100 Idle Days in Patagonia. 



company of five or six more gauclios — also offenders 

 against the law, who had flown to the refuge of the 

 desert — he amused himself by hunting ostinches 

 along the Rio Colorado. On the 12th of March the 

 hunters were camping beside a grove of willows in 

 the valley, and about nine o'clock that evening, 

 while seated round the fire roasting their ostrich 

 meat, Sosa suddenly sprang to his feet and held his 

 open hand high above his head for some moments. 

 " There is not a breath of wind blowing," he ex- 

 claimed, " yet the leaves of the trees are trembling. 

 What can this portend '? " The others stared at 

 the trees, but could see no motion, and began to 

 laugh and jeer at him. Presently he sat down 

 again, remarking that the trembling had ceased ; 

 but during the rest of the evening he seemed very 

 much disturbed in his mind. He remarked re- 

 peatedly that such a thing had never happened in 

 his experience before, for, he said, he could feel a 

 breath of wind before the leaves felt it, and there 

 had been no wind ; he feared that it was a warning of 

 some disaster about to overtake their party. The 

 disaster was not for them. On that eveninof, when 

 Sosa sprang up terrified and pointed to the leaves 

 which to the others appeared motionless, occurred 

 the earthquake which destroyed the distant city of 

 Mendoza, crushing twelve thousand people to death 

 in its fall. That the subterranean wave extended 

 east to the Plata, and southwards into Patagonia, 

 was afterwards known, for in the cities of Rosario 

 and Buenos Ayres clocks stopped, and a slight 



