I am startled, mystified.

'Dugald,' I say, 'did I really kill that guanaco?'

'No one else did.'

'And you've only just come--only just this second? Well, I'm glad to hear
it. It was after all a pure accident my shooting the beast. I _did_ hold
the rifle his way. I _did_ draw the trigger----'

'Well, and the bullet did the rest, boy. Funny, you always kill by the
merest chance! Ah, Murdoch, you're a better shot than I am, for all you
won't allow it.'

Wandering still onwards and still upwards next day, through lonely glens
and deep ravines, through canons the sides of which were as perpendicular
as walls, their flat green or brown bottoms sometimes scattered with huge
boulders, casting shadows so dark in the sunlight that a man or horse
disappeared in them as if the earth had opened and swallowed him up, we
came at length to a dell, or strath, of such charming luxuriance that it
looked to us, amid all the barrenness of this dreary wilderness, like an
oasis dropped from the clouds, or some sweet green glade where fairies
might dwell.

I looked at my brother. The same thought must have struck each of us, at
the same moment--Why not make this glen our _habitat_ for a time?

'Oh!' cried Archie, 'this is a paradise!'

'Beautiful! lovely!' said Dugald. 'Suppose now--'

'Oh, I know what you are going to say,' cried Donald.

'And I second the motion,' said Sandie Donaldson.

'Well,' I exclaimed, 'seeing, Sandie, that no motion has yet been made--'

'Here is the motion, then,' exclaimed Dugald, jumping out of his saddle.

It was a motion we all followed at once; and as the day was getting near
its close, the Gauchos set about looking for a bit of camping-ground at
once. As far as comfort was concerned, this might have been chosen almost
anywhere, but we wanted to be near to water. Now here was the mystery: the
glen was not three miles long altogether, and nowhere more than a mile
broad; all along the bottom it was tolerably level and extremely well
wooded with quite a variety of different trees, among which pines, elms,
chestnuts, and stunted oak-trees were most abundant; each side of the glen
was bounded by rising hills or braes covered with algorroba bushes and
patches of charmingly-coloured cacti, with many sorts of prickly shrubs,
the very names of which we could not tell. Curious to say, there was very
little undergrowth; and, although the trees were close enough in some
places to form a jungle, the grass was