THE KINGDOM OF THE WINDS 121 



marched to the camping-ground of the Indians, which, though the 

 nearest of their old camps to Lake Buenos Aires, was still a good 

 distance from it. The Azulejo had been lost, but was brought 

 in quite spent, by Barckhausen. Poor little beast ! He lay down 

 more dead than alive under a bush, a pathetic little figure enough. 

 After reaching camp, Jones and I had to turn out again, pretty 

 tired as we were, to look for food. We rode for hours, and saw 

 only a herd of guanaco. At this season the country round about 

 here is rather devoid of game, the ground is stony, with thorn and 

 dry, blackened bushes. We were disappointed in our hunt again on 

 the second day, seeing only two guanaco, lion-tracks, and a couple 

 of pigeons, but we did not shoot them, and I am unable to speak 

 with any certainty of the species to which they belonged. I have 

 never seen a district so bare of life. We had come, as it were, to 

 the world's end. 



I sat in my tent-door and wrote my diary. Far away I could 

 see the Cordrllera, splendid giants, with the sun shining upon them ; 

 below, the lake that reminded me strongly of the picture in which 

 Hiawatha sailed into " the kingdom of Ponemah. the Land of the 

 Hereafter." That scene was just so wild, and so remote, with a 

 great red sunset burning over it, and round about it rock and sand 

 and marsh, with a pale wide rim of dead-wood, swept down 

 by floods from the neighbouring forests 



On our way to the shores of the lake we had passed through 

 a stretch of extraordinary aridity, a white and yellow spread of 

 mud and stones that filled a valley between two scrub-covered 

 hills. From far off it looked level, but in reality we found it to 

 be intersected and veined with mighty gashes, which formed 

 winding gorges. There the wind blew, and at times the sun 

 beat down ; very cold it was, and very hot by turns, but never 

 temperate. 



We had expected to find plenty of game in the vicinity of the 

 lake, but in this, as I have said, we were disappointed, the 

 consequence being that our supply of meat ran short. There was 

 nothing for it but to kill the eighteen-months old colt of one of the 

 madrinas. But before we did this we hunted for three days, during 

 which time I shot a couple of upland geese, which made the sum 



