AT LAST, PATAGONIA! 5 



whose footprints seen on the sea-shore amazed 

 Magellan and his men, and won for it the name 

 of Patagonia. There, too, far away in the in- 

 terior, was the place called Trapalanda, and the 

 spirit-guarded lake, on whose margin rose the 

 battlements of that mysterious city, which many 

 have sought and none have found. 



It was not, however, the fascination of old 

 legends that drew me, nor the desire of the desert, 

 for not until I had seen it, and had tasted its 

 flavor, then, and on many subsequent occasions, 

 did I know how much its solitude and desolation 

 would be to me, what strange knowledge it would 

 teach, and how enduring its effect would be on 

 my spirit. Not these things, but the passion of 

 the ornithologist took me. Many of the winged 

 wanderers with which I had been familiar from 

 childhood in La Plata were visitors, occasional or 

 regular, from this gray wilderness of thorns. In 

 some cases they were passengers, seen only when 

 they stooped to rest their wings, or heard far off 

 1 1 wailing their way from cloud to cloud, ' ' impelled 

 by that mysterious thought -baffling faculty, so un- 

 like all other phenomena in its manifestations as 

 to give it among natural things something of the 

 supernatural. Some of these wanderers, more es- 

 pecially such as possess only a partial or limited 

 migration, I hoped to meet again in Patagonia, 

 singing their summer songs, and breeding in their 

 summer haunts. It was also my hope to find some 

 new species, some bird as beautiful, let us say, as 



