Life in Patagonia. 101 
shock was also experienced in the Carmen on the 
Rio Negro. 
My host, whose Christian name was Ventura, 
being a Patagonian by birth, and not far off fifty 
years old, must, I imagined, have seen a thousand. 
things worth relating, and I frequentiy importuned 
him to tell some of his early experiences in the 
settlement. Butsomehow he invariably drifted into 
amorous and gambling reminiscences, interesting in 
their way, some of them, but they were not the 
kind of recollections I wished to hear. The empire 
of his affections had been divided between Cupid 
and cards ; and apparently everything he had seen 
or experienced in fifty eventful years, unless it had 
some relation to one of these two divinities, was 
clean forgotten—cast away from him like the ends 
of the innumerable cigarettes he had been smoking 
all his life. Once, however, a really interesting 
adventure of his boyhood was recalled accidentally 
to his mind. He came home one evening from the 
Carmen, where he had been spending the day, and 
during supper told me the following story. 
When he was about sixteen years old he was sent 
one day with four others—three lads like himself, 
and a middle-aged man named Marcos in charge of 
them—with a herd of horses required for military 
service at a place twenty-five leagues up the river. 
For, at that period, every person was at the beck 
and call of the commander of the colony. Half 
way to their destination there was a corral, or 
cattle-enclosure, standing two or three hundred 
