Leaving England -- Start -- _Primero de Mayo_ -- Port Belgrano -- Welsh colonists -- Story of Mafeking -- First sight of Patagonia -- Golfo Nuevo -- Port Madryn -- Landing -- Trelew -- A pocket Wales -- Difficulties of early colonists -- Other Welsh settlements -- Older and younger generations -- Welsh youths and Argentine maidens -- Language difficulty will arrange itself -- A plague of "lords" -- Lord Reed -- Trouble of following a lord -- Itinerary -- Travelling in Patagonia -- Few men, many horses -- Pack-horses -- Start for Bahia Camerones -- Foxes, ostriches, cavy -- On the pampas -- Guanaco -- First guanaco -- _Maté_ -- Dogs -- Farms -- Indians -- Landscape -- Mirages -- Vast empty land -- _Cañadones_ -- _Estancia_ Lochiel -- Seeking for puma -- Killing guanacos -- Many pumas killed during winter months--Gauchos.
We arrived at Buenos Aires early in September 1900, and on the 10th we embarked again on board the _Primero de Mayo_, one of the transports of the Argentine Government, by which my companions and myself had courteously been granted passages to Patagonia. The _Primero de Mayo_ is a boat of 650 tons. We carried an extraordinary amount of deck cargo, for there were a good many passengers on board, as these transports offered the sole means existing at that time[1] of communication by sea with Argentine Patagonia.
We started about one o'clock. Lieutenant Jurgensen, the _commandante_, was good enough to invite us to dine on that night with the officers in the deck-house. He subsequently extended his invitation to cover the entire voyage. After dinner we went out upon the deck. It was starlight, and the _Primero de Mayo_ was steaming down the brown estuary of the Plata.
First night out! What a penance it is! It is "good-bye" translated into heaviness of heart, and it knows for the time no future and no hope. You can only look back miserably and long for lost companionship and
All dear scenes to which the soul Turns, as the lodestone seeks the pole.
It is a time when romance fades out, and nothing is left save the grey fact of recent partings and the misery of unaccustomed quarters.
First night out--when one renews acquaintance with the thin cold sheets and those extraordinary coverlets whose single habitat in the world appears to be upon the bunks of steamers. Our fellow passengers also seemed very much under the same influence of greyness. They had packed themselves round the saloon-table, and were keeping the stewards busy with orders.