JOURNEY TO LAKE ARGENTINO 189 



most desolate and forbidding of camps. Flocks of flamingos were 

 standing in the upland pool, and round about upon the little pro- 

 montories that thrust out into the wind-whipped water bandurias 

 were huddled in close order, while as the evening began to fall a 

 wisp of snipe flew over, wailing most rriournfully. Few things, 

 indeed, seem to me to bring out into keener prominence the 

 loneliness of a place than the cry of snipe heard in the windy 

 gloaming. There is some suggestion of human sorrow in the 

 sound. 



So we had journeyed westward, having always upon the south 

 the yellow pampa, and beside us on the north the river rurming 

 through its deep canadon, while every dawn the vast phalanx of 

 the Andean peaks seemed to have moved nearer, as though the 

 great mass of mountain was marching slowly and surely towards 

 us like the battle-front of some destroying army. 



Again we came upon a second death-place of guanaco, which 

 made a scene strange and striking enough. There cannot have 

 been less than five hundred lying there in positions as forced and 

 ungainly as the most ill-taken snapshot photograph could produce. 

 Their long necks were outstretched, the rime of weather upon their 

 decaying hides, and their bone-joints glistening through the wounds 

 made by the beaks of carrion-birds. They had died during the 

 severities of the previous winter, and lay literally piled one upon 

 another. A brown, almost chocolate-coloured, lagoon washed 

 close to the front rank of the dead, and those in the rearmost line 

 had evidently lain down to die while in the very act of descending 

 the tall barranca for water. The mortality among guanaco in a 

 really hard winter is tremendous. They die in batches, absolutely 

 in hundreds. At that season they come down to the lower 

 grounds for warmth and water, but desert them in the summer 

 and take to the high pampa, where, as I have described in another 

 place, the Indians hunt and slay them in great numbers for their 

 pelts. The cry of the guanaco is a noise unique. It is something 

 between a bleat, a laugh, and a neigh. Often the old macho of a 

 herd would come to the high ground nearest to our camp, and from 

 it neigh defiance at us, while the rest of the point would satisfy 

 their curiosity by staring from a safer distance. 



