1 68 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : NARRATIVE. 



The locality chosen for my solitary resting place during the night proved 

 also to have been in times past a favorite encampment for the Indians. 

 Scattered about over the ground were numerous fragments of broken 

 pottery, stone scrapers, drills and arrow points. 



On the following day I examined a number of small exposures in the 

 sedimentary deposits for fossils and returned to camp in the afternoon. 



The following morning, with a fresh horse, I started to explore the country 

 to the northward. Crossing the main valley of Spring Creek, I ascended 

 a high ridge on the opposite side. The surface of this ridge, which at 

 this place was some five miles in width, increased rapidly in elevation to 

 the northward and was covered over by numerous small round hills, 

 chiefly composed of fine sand and gravel, but with many large polished 

 or angular blocks of granite, syenite, gneiss and other crystalline rocks 

 of unusual size, frequently attaining to a weight of several tons. The 

 whole aspect of the deposit was such as to suggest that the materials 

 could have been transported to and deposited in their present resting place 

 only by ice. Continuing my journey through these glacial hillocks, I came 

 finally, at a distance of about five miles, to the crest of a high escarpment 

 overlooking the deep, broad valley of Arroyo Gio, lying east of a small 

 lake bearing the same name. Following westward along the crest of this 

 escarpment, it was found to increase rapidly in elevation and from a par- 

 ticularly advantageous point I got my first view of the eastern extremity 

 of Lake Pueyrredon, of which at that time I believed myself to be the 

 discoverer, and which in a short paper I subsequently called Lake Prince- 

 ton, in honor of Princeton University. It had, however, been discovered 

 during the same season, but a few months earlier, by Senor von Platen, an 

 engineer of the Argentine Boundary Commission. Though Lake Prince- 

 ton has priority of publication, I gladly relinquish it in favor of Pueyr- 

 redon, the name given by the Argentine commission after a vessel in the 

 navy of that country. To Seiior von Platen belongs the credit for the dis- 

 covery of this magnificent lake, with a length of fifty miles and an 

 average breadth of from five to ten oiiles. 



Descending to the bottom of the valley, which lay some two thousand 

 feet below the crest of the bluff, I continued in a northwesterly direction, 

 to examine what appeared to be a bad-land area, distant some ten miles 

 from the foot of the bluff and in about the middle of the valley. These 

 bad lands proved to be the bluffs of the Rio Blanco, a small stream flow- 



