Lawlor was not far away; and with him also Castizo shook hands. So equality was established.
Our tent was not of guanaco skins, like that of the Indians who accompanied us on this expedition. We had a canvas marquee of small dimensions, but most comfortable, and so neatly made that it could pack together into a load for one horse, poles and all.
Castizo had been a Patagonian traveller for years. At first, he told us, he “herded” with the Indians under their tents of skin, and lived quite as they did, with the exception of the drinking of rum; but he soon found it better to import a little civilisation into his mode of life. So he did; and I advise any one who meditates going to the Patagonian Pampas to do the same.
Here we were in our handsome tent, with every comfort before and around us which it is capable of transporting into the wilderness.
The table was a piece of canvas spread on the ground in the middle of the tent. Candles—real candles—burned in the centre, stuck in a rudely formed sconce of wood, which in its turn was stuck through the canvas into the ground. Our seats were our huge, gown-like guanaco mantles, which by and by would serve us for blankets, when we lay down to sleep on our couches of withered grass.
Our dishes and plates were all of tin, easily packed and easily carried, and we had knives and forks. Had our table been a raised wooden one, it would have groaned, not so much with the variety of good things, but with their solidness and substantiality. Here were steak of guanaco, and stew of horseflesh—one of our pack animals had broken a leg the day before, and we were wise to make use of him—and here were roast ducks. Cakes we had, too, made of flour which had been half-roasted before it left Valparaiso. These cakes were made by Pedro, who was our very excellent cook. I think there must have been something else in them as well as flour. However they were very nice, and tasted and looked somewhat like a happy combination of Scotch haggis, Australian damper, and Irish scone.
We had no beer to drink; we had no wine; but we had yerba maté, which combines the invigorating qualities of both, with all the soothing, calming influence of a cup of good coffee or tea.
It is a kind of tea made of the dried leaves of the Paraguayan ilex, and is infused and drunk just as tea is; though the Patagonian Indians and hunters usually drink it through tubes pierced with little holes, so that they can have the infusion without the powder or leaves.
“Well, boys,” said Castizo, whose English, by the way, was irreproachable, “we’ve made a fairly good start. And your captain, with his adorable little wife—what an amiable creature she is—will be nearly half-way home by this time. Are you sorry you haven’t gone with them to see the mother?”
“Ah!” I said, “I know mother well: she will be pleased to hear we are enjoying ourselves, and learning something at the same time. Won’t she, Jill?”