And at twenty-seven, he started forth again, a full-fledged adventurer, avoiding the cities, wishing to snatch money from untapped, natural sources.

He worked farms in the forests of the North, but the locusts obliterated his crops in a few hours.

He was a cattle-driver, with the aid of only two peons, driving a herd of oxen and mules over the snowy solitudes of the Andes to Bolivia and Chile.

In this life, making journeys of many months' duration, across interminable plains, he lost exact account of time and space.

Just as he thought himself on the verge of winning a fortune, he lost it all by an unfortunate speculation.
And in a moment of failure and despair, being now thirty years old, he became an employee of Julio Madariaga.
He knew of this rustic millionaire through his purchases of flocks--a Spaniard who had come to the country when very young, adapting himself very easily to its customs, and living like a cowboy after he had acquired enormous properties.