"Mock Sunday and at rest, a time for dreaming. Away at home the trees are browning. How one's heart turns to them and dreams of them! The men born out here wonder how we can look forward to the happiness of going home, perhaps for the sight of some village church hidden in English lanes and fields. Half the charm of this life we are living out here lies in thinking of our return to the land that gives us all comfort and a silent welcome of green springs. Went out to-day after the lion and found tracks, but the ground was too hard for following them up. He lives in a valley of grey dead bush. As we went away from the dead guanaco yesterday, a condor (Sarcorhamphus gryphus) appeared and dropped on the carcase almost before we left it.
GUANACO HOUNDS. (FATHER AND MOTHER OF THE AUTHOR'S HOUND, TOM.)
"October 14, Sunday.—We got away at nine o'clock and came fast. The muddy narrow Chico flowing through a land which looks as if it led over the edge of the world. It reminds one of a flowering wilderness. Last night we tied up the dogs, and dear old Tom howled till I had to get up and correct him. When up I let poor little Lady loose, the last service I was ever destined to do for her, for to-day the waggon went over her belly, and she lies dead on the track a few leagues back. She was six months old, always cheerful, and wagging her whip of a tail, always up to the march. Half an hour before she died I saw her hunting a young fox, her first. She had brown eyes and I had got fonder of her than I knew. Tom used to drive her from her food, biting her, and from the softest bed, and I am now glad to think I sometimes made him give way to her. Just before Lady's death, I shot a cavy (Dolichotis patagonica) with the Mauser. He gave me a nice shot sitting up on his haunches, near the track on the skyline of a low bare ridge. Yesterday we had a very fine puchero or stew, pickled eggs given me by Pedro at Camerones and two plum-duffs made with waggon-grease by Burbury, who is quite a chef at plum-duff. After our meal we had out the concertina and found that Burbury knew 'The Church's One Foundation,' and Jones a melancholy Welsh hymn.
"The two best of my horses have sore backs.
"We spent an hour trying to get the waggon up a steep ridge 100 feet high, and had to unload and all work at it. Made a long seven leagues and encamped at the foot of a ridge with 200 yards of dead bush between us and the yellow Chico. Going very pebbly, the ground here and there burnt up and arid. It is always in such places that the mirages are most common.
"October 15.—Got off 8.40. At 11 unloaded waggon, which was in great danger of turning over. Scrivenor photoed it. At 2.20 waggon horses unfit to go farther. Camped by the Chico; shot a yellow-billed teal.
"October 16.—Out of humour all day, first, because, I found one of the cameras put unprotected into the waggon among the tins of potted meat, &c. Wearily, wearily we wend our way towards the blue distant hills of our desires. Even as in life we wend towards distant ambitions, and, coming up to them, find new ones arise upon the horizon beyond, and so we travel all our days, looking longingly ahead. This valley of the Chico is a wild place, conical hillocks of sand have now taken the place of the bush-covered ones. The Chico remains yellow and winds greatly. Purple hills crown the distance. It is all high-coloured and clear-shaded as in a picture.
"To-day, coming round a bend of the Chico glen, I saw seven guanaco feeding in the valley. They had seen me and begun to move, so I galloped round the ridge, and as I jumped off my horse one passed and halted within seventy yards. The herd made a pretty picture standing on the bare, desert-brown hillside in the tearing wind. I clean missed the buck with the first shot, and only killed him as he ran off, hitting him low behind the shoulder. The wind was blowing hard to-day and full in our faces.