Wild Life in the Land of the Giants Part 33

We had no beer to drink; we had no wine; but we had _yerba mate_, which combines the invigorating qualities of both, with all the soothing, calming influence of a cup of good coffee or tea.

It is a kind of tea made of the dried leaves of the Paraguayan ilex, and is infused and drunk just as tea is; though the Patagonian Indians and hunters usually drink it through tubes pierced with little holes, so that they can have the infusion without the powder or leaves.

"Well, boys," said Castizo, whose English, by the way, was irreproachable, "we've made a fairly good start. And your captain, with his adorable little wife--what an amiable creature she is--will be nearly half-way home by this time. Are you sorry you haven't gone with them to see the mother?"

"Ah!" I said, "I know mother well: she will be pleased to hear we are enjoying ourselves, and learning something at the same time. Won't she, Jill?"

"a.s.suredly; and so will aunt."

"Well," said Castizo, with a laugh, "as to learning something, there is no doubt about that. You will learn to be men. The Pampas is the best school in the world."

"Whose sentry-go is it to-night?" said Peter.

"Mine, I believe," said Jill, looking at his watch; "I go on in half an hour. Then Lawlor."

"That's right," said Lawlor.

In less than an hour, we were all curled up in our toldo or kau, wrapped in our good guanaco robes, and fast asleep.

Out in the moonlight, however, Jill, with his rifle at the shoulder, paced steadily to and fro on sentry, and not very far off, leaning against one of the posts of the great skin tent, stood a Patagonian, also on duty. He looked a n.o.ble savage, erect and stately, and tall enough in his robe of skin to have pa.s.sed for a veritable giant. Lying carelessly across his left arm, its point upwards, and gaily decorated with ostrich feathers, was his spear. A formidable weapon is this Patagonian spear, of immense length and strength, and tipped with a knife of stoutest steel. A swordsman has little chance against so terrible an instrument of warfare, for your giant antagonist can strike home long before you can get near enough to do execution. If very active and you can succeed in parrying one blow, you _may_ seize the instrument, and rush in and slay your man; but, as the Scotch put it, "What would he be doing all this time?" He will not wait till you get quietly up to him, depend upon it. So I say that the best fencer that ever switched a foil is not a match for a Patagonian spearsman.

The Patagonians who formed part of our present camp were good fellows all. They were hired by Castizo, some at Puento Arenas, and some from a tribe stationed at or near Santa Cruz. Those from the former place, our cacique--as we may as well now call Castizo--had taken north with him in his yacht to Santa Cruz, and altogether our Indians numbered twenty-four souls. No women, no children, save those of the chief and his second in command. Our cacique knew better than to enc.u.mber himself with many of these on the march.

That these Patagonians would remain faithful to us, we had little doubt.

For, first and foremost, they are, on the whole, good-natured and friendly to white men; secondly, they had only been paid in part, and would not get the remainder of their stores till we returned to Santa Cruz.

A glance at the map will show where this last place lies. But do not think it is a town. At the time of which I speak, it consisted indeed of but one _estancia_, on an island. It has an excellent harbour, however, and s.h.i.+ps in distress often come here. Others, again, come regularly to meet the Indian tribes, and purchase from them skins, ostrich feathers, and curios.

There is a regular Indian encampment here. They all live in tents, and for the matter of that compare favourably with the gipsies we meet on our own Scottish borders at home.

How sound one sleeps on the Pampas! I scarcely knew my head was on the pillow till it was morning again, dogs barking and yelping, Indians shouting, horses neighing, and the bold, strong voice of the Patagonian chief as he harangued his men, heard high above all.

CHAPTER TWENTY.

A WILD RIDE--COOKING AN OSTRICH WHOLE--QUIET EVENINGS ROUND THE CAMP FIRE.

He was indeed a n.o.ble savage, this Patagonian chief. His name was Jeeka; at least it sounded like that. Peter said "Jeeka" was near enough, and to give it a better ring we added "Prince"--Prince Jeeka.

Peter admired him very much, as all young men admire n.o.bility of figure.

"I'll tell you what it is, Jack," he said to me to-day; "if I had a figure like that fellow, it isn't going to sea I'd be."

"What would you do?"

"Take to the stage. What an Oth.e.l.lo the fellow would make! Look at him now. What an air of quiet command, and such a voice! That is his favourite wife in the corner, with baby in her arms. She looks at him with fondness, not unmingled with awe. Even the dogs are listening, as if they understood every word he said."

"It's more than I do, Peter."

In good weather--and this particular morning was beautiful--no one feels inclined to laze on the Pampas. Your sleep has been sweet and sound; your breakfast, princ.i.p.ally of meat, as fat as you please, has been a hearty one, yet you do not feel heavy after it. On the contrary you have but one wish--to be up and away.

