THE PAMPAS OF PATAGONIA. 3 



for he is an intolerable nuisance, gnawing through the 

 sogas of the horses and thieving in so inveterate a fashion, 

 that hardly a camp can be made without its occupants 

 paying toll of their belongings to his tribe. Nothing 

 escapes the fox's voracious appetite ; a raw hide, a 

 saddle, natural history specimens even when cured with 

 arsenical soap, all if left within reach of a fox's leap are 

 pulled down and devoured. 



But as numerous as the foxes, and far more apparent 

 to the traveller's eye, are the guanaco. The herds of 

 this strange animal are distributed over the whole area 

 of the pampas, and though infinitely more plentiful in 

 certain favoured districts, such as the vast tablelands to 

 the south-west of Lago Buenos Aires, are to be met 

 with in greater or less numbers in almost every part. 

 Exactly as the caribou upon the same degree of latitude 

 north, so is the guanaco to the south, the prop of life to 

 the nomadic tribes. The guanaco do not, however, 

 migrate en masse ; they only move in the case of isolated 

 herds from their summer haunts on the high tablelands 

 to winter in the river valleys or about the shores of the 

 lakes. 



If the sporting qualities of an animal are to be judged 

 along the usual lines, the guanaco must take high place. 

 This somewhat dogmatic statement presupposes that 

 the hunter's ideal is a chase in which he can see his 

 quarry in the open, can match his intelligence against 

 its instinct, and win or lose the day on his merits. 

 Beyond this, again, there is the definition of Mr. Bromley 

 Davenport concerning the real and the artificial in sport, 

 by which he defines the real as "the pursuit of the 

 perfectly wild animal on its own primaeval and ancestral 

 ground, as yet unannexed and unappropriated in any 



B 2 



