WILD CATTLE 231 



close to where 1 had shot him. He was, I understand, hit through 

 the lungs. 



After this shot on Pimta Bandera, the herd left that locality, as 

 they invariably do, and most of the remainder of our hunting took 

 place upon the Lake Rica, or southern side, of the great mountain 

 One of the pleasantest days we enjoyed was upon Mount Frias 

 where a large point of catde had gone up beyond the snow-line. 

 On that occasion, when above the snow-line, I saw a pampa-fox, 

 some guanaco and a few ostriches. Quite a number of small 

 birds that I was unable to identify, as I could not shoot them, were 

 feeding upon a red berry which grows beneath the snow. 



I think of earthly situations I would choose that for the location 

 of my happy hunting-ground where life throbs and quickens in the 

 keen air, and where, in the shelter of the black forest of antarctic 

 beech-trees, one can hear the wind from the snows moaning and 

 crying among the tree-tops, and dropping the leaves, painted with 

 red and yellow, upon the soft mossy mid-forest carpet. 



While on Mount Frias my attention was drawn away from the 

 cattle by what I took to be an instance of albinism in the guanaco. 

 There was an immense herd of five hundred or perhaps more in an 

 open hollow, and among them I observed a very white specimen, 

 but on looking at it through the glasses it proved to be piebald 

 rather than truly white. 



My next excursion was made on much lower ground in 

 the direction of Lake Rica. We had observed some spots to 

 which a herd returned night after night.* The success with 

 which the herds can pick their way over bad ground such as 

 this and through trees, and most of all across the giant trunks, 

 decaying and rotten, many of which must have fallen years ago, 

 is extraordinary. Had it not been for the openings broken by 

 the passage of the cattle, we should have been unable to penetrate 

 the denser parts of the woods without axes. In spite of his 

 being such a heavy brute, a bull can always overtake a horse 



* To hunt this swampy ground in shooting-boots is an unnecessary handicap, for 

 the footing is so soft that one sinlcs to the knee in the worst places. A pair of string- 

 shoes called " alpargatas " are the most useful and suitable footgear for this work, and 

 the gain of their lightness is an added advantage. 



