CHAPTER III 



THE BATTLE OF THE HORSES 



Leave Bahia Camerones — Horses wild — Decide on taking one waggon — Bell- 

 mare — Names of horses — Breaking-in of horses — German peones — Horses 

 stray — Gaucho trick — Watching troop at night — Four languages — SignaUing 

 by smokes — Searching for horses — Favourite words and phrases — Nag of the 

 baleful eye — Canadon of the dry river — Bad ground — Flies — Ostrich eggs — 

 Shooting guanaco — River Chico of Chubut — Puma's visit at night — Condor — 

 Lady killed — Singing in camp — Stormy night — Breakdown of waggon — 

 Guanaco on stony ground — Long chase — Guanaco's death. 



I WILL not bore my readers with all the technicalities of our 

 preparations for the real start. 



Suffice it to say that our total belongings were stowed upon a 

 waggon and on the backs of four pack-horses. We had in all 

 sixty horses, and eight men. About forty of these horses had 

 been running wild upon the pampa for eight months previous to 

 our acquiring them. During that time they had been lost and had 

 only been recaptured shortly before our arrival in Trelew. The 

 purchase of them was, however, the best speculation I could 

 make under the circumstances, since all the animals were good and 

 sound. Had I bought by small instalments in Trelew, not only 

 would every man within journeying distance have very naturally 

 attempted to palm off upon me the worst and most vicious animals 

 he possessed, but the horses, not being used to one another's 

 company, would have been impossible to keep together at night 

 upon the pampas, as the various sections composing such a tropilla 

 would inevitably have scattered to the four points of the compass. 



Patagonian horses, which are descended from those brought 

 over by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century, are never stabled, 

 but are turned out rain and snow in their troops. These troops 

 4r tropillas consist of any number from six animals to thirty, and 



