During our stay in this neighbourhood I took the opportunity of examining most thoroughly the shores of the lake. The ground which descended to them was cut and intersected by pantanos of wet or drying mud and sand. Upon the eastern shore rose dunes, covered with dense low strips of scrub. In the pantanos the tracks made in the end of the winter, when the snow has melted and the ground is soft, remain visible for five or six months. And thus these hardened marshes offer a study of considerable interest.
Although the Indians declared that guanaco rarely visited the lake, this proved to be incorrect. In the winter a considerable number must live upon and about the shores, for their unmistakable tracks were always to be found. Towards Mount Pyramide on the western side, the number of these tracks was distinctly less—rheas, pumas, the animal known locally as the red fox or Cordillera wolf (Canis magellanicus).
A few huemules (Xenelaphus bisulcus) exist upon the northern shore. In the winter upland geese seem also to favour this spot in large numbers. So strongly does the mud retain the impression of tracks that I was able to follow the trail of a horse, which must have been ridden by one of Mr. Waag's party six months before, for a distance of a couple of miles.
Tehuelche Spying Guanaco
Photochromogravure, Lyons & London
Note.—The Tehuelches probably copied this method from the Araucanians. As a rule the Indian stands or kneels on his sheepskin saddle. Here is depicted the extreme position which would be assumed to show off. I have seen gauchos do a similar trick, though few Patagonian horses will permit such liberties.
In summer the north shore of Lake Buenos Aires is one of the poorest game centres in Patagonia. During the first fortnight of our stay there we shot but two guanacos. Sometimes for a week one would see nothing save an old ostrich, which was often observed at the far end of the marsh where the horses fed, but he was a wary bird with an experience of human methods, and he would never allow us to approach within shot.
It seemed probable, from the evidence of the tracks, that at the beginning of the hard weather the guanaco trekked down to the level of the lake. For one track made in November there were twenty made in July. The foregoing remarks only refer to the northern shore of the lake; on the eastern and southern sides things were very different, and about them we enjoyed good sport.
On November 21, Scrivenor, Jones and I made a little expedition to the River Fenix where it enters the lake, and there we came upon the most favourable camping-ground we had yet seen in the whole country. We pitched our camp—afterwards called Rosy Camp—in the midst of high yellow grass beside the narrow river that wound between banks, on which green low scrub ran riot, and enormous califate-bushes made impenetrable patches of thicket. Jones and I, on our arrival, went to examine the mouth of the river. Our camp was quite drowsy with the humming of insects, for, sheltered as it was from the wind by trees and by the cliffs of a lonely hummock, it gave us a delightful feeling of comfort and well-being after our many very different experiences of camps among the high dunes and rocks over which the wind whistled.