

30 HUNTING CAMPS. 



(I have preferred this form of the word as it more 

 nearly approaches to the name as locally spoken) 

 extended in its range to the Atlantic, and some few 

 animals were said to haunt the highlands near the 

 outlet of the Rio Deseado. But as far as my own 

 experience goes I am inclined to believe that 

 the guemal does not stray far from the immediate 

 neighbourhood of the Andes. 



In Patagonia itself very little was known of this 

 animal ; in fact, for a long time I met no single 

 individual there who had shot one, though among my 

 gauchos, a Welshman named Jones had once caught 

 sight of a buck running along a spur of the mountains 

 near the colony of " The 16th October," a settlement 

 lying to the north-west of the country, some seven 

 hundred miles north of Lake Buenos Aires. 



The desire to kill something is, in the hackneyed 

 phrase, the dominant aim of an Englishman's life, but 

 when the creature he wishes to kill has rarely been 

 obtained by any other man the desire increases in 

 strength. Give him, further, months of anticipation, 

 and then three weeks of fruitless hunting, and his 

 eagerness will probably grow out of all proportion to 

 the end in view. Yet, surely, it is this very lack of 

 proportion that lends to sport its powerful dominion 

 over its votaries, who, though probably in the main 

 reasonable beings, become so much in earnest while in 

 pursuit that they have at such times only room for the 

 single idea. Such was the state of mind at which I 

 had arrived in the early days of that December. 



I had tried by every means in my power to persuade 

 the Indian guide, who was with us at that period, 

 to remain and hunt with me in the foothills, but, though 



