32 HUNTING CAMPS. 



and, later in the afternoon, found for the first time the 

 tracks of a guemal in a gully near the lake, but failed 

 to catch a sight of the deer itself. 



About a week after one of my men observed a guemal 

 buck and some does while making camp near Mount 

 Piramide, but crossing to windward they made off. 

 Near this mountain, during the previous year, my 

 friend Mr. Waag, of the Argentine Boundary Com- 

 mission, had shot several guemal. I was therefore 

 rather disappointed at my vain search, but thought it 

 not unlikely that the fact of being hunted by Mr. 

 Waag's party had driven the deer away from that 

 particular spot. I hunted, riding perseveringly over 

 the ground pointed out by the Indian, for nearly a 

 whole month without success before I discovered a 

 district where they were plentiful ; this was a high strip 

 of tableland between the rivers de Los Antiguos and 

 Jeinemeni, which flow into Lake Buenos Aires from 

 the southern mountains. 



To reach these mountains entailed a sixty miles' ride, 

 which I undertook with one of my men, and passing 

 round the great lake we came, on the second day, to the 

 Rio de Los Antiguos, and turned along its bank into a 

 valley which seemed to run between frowning cliffs into 

 the cordillera. After following the valley for some 

 distance we forded to the western bank of the river and 

 pitched camp, on a spot clear of thicket and close to a 

 forest that looked very green to my eyes after our long 

 journey over the pampas. 



That same evening, close to the camp, I found the 

 tracks of a guemal that had come down to drink at the 

 river. It had been stalked and attacked by a puma and 

 her cub, but had managed to get away into the woods, 



