STERILE GROUND TO NORTH OF LAKE BUENOS AIRES
My horse, the Alazan, had recently received some jumping lessons, and being an animal with no sense of proportion, had been seized with a mania for jumping everything. Jones nearly fell off his horse with laughing when the Alazan valiantly charged a califate-bush, eight feet high and full of thorns, through which he dashed in one jump and two supplementary bucks. Emerging upon the other side we set off after our guanaco and enjoyed one of the most glorious gallops that ever fell to the lot of man. I could not help admiring the way in which Jones, who was a born rider, and, like most Gauchos, had lived all his life on the outside of a horse, picked his way among the great fragments of rock that filled the hollows. The Alazan jumped them, and proceeded upon his appointed path to his own evident satisfaction, the infinite amusement of Jones, and the terror of myself. However, though one might take exception to his methods, the Alazan had a turn for speed and bore my fourteen stone nobly to the front.
Presently the guanaco we were pursuing dashed across a shallow lagoon and fell upon the farther side of it. As we dismounted we observed fresh tracks of a wild bull, which was heading north-west towards the Cordillera. Although we followed these tracks for twenty miles and came upon ample evidence of their being quite recently made, evening fell upon us and we were obliged to turn campwards.
On our arrival we had a look at the horses and sat up late expecting the return of Barckhausen and Burbury, who had gone to look for the Indian trail, which the Indians told us led under the foothills of the Cordillera to the end of the continent. I have given a description of the trail in another place. It is in its way as remarkable a highroad as the Grand Trunk Road in India. Were it not for the tracks of horses, and the occasional dead camp-fire to which it leads you, it would be impossible to distinguish it from a series of guanaco-tracks running parallel. Nevertheless, many an ostrich-hunter has by its aid found his way into the settlements, when without it he would have wandered far and wide upon the pampas.
It was not before the next day, however, that Burbury and Barckhausen returned with the news that they had found the trail some twenty leagues away near the cañadon of the River Deseado.
I have mentioned my great desire to shoot a huemul (Xenelaphus bisulcus), and, as we had been disappointed in this respect in our former expeditions, I decided to penetrate into the gorge of the River de los Antiguos. We made arrangements for an absence of some duration from the base camp, leaving Jones and Burbury in charge.
On the 5th we started, and, while riding to Rosy Camp, saw columns of smoke arising from amongst the hills on the other side of the Fenix. We thought they were signals of Indians and answered them. By here and there burning a bush we signalled to the unknown, and in this way drew together. It was upon the yellow shores of a dry lagoon that we met with the first white man we had seen since leaving Colohuapi. This man and his errand were so typical of the country and its methods of life that I do not apologise for sketching his portrait at full length.
As he came riding towards us we perceived that he was seated upon a saddle of sheepskins, and rode a yellow horse, whose condition told its own story. In Patagonia one gets into the habit of noticing the horse before the rider. The practised eye can learn from its appearance and condition the answers to at least three questions. The rider was a very small Argentine, and he had, he informed us, come up from San Julian. You who do not know Patagonia may think it strange that one should meet with one's fellow creatures miles from anywhere, but the Patagonian Gaucho is in his way unique. He is as much a pioneer of civilisation as were the fur-clad hunters of the Bad Lands of North America. By habit and by choice the Gaucho is a nomad. It is not too much to say that, grumbler as he is when upon the pampas, there is a deep-seated instinct in his heart ever leading him back to that peculiar mode of life which has become second nature to him. There is an idea in England that Patagonia is as untrodden as the Polar regions. But this is a fallacy. The tides of civilisation are moving slowly westwards, and will so continue to move until they are thrown back by the great natural barrier of the Andes. But as the tide will often fling a little wreath of foam far ahead of its advance—a wreath that disappears for the moment perhaps, but yet its fall has marked a spot that in course of time will be swept over by the rising water; so in Patagonia these few wanderers break away from the settlements upon the coast, and set out with their little store of flour, fariña, and maté, their troop of horses, and their half-dozen hounds. They say that they are looking for good ground or, as they call it, good camp to settle upon, but few of them actually carry out this final intention. It is the free life that they love, the wild gallops after the ostriches and the guanacos, the sound slumbers under the stars, and the absence of all control.
Such a wanderer was our small friend. He had, he said, two companions, whom he had lost when running ostriches. As we sat there upon our horses and looked from the man to the great clouds of smoke which were arising from the direction of the Fenix, of which he was the miserable author, one felt inclined to throw him in his own fire. For whereas, whenever I or my men lit a smoke, we were careful that it should burn but one bush, and not spread to scar and disfigure the face of the country, this irresponsible little being, who had, as it were, ridden to meet us out of the nowhere, persistently lit his reckless fires among the best grass, so that they burnt huge areas. It was a remarkable, and in its way a painful, reflection that this puny bit of humanity with his box of cheap matches could do more harm in half an hour than he would be likely to be able to repair during a lifetime. The fact is, a fire will burn a very small area upon the pampas near the coast, where there is little for the flames to take hold upon, while here in the high grass, near the Cordillera, it may rage for two or three days, devastating and blackening the landscape.
Rather annoyed with the small man, I directed Barckhausen to ask him why he had lighted so many smokes. He replied that he had done so in order to recall his companions. As the man was, after the fashion of the pampa, our guest, there was nothing more to be said on the matter, but had I foreseen how much trouble his mania for raising smokes was yet to cause us, I should probably have remonstrated with him.