Colonel Perez’s regiment they lost two hundred horses from want of fodder caused by the deep snow. Permanent barracks, however, are now built, and a large area of land has been brought into cultivation with lucerne to supply fodder. The officers of Colonel Perez’s regiment showed us the greatest kindness and hospitality, and I have to thank this fine old frontier officer for much assistance on our journey.
The mountains round Lake Lacar are forest-clad and some of them run up to 6,000 or 7,000 feet, having the flora and aspect of Chile rather than of Argentina. On the Chapclco mountain I found several rare and interesting plants, among them an Oxalis Bustillosii (or adenophylla), which may be new and which has already flowered in my garden, and Ourisia Poeppigii Benth., of which a few seeds have also germinated; and on the Chapelco mountain above San Martin I have no doubt that other plants of great interest will be found.
The weather from here southwards became much wetter, and the vegeta¬ tion had an autumnal aspect; but the meteorology of this region is so much affected by the presence or absence of high mountains to the west, which in some places cause the rainfall to vary very much inashort distance, that I should not like to say that there is any real change in the climate.
When we reached the point where the Limay river runs out of the great Lake Nahuelhuapi we were almost out of the mountains and on the edge of the great Patagonian pampa, whose natural history is pretty well known. I had intended to return to Buenos Ayres by boat down the Rio Limay as far as Confluenza, where it joins the Rio Negro, and where the present terminus of the railway was situated. But as the valley is already well described by Señor Moreno, and I heard that there was now an easy route to Puerto Montt in Chile, I decided to go that way and was very well pleased that I did so.
All the western and north-western shores of the lake are shut in by mountains rising to 5,000 or 6,000 feet, and covered with dense, almost impenetrable, forest, of which beech, cypress and Alerce (Fitzroya patagonica) are the principal trees. A saw mill has now been opened by an English firm to cut and float logs down the Rio Limay to Argentina, and there is a large ranch belonging to a well-known American settler, Señor Jones, on the north shore. I sold my horses and mules to his partner, Mr. Neil, who has a store on the banks of the lake where the Limay leaves it, and sent my Chilian servants back to Lonquimai, as I had not time to extend my journey southward to the Welsh settlement of Colonia de 16th Octubre, near the headwaters of the Chubut river.
As for the road to Puerto Montt, I do not think I have ever seen a route which in three or four days combines such varied features of beauty and interest to a naturalist. Starting from San Carlos on the south-east shore of Nahuelhuapi, we crossed the lake in a small steamer, and reached Puerto Blest at the head of a deep inlet on the south-west end of the lake.
At Puerto Blest is a store for merchandise, but there were then no in¬ habitants, and travellers’ baggage is conveyed on bullock carts about three miles through an extremely dense forest to the shores of a little mountain lake called Lake Frio, Here I first saw that magnificent tree Fitzroya
