up to 50 kilos, with enormous head, and good eating;
"Savala," the mud-eating cruiser, which one sees nearly always with its
tail out of water, and which makes excellent revolver shooting;
"Palmieta," the curse of the Chaco streams and rivers, making bathing
unadvisable on account of its hostile assaults on the extremities of all
foreign bodies; and the "rallo," or sun fish, a large flat fish with a
long tail.

Thus was spent a week of happy days of excursions and explorations,
where sometimes we had to walk through great distances of undergrowth
and the everywhere-abundant prickly cactus, cutting our way with large
cavalry swords, always with our eyes skinned to catch sight of some
strange bird, beast, or flower. Sometimes we waded for miles through
swamps, which, in some places, abound with enormous water snakes up to 6
metres long.

We put up all kinds of water-fowl, as we struggled on, splashing
through rivers, clambering up and skeltering down slippery banks,
reaching home tired and weary every night to recount all the day's
doings, sitting out in the patio in the cool evening, eaten up by
mosquitoes.

So ended my holiday, with hurried packing, much toast-drinking, and a
final little farewell dance to the accompaniment of guitar, gramophone,
mouth-organ, and accordion. The journey south was of no great interest,
half on horseback, half in "galera," or public mail coach, with, as
fellow passengers, a German traveller, a cure (most jovial of beings,
who had brought enough food with him to feed a whole regiment), a head
of police and his men, and two coach boys.

The coach, with five young horses tied in abreast, went bumping and
jolting along hour after hour, until we came to a big river,
unfortunately in flood. The horses were unhitched, tied together and
swum across; a boat coming from some unseen corner, took passengers and
luggage across, leaving the coach itself alone, with a long wire tied to
the end of the pole. The horses were fastened to the end of this wire on
the other side of the river, and then, with a whoop and a cheer, the
coach tumbled head-over-heels into the raging flood, twisting and
turning in all ways, first one side up and then the other, until at last
it reached the near bank. And so we travelled on, back to civilisation;
a tiring journey in dust and heat by rail, bringing us home to the same
old flat, treeless, priceless plains of the Central Argentine, to dream
for many days of birds, fi