58 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



the rise has been rapid and uniform. The pebbles are of 

 all sizes up to a foot in diameter, at least three fourths 

 of them being various kinds of trap, of different colors, 

 red, black and brown, and of all sorts of texture. 



Where they have lain on the surface they are as pitted 

 as though marked by smallpox, and remind one of the 

 surface of a meteor, which, as it came hurtling through the 

 air, has by the friction and unequal resistance of the sur- 

 face been unequally melted and pitted. On these stones 

 the reverse has been the process, for as they lay on the 

 ground, the wind carrying fine sand as an abrading material 

 has worn on the surfaces, the softer feldspar crystals yielding 

 most, leaving the top covered with hosts of pits. On some of 

 the larger and less movable stones, even the direction of the 

 prevailing winds is indicated by the wear in the surfaces. 



After packing two boxes of the material we had gotten 

 together, we hitched in next morning and started for 

 Camerones, which proved farther than we had expected, 

 so that it was just getting dark as we pulled in. Like so 

 many of the coast towns the place is wholly without water, 

 except such as can be caught in cisterns, and this is used 

 only for drinking purposes. So carefully is it cherished 

 that though it had recently rained, they would not sell us 

 any for our horses to drink, but directed us to a pool "half 

 a mile outside the town." In the dark we could not find 

 this, until we subsidized a small boy who led us a good two 

 miles to the nearest drinking place. Finally, however, 

 the horses were watered and fed, and we went to the hotel 

 of the town. Camerones is one of the larger port towns, 

 having a population of some 200. Here we appreciated 

 why it cost 45 cents to get a shirt washed, and even then it 

 looked as if it had been done in a pint of water. Next 

 morning we shipped our two boxes to Buenos Aires; but 

 while they got that far and into the hands of the steamship 

 company for the United States, that is as far as we have 

 ever been able to trace them. We also got provisions, hav- 



