This party was a fair sample of the evil consequences of such a system. It consisted altogether of about 300 people under their caciques, who had left their country more than a year before for the sole purpose of collecting cattle for the Valdivians; and they were now on their way home with about 800 head, every animal of which bore a Buenos Ayrean mark, and had been stolen from some estancia in that province. They were less shy than the Indians whom the Spaniards had before fallen in with, and so long as they got plenty to eat and drink they journeyed on by the side of the boats in apparent good humour, giving such assistance as was in their power, and such information as they could with respect to the country they passed through. But this did not last long; and when after about a fortnight they found that Villariño could not afford to make the caciques and their wives drunk every day they changed their tone, and even went so far as to lay a plot for getting the boat's crew on shore on pretence of a feast, in order to rob and murder them. Frustrated in this by a timely discovery of their treachery, they suddenly galloped off, carrying with them, however, two of the men, whom it was supposed, by means of their women, they had contrived to inveigle from the boats. Cunning and treachery, Villariño observes, seem the special characteristics of these people; thieves by habit, plunder is the object of their lives, and to obtain it fair means or foul are alike justifiable in their eyes. Kindness is thrown away upon them, and fear alone seems to have any influence over them which can be calculated upon. In thirty days from their leaving Fort Villariño, the boats arrived at the confluence of the River Neuquen, or Sanquel-leubú as it is sometimes called by the Indians, from the huge canes or reeds which overgrow its banks. This river was erroneously supposed by Villariño to be the Diamante, and he did not hesitate to lay it down as that river, and to express his belief that had he gone up it in twenty-five days he should have found himself in the province of Mendoza. Subsequent information has corrected this error, and shown it to be the river _Neuquen_, which here joins the Negro, and which, rising a little above Antuco, is increased by many other streams from the Cordillera, which subsequently fall into it.