RIVER OLIN

We rode back to the camp, and decided to try the little filly with a short march, as much delay was out of the question. The horses all appeared to be interested in the arrangement, and refused to be driven unless the filly led. This she did, making her first journey trotting beside her mother. We had to cross a ford, and Barckhausen brought the filly over gently by the ear, Mrs. Trelew objecting extremely to such treatment of her offspring. We are all very careful and tender over our loose-limbed baby. During the short march we saw many guanacos.

The duration of the expedition might be divided into periods: first, the biscuit period, when every one toasted biscuits, hard camp biscuits, shiny and of a great size; followed by the dumpling period. Now it was the damper period, which was the most appetising of them all.

THE EASTERN PORTION
OF
LAKE BUENOS AIRES

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On the last day of the year we managed seven leagues, and camped in a bare cañadon. New Year's Day we covered eight leagues of bare and arid steppes of pampa. At this time we had a great deal of hunting. A lame dog, left behind by our Argentine ostrich-hunter, turned out to be excellent for sport. We named him Chichi. We camped by a lagoon of muddy water with a thin strip of feed half encircling it, but the grass was rich with seed. Mirages haunted our marches through this desolate region. This chapter might be called "Through the Land of Distant Hills." There was a savage loneliness between those wide horizons that thrust itself upon you. One felt a mere atom, and the thought of finding oneself condemned to live there alone seemed too awful to face. The bare, round-headed hills looked old and bald, eternal winds (though not so strong as nearer to the lake) whistled sadly as before, and on all sides pampa pebbly and grassless, ridge on ridge, horizon on horizon, mirage on mirage.

Suddenly, during that night, the sky became black over the distant Cordillera and the rain began. Immediately we slung up the tents. Oh, those tents, what a comfort they were at the end of a weary march! We had no adequate poles and no bushes or pegs to hang them upon, but we got them up somehow and put the cargo round them. Then we crept inside and listened to the rain. The warm beds, the rugs, the candle and tobacco and books. It was homelike. And the dry shirt one could put on within that shelter, with the rain, rain outside! When you have slept out in all weathers you begin to understand the full luxury of a tent like ours, with its furs and warmth and a decent pipe out of the wind. It is a moving home. To be free of the weather, to let it rain if it wants to, to lie and listen to it, these are all thrilling pleasures, pleasures because of the contrast to the wet open camp where, in spite of the covered and sweating head and body, the pitiless rain trickles in pools into your bed. And the spell of reading at night inside the tent, the company of thoughts new and old of wise men, these are pleasures of which only the wanderer knows the true sweetness.