104 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



own people again. Escape was impossible: to 

 have revealed his true feelings would have ex- 

 posed him to instant cruel death. To take kindly 

 to the savage way of life, outwardly at least, was 

 now his only course. With cheerful countenance 

 he went forth on long hunting expeditions in the 

 depth of winter, exposed all day to bitter cold and 

 furious storms of wind and sleet, cursed and 

 beaten for his awkwardness by his fellow-hunts- 

 men; at night stretching his aching limbs on the 

 wet stony ground, with the rug they permitted 

 him to wear for only covering. When the hunters 

 were unlucky it was customary to slaughter a 

 horse for food. The wretched animal would be 

 first drawn up by its hind legs and suspended 

 from the branches of a great tree, so that all the 

 blood might be caught, for this is the chief deli- 

 cacy of the Patagonian savage. An artery would 

 be opened in the neck and the spouting blood 

 caught in large earthen vessels; then, when the 

 savages gathered round to the feast, poor Damian 

 would be with them to drink his share of the ab- 

 horred liquid, hot from the heart of the still living 

 brute. In autumn, when the apples were fer- 

 mented in pits dug in the earth and lined with 

 horse hides to prevent the juice from escaping, he 

 would take part, as became a true savage, in the 

 grand annual drinking bouts. The women would 

 first go round carefully gathering up all knives, 

 spears, bolas, or other weapons dangerous in the 

 hands of drunken men, to carry them away into 



