CHAPTER IX 



ROUND AND ABOUT LAKE BUENOS AIRES 



Chain of lakes — Size of lake — Sterility and fertility — Trips to Cordillera — 

 Bones of dead game — Shores of lake — Western shore — Tracks in marshes — 

 Northern shore — Rosy camp by Fenix — Guanaco hunt — Horses stray — 

 Cordillera wolf — Vain search for huemul — Return to Horsham Camp — Trip 

 to River Deseado — Paradise of wildfowl — Shooting ostriches — Long-necked 

 game of Patagonia — No ruins or vestiges of older civilisation in Patagonia 

 — Hunting mornings — Wounded guanaco — Indian trail — Trip to River de 

 los Antiguos — Meet ostrich-hunter — Wandering Gauchos — Wanton burning 

 of grass — Second visit to Rosy Camp — Flamingoes — Danger-signals — Scrivenor 

 returns to Horsham Camp — River de los Antiguos. 



At last we had arrived at Lake Buenos Aires, a time long looked 

 forward to. The pampas were crossed and left behind, and the 

 lower line of the Andes was reached, the foothills of the great 

 range whose upper summits we had watched for weeks lying high 

 on the sky-line, blue and white and cold, sending the message of a 

 great wind from them to us. We were now upon the shores of 

 the largest of the wonderful network of lakes and lagoons which 

 stretches parallel with the Cordillera hundreds of miles to the 

 southward, ending not far from the Straits of Magellan. 



There was to me something infinitely romantic about Lake 

 Buenos Aires. Its aspect was ever changing, and so often you 

 came on a scene supremely beautiful. The wild light of sunset 

 upon the snow-peaks, the grey turbulent water of the lake, and the 

 bull-like wind charging down at us day after day — all these things 

 gave the place an individuality of its own. 



The lake is of considerable extent, measuring seventy-five miles 

 in length from S.S.W. to N.N.E.. and its waters wage a continual 

 war upon the thorns and scrub growing upon the margin. Vast 

 masses of milk-white timber, blanched by the influences of sun and 

 water and eloquent of the mountain-land of forest whence they 



