L ife in Pat agon ia. i o i 



shock was also experienced in the Carmen on the 

 Rio Negro. 



My host, whose Christian name was Ventura, 

 being a Patagonian by birth, and not far off fifty 

 years old, must, I imagined, have seen a thousand 

 things worth relating, and I frequently importuned 

 him to tell some of his early experiences in the 

 settlement. But somehow he invariably drifted into 

 amorous and gambling reminiscences, interesting in 

 their way, some of them, but they were not the 

 kind of recollections I wished to hear. The empire 

 of his affections had been divided between Cupid 

 and cards ; and apparently everything he had seen 

 or experienced in fifty eventful years, unless it had 

 some relation to one of these two divinities, was 

 clean forgotten cast away from him like the ends 

 of the innumerable cigarettes he had been smoking 

 all his life. Once, however, a really interesting 

 adventure of his boyhood was recalled accidentally 

 to his mind. He came home one evening from the 

 Carmen, where he had been spending the day, and 

 during supper told me the following story. 



When he was about sixteen years old he was sent 

 one day with four others three lads like himself, 

 and a middle-aged man named Marcos in charge of 

 them with a herd of horses required for military 

 service at a place twenty-five leagues up the river. 

 For, at that period, every person was at the beck 

 and call of the commander of the colony. Half 

 way to their destination there was a corral, or 

 cattle-enclosure, standing two or three hundred 



