DESCENDING THE BARRANCA
That was one of the most picturesque camps which fell to our lot in Patagonia. The grass there, though coarse, was very good; deep green scrub and incensio bushes bounded it on three sides, the barranca leading up to the tableland being on the fourth. As we were riding through the trees we discovered the three horses, led by Fritz the Zaino, descending the barrancas to water. Truly our snakes were standing upright, as the Zulus say. Of course, immediately the horses under General Fritz perceived us, they stood still. Before that they were coming down the steep side of the cliff with the grace and swing of wild things, now they at once pretended that it was a very difficult business. We caught them, and found them to be in excellent condition, glossy, bright-eyed and fat. We at once put them upon sogas, lest their love of liberty might have been increased by the week-end they had spent alone. They were evidently in the habit of drinking each evening and feeding in the rich grass of the Gorge, and in the morning ascending to the tableland and enjoying themselves there.
After settling the camp, Jones and I saddled up Luna and General Fritz and went up to look for a guanaco. We found that the fire lit by Barckhausen and myself had burned over a largish area and driven the game backwards into the higher basaltic hills. Among these, and upon the western river, the Jeinemeni, we had a most lovely evening. Fresh horses, keen air, a soft wind out of the west, and the most glorious of views—the lake, placid for once, in its gigantic setting of peaked and pinnacled Cordillera, the tint of yellow marshes in the lowland, and the whole background of the picture painted with mist and distance in a dozen shades of dusky and far-off blue.
In the course of that day's wanderings we first reached the Jeinemeni, the more westerly river, which shut in the farther side of the tableland. The ravine through which it flowed down to the lake was magnificent, a wonderful vista of broken white cliffs. The conformation of its cañadon was very different to that of the de los Antiguos. Seen from a distance the valley appeared almost treeless, and upon its west bank rose the lower hills of the Cordillera into needles and peaks of red rock and virgin snow. The plateau between the rivers we found to be an excellent game country. Upon a fast horse the ground was good enough, though rather too broken to admit of "running" young guanaco, one of the finest and most exhilarating pastimes that I have ever enjoyed.
There is an element in Patagonian hunting quite unique: so much depends upon your horse. There were but two in all our forty-seven which could be trusted to stand and not gallop off when we fired. These two I trained myself on the way up from Trelew to Colohuapi, and they were a great ease and comfort to me. But to go shooting on a wild horse, then probably to find your game in a bushless country, where you are quite unable to shoot because you cannot tie up your mount, is a most disappointing affair. Also you have on many occasions to gallop down your game—if you hit it a little too far back, for instance. Wearier work than chasing a wounded guanaco afoot over the bald and endless ridges of the pampas, or up and down the steep unstable slides of a barranca, I do not know.
With my trained horse the Cruzado, and the Little Zaino, all that was necessary was just to drop to the ground—you could rein up in the middle of a fast canter and slip off—the horse would stand where you left him until you came for him again. There were others, of course, who, if you loosed the cabresto, were off to camp at a gallop, and where quickness is so important, they made sport a little of a penance.
But to return to our first visit to the Jeinemeni. In the cañadon we came upon a guanaco, and I stalked him. The bullet took effect, and the poor beast plunged into the abyss below. We followed him down a few hundred feet, but finding the way beset with loose stones, and, consequently, on the raw bare cliff, rather dangerous, we returned with much toil to our horses. It had taken us one and three-quarter hours to climb five hundred feet.