Our route to-day would lead us somewhat aside from this Rio Santa Cruz (the river of the Holy Cross), in a direction about west and by north, straight away, in fact, for the distant Cordillera range of mountains, which was to be our ultimate destination.

Ever since our start, and even before we started, we--Ritchie, Peter, Jill, and myself--had been practising morn, noon, and night with bolas and la.s.so. The latter needs no description, and a good horseman soon gets up to throwing it well, although there is a danger of being dragged headlong out of the saddle, when it becomes tightened between the la.s.soed animal and the thrower. The bolas are b.a.l.l.s, two or three, of either stone or lead covered with skin, attached to the ends of some yards of thong. They are whirled rapidly round the head for a moment or two, then deftly allowed to fly off at a tangent, so that when they fall upon an animal, be it ostrich, guanaco, or even the South American lion called puma, they so hamper his movements that further flight is out of the question. The horseman speedily advances and puts a speedy end to the creature's sufferings.

To-day the journey was a peculiarly arduous one. The sun was blazing down from an unclouded sky, making it positively hot for the climate; but after being heated, when we stopped a short time the cold east wind went searching through bones and marrow. We felt, as Peter expressed it, "suddenly placed inside an American patent freezer."

The route was very rough: the same barren wilderness that we had been traversing for days; the same sort of sand-clay or gravel, under foot; the same stunted bushes, gra.s.s and thistle tufts; the same stony ground, the same up hill and down dell, over banks, up steep terraces, across plateaus, down into cartons and past _salinas_, near which was a greater abundance of vegetation, though nothing approaching to luxuriance.

These salinas are salt lagoons or lakes. I feel sure, from their appearance, many of them are the craters of extinct volcanos. And indeed the whole country where we were to-day seemed as if at one time it had been overflown by lava, and subsequently rent and torn by earthquakes.

Castizo told Jill and me that all the land here at various periods of time had been raised from the level of the sea by the giant forces of nature operating beneath, and that this accounted for the terrace-like formation we now and then came to. But Jill and I were too young at that time to study geology. Besides, we had no more love for "ologies"

at this period of our lives, than we had when poor Aunt Serapheema used to strike one o'clock on our knuckles at home. As we wanted to put as much land between us and the Atlantic as possible, we did not stay to-day for big hunting. Besides, we were not in the very best of hunting countries yet, though we saw several herds of guanaco, and a good many ostriches.

We had one little hunt, however. It was disobeying the orders of our cacique to break away from the line of march, but in this particular case we could not well help it. Besides, if any one was to blame, it was Ossian.

A fox, a huge beast like a wolf, ran across our path.

"Hurrah!" Ossian seemed to cry, "Yowff, yowff. Come on, Bruce. Here's a chance!"

Away went the two dogs like two birds. Away went Jill after his pets like a third bird, while I brought up the rear.

We heard Castizo order a halt, so we thought it would be all right, and rode heedlessly on after the dogs. We must have ridden fully two miles when we came up with Ossian. Poor Bruce was nowhere in it; near him lay the fox, dead. I speedily dismounted, and secured the tail, which I fastened to Jill's saddle. Then Bruce came up panting, and complained to us that his legs were not long enough. Guanacos, he said, were more his form; and this proved to be true enough, for he afterwards proved invaluable at this form of hunting.

As we were returning, we noticed an ostrich at some distance to the right. Our bolas were handy, and so off we went at a tangent, in pursuit. Another and another sprang up, and to my intense delight and Jill's glory he succeeded in entangling one I shot the bird with my revolver, but I think even now I see the wild and frightened look the poor creature had in its quaint, queer face. We did not stop to possess ourselves of any of the meat, but secured the feathers, tied them in a bundle, and prepared to return in triumph.

Well, to retrace our trail was easy enough. We reached the spot where we had left our companions.

They were gone.

But where, whither? We could see the plains all round us when we rode up to the top of a ridge for very many miles, but never a vestige of the cavalcade.

"Jill," I said, "we're left and lost."

"But they cannot surely have gone out of sight in so short a time!"

"Where are they then?"

"It seems to me as if the earth has opened and swallowed them up."

And that was really and truly what had happened, with this difference: the earth had opened thousands of years before, and our companions were swallowed to-day. They were quietly preparing lunch down in the bottom of a green-carpeted canon.

We were very glad to find them, and Peter told us after, he had been looking out for us all the time from behind a boulder at the top of the bank.

When Prince Jeeka found out we had killed an ostrich, and had not brought in the flesh, he was astonished.

"You young," he said, smiling, "young, young--" Then he ordered an Indian to go and find it; which he did, and not long after brought it to camp.

Meanwhile the Indians had made a splendid fire in the lee of a rock, with roots and bushes pulled from the adjoining bank. I had once seen an ox roasted whole, but never before an ostrich.