In the Wilds of South America

by Leo E. Miller

After a week we returned over the route we had come to a station called General Pinedo. This was a new settlement and several dozen board huts were being constructed on both sides of the track. Here there were seemingly limitless stretches of fine pampas with occasional small clumps of red quebracho-woods. Numbers of cattle grazed in the rich grass, and this place was much more attractive than the one we had just left. As might be supposed, the fauna was typical of the open country and included an abundance of short-eared and burrowing owls. The latter sat on fence-posts or on the mounds near their burrows all day long; at night they became very active and flew back and forth over the fields grabbing up beetles and small rodents with their feet. Their long, tremulous screeches pierced the darkness all night long.

On Sunday all the men congregated at the two rum-shops and tested their capacities for strong drink. Often the day ended in a series of brawls when knives and machetes were plied freely—once with fatal result to one of the compadres. I asked one of the guards what would be done with the murderer, who had promptly been arrested. He said that if he could give two hundred pesos to the commisario and ten to each of the guards, the matter would be dropped. Later I was told that the matter had been “fixed up” satisfactorily, but of course could not verify this.

June 14 found us in the village of Lavalle, in the heart of Argentina’s desert regions. When the train from Tucuman pulled out, leaving ourselves and our belongings on the station platform, we at once began to regret that we had come at all. The place looked decidedly uninviting. There was only the small cluster of adobe hovels, while all around stretched the cheerless waste of sandy desert. That there could be any considerable amount of wild life in the region seemed impossible; but, as we soon discovered to our unbounded delight, it was only one of the instances where first impressions are deceptive.

Our first care was to find a place where we could put up as we had come prepared to remain a week; so we inquired of the station agent if there was a posada in town. He promptly said that there was none. Then we called on the judge, to whom we had a letter of introduction. He took us to the home of a kind-hearted old woman who immediately agreed to give us a room and board; and here let me insert that in no place in all South America were we treated with more courtesy and consideration than in the home of this venerable old woman, during the entire month we finally remained. Learning of our mission, her three daughters became very enthusiastic and plied us with information about the country, and the vast numbers of animals to be found within a short distance of their very doors. They told us that the country was teeming with vizcachas—large rodents that weigh up to twenty-five pounds and come out of their burrows only at night. We wanted to go out and hunt them at once but, unfortunately, there was no moonlight during the first part of our stay, so it was impossible to go in quest of them. We therefore devoted our time looking for other things.

Investigation showed that the country was not quite so barren as it had at first appeared. A short walk took us into a region where there was a dense growth of cacti and thorny shrubbery—so thick in fact that it was almost impossible to get through; many of the former plants were in bloom, the spiny columns being covered with large white, waxy flowers. Here and there a native hut adorned the top of a small rise in the landscape, and near by we were sure to see the inevitable flock of goats nibbling on the leaves of acacia and mimosa, and guarded by bad-tempered dogs. A little distance away from each hovel was a pond of considerable size; these fill up during the short rainy season and their contents are used to water the stock and to irrigate the small patches of corn and potatoes.

Everywhere we came across evidences of the animals about which we had heard so much. The country was dotted with huge mounds out of which large tunnels opened. From the mouths of the burrows lead deeply worn paths and in these the ground had been trampled into dust six inches deep. The mounds are built up by the vizcachas, of the earth thrown out of the tunnels, and they take advantage of the hillocks thus created by using them as observation-posts before going far away from their homes. The tops are often strewn with skulls and bones of the large rodents that have died in the burrows and which have been thrown out by the survivors. Burrowing owls sat on the mounds, and swallows flitted in and out of the openings below. There were also the telltale little foot-prints of numerous small animals which appropriated the vizcacha’s dwelling for their own use and apparently lived on peaceful terms with it. We wondered how far the tunnels ran underground, and how many species of animals occupied them, but there was nothing to give us a clue to the answer of either conjecture. As the time flew by, however, we learned many things, and one at least was of a startling character.

The great crested tinamou.

A burrowing owl.