A number of animals live in the Gorge of the River de los Antiguos. Quite close to the camp I found tracks of wolves, guanaco, huemul, a wild cat, and the smaller rodents. There was a little story to be read on the wet sand. A huemul had come down to drink the preceding evening, and had been stalked by a puma and her cub. The puma must have been giving her offspring a lesson in killing. You could see that the puma had leaped upon the huemul from a neighbouring thicket, and there had been a struggle. The huemul, however, managed to dash back into the trees and finally made his escape upon the other side of the patch of forest.
After resting the night we rode up the Gorge, where we saw some guanaco and found an ostrich egg. We left the three extra horses tethered in the camp, and rode along the heights above the river. The going was bad all the time. Stones, cliffs and rifts hindered our advance, but presently we began to leave the bush behind and entered into a bare tract of iron-grey hillsides and black boulders. Here we stopped for a meal, for which we made an omelette of the ostrich egg, and ate it powdered with chocolate. We cooked it in a tin plate with a little mutton-fat, and uncommonly good we found it.
About two leagues farther on I shot a guanaco, but my desire was to see a huemul. Every new variety of game was of interest to us, not only from the zoological point of view, but also from that of the hungry man, for we had had a very long spell of guanaco meat. We spent the night in a spot where the horses fed on some fair grass.
We climbed the highest eminence at dawn and looked out for a smoke behind the island, but seeing none we pushed on. I was riding far ahead along the tableland above the river valley when I saw a huemul. It sprang out from some rocks ahead of me. It was a young buck, and when he caught sight of me he stood at gaze. The huemul is one of the most beautiful deer in the world, although he only carries small spiked horns of no great size. His summer coat is of a rich reddish-brown, which, when examined closely, is found to be thickly mingled with white hairs. In shape huemules are rather strongly built, being about the size of fallow-deer. I have given a detailed account of the habits of the huemul, of which no other record exists, in a later chapter, so will say no more upon that subject here. I was most unwillingly obliged to shoot the buck, for we were in need of food. Leaving the meat, after tying a handkerchief above it to scare away the condors, we hastened back to fetch the extra horses. We had had scanty diet for some days, and the thought of a full meal put strength into us. We were not long in bringing up the remainder of our troop, but when returning we saw three condors drop suspiciously near the dead huemul. By the time we arrived there was hardly an ounce of meat left on the bones, and only the quarter, which we had hidden in the bushes, remained, even that being a good deal torn and mangled.
BEST HEAD OF HUEMUL (XENELAPHUS BISULCUS)
Shot by the Author
Photo by W. H. Brigden
Horsham
Such as it was, however, we made the best of it, and after cutting away the damaged parts, found enough for a meal. It turned out to be the driest, stringiest, worst meat I have ever for my sins been forced to eat.[20]
As night fell, the Gorge—it became the Gorge to us—assumed a more and more sinister aspect. Of all the scenes I had up to that time beheld in Patagonia, this was the most repellent and inhospitable. The little torrent (which was destined to play us such a trick), the high iron-grey bluffs and escarpments, the soaring condors, the scavenger caranchos, and the black shadows of the Cordillera, made up a picture that was both grand and menacing.
Next day I shot a guanaco. Very much easier work than it had been on the pampas. A guanaco would remain lying down until you were within a long shot, and one actually watched us and neighed while we discussed our porridge. Man had never, I fancy, molested them before.