THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS 121 



marched to the campini^-ground of the Indians, which, though the 

 nearest of their old camps to Lake Buenos Aires, was still a good 

 distance from it. The Azulejo had been lost, but was brought 

 in quite spent, by Barckhausen. Poor little beast ! He lay down 

 more dead than alive under a bush, a pathetic little figure enough. 

 After reaching camp, Jones and I had to turn out again, pretty 

 tired as we were, to look for food. We rode for hours, and saw- 

 only a herd of guanaco. At this season the country round about 

 here is rather devoid of game, the ground is stony, with thorn and 

 dry, blackened bushes. We w ere disappointed in our hunt again on 

 the second day, seeing only two guanaco, lion-tracks, and a couple 

 of pigeons, but we did not shoot them, and I am unable to speak 

 with any certainty of the species to which they belonged. I have 

 never seen a district so bare of life. We had come, as it were, to 

 the world's end. 



I sat in my tent-door and wrote my diary. Far away I could 

 see the Cordillera, splendid giants, with the sun shining upon them ; 

 below, the lake that reminded me strongly of the picture in which 

 Hiawatha sailed into " the kingdom of Ponemah. the Land of the 

 Hereafter." That scene was just so wild, and so remote, with a 

 great red sunset burning over it, and round about it rock and sand 

 and marsh, with a pale wide rim of dead-wood, swept down 

 by floods from the neighbouring forests 



On our way to the shores of the lake we had passed through 

 a stretch of extraordinary aridity, a white and yellow spread of 

 mud and stones that filled a valley between two scrub-covered 

 hills. From far off it looked level, but in reality we found it to 

 be intersected and veined with mighty gashes, which formed 

 windino; ororgres. There the wind blew, and at times the sun 

 beat down ; very cold it was, and very hot by turns, but never 

 temperate. 



W^e had expected to find plenty of game in the vicinity of the 

 lake, but in this, as I have said, we were disappointed, the 

 consequence being that our supply of meat ran short. Tiiere was 

 nothin''" for it but to kill the eiiihteen-months old colt o( one of the 

 niadriiias. But before we did this we hunted for three davs, during 

 which time 1 shot a couple of upland geese, which made the sum 



