In March, 1877, Doctor Moreno with a party of men working on the boundary commission, and with a number of Patagonian horse-Indians, was encamped for some weeks beside Lake Viedma, which had not before been visited by white men for a century, and which was rarely visited even by Indians.  One morning, just before sunrise, he left his camp by the south shore of the lake, to make a topographical sketch of the lake.  He was unarmed, but carried a prismatic compass in a leather case with a strap.  It was cold, and he wrapped his poncho of guanaco-hide round his neck and head.  He had walked a few hundred yards, when a puma, a female, sprang on him from behind and knocked him down.  As she sprang on him she tried to seize his head with one paw, striking him on the shoulder with the other.  She lacerated his mouth and also his back, but tumbled over with him, and in the scuffle they separated before she could bite him.  He sprang to his feet, and, as he said, was forced to think quickly.  She had recovered herself, and sat on her haunches like a cat, looking at him, and then crouched to spring again; whereupon he whipped off his poncho, and as she sprang at him he opened it, and at the same moment hit her head with the prismatic compass in its case which he held by the strap.  She struck the poncho and was evidently puzzled by it, for, turning, she slunk off to one side, under a bush, and then proceeded to try to get round behind him.  He faced her, keeping his eyes upon her, and backed off.  She followed him for three or four hundred yards.  At least twice she came up to attack him, but each time he opened his poncho and yelled, and at the last moment she shrank back.  She continually, however, tried, by taking advantage of cover, to sneak up to one side, or behind, to attack him.  Finally, when he got near camp, she abandoned the pursuit and went into a small patch of bushes.  He raised the alarm; an Indian rode up and set fire to the bushes from the windward side.  When the cougar broke from the bushes, the Indian rode after her, and threw his bolas, which twisted around her hind legs; and while she was struggling to free herself, he brained her with his second bolas.  The doctor’s injuries were rather painful, but not serious.

Twenty-one years later, in April, 1898, he was camped on the same lake, but on the north shore, at the foot of a basaltic cliff.  He was in company with four soldiers, with whom he had travelled from the Strait of Magellan.  In the night he was aroused by the shriek of a man and the barking of his dogs.  As the men sprang up from where they were lying asleep they saw a large puma run off out of the firelight into the darkness.  It had sprung on a soldier named Marcelino Huquen while he was asleep, and had tried to carry him off.  Fortunately, the man was so wrapped up in his blanket, as the night was cold, that he was not injured.  The puma was never found or killed.

About the same time a surveyor of Doctor Moreno’s party, a Swede named Arneberg, was attacked in similar fashion.  The doctor was not with him at the time.  Mr. Arneberg was asleep in the forest near Lake San Martin.  The cougar both bit and clawed him, and tore his mouth, breaking out three teeth.  The man was rescued; but this puma also escaped.