152 THROUGH THE HEART OF PATAGONIA 



in the comino- October! It is all over. His oHtterino- locks 

 " clutch the sand," or in fraiiments he shifts with the waters of the 

 inhospitable torrent. Oh, my guns ! my guns ! Well, it was a 

 congenial death to you, and I am glad to think the Mauser had 

 killed a couple of Patagonian huemules before he came to his end. 

 But, sentiment apart — and there is a great deal of it in this affair 

 — the loss is very serious. True I have still at Horsham Camp 

 four rifles and a shot-gun (two Colts, a Parado.x, a 12-bore and the 

 sick Mauser), but none of them are in the same class with the 

 lost ones." 



Before leaving the camp I went down again to the river brink 

 to seek for wreckage. Nothing was to be seen save rock and 

 stone, overturned trees and boulders. My regrets for the losses 

 which had befallen us were, however, moderated by the reflection 

 that I might well be thankful I w^as not personally keeping the two 

 guns cold company in the bottom of the lake. 



We were astir at four o'clock by moonlight, and started three- 

 quarters of an hour later. To us, knocked about and dog-tired as 

 we were, the going was difficult. The barrancas seemed endless. 

 The river was now a yellow flood, crashing and rushing down the 

 cafiadon, bearing trees, bushes, and logs with its whirl and flurry. 

 When we arrived at the upper ford it was only to find six feet 

 of water there and a fall formed beyond it — quite impassable 

 in fact. 



Our position, in the face of this difficulty, was rather a serious 

 one. We had food for three days, that is, porridge, and though 

 " parritch is gran' food," it is not, alone, good to work very hard 

 on. The snows were still melting in the hills, and, given a pro- 

 tracted period of warm weather, it might be days before the 

 river would allow of our passing through it. I lit a signal-fire 

 on the hills in the hope that my party at Horsham Camp would 

 reply. 



It was possible that our small Argentine friend had again been 

 lost " running ostriches " and had again lit up half the countryside 

 to call his companions' attention to that important fact. The only 

 weapon left us was a broken Colt and the cartridges in it. But 

 apart from our own position was the far more serious fact that 



