52 PATAGONIAN EXPEDITIONS : NARRATIVE. 



tions. I was most hospitably received and invited to make myself at 

 home for as long a period as I saw fit. 



Killik Aike lies at the bottom of a deep gulch, which enters the Gallegos 

 River from the north. At its mouth this gulch is not more than three 

 hundred yards in width, but at a short distance above it opens out 

 into a wide basin, entirely surrounded by the high and level plain, 

 which, however, is marked by numerous deep indentations, scooped 

 out by as many small and usually dry water courses, tributary to the 

 main basin. 



I was not slow in accepting the invitation to make myself at home, and 

 immediately unsaddled my horse and turned him out to graze with the 

 other horses about the estancia. Then, after refreshing myself with a 

 hearty meal of meat, vegetables and coffee, I set out for the beach, only 

 a hundred yards from the house, where the foreman assured me there 

 were to be found in the rocks many bones and teeth. I had scarcely 

 clambered down over the edge of the three or four yards of silt, which 

 forms the bottom of the small tributary valley, when at my feet, in the 

 solid tosca, I discovered the jaws and teeth of a small rodent, Procardia 

 elliptica. These were soon taken up and carefully wrapped in cotton 

 batting. Turning to my right I proceeded to walk along the foot of the 

 cliff, which fronts the river and increases rapidly in height, until, within a 

 short distance, it rises perpendicularly to the plain above at an altitude of 

 four hundred and fifty feet. I had gone but a short distance when my 

 eye caught the reflection given off by the polished enamel of a tooth pro- 

 truding from the surface, at a short distance from the base of the cliff. 

 Upon examination this proved to be one of a complete series belonging 

 to an almost perfect skull of Icochilus, a small ungulate mammal with 

 hypsodont teeth, belonging to the Typotheria, which, though represented 

 by numerous genera and species in these deposits, has left no descendants 

 among the present fauna of South America, or elsewhere. The discovery 

 of more or less complete skulls and skeletons of other animals followed 

 in rapid succession. Among the more remarkable may be noted Nesodon, 

 an ungulate mammal approaching in size some of the smaller rhinoce- 

 roses ; Astrapotherium, another ungulate, and the largest and most for- 

 midable of the entire fauna, with its enormously developed upper and 

 lower canine teeth and powerful posterior molars resembling those of the 

 modern rhinoceros ; Diadiaphorus, the horse-like ungulate, which has so 



