BACK TO CIVILISATION 169 



grass, and the occasional fox. We left some tins of corned beef 

 behind us, as I hoped to travel very fast to Santa Cruz. That day 

 we made anything from eight to ten leagues, and camped in Seven 

 Ostriches canadon, the spot that Barckhausen and I had previously 

 visited and named after the birds we saw there. 



The following day (27th) we made a good march and encamped 

 by a lagoon, upon which I shot two yellow-billed teal, and Jones 

 and Burbury four ducks, which were plucked before we came into 

 camp. On the morning after a very difficult part of our journey 

 commenced. All day we travelled over a pampa covered with 

 basaltic fragments and thorny bushes ; some of these bushes bore 

 a red tulip-like flower. 



Enormous numbers of guanaco haunt these grim plateaus. 

 Jones and I galloped a half- grown one, and killed it with the help 

 of a dog. The going was extremely bad, our path lying through 

 gorges and up steep-sided ridges, rough with basaltic fragments 

 and powdered with sharp clinkers of lava. It is not easy to 

 describe the changing fortunes of such a day. For instance, we 

 were turned again and again by gullies and rifts in the hollows of 

 the hills, and, what with shifting cargoes on these cruel and almost 

 perpendicular slopes, the difficulty of keeping the troop of horses 

 straight and of taking care of one's own limbs, was extreme. 

 Literally thousands of guanaco appeared on the summits of the 

 surrounding barren ridges, and fled galloping down the rock-faces 

 with jerking necks and flying hoofs. Sometimes the old bucks 

 would come and look at us, running towards us and neighing and 

 laughing, and then ducking their long necks and cantering off. 

 What they lived on in so sterile a region still remains a mystery 

 to me. 



I saw one condor poised high. 



Our Indian baqueaiw, Como No, had told us that we must 

 strike "between two hills." Barckhausen asserted that he had 

 indicated to him a couple of round peaks on the summit or rather 

 forming the culminating-points of this high basalt range. We 

 made our way up these monstrous steps, as it were, of rock, steer- 

 ing by the compass, and after some twenty miles of travelling 

 found ourselves upon a bare black highland over which the wind 



