WANDERINGS OF THE INDIANS 133 



ripened on the former estates of the old Jesuit missions. 

 The clusters of bamboo on the Cordillera provided the 

 lances of the Aucas and Tehuelches. 



Lake Nahuel Huapi is the first stage of the busiest 

 of the routes used by the Indians. It came from 

 the lower Santa Cruz, went up the Rio Chico, and 

 from there northward followed the foot of the Cordillera. 

 D'Orbigny was told about it : " All the Indians who 

 live near the Andes go along the eastern foot of the 

 mountains in their journeys, because they find water 

 there, whereas they would find none if they went 

 by the coast ; in that way they travel from the Straits 

 of Magellan to the Rio Negro." The Indian track 

 only left the sub-Andean depression between the 

 Rio Chico and Lake Buenos Aires, in the district 

 where the high basalt mesetias extend as far as the 

 Cordillera, and on the Pampa of the Sanguerr. 



From Lake Nahuel Huapi the Indians of the south 

 descended the Limay and the Rio Negro, and reached 

 the island of Choele Choel, some 230 miles above Carmen, 

 where they met the Aucas and Puelches. There they 

 exchanged their guanacos hides for woollen fabrics 

 made by the Aucas. Choele Choel was the only large, 

 purely indigenous market ; the whites never visited 

 it. Geographical reasons fixed the site of this market 

 of the nomads. In the latitude of Choele Choel the 

 Rio Negro approaches the Colorado and the archi- 

 pelago of the Sierras of the southern Pampa, which 

 mark so many stages on the routes from the Pampa 

 to the Andes. To the south the coast-route, less 

 exposed to snow than the sub-Andean track, began 

 from Choele Choel. The Indians followed this to reach 

 the Gulf of San Jorge and the Santa Cruz in winter, 

 during the rainy season. Darwin notes the importance 

 of the site and the ford of Choele Choel. Villarino 

 had suspected it, and had, as early as 1782, pleaded 

 for the building of a fort there. By holding this 

 point, he said, they could prevent the tribes from 



