98 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



When they had drunk their fill, they were driven 

 like cattle to the Carmen and shut up within the 

 fort. In the evening the ship arrived before the 

 town, and, going a little too near the shore on the 

 opposite side, ran aground. The men in her were 

 quickly apprised of the disaster which had over- 

 taken the land force ; meanwhile the resolute Pata- 

 gonians, concealed amongst the trees on the shore, 

 began to pepper the deck with musket-balls ; the 

 Brazilians, in terror for their lives, leaped into the 

 water and swam to land ; and when darkness fell, 

 the colonists had crowned their brave day's work 

 by the capture of the Imperial war-vessel Itaparica. 

 No doubt it was soon pulled to pieces, good build- 

 ing material being rather expensive on the Rio 

 Negro ; a portion of the wreck, however, still lies 

 in the river, and often, when the tide was low, and 

 those old brown timbers came up above the surface, 

 like the gaunt fossil ribs of some gigantic Pliocene 

 monster, I have got out of my boat and stood upon 

 them experiencing a feeling of great satisfaction. 

 Thus the awful war-cloud burst, and the little 

 colony, by pluck and cunning and readiness to 

 strike at the proper moment, saved itself from the 

 disgrace of being conquered by the infamous 

 Empire of the tropics. 



During my residence at the house alongside the 

 Parrot's Cliff, one of our neighbours I was very 

 much interested in was a man named Sosa. He 

 was famed for an almost preternatural keenness of 

 sight, had great experience of the wild life -of the 



