CHAPTER II 



SOUTHWARD HO! 



Leaving England — Start — Priincro de Mayo — Port Belgrano — Welsh 

 colonists — Story of Mafeking — First sight of Patagonia — Guolfo Nuevo — 

 Port Madryn — Landing — Trelew — A pocket Wales — Difficulties of early 

 colonists — Other Welsh settlements — Older and younger generations — Welsh 

 youths and Argentine maidens — Language difficulty will arrange itself — 

 A plague of " lords " — Lord Reed — Trouble of following a lord — Itinerary — 

 Travelling in Patagonia — Few men, many horses — Pack-horses — Start for 

 Bahia Camerones — Foxes, ostriches, cavy — On the pampas — Guanaco — First 

 guanaco — Mate — Dogs — Farms — Indians — Landscape — Mirages — Vast empty 

 land — Cahadones — Estancia Lochiel — Seeking for puma — Killing guanacos — 

 Many pumas killed during winter months — Gauchos. 



We arrived at Buenos Aires early in September 1900, and on the 

 loth we embarked again on board the Primero dc Mayo, one of 

 the transports of the Argentine Government, by which my com- 

 panions and myself had courteously been granted passages to 

 Patagonia, The Prwiei^o dc Mayo is a boat of 650 tons. We 

 carried an extraordinary amount of deck cargo, for there were 

 a good many passengers on board, as these transports offered 

 the sole means existing at that time* of communication by sea 

 with Argentine Patacronia. 



We started about one o'clock. Lieutenant Jurgensen, the 

 cominaiidaiite, was good enough to invite us to dine on that night 

 with the officers in the deck-house. He subsequently extended 

 his invitation to cover the entire voyage. After dinner we went 

 out upon the deck. It was starlight, and the Prinicro dc J/avo 

 was steaming down the brown estuary of the Plata. 



First night out! What a penance it is I It is "good-bye" 

 translated into heaviness of heart, and it knows fnr the time 



* Since writing the above I learn that a German line has put steamers upon this, 

 route. 



