“It was one of the best cuts from a well-fatted mare,” said the Scotchman. “Nearly all the meat the Patagonians eat is horseflesh and they think it the best in the world. I’m glad you like it.” Brent turned pale, but he rallied bravely before his feelings could overcome him. “Great Scott,” he exclaimed, “have I been eating horseflesh? I’m glad you didn’t tell me before. Perhaps it was hunger that made it seem so good. It thinks bad, but it didn’t taste bad.” Fraser laughed heartily. “I was afraid you wouldn’t eat it if I told you, and I didn’t want you to offend the chiefs,” he said. “Really there is nothing unwholesome about it. It isn’t as though it were an old, worn-out animal that had spent its life in city streets. They prepare horses for food with more care than we do beef and mutton. Animals that do not come up to their high standards of speed and strength furnish the most esteemed delicacies of their bill of fare.” Soon after eating, Brent was fain to wrap himself in his blanket and rest his aching limbs. Casimiro called him away from the fire and suggested that they should walk for a time. The young man pleaded fatigue and he felt indeed scarcely able to keep his feet. The chief explained partly by signs that if he would walk briskly until the cramped muscles were limbered up, he would be much better able to continue the journey in comfort on the morrow; otherwise he would have a painful experience. Brent acted on the advice, though at the expense of an uncomfortable half-hour. He felt better for the exercise even before he slept. The next day’s journey was easier and more rapid. Their destination lay, the chiefs said, in a group of high mountains which were in sight all day. They were a spur or offshoot of the Cordilleras of the Andes, the main range lying still two or three hundred miles to the west. In the afternoon the landscape again became broken. At length Casimiro led the party into a narrow defile which grew wilder and grander with every furlong. The trail, which no stranger could have discovered, crept along the side of a mountain, craggy and bare. For a time they were just above the verdure of a narrow valley, which below was bright and fresh along the banks of a twisting river, while over them hung black and threatening masses, flung into grotesque and insecure shapes by some not remote cataclysm of nature.