At Last, Patagonia / 11 
side near the top, and leading to it there is a narrow 
arched gallery resting on a horizontal branch, and 
about fourteen inches long. So compactly made is 
this enormous nest that J have found it hard to 
break one up. I have also stood upright on the 
dome and stamped on it with my boots without 
injuring it atall. During my stay in Patagonia I 
found about a dozen of these palatial nests; and 
my opinion is that like our own houses, or, rather, 
our public buildings, and some ant-hills, and the 
vizcacha’s village burrows, and the beaver’s dam, it 
is made to last for ever. 
The only mammal we saw was a small armadillo, 
Dasypus minutus; it was quite common, and early 
in the day, when we were still fresh and full of 
spirits, we amused ourselves by chasing them. We 
captured several, and one of my companions, an 
Italian, killed two and slung them over his shoulder, 
remarking that we could cook and eat them if we 
grew hungry before reaching our destination. We 
were not much troubled with hunger, but towards 
noon we began to suffer somewhat from thirst. At 
midday we saw before us a low level plain, covered 
with long coarse grass of a dull yellowish-green 
colour. Here we hoped to find water, and before 
long we descried the white gleam of a lagoon, as we 
imagined, but on a nearer inspection the white- 
ness or appearance of water turned out to be only 
a salt efflorescence on a barren patch of ground. 
On this low plain it was excessively sultry; not a 
bush could be found to shelter us from the sun : all 
