THE CHACO. 
165 
for I saw what must be one of the most 
interesting countries existing. 
Our plan was as follows. We were to start 
from Asuncion, the capital of Paraguay, and 
go in a petrol launch two days 5 journey up the 
Pilcomayo, one of the large rivers which rises 
in the Andes and flows into the Paraguay from 
the west. Here we should reach the little 
puerto of Galileo, from which a narrow gauge 
railway track, now disused, ran some forty 
kilometres north into the Chaco. At Galileo 
we were to get hold of a trolley—there was no 
other rolling stock—put our rifles and kit on it, 
and get a couple of peons to push us up to rail¬ 
head, where we would make our headquarters 
and starting point. Big game shooting in 
South America is notoriously bad, but this, in 
the opinion of those who knew, was the best 
place we could go to. It had never failed 
before. It failed through no fault of the kind 
friends who took so much trouble to send us 
there. It failed because, as we heard after we 
had been some time there, the roving Indians 
had been there a few months before and killed 
off everything. Consequently we, a party of 
three with two guides, only got three head of 
game in a fortnight, one stag, one peccary and 
one gato onza—the tiger cat or ocelot, that 
beautiful miniature of the jaguar. Indeed, 
except for birds, of which there were many and 
which we shot to eat, we never got a shot at 
