"I _never_ was so hungry," said he, as he took the tin plate offered him by Manuel. "I think I could eat with my hands like the cowboys! Do they ever eat anything but meat?"
"Seldom. They care but little for vegetables; not enough to take the trouble of raising a few. Meat and _galletas_, the hard biscuit of the Pampas, often three or four months old, is all they have besides their _máte_, that they _must_ have always.
"Que esperanza! lad, this lamb is good! It takes me back to other days. Many times on our expeditions into the provinces have I eaten thus."
"Tell me, do tell me of one while we eat and rest," coaxed Francisco.
"There were many, lad," said the Colonel, as he passed his plate back to Manuel for another piece of the smoking, savoury lamb. "I've never told you of the expedition of General Roca into Patagonia. I was commanding a regiment at that time, one of the regiments that became famous because of that remarkable undertaking.
"Patagonia is all of the southern-most part of this continent lying between the Rio[20] Negro and the Straits of Magellan, excepting the narrow strip between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, which belongs to Chile. This country is not the barren, unproductive country now that it was before our expedition carried civilization to its wild wastes and reclaimed those vast prairies from the Indians."
"But, Uncle Juan, what right had Argentina to take the land from the Indians of Patagonia? They had lived there for centuries and it was theirs."
"It is a long story, Niño, and I shall give you only the bare outline. You see, Patagonia is a series of vast terraces from the Atlantic Ocean to the foot of the Andes. On these well watered steppes, Patagonian Indians, mainly the Chennas, raised their cattle, allowing them to rove at will. But the winters there are most severe, especially when a _pampero_ blows; so, during the winter months, they drove their immense droves of cattle to the northward into the foothills of the Andes, where it was warmer. During these winter sojourns close to the frontier of our Republic, they lived by murdering and stealing from our settlements, and the development of our lands was being retarded because these pioneers were obliged to flee to the cities and leave their fields of grain and maize, their vineyards and their cattle to the mercy of the marauders.