34 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



deepened, and there was nothing in the cup to in- 

 flame the fancy. But it was tonic. My rides were 

 often to the hills, or terraced uplands, outside of 

 the level valley; but my description of that gray 

 desolate solitude and its effects on me must be 

 reserved for a later chapter, when I shall have 

 dropped once for all this thread of narrative, 

 slight and loosely held as it is. In the present 

 chapter and the succeeding one I shall treat of 

 the aspects of nature in the valley itself. For I 

 did not remain too long at any one point, but dur- 

 ing the autumn, winter, and spring months I re- 

 sided at various points, and visited the mouth of 

 the river and adjacent plains on both sides, then 

 went up river again to a distance of something 

 over a hundred miles. 



The valley, in this space, does not vary much 

 in appearance; it may be described as the level 

 bed of an ancient river, five or six miles wide, cut 

 out in the plateau, with the existing river a swift, 

 deep stream, two hundred to three hundred yards 

 broad serpentining along its middle. But it 

 does not keep to the middle; in its windings it 

 approaches now the north, now the south, plateau, 

 and at some points touches the extreme limits of 

 the valley, and even cuts into the bank-like front 

 of the high land, which forms a sheer cliff above 

 the current, in some spots a hundred feet high. 



The river was certainly miscalled Cusar-leofu, 

 or Black Eiver, by the aborigines, unless the 

 epithet referred only to its swiftness and danger- 



