Wild Life in the Land of the Giants: A Tale of Two Brothers

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 noble 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 nobility 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 Othello 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, principally 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 lasso. 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 lassoed animal and the thrower. The bolas are balls, 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, grass 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 cañon.

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.

The huge bird was speedily disembowelled. The entrails fell to the share of the mongrel greyhounds, or coarse-built whippets, and a deal of quarrelling they had over them. The blood was drunk by the chief and his wives. It certainly did not improve their copper-coloured complexions. Meanwhile stones were heated and placed inside the bird, the whole being finally lifted on to the bright fire, and partly covered. In about an hour it was cooked.

We were all hungry, and glad to share with the Indians. I cannot say I relished it very much; but hunger is sweet sauce, and it is never half so sweet as when squatting gipsy-fashion round a meal spread in the open air.

After a few hours’ rest we went on again, and so on and on day after day.

We seemed to be making forced marches, and seldom stayed to do much hunting, except simply for sake of fresh meat.

Unless one keeps a diary on the road – and that is what neither Jill nor I did – it is impossible to remember a tithe of the many little events that happen, or the character of the scenery. During the first six or eight days of this journey, however, there was but one character in the scenery, and that I have already noted; and great events were few and far between, so that only a few impressions remain recorded on the tablets of my memory.

I will never forget our quiet camp life of an evening, when the tents were raised, and we settled down for enjoyment. Sometimes even yet, when sleepless in bed of a night I allow my mind to revert to them, and they never fail to woo me to sweet and dreamless slumber.

The dinner was, of course, the great event of the evening, and it was wonderful how well Pedro cooked that meal, considering the few things at his command. Lawlor and he were our servants in a manner of speaking, but immediately after dinner they joined the group around the camp fire, and there we sat chatting and telling stories till ten o’clock or past.

Every one had something to tell, and Castizo, though full of adventurous stories and reminiscences himself, never failed to draw “yarns,” as sailors call them, from others.

Even Jill and I found our tongues, and told Castizo about the little escapades of our schoolboy days. He listened to these, I think, far more eagerly than he did to the wilder exploits of Ritchie, Lawlor, and Pedro.

He laughed heartily over our piratical experiences, running with, or being run away with by the hulk, and firing our pistols at the flag-ship.

“Your sister Mattie,” I remember him saying one evening, “must be a darling child, and as full of spirit and fun as a young puma.”

“She is all that,” “She is all that,” said Jill and I together.

It used to amuse Castizo to hear my brother and me, when mutually excited, speak thus together in one breath and in the same words. He would laugh, and then say —

“You boys seem to be animated with but one spirit between you.”

“One spirit is quite enough for Jill and me,” “One spirit is quite enough for Jack and me.” – this would be our answers.

It was not very often that Castizo was in the humour to tell us a story; but when we did get him to consent, we had descriptions of the most thrilling adventures, both by sea and land, that it is possible to imagine.