CHAPTER II. 



HUNTING-DAYS IN THE CORDILLERA OF THE ANDES. 



THE cordillera of the Andes is connected with some 

 of 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 pro- 

 duce from his inner consciousness 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 



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