20 



THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



There was an anxious moment when the launch slipped the 

 towing-cable and the sailor in the bows flung a rope, which 

 dropped short of the black wooden jetty, and we were swept some 

 boat-lengths away by a big broken sea. To be swamped at the 



moment of landintr ! — 

 the thought was too 

 disastrous to be dwelt 

 on ; half our rifles and a 

 box of instruments were 

 on board. It cost us a 

 long hour and a half of 

 hard work before every- 

 thing" was safe ashore. 

 And while we toiled a 

 dozen seals came and 

 stared at us with their 

 doglike faces, and lazy, 

 solemn eyes. 



When all our pro- 

 perty had been brought 

 to land, luckily without 

 mishaps of any kind, 1 

 left Scrivenor with our 

 peones to bring up the 

 heavy baggage and went 

 on with Burbury to Trelew by the miniature train which plies to 

 and fro between the Welsh colony and the coast. From Trelew 

 a ten-days ride takes you beyond the farm of the last settler and 

 into the waste places of the pampas. 



Trelew is a new and pocket Wales, but very much Wales 

 all the same. To prove the accuracy of this statement it is only 

 necessary to say that the waggon which set us on the first leagues of 

 our way belonged to a Jones, that another Jones accompanied the 

 expedition to the Cordillera, that I negotiated with a third Jones 

 for a supply of mutton to take with us for use on the first part of 

 our journey, that I was introduced to several Williamses and did 

 business with various Hugheses. And all this in a day and a half. 



T. R. D. BURBUKY 



