“I made especial effort to gain the confidence of their principal cacique, a fine old warrior whom they call Casimiro. He is a wonderful old man, more than ninety years old he says, and I believe him. Centenarians are by no means rare among these people and I met one old fellow who claims more than one hundred and twenty birthdays. Casimiro is remarkably intelligent, remarkably broad in his ideas, for a savage. I became quite attached to him, hunted and fished with him, and we had many long talks together. He has picked up a good deal of Spanish, and he taught me enough of his language to enable me to get along very well with the others of the tribe. He took very deeply to heart the decadence of his people. In all Patagonia now there are not above twenty-five thousand of the native tribesmen remaining, while a century ago their numbers were probably almost ten times as great. Casimiro lamented the growth of the white colonies, denounced indiscriminately the traders and the missionaries who had come among his people, and predicted gloomily the speedy extinction of his race. I sympathized with him and tried to convince him that there was good as well as bad in the civilization which he denounced. “Finally a bit of adventure gave me a stronger hold upon the old chief’s regard. We had been wandering one afternoon last April through a very rough, half-wooded valley some miles inland. Making our way along the side of a steep declivity, we came to a spot where there had been a recent landslide. I stopped to examine what I thought were traces of gold in the fresh surface. Casimiro, picking his way some yards in advance of me, started somehow another movement of the loose earth and stones. He was swept off his feet in a moment, and before I realized what had happened I saw him whirled over and over in a great mass of _débris_ toward the bottom of the defile more than a hundred yards below. I gave him up for lost, but about a third of the distance from the bottom, before the descent became almost perpendicular, was a large jutting rock, which divided the small avalanche, and the old man managed to catch and cling to it. “Of course I went to his assistance. It was a matter of great difficulty to reach him. There was danger of starting fresh slides which would sweep us both away and it was not easy to get a footing in the insecure earth. Two or three times I slipped a few feet, but by digging toes and fingers into the hillside I checked myself with no worse damage than a few scratches. The old Indian was badly shaken and bruised but he seemed to have no bones broken. I got him into a more comfortable position on the rock and in a few minutes his strength came back, so that with a little help from me he was finally able to scramble up the steep slope to an easier angle where we could stand on our feet again and make our way to sound earth.