CHAPTER XIX.
IN THE WILDERNESS.
Some days afterwards we found ourselves among the mountains in a region whose rugged grandeur and semi-desolation, whose rock-filled glens, tall, frowning precipices, with the stillness that reigned everywhere around, imparted to it a character approaching even to sublimity.
The capataz was still our guide, our foremost man in everything; but close beside him rode our indefatigable hunter, Dugald.
We had already seen pumas, and even the terrible jaguar of the plains; we had killed more than one rhea—the American ostrich—and deer in abundance. Moreover, Dugald had secured about fifty skins of the most lovely humming-birds, with many beetles, whose elytra, painted and adorned by Nature, looked like radiant jewels. All these little skins and beetles were destined to be sent home to Flora. As yet, however, we had not come in contact with the guanaco, although some had been seen at a distance.
But to-day we were in the very country of the guanaco, and pressing onwards and ever upwards, in the hopes of soon being able to draw trigger on some of these strange inhabitants of the wilderness.
Only this morning Dugald and I had been bantering each other as to who should shoot the first. 198
'I mean to send my first skin to Flora,' Dugald had said.
'And I my first skin to Irene,' I said.