JOURNEY TO LAKE ARGENTINO 185 



however, at people being a little cautious and suspicious, as the 

 wayfarer is not always a wandering angel in Patagonia, or, for that 

 matter, in any thinly populated country that is being newly opened 

 up. Therefore we were the more grateful to our hostess of La 

 Ultima Casa. At the shanty of another farmer, a Scotchman, we 

 had had the door bolted against us, and been told to await his 

 home-coming if we wished to enter the house. 



We ate our meal at Mrs. Hardy's sitting on up-turned boxes, 

 and she brought out some maoazines for our readintr. Hers was a 

 strange existence, poor old lady ! She appeared to be regarded or 

 — it comes to the same thino- — thought she was reearded a little in 

 the light of an Ishmaelite by her neighbours, who were trying (she 

 told me) to acquire her land. Her position did not seeni to be 

 prosperous. The casa had the usual corrugated roof, and her one 

 window could boast no o-Iass. From this main buildinLT a sort of 

 barn jutted out to the left. Later on, I decided that this annex, 

 which I at first took to be a barn, must be the old lady's private 

 sanctum, for from it she produced five magazines, some lions' 

 claws, a skunk-skin rug, some hen's eggs, and the hen herself A 

 regular widow's cruse of a place. The blackened roof of the 

 kitchen was supported by four beams lengthways and four across, 

 these last shiny as if tarred with the smoke of many winters. An 

 old step-ladder in the corner answered the uses of a cupboard, 

 cups and so forth being kept on a couple of wooden shelves, and 

 lumps of sheep's fat decorated the room. We sat on the old 

 wooden bedstead with its pile of sheepskins for bed-clothes and 

 wrote our diary. Our hostess, who wore her hair in two i)laits 

 hanging down at each side of her face, sat on a case and talked 

 while she drank the inevitable viaic^ throuoh a bonibilla. She 

 asked us to remain over a second day, which was most good ot 

 her, but we had to continue our journey. 



We marched until about three o'clock, when, coming up u^ an 

 empty shanty, we took shelter in it for a while, as it happened to 

 be very hot. Later we started again, and made a long march 

 across a })ampa above the cauadoi of the Santa Cruz, which is 

 here two miles or more in breadth. Speaking of this cauadon. I 

 cannot do better than gi\e Darwin's words : " This valley varies 



