How we managed to get her off it is impossible to describe; we did it somehow. The next morning was still windy, but we steamed along the Canal de los Tempanos under Mount Buenos Aires, and there it was that a fire broke out on the launch. This was an accident we always dreaded, for, having no room elsewhere, we were obliged to pile the fuel round her engine, with the result that it occasionally became dangerously heated.
GLACIER DE LOS TEMPANOS
Landing at the end of the Canal de los Tempanos we found ourselves in forests of magnificent timber. The vegetation was rank and luxuriant, a mass of decay under a forest of life. From the swampy dank ground tall stems sprang up straight and branchless as palms, while at their feet grew a carpet of ferns.
We had some marvellous days of fine weather in the Cordillera, where on the mountain slopes, as winter drew on, the crimson shades crept deeper to mingle with and finally change the green. In due time we reached the South Fjord by water. The account of a previous visit on horseback has already been told. Then we turned homewards, and on the way I secured some good photos of the great glacier of the Canal de los Tempanos. As we passed down the canal, a big berg broke off from the glacier ahead of us and plunged into the water, sending up a huge wave, which luckily only touched us slightly. It was well we were no nearer. We witnessed after this the fall of several lesser pieces of ice, the noise of which resounded loudly among the gorges.
Our return voyage was eventless. While Bernardo was making our camp-fire upon landing, he called to me to come with my rifle. He said he had been attacked by a large Cordillera wolf, which snapped at his legs. He retaliated with an axe, but it got away. Following in the direction he indicated, I caught a glimpse of the animal crossing a patch of moonlight, and fired, hitting it far back.
There are many thousands of square miles of unexplored forest in Patagonia. It is a region unknown and mysterious, which has never been deeply explored by man. As has been said, no man lives in them, and it is a question whether man has ever lived there, for the one all-sufficient reason—the practical absence of game on which he might subsist.
I well remember my first sight of the forests, and the intense longing that took hold upon me to make my way into their virgin fastnesses. It is one of the traveller's most unquenchable desires, this hankering to go where no other man has yet been. It springs, I suppose, from the undefined thought that in the unknown everything is possible, though few things perhaps come to pass.