large brown Ibis, Theristicus caudatus, which is common in many parts of Chile, were the most conspicuous. At rare intervals I saw a humming¬ bird, generally at high elevations. But though I began life as an orni¬ thologist and still have a great interest in this study, it is impossible, when travelling on horseback and collecting plants and insects, to pay enough attention to birds to make one’s observations of much value. And as the birds of Chile are fairly well known from the catalogue of them compiled by the late Mr. James and edited by Dr. Sclater, I have said but little about them.
Mammals are scarcer in Chile than in any country I ever visited. I do not think I saw six species during the whole of my journey. Guanacos are common further east wherever they are not too much hunted, but I only saw one small herd near Traful. Foxes are not rare, but seldom seen. Deer arc still found in the denser and more remote forests, and were formerly common on the upper Biobio valley, but I never saw even a track of the large Cervus chilensis, and only once surprised a small Pudu in the thick forest above San Martin, It scorns difficult to say what the Indians who formerly roved over this country lived on; for though the seeds of Araucaria are said to have formed the principal food of the tribes frequenting the restricted region where this tree grows, and the seedlings which have sprung upon the site of old camping grounds show that they carried them about as food, yet before the Spanish colonists introduced cattle it seems as though there could not have been fish, flesh or fowl sufficient to support more than a very few of them for a part of the year.
Dr. Moreno has studied the anthropology of the country so thoroughly that I will not say anything of the tribes. In a book which he published in French, Reconnaissance de la Région Andine (La Plata, 1898), he has given a good account of this part of the frontier illustrated by photographs which will tell far more about it than I can do, and the geology of the country is probably one of its most interesting and attractive features, of which I can say little or nothing.
I have never, however, in Europe, Asia or America, seen such curious and striking rock formations as we passed in the valley of Quillen, and on the march from San Martin to the Limay river, Some of these Mr. Calvert photographed, and though these photos fail to show the wonderful forms and colours of the rocks, they may attract a competent artist and geologist to a country which is full of beauty and interest, and as yet quite unknown to European naturalists.
From Lake Quillen we tried to return to the lowlands of Chile by a trail through the forest which is called the Pucon pass, and which leads down to the lake of Villarica, once a flourishing Spanish settlement which was destroyed by the Indians and whose site is now, as I hear, covered with what seems to be virgin forest.
Our guide, however, either did not know the road or purposely misled us, for, before reaching the frontier, which is here quite a low pass, the track became so much encumbered with fallen trees and the forest so dense that I had to turn back, I crossed from Lake Quillen to Junin de los Andes, near the sources of the Pichi Nahuelhuapi river, and after leaving
