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[[1st newspaper article]] Hermit of Patagonia Keeps Hidden as Train Rolls By Steward Cuts His Arm Opening Window to Toss Out Bread ^[[June 2]] By W. H. SHIPPEN. Jr., Star Staff Correspondent. [[image - W.H. Shippen, Jr.]] EN Route TO BARILOCHE, Patagonia. -- We never saw the hermit. He was supposed to be hidden in the rocks -- very well hidden! I had my pocket camera out and the train crew as on the alert. The diner stewards had a bundle of bread to toss him. But the train was going downgrade, having labored over the divide. One cliff looked like another as we coasted toward Bariloche. We wound in and out, descending a twisting track which showed the engine and at least 10 cars ahead. The diner stewards, an Austrian and a young Argentine, got a bit excited looking for their friend, the hermit. The Argentine tried to raise a window which (because the train traversed a desert) was tighly fitted. In his hurry he shattered the glass. His wrist went through. The steward wrapped a napkin about his hand to hide the crimson stain, and go the bundle of bread out at its proper destination. The hermit, it seems, is quite fond of bread, although he has foresworn other benefits of civilization. He lives in a cave and has no truck with the world, as represented by the trains which come dropping down, and huffing and puffing back, once a week in the off tourist season. The trains have been passing for two years -- pretty regularly ever since the line was built to its terminus at Briloche, on Lake Nahuel Huapi, in the Andes, just under the border of Chile. The stewards knew nothing about the hermit. They had seen him only once or twice. He had a beard, of course, and he was deeply religious. Beyond that the stewards could give us no description of the recluse. "The hermit," they said, "likes bread." "But what about those sheep back there? They seem to be eating the hermit's bread." "Ah, senor, the hermit will be there soon. If the sheep eat the bread, perhaps the him will eat the sheep!" "Si, si, si, senor," I said, meaning, "yes, yes, yes, mister!" [[article cuts off there. It is unclear if it is over.]] [[2nd newspaper article]] Boar Hunts Common On Large Ranch in Patagonian Park Texan, 75, Injured in Chase, Shows Visitors 900-Pound Carcass By W. H. SHIPPEN. Jr., Star Staff Correspondent. [[image - W.H. Shippen, Jr.]] BARILOCHE Patagonia. -- In the future Don Juan (John) Jones will kill his wild boars from horseback. Several months ago he wrenched an ankle dodging about the scrub trying to get a pistol bullet into a charging tusker at close range. Don Jaun was still limping when we visited his ranch today, but not enough to stop him from showing us his meat house, in which hung the carcass of a European wild boar that had weighed almost 900 pounds. "At my age," grinned Senor Jones, who admits to 75 years, "a man learns to be a mite cautious. With my boys, now, its different. They ride into the brush and get their pigs n foot. I'm afeerd I can't run fast enough to do that any more!" Don Juan came to the Argentine from Northwest Texas when the fences bagan to crowd him, and when he was young enough to live about 20 hours a day in the saddle. He got a job driving cattle from Buenos Aires West across the Pampas and through an Andean pass into Chile on the West Coast. Sometimes the round-trip took a year. In Chile he met a girl newly arrived from Iowa. The two hit it off together and were married after young Jones got a stake of several thousand pesoes salted away in his money belt. The couple came South in search of grazing leagues unmarred by fences. Imported Own Trees. The two found what they wanted in this region, rimmed by the snowclad Andes and the bright waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi. They bought sheep and cattle and ranged them on government land. Senor Jones imported his own trees. He rode for weeks with a bundle of seeding poplars tied behind his saddle. Year after year the prevailing wind whipped all the life out of the young poplars, but the Joneses persisted. They had built their first cabin from native cedar dragged off the slopes of the Andes, and were not to be discouraged by the reluctance of shade and windbreak trees to thrive in the new environment. After they got enough poplars started to stem the the full force of the wind, the new plantings grew rapidly in the rich soil. The Jones ranchhouse now is surrounded by great trees. Senor Jones holds the title to his lands, although they lie within a great national park. In the early days, during the border dispute between Argentina and Chile, Jones was able to do many favors for Senor Francisco P. Moreno, who represented the Argentine on the Boundary Commission. Senor Moreno later became "the father of the national park system." He rewards the North American pioneer by helping to pass special legislation authorizing him to purchase from the government the grazing land he had rented. The Joneses have five sons and two daughters. The family is an active one. The two girls ride almost as well as their brothers, although the youngest Jones boy, called Duke, has outstripped them all at killing wild boars. The neighbors predict that Duke won't live to a ripe old age. He gets his pig by pulling it hind feet from under it after the dogs bring it to bay and slitting its throat with a Gaucho knife. Some of the boars have 6-inch tusks. Boars Came From Germany. The boars, just now, are quite a topic of conversation at the surrounding estancias. They were imported, about 14 years ago, from the Black Forest of Germany by some sportsmen from Buenos Aires who planned to ride them down on the pamps with lances -- like the daring British pig-stickers of swank regiments in India. "The trouble with that idea," grinned Don Juan Jones (his Texas drawl persists after more than half a century of speaking Spanish) "is that those pigs are too cute to on the plains. They just naturally take to the brush and the mountain roughs as soon as they hear a hound open up. "The only way you can get a boar in the open is to shoot him dead and drag him out behind a horse!" It seems that the B. A. sportsmen, upon verifying this disconcerting habit of the pigs, washed their hands of the whole shooting match. The pigs became the problem of the local ranchers, a problem that multiplied with the years and the litters. The big boars grew lustily in a favorable, wild environment and took to killing lambs. "Last lambing season," Senor Jones said, "we tracked a big one through the snow in a back pasture. That fellow