 



Having completed our arrangements for leaving Buenos Aires, we spent 

 the remaining days left to us before actually starting on our trip south- 

 ward in examining whatever of interest was to be found in and about the 

 city, and in paying a visit to La Plata and its really splendid museum. 

 Here we got a glimpse of that extinct mammalian fauna, in the remains 

 of which we were soon to find the rocks of Patagonia so marvellously rich. 



It was with no little pleasure that we welcomed the i6th of April, the 

 day set for our sailing for the south coast. While our stop in Buenos 

 Aires had been pleasant, yet it had been more prolonged than we had 

 anticipated, and we were really quite anxious to be again under way. 

 We had been told the evening previous that the Villarino, the vessel 

 which was to carry us south, would leave promptly at ten o'clock on the 

 morning of the sixteenth, and we were especially cautioned to be on 

 board early. It is needless to say that this was scarcely necessary. 

 However, at nine o'clock of the morning in question we were on board. 

 Then began a tedious wait of several hours, so that it was late in the 

 afternoon before our little vessel cast loose and steamed slowly out of the 

 "Boca" on her way to the south coast of Patagonia and the Fuegian 

 ports. What a feeling of relief it was to be on our way once more. 

 Slowly we steamed out along the channel into the River Plate. The day 

 was an ideal one, even for Buenos Aires, where so many days are ideal. 

 The mild warmth of the sun softened the temperature of a crisp autunm 

 breeze, which scarcely sufficed to produce a ripple on the surface of the 

 river. The latter appeared like a great mirror, or, as its name implies, 

 a mighty stream of silver, moving slowly seaward. Every molecule 

 throughout its sixty miles of breadth acted with such unison, that from its 

 bosom there was reflected an exact image of the shipping at anchor in the 



