NAVIGATION OF THE RIVER LEONA 203 



The river had swollen and was rising- and the current looked 

 menacing, but we thought that with great care and slow movement 

 we might bring the launch through all right. Care and slow move- 

 ment ! We did not foresee to what an extent the elements were 

 destined to take charge of our affairs. 



Our plan was to descend the river stern-first with only enough 

 steam to enable the boat to answer her tiller ; for fuel we had no 

 choice but to burn wood, and although califate made no bad firing, 

 still the results to be expected were not by any means the same as 

 if we had been able to put coal into the furnace. 



In the evening the horses strayed, and I went to bring them 

 in. The landscape on this side of Viedma is the most desolate 

 imaginable, being made up chiefly of sand, sparse yellow grass, 

 low thorn-bushes, and the skeletons of dead game. It is a place 

 only fit to die in, a fact the guanacos seem to have grasped, 

 for their bones lay all over the ground in far greater pro- 

 fusion even than upon the shores of Lake Buenos Aires. The 

 mountains about Viedma differ in outline from most of the other 

 ranges in Patagonia. The peaks are more pointed and rise against 

 the cold sky in a line of pinnacles and minarets. 



My way led me along the banks of the Leona. It was a grey 

 and miserable afternoon verging towards evening, and the strong 

 wind was sending a large volume of water racing and moaning 

 between the bare and treeless banks of the river. I remember 

 thinking with great longing of warm and comfortable England, 

 of good friends and true, of home, and of all the many small 

 things which make life worth having. I suppose every one is 

 attacked with this kind of feeling sometimes. Not very often, 

 luckily, nor when the sun is shining, but on these miserable, grey, 

 whimpering evenings everything takes on a sombre shade. 



I found the horses collected in a rincon, beneath the shelter 

 of a few thorn-bushes ; they were looking very forlorn, especially 

 the Alazan, who was etched out darkly against the bleak sky. 

 They seemed a bit tucked up too after the tiring marches of the 

 previous days. 



We hoped to start in the launch on the following morning. 

 When we woke it was still blowing half a gale. I, however, told 



