HORSHAM BASE CAMP
As we neared camp, I saw something gleam white behind a bush. An upland goose! I crawled up and found two. With what care I managed that stalk! I killed the female with one barrel on the ground and pulled over the male as he swung upwards. After riding seven leagues, we got our small results of the day's seeking within a mile of the camp! One or other of us had seen far-off guanaco flying out of sight, and I decided to start next day for the River Fenix to try for some, camping there the night and returning next day to begin our long-needed rest.
Yet the next day (November 9) none of us went a-hunting after all. We were fairly played out. Personally I had had not one day's rest since starting two months before, as upon me principally fell the duty of providing for the pot, so that upon coming in of an evening on the close of a long march it was usually necessary to saddle a fresh horse and ride a further distance from five to fifteen miles in search of game.
So we killed the colt to provide for our wants while men and horses enjoyed well-earned repose. I had formed a base-camp about five miles from the shores of the lake, intending to make short expeditions, lightly equipped, round and about the vicinity. As for the camp, three large thorn-bushes were Nature's contribution towards it, and what a relief even the shelter of a thorn-bush can be in the Kingdom of the Winds, you could only learn by an experience such as was ours. Below the camp, which stood on a ridge, the ground fell away in a three-mile slope to the usually angry water; eastwards was a pantano or swamp of yellow reeds, which ran a long way below the scrub-grown ridge. The tents huddled back-to-wind, as much under the lee of the bushes as possible. We made an oven, but it turned out a failure, the earth being too soft for our purpose. Round the fire was a hedge of thorn hung with horse-blankets, red, yellow and black, which gave a rather festive air to the camp. The only sounds were the neigh of a horse, the hooting of night-birds, and the never-silent wind.
STORE-CLAD INDIANS
During the night of the 10th, half a gale of wind blew up with an extraordinary rancour of coldness. I lay in my tent and heard the sides of it flapping like some great wounded bird. Sleep was put off till far into the small hours. Through the open tent-door I could look at the bushes writhing in the gale, the long black back of the ridge and the glint of stars. How often one sees in half-sleep the scenes of home and of the past! I seemed again to be watching the boats coming in and the tides rising with the well-known ripple and pouring rush of water on a shallow beach, tides that in boyish days held so infinite a romance. Where did the storms that broke there come from? whither went the dark hulls after they sank below the blue edge of sea? Or where did the fishermen sail their boats to—lonely rocks from which they brought back parrot-beaked, jelly-armed pieuvres? And yet, having drifted into some long wanderings, and now into that wilderness, no scene that I have ever looked upon, however wild or lonely, has touched me in any way that could compare with the thrill of those early dreams. Romance lies always a little too far away; only in childhood is the gate of that wonderful garden open to us, and we gaze and long for the fruit we are never to handle.
Our tents at Horsham Camp—so we named it—were the only green things in the landscape. They happened to be of a pale green. Riding out from the camp in most directions you found yourself amongst a bare and wind-swept series of ridges two or three hundred feet in height, which appeared to roll away across the wide continent. Sunday was welcome. It was noticeable how Sunday abroad always affected men, some of whom at home spared small attention for the day. Life went evenly. The others took it in turn to cook. I generally rode out early. The troop were rounded up and our first meal came about 7 o'clock. After that I used to go to my tent and write while the men busied themselves with any job on hand. Cocoa at two on Sundays, and about six a meal of meat and beans. And so to bed. The day before the colt was killed, Tom, my hound, stole a dumpling from the plate of one of the party as he sat eating. The loser at once pursued the thief, retrieved the dumpling and ate it, so you will understand that there was no wastefulness among us!
By November 12 I was tired of inaction, tired of the tent, tired of the camp. The wind continued. Surely in all his writings R. L. Stevenson never made a more perfect phrase than the "incommunicable thrill of things." A wood-scent in the morning, the sound of the wind at night, the clear cinders of the fire or a whiff of burning wood—one receives the spark that fires the train of thought and leads us far away. No indolence of the soul this, but the fulfilling of some beautiful law at the junction of the spiritual and the natural, infused through a thousand tissues and welded by a thousand heredities.... One writes much of this kind of thing, for, afar from all books or chance of interchanging ideas, one falls back upon oneself, and one's pen is a safe outlet for superfluous imaginings.