On the lagoons south of the Rio Gallegos is found a kind of a duck that has a curious performance in the air, also. The birds in small flocks rise to a great height and then divide into two lines, which alternately separate and come together, while all whistle and call in the happiest manner. As the two lines close up together they strike each other with their wings with a sound something like the spatting of hands at a minstrel jig. The performance may last an hour.
Let no one infer from what has been said here of songs and screams that the desert is a noisy place. It is, on the contrary, distinctively the silent land. One may ride all day and yet hear nothing but the beating of the horse's feet and the brushing of his own feet against the bushes. Even the fierce wind does not whistle or even sigh through the brush. In this land the birds, save only the water fowl, are as a whole silent or low-voiced. To one who has heard the constant and tremendous noises the birds of the tropical forest make the contrast is something wonderful.
Of the other birds that the traveller may see a brief space must suffice. Condors, with an eight-foot spread of wing, are common in the Andean region, and are rather numerous at Port Desire and among the rocks up the river there. The carancho is a great white-breasted bird, that is something like an eagle and something like a buzzard; it is everywhere abundant. Seated on the top of a bush on the gray-brown expanse of the desert, it is a most conspicuous object to the eye. Both condors and caranchos follow the panther, to feast on the game it slays for fun. The shepherds say they watch these birds when hunting panthers, and where a number of them gather somewhat excitedly, they invariably find a panther hiding near the dead carcass of some animal. Both kinds of birds, too, have the faculty of seeing when an animal of any kind is from any cause so near to death as to be unable to defend itself, and so gather to tear the unfortunate beast to pieces while yet alive. In the old days, when Punta Arenas was a convict station, the prisoners often escaped to the desert singly or in twos or threes. Hardy ones were known to work their way at times to the Argentine with the aid of Indians or even alone, but the majority fell by the way. Their fate was pitiful. With the lack of food and the gnawing of thirst, their strength gave way until they could but stagger on with faces to the north. And as they staggered came shadows circling over the sand about them. Then the shadows became substance in the form of black-winged condors and white-crested vultures of fierce aspects and an eager hunger for living human flesh. The unfortunate would rouse himself to shout and hurl stones at this devilish host--for a time with success, but sooner or later he would stumble and fall, and then they came and tore him to pieces.