killed and ate 11 lambs between midnight and daylight and we could tell by his tracked he was still hungry and hunting for more!" Imports Coon Hounds. Don Juan imports Tennessee coon hounds to hunt the boars. Kentucky fox hounds, he says, are faster on the trail but they won't take hold of a big boar to bring him to bay. The Jones have lost many dogs. Of a pack of eight, six came back wounded from the last hunt. "A hound takes a big boar by the ear," Senor Jones said, "and the boar shakes his head. His ears are set just right to bring a hound's throat across his tusks. Then we need another hound. The big fellow always comes to bay in thick brush. When we follow, he won't hesitate to charge a man on horseback. One of them slashed a horse of mine across the hock and the wound was months in healing. I've seen them leap up and try to cut the throat of a horse. "The trick is to ride in close, save your fire and shoot when you know exactly where a bullet's going! Eight or 10 feet is the best range . . . and don't miss!" The wild boars have multiplied and ranged far. They time their raids on lambing fields and poultry yards so that the daylight finds them far away in the mountains. They sometimes run for 12 hours ahead of the hounds. Up until a few years ago, the rancher were seriously worried about the new natural enemy threatening their flocks. "I doubt if they're increasing now," said Senor Jones. "I've seen signs that the boars eat their own young. For the last few years they're only averaged about 300 lambs a spring from my sheep." "Did you ever think of asking damages from the men who liberated the wild pigs?" "Well, my boys and I get a lot of sport out of hunting boars. We figure it's cheap at 300 lambs a year!" [[end article]] [[3rd newspaper article]] Lonely Naturalist Keeps Strange Pets In Lake-Set Park Guanacos Get Too Friendly Without Introduction to Dr. Mann and Party By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr. Star Staff Correspondent, [[image - W.H. Shippen, Jr.]] BARIOCHE, Patagonia. -- "Ah, please to excuse my friends!" The German naturalist on Victoria Island was embarassed. He blushed a bit into his beard. Or perhaps it was exertion. His arms were about the long giraffe-like neck of a guanaco . . . two gaunacos, as a matter of fact. Now a guanaco is a llama's cousin and a camels nephew. He's pretty strong and twice as curious. The guanacos were trying to get at the visitors -- all in the friendliest possible spirit. They wanted to put their hooves on the visitors' shoulders and lick their noses. The young naturalist, a pretty husky citizen, was having quite a tussle trying to restrain his "friends," and keep it all on a dignified plane. He kept calling for his assistant. "You know the guanaco, yes?" panted the naturalist, making conversation while his assistant came on the run. "I've met a few," replied Washington Zoo Director William M. Mann, "but that's the first time one ever kissed me before we were introduced!" "Please to excuse." The naturalist sighed with relief as he turned over his armload of necks to an assistant with rope halters. "My friends, they come here when they are very little. I make them my pets because I am much alone. I have other pets. Will you come and see, please?" Deer Seen in Numbers. We had landed from a government launch on Victoria Island in Lake Nahuel Huapi, where the National Parks Service is establishing a game refuge in the virgin forests and clear waters that lie under the snow-capped Andes. The naturalist in charge led up the pathway towards his lodge of cedar logs set in a clearing on a knoll overlooking the lake. A Great Dane came bounding to meet us, and a canary chirped a greeting as we entered the lodge. A poodle was stretched before blazing logs in the fireplace, and from the windows we could see deer grazing along the lake shore. "I have many friends to keep me company in the winter when the snow comes down," the naturalist said. He showed us photographs he had taken of the deer feeding in little yards he had cleared from the drifts. He had been much alone on the island during the months he had started. He showed us his grand piano by the windows overlooking the lake, where he tried his hand at composingl his studio on the second floor, where he developed his photographs, sketched and executed wood cuts of life on the pampas and in the Andes; his collection of curios (boleodoras, lassoes, Gaucho knives, ponchos, Indian handwork, old silver and dueling pistols) and his Winchester rifle and revolvers. Take Stroll in Virgin Forest. The naturalists then took us for a stroll through a virgin forest of pines and native trees from which hung Spanish moss and strange parasite plants. One of these looked like our honeysuckle and flowered the year around. Humming birds darted among the blossoms, although the fall season was well advanced, and the first snow had drifted well below the timber line on the granite mountains that towered into the clouds above us. The naturalist, he said, was returning with us in our launch, the some 15 miles to Bariloche. Bach at the lodge he excused himself while he dressed. When he showed up again he was outfitted in flowing Gaucho trousers gathered into half boots, a broad, silver-decorated belt with cartridges and revolver holster, a tweed coat Tyrolean hat. His brown beard was neatly trimmed and he wore a monocle. He was en route, he explained, across the lakes and over an Andean pass to Chile to negotiate for some flamingos. The snow had stopped automobile traffic through the pass, and he planned make that part of the journey on horseback. As we approached the boat landing one of the gaunacos broke free and made for straight for Dr. Mann, nudging him suddenly from behind. The startled zoologist jumping a good distance down the trail. Our host, embarassed all over again, wrestled his 4-footed friend behind a fence. Fails to Make Good His Threat. "Come on over," grinned Dr. Mann, "and I'll give you a poke on the jaw!" The guanaco obliged, and was about to leap the fence when Dr. Mann retreated to the launch. "Perhaps I make pests of my pets," smiled the naturalist, "You see, I am a lonely man on my island." As our launch moved out into the lake, however, we noticed the naturalist furtively reading a letter in a feminine hand -- it bore a Chilean date mark. "I wonder," said Dr. Mann, "if that young fellow is riding through a snowy pass in the Andes just to bring back some flamingoes * * * maybe his pets will have a mistress this winter to teach them the proper respect for their elders!" [[end article]]
