96 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



much interested in was a man named Sosa. He 

 was famed for an almost preternatural keenness 

 of sight, had great experience of the wild life of 

 the frontier, and was always employed as a scout 

 in times of Indian warfare. He was also a cele- 

 brated horse-thief. His horse-stealing propensi- 

 ties were ineradicable, and had to be winked at on 

 account of his usefulness; so that he was left in 

 a great measure to his own devices. He was, in 

 fact, a fox hired to act as watch-dog to the colony 

 in times of danger ; and though the victims of his 

 numberless thefts had always been anxious to 

 wreak personal vengeance on him, his vulpine sa- 

 gacity had so far enabled him to escape them all. 

 My interest in him arose from the fact that he was 

 the son of a man whose name figures in Argen- 

 tine history. Sosa's father was an illiterate 

 gaucho a man of the plains possessing faculties 

 so keen that to ordinary beings his feats of vision 

 and hearing, and his sense of direction on the 

 monotonous pampas, seemed almost miraculous. 

 As he also possessed other qualities suitable to a 

 leader of men in a semi-savage region, he rose in 

 time to the command of the southwestern frontier, 

 where his numerous victories over the Indians 

 gave him so great a prestige that the jealousy of 

 the Dictator Rosas the Nero of South America, 

 as he was called by his enemies was roused, and 

 at his instigation Sosa was removed by means of 

 a cup of poison. The son, though in all other re- 

 spects a degenerate being, inherited his father's 



