JOURNEY TO LAKE ARGENTINO 193 



with it for some miles, crossed the Rivers Calafate and de los 

 Perros, and finally arrived upon a peninsula which culminates in 

 Mount Buenos Aires. This peninsula is called the Burmeister 

 Peninsula.. Here, many days' ride into the interior, and under the 

 very shadow of the Andes, 

 lives an English pioneer, Mr. 

 Cattle, whom we visited, and 

 who was kind enough to help 

 me in every way and to give 

 us hospitality. 



During the first night we 

 spent upon the shores of Lake 

 Argentino there was a heavy 

 snowfall on the tops of the 



'^ ESrANCIA OP MR. E. CATTLE 



nearer mountains. 



Our first move was in the direction of Lake Rica — so- 

 called locally. Upon the maps we had with us it was marked 

 as a separate lake connected by a river with Lake Argentino. 

 We soon proved this to be a mistake, the so-called Lake Rica 

 being an arm of the large lake, connected with the parent volume 

 of water by a channel of considerable width, which is occasionally 

 blocked, or nearly so, by icebergs. I should mention that we had 

 left England before the publication of Dr. Moreno's excellent 

 map, in which this and many other errors had already been set 

 right. 



Taking our horses, we made our way to the south-west along 

 the shores of Lake Rica. We were forced to make detours, as 

 the steep banks were cut up by innumerable rifts, at the bottom of 

 nearly every one of which streams of varying size emptied them- 

 selves into the fjord. Heavy forests clothed the slopes of the hills 

 almost to the margin of the water. Very litde animal life was to 

 be observed. I picked up a number of iron-ore stalactites on the 

 shores and also from the mud of the shallow water near them. 

 When approaching the end of this South Fjord — as Lake Rica 

 should properly be called — of Lake Argentino we crossed a river 

 or rather, I should say, a torrent, that after a riotous course between 

 very steep cliffs flowed over a rocky bed into the .South Fjord. 



