Through the Heart of Patagonia

by H. Hesketh-Prichard

So we had journeyed westward, having always upon the south the yellow pampa, and beside us on the north the river running through its deep cañadon, while every dawn the vast phalanx of the Andean peaks seemed to have moved nearer, as though the great mass of mountain was marching slowly and surely towards us like the battle-front of some destroying army.

Again we came upon a second death-place of guanaco, which made a scene strange and striking enough. There cannot have been less than five hundred lying there in positions as forced and ungainly as the most ill-taken snapshot photograph could produce. Their long necks were outstretched, the rime of weather upon their decaying hides, and their bone-joints glistening through the wounds made by the beaks of carrion-birds. They had died during the severities of the previous winter, and lay literally piled one upon another. A brown, almost chocolate-coloured, lagoon washed close to the front rank of the dead, and those in the rearmost line had evidently lain down to die while in the very act of descending the tall barranca for water. The mortality among guanaco in a really hard winter is tremendous. They die in batches, absolutely in hundreds. At that season they come down to the lower grounds for warmth and water, but desert them in the summer and take to the high pampa, where, as I have described in another place, the Indians hunt and slay them in great numbers for their pelts. The cry of the guanaco is a noise unique. It is something between a bleat, a laugh, and a neigh. Often the old macho of a herd would come to the high ground nearest to our camp, and from it neigh defiance at us, while the rest of the point would satisfy their curiosity by staring from a safer distance.

Upon the high pampa, across which, bearing north-west, we passed, we found guanaco to be extraordinarily plentiful, and fatter than any we had hitherto met with in our wanderings through the country. Upon this pampa was no firewood at all, nothing save rolling grass which pricked you with minute thorns, so that a walk through it left your putties spined like a porcupine. To stalk in this grass, where the guanacos were unusually wild, and long periods of crawling were necessary to attain success, one had to carry a piece of guanaco-skin in the left hand, which took up the grass spines that must otherwise have entered the palm of the hunter.

Our first glimpse of Lake Argentino was a strongly-marked and vivid picture as seen from the rim of the high pampa when we surmounted it. A great eye of blue water—for the sun was bright—set beneath white pent-house brows of the mountain range. A tremendous wind was blowing out of the north-west, and we could see the great southern lake was in a turmoil of short and angry seas. Deep channels cut away into the depths of the Cordillera at the western end, and at the eastern side the waters flowed out into the swift current of the River Santa Cruz. Farther along the northern shore the cañadon of the River Leona was also visible. We could not then guess how glad we should one day be to reach the haven of that river mouth. Beyond the lake, and partly surrounding it, the Cordillera raised their jagged line of peaks against the sky. From the bases upwards towards the higher altitudes the mountains were black with forests. Three large icebergs floated on the water at the farther side, one of which had drifted into shallows near the shore. No sign of life was to be observed anywhere in the great hollow stretching beneath us.

To my mind Argentino is a far more beautiful lake than Buenos Aires. After a long look we began to descend into the lower land by a sharp cleft that led down into a deep cañadon. It was, owing to a recent landslip, a nasty piece of travelling, and the horses, disliking it, broke back more than once, the Zaino overo taking the lead as usual.

FIORD OF LAKE ARGENTINO, SHOWING FOREST ON MOUNT AVELLANEDA

Emerging from this cleft we came on one of Nature's tragedies. Upon the side of the slope was a guanaco, fallen (when I first caught sight of it) upon its knees, and making frantic efforts to rise. Three huge condors were poised a few feet above the head of the unfortunate animal. I galloped towards them, and as I came near the guanaco fell over upon its side, still moving convulsively. At once one of the condors lit on the ground beside it. I cannot have been more than a minute approaching, and as I came close the condor rose into the air to some distance. A thin stream of blood was trickling down the surface of the rock upon which the guanaco lay, and the poor creature was jerking its legs and body. During the moment which I had taken to ride up the condor had torn out its eyes! The guanaco was evidently dying of scab, and had thinned down into a mere skeleton.

I own to a horror and a loathing of the condor. Seen against the pale hue of the sky, its stately flight and grand spread of motionless wing made it seem a noble bird, but near by it shared the repulsive appearance of other carrion-eaters. In size it is enormous. I shot one off Hellgate measuring nine feet three inches across the outstretched pinions. It rivals the vulture in its ability to quickly discover and arrive upon the scene of a feast, and is in the habit of gorging itself until it becomes practically powerless, and it is possible to slay it afoot with a stick. It is one thing to be well mounted on a good horse and to watch, as you ride along, the far specks in the intense blue, or to admire them wheeling in wide graceful circles with quiescent wings, but quite another aspect of them would be borne in upon you if your horse chanced to stumble, and left you, say, with a broken leg upon the empty pampa; long before help might come, or, indeed, if you were alone, would be at all likely to come, you would make a terribly close acquaintance with the methods a condor adopts when meat—be it dead or wounded—falls under his power of beak and claw.