198 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS: NARRATIVE. 



ceeded in breaking out several teeth and otherwise mutilating its then 

 comparatively helpless victim, before one of his companions could rush 

 up and despatch the thoroughly angered brute, which, after it had been 

 killed, was found to be a very old male. 



I had not travelled far on the morning after parting company with my 

 companions to the eastward of Lake Pueyrredon, when it started raining. 

 As the hours passed, the rain increased, so that along the foothills the 

 bottoms of the usually dry canons were soon occupied by swift-flowing 

 streams, while the exposures over the slopes were made slippery by the 

 softened clay. These conditions sufficed to make travelling through the 

 foothills especially difficult, and, after a time, I was compelled to descend 

 to the plains, which I reached just at the eastern extremity of Crystal 

 Lake, a small but most beautiful body of water. Having reached the 

 plain, I steered my course for Mt. Belgrano. The surface of the pampa 

 was almost level and travel comparatively easy, until I came to a deep 

 depression lying a little to the eastward of the mountain. I have else- 

 where spoken of the prevalence of such depressions throughout the plains 

 of Patagonia, but in depth this one surpassed any with which I met during 

 all my wanderings in that country. My aneroid gave it a maximum 

 depth of nine hundred feet beneath the nearly level surface of the plain, 

 which extended southward from the west end of the depression. From 

 crest to crest of the bluffs on the north and south its width was perhaps 

 three miles, while its easterly and westerly dimensions were considerably 

 greater, and the bluffs to the eastward, though still high, were much lower 

 than those farther to the west. 



The rain that had set in in the morning continued to increase through- 

 out the day and, with the falling temperature toward evening, it changed 

 to snow. Late at night I camped on the almost barren plain which 

 extends southwestward from the foot of Mt. Belgrano. Here I passed 

 the night without the shelter of a tent or even so much as the pro- 

 tection of a bush. When I awoke the following morning, I could feel 

 the heavy weight of the six or eight inches of snow that covered alike 

 the surrounding plain and my tarpaulin. On thrusting my head from 

 beneath the latter the sight which greeted me was, to say the least, any- 

 thing but cheerful. The storm, so far from abating, had increased in fury 

 and presented all the aspects of a full-fledged Wyoming blizzard. The 

 temperature had fallen considerably during the night and a bitterly cold 



