HUNTING IN THE ANDES. 37 



who had shot one, though among my gauchos, a Welsh- 

 man named Jones had once caught sight of a buck running 

 along a spur of the mountains near the colony of " The 

 i6th 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 he was will- 

 ing to accompany me along the shores of the lake, nothing 

 could induce him to venture into even the outermost ring 

 of the mountains. Following his directions, however, I 

 spent a number of days riding through all the likely defiles 

 which sweep from the ridges to the level of Lake Buenos 

 Aires. I had shot several guanaco and a couple of ostriches, 

 and had patrolled the full length of the eastern lake-shore, 

 without discovering so much as the track of a guemal, 

 although the Indian, who had in the interval taken his de- 

 parture, had pointed out this particular area as the place 

 where from time to time his tribesmen had killed deer. 



Apart from its value as a natural history specimen, 

 the meat of a deer would have been very welcome in camp, 



