HUNTING IN THE ANDES. 45 



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that the beauty of environment appeals to some 

 sub-conscious self is certain, for scene after scene not 

 sensibly noticed at the moment of seeing remains 

 clearly etched on the memory. The Patagonian Andes 

 may well be described as "unspeakably grand and 

 terrible," for such is the impression they usually make 

 upon the mind ; but on the day I write of the sun was 

 shining brilliantly and had changed the whole aspect of 

 the scene. For once the formidable summits, 8,000 or 

 9,000 feet high, crowned with snow and clothed about 

 their flanks and spurs with dense black forest-lands, 

 were lit and softened. In the sky there was not a 

 cloud, and far below me the lake, so often storm-tossed, 

 shone like a pool of fathomless blue. 



Although it had been still enough in the valleys, a 

 pretty strong wind was blowing on the heights. A bold 

 escarpment hid me completely from the bulls, and it 

 was not until I was opposite a rock which I had marked 

 as being on a line with them that I peered over. At 

 first I could discover no sign of the wild cattle, but 

 moving cautiously to another coign of vantage I saw 

 one, a great brindled bull, walk slowly into view along a 

 game-track. He was soon followed by a second bull, if 

 anything a larger animal; this latter was an overo, as the 

 Spaniards call a piebald of black and white. The third 

 was not visible. The bulls were about four hundred yards 

 away, but between me and them was a wide outcrop of 

 glacial detritus, among which I crawled towards a 

 boulder, within a hundred yards of which it seemed to 

 me likely the bulls would pass. I was hardly half way 

 to the boulder, when a pair of horns suddenly came in 

 sight. These belonged to an animal lying down lower 

 on the hillside, and which had hitherto been hidden by 



