1 62 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: NARRATIVE. 



our materials thus far collected and leave them with our friend, Mr. Halli- 

 day, to be shipped by the first vessel which should call at that port. 



From Gallegos we proceeded to Santa Cruz, and, crossing the Santa 

 Cruz River some twenty-five miles above its mouth, started on a second 

 trip into the interior in search of the Pyrotherium beds of the Ameghinos. 

 For some two hundred miles our course lay up the River Chico, following 

 practically the same route as that by which we had descended that stream 

 on our first trip. In crossing this river at a rather high stage of water our 

 team stalled in the middle of the stream, where we had to leave our wagon 

 standing with the water running half way over the box, while we carried 

 our equipment and supplies to the opposite shore on horseback, and later 

 succeeded in drawing our wagon ashore by attaching picket ropes to the 

 end of the tongue. We spent the succeeding day in overhauling and 

 drying our outfit and supplies. A considerable portion of these had 

 become thoroughly wet while in the river. We were not a little chagrined 

 to find that most of our salt and a considerable portion of our sugar had 

 been dissolved by the water, while there was scant satisfaction afforded 

 by the reflection that, in bulk at least, the loss in salt and sugar had 

 been fully recompensed by the expansion which had taken place in the 

 contents of a case of evaporated apples that chanced to be stored near the 

 bottom of the wagon. Our matches, however, caused us most concern. 

 As for salt, we could still supply ourselves from the lagoons of the pam- 

 pas. Of sugar we still had plenty, for we had started from Santa Cruz 

 with a one-hundred-pound sack. Since neither of us smoked, we did not 

 need many matches, and as we still had a few small boxes of dry ones, we 

 decided to go on with these and dry such as had been wet, in hopes that 

 some of these at least might still be serviceable. In this we were not 

 unsuccessful, and we were, therefore, not without a sufficient supply of 

 those useful articles. 



We crossed the Rio Chico a few miles below the mouth of the Rio 

 Belgrano, just where the wide valley, mentioned in the narrative of our 

 first expedition, enters the river valley from the north and distant about 

 forty miles from the eastern base of the Andes. 



Leaving the river at this point, we laid our course almost due north over 

 the level surface of the broad, open valley, which gradually but rapidly 

 increased in elevation and assumed more the appearance of a high pampa 

 or plain than that of a valley. On the west this valley was enclosed by 



