SHOEING HORSES. 97 



a single room. The roof was of rough boards with a hole left in one 

 corner to permit the escape of the smoke from the open fire beneath, 

 though in truth the greater part of it remained within, entirely filling the 

 room. A small table of rough boards, one or two stools and a few tin 

 vessels were the only articles of furniture of which this house could boast 

 It was not nearly so well furnished or comfortable as many of the toldas 

 belonging to Indians of pure breed with which we had met while in Pata- 

 gonia. I could not avoid wondering, as I sat and surveyed the poverty 

 stricken and filthy nature of everything about me, what had brought this 

 apparently well-bred man to such perfect contentment with his miserable 

 surroundings. When I learned subsequently that he was not only from 

 a good family, but had enjoyed the further advantages of a university 

 training, my wonder was increased rather than diminished. Surely from 

 a university life to this he was leading in Patagonia was a long step, but 

 he appeared, except for his refined language, so completely in harmony 

 with his present environment that I doubt not he had taken to them of 

 his own volition and found in the half savage life he was leading a certain 

 satisfaction, though little, I fancy, of comfort or pleasure. To me he 

 furnished a striking example of the ease and rapidity with which represen- 

 tatives of the human race can relapse into barbarism from positions of 

 high social and moral standing. Though morally, I am bound to say, 

 that from all I could see or learn of him, there was little with which he 

 could be reproached. 



On the following day we moved on a few miles farther to some springs 

 which gushed forth from beneath the bed of shingle on the side of the 

 bluff some fifty or sixty feet below the surface of the pampa. In the 

 night before, the mosquitoes had, for the first time during our trip, been 

 very troublesome. At these springs we not only found' most excellent 

 water and an abundance of grass, but relief also from those pests which 

 had been so annoying in the valley below. We passed the remainder 

 of the day at this place, washing our soiled linen and shoeing our horses, 

 preparatory to their long trip over the stony and lava-covered plain. 

 Horseshoes were scarcely known in Patagonia. We had with great diffi- 

 culty procured six of these very useful articles in Gallegos, along with a 

 number of mule-shoes which had been shipped with other government 

 stores from Buenos Aires to the commissariat These had been knocking 

 about among the stores for a number of years, not that they had never 



