100 Idle Days in Patagonia. 
company of five or six more gauchos—also offenders 
against the law, who had flown to the refuge of the 
desert—he amused himself by hunting ostriches 
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 evening, 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 
