THE PAMPAS OF PATAGONIA. 13 



to the sportsman, cannot, however, be ignored, 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 concern- 

 ing the real and the artificial in sport, by which he defines 

 the real as " the pursuit of the perfectly wild animal on its 

 own primeval and ancestral ground, as yet unannexed and 

 unappropriated in any shape or way by man ; where, there- 

 fore, no permission can be asked, granted, or refused ; where 

 the wild illimitable expanse is free to all, human or animal, 

 and the first come is the first served." In its Patagonian 



