ROUND AND ABOUT LAKE BUENOS AIRES 137 



On measurement I found him to be five feet in height and three 

 feet high at the shoulder. 



The greatest number of adult ostriches I ever saw together was 

 seven. This in a canadon off the River Deseado. At a later 

 date I saw forty-two together, but this included many small and 

 immature birds. 



The long-necked game of Patagonia is difficult to stalk owing 

 to their having such a field of vision. The ruse of tying up one's 

 horse in full view gained me many a guanaco, but was quite a 

 useless trick in the case of ostriches. The Cruzado was by this time 

 an A I shooting-horse. He would stand anywhere and wait my 

 return, he would also allow me to fire quite close to him, but he 

 would never allow any white object to be put upon his back. If 

 this was done, he would at once rear and throw himself back. 



There is one thing which strikes me forcibly with regard to 

 Patagonia. Here is small vestige of the elder peoples, and little 

 of any older civilisations.* Even in the hearts of deserts in the 

 old world are to be found traces of ancient cities, where men lived 

 long ages ago. But nothing that bears farthest resemblance to a 

 ruin, to the "one stone laid upon another" that tells of man's 

 settled home, exists in Patagonia. Yet though the ruined cities of 

 other countries are old, Patagonia is older yet. The nomad tribes 

 have roamed here through the centuries, leaving the grass to grow- 

 over their old camp-fires, but never altering or marking with any 

 permanent mark the face of this old land. No, though Patagonia 

 is in a sense the oldest of all, for here we come face to face with 

 prehistoric times — the skeletons of the- greater beasts, the flint 

 weapons of primitive man with practically nothing save the years 

 to intervene. A lean humanity, untouched by aught save nature, 

 has run out its appointed course until very recent years ; and there 

 is little to testify to its wanderings but the brown trail of generations 

 of footsteps, which ten years of disuse would blot out for ever. You 

 cannot there gaze over the ruins of a once populous city and say, 

 " Here lived a dead people." No, you can but think by lonely 

 river or lagoon, " The bygone Indians may here have had their 



* I believe, as does Dr. Moreno, that a race of Indians, now extinct, once dwelled 

 among the foothills of the Cordillera. 



