I spent a few days in Santa Cruz making arrangements to divide my expedition into two parts, leaving Scrivenor with the peones to collect fossils and specimens in the neighbourhood of the River Santa Cruz, where most interesting deposits exist, while I with Burbury and a peon, whom I picked up at Santa Cruz, recrossed the continent to the lake-region.
In a huge country like Patagonia, to explore and to collect at the same time is practically out of the question, but by dividing our forces I hoped to achieve both ends more satisfactorily.
The lake which I now wished to visit is the last very large piece of water in the long chain of Andean lakes and lagoons. It is a little to the south of 50° S. lat. From this lake, Lake Argentino, the River Santa Cruz flows eastwards and empties itself into the Atlantic, the settlement of Santa Cruz being situated at the mouth of the river. It was by following the course of this river upwards for some 140 miles that Darwin made his only serious expedition into the interior of Patagonia. His party found the passage of the river both dangerous and laborious, and Captain FitzRoy decided to return to Santa Cruz on the fifth day, after they sighted the snowy summits of the Cordillera. Thus they never reached Lake Argentino.
We also followed the course of the river, but on horseback instead of by boat, and thus for the early part of our journey we passed through the identical country traversed by Darwin.
THE MAIN STREET, SANTA CRUZ
I desired above all things to be able to move rapidly, and accordingly cut down the amount and weight of our baggage as far as prudence permitted. I append a list of the provisions, which I intended—with the help of guanaco meat—to last us for the four months which remained before we must return to the coast if we wished to escape the severities of the Andean winter:
35 kilos fariña.
25 kilos oatmeal.