On that afternoon I caught a horse and went down to the long point that stretches out into the lake. Although this was a ride of upwards of twenty miles, I saw no living thing upon the land, and on the water only a couple of grebes and three upland geese. My way lay through dense thickets of low growth, the going very sandy and treacherous. The high-water mark, or, as I should rather say, the flood-mark of the lake was outlined by piles and piles of driftwood of milk-toothlike whiteness. Some of the trunks were as large in girth as my body. All this comes down from the mountain forests, carried by torrents from the melting snows. The vegetation on that side of the lake was the most florid and sizeable that I had so far seen in Patagonia. High flowering grass, thorn-bush thickets almost impenetrable, and between these and the margin of the water a wide strewing of rotten trunks of antarctic beech and poles of an arborescent grass-like bamboo. On my way back I made a short cut through the edge of the lake, of which the bed was shingly.
LAKE BUENOS AIRES
November 13.—I went to the River Fenix and shot a guanaco. Afterwards I took a six-mile walk and shot two snipe. Lake Buenos Aires was certainly the very heart of the wind's domain. While we were there the wind never died down, it blew all the time, often lifting sand and gravel, and sometimes a great piece of our camp-fire, sheltered as that was. It raged on most days, blowing so hard that some people in England would not have cared to venture out of doors.
I have so far given no description of our tents, which were probably the nearest approach to comfort within many hundred miles of Horsham Camp. Mine was small, seven feet by a short six, and four feet high, sustained by four ropes and a pole, the place of the second pole—which we lost—being taken by a bow-legged slip of califate-wood. The tent contained two beds made up of skins and ponchos laid on the green canvas floor, a soldered tin of plug tobacco served by way of a candlestick and upheld a candle-end. Round and about the tent and on its excrescent flooring were heaped our boxes, otherwise the wind would have blown it over. It was a mere bag of a place, with an exit like an animal's hole; but at night, when the storm howled without, our dim light looked homely, the tobacco-scented air was grateful, and a bit of camphor lent its aroma to the place. And there one could lie at ease and read or think at pleasure.
On the 14th I shot another guanaco; it was curious that we were always rich in meat or else in absolute want of it. I had gone out on Jones' black horse for a little exercise towards the River Deseado, and there I surprised the guanaco. He was an old buck and solitary. He gave me a nice shot, then walked a step or two and fell dead. At Horsham Camp we lived in some dread of scorpions; Jones found one on his saddle, Burbury another in the flour or the cooking-pot, and some roosted in our bedding. By the way, our kitchen arrangements were becoming very scanty at that period; we had but two cooking-pots left and one kettle, thanks to the energetic treatment they had received at the heels of the cargueros. It was fervently hoped by all the party that nothing would go wrong with any of these, or we should have been most uncomfortably situated.
On the 15th I started with Burbury and Scrivenor to make an expedition towards Mount Pyramide. Upon our way we were astonished to see three herds of guanaco—fourteen, and ten, and then twenty-one—at different times. Although I was well within shot I did not try to kill any, as we had meat enough.