CHAPTER II. 

 HUNTING-DAYS IN THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES. 



' I ^HE Cordillera of the Andes is connected with some of 

 JL my earliest recollections, for my youthful knowledge of 

 geography was supposed to be promoted by drawing from 

 memory presentments of Great Britain and Ireland or one 

 of the continents. The maps on the wall were rolled up, 

 and each small boy was left with a sheet of paper, a black 

 pencil and a red pencil, to produce from his inner con- 

 sciousness a chart of the land to which his fancy at the 

 moment attracted him. On such occasions I always, unless 

 definitely forbidden, exercised my ingenuity on the South 

 American continent, which gave scope in more ways than 

 one to the play of the imagination. Its contour was familiar, 

 and it was safe to put in one river after another, running 

 from west to east at irregular intervals all down the map ; 

 a fishbone of red represented the Andes, and here came 

 the touch of glamour tucked away somewhere among 

 their spurs I was invariably particular to mark in two 

 names of old romance, the one Manoa, the other El Dorado. 

 I did not then guess that in years to come I should make 

 a close acquaintance with a part of that continent. 



I crossed and recrossed the southern portion of it more 

 than once, and spent many months wandering among the 

 foothills of the Patagonian cordillera, from Lake Buenos 

 Aires in the north to Lake Argentine in the south, gener- 

 ally on horseback, but sometimes penetrating deeper into 





