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bread, preserves, cheese and potatoes. I thought it strange that 
with so many cows no butter was made. The meat was boiled 
or roasted on a spit over the fire. Our cooks were the men who 
lassoed and killed the cattle on our arrival. Each meal consisted 
of four courses: boiled meat flavored by putting grains of maize 
into the water; soup; asado, or ribs roasted over the fire, and 
coffee. Everybody drank wine, which was a very:good quality 
of claret In the morning and between meals it was customary 
to take maté, an infusion of the leaves of /lex Paraguayensis, 
which is sipped from a gourd through a silver tube called a bom- 
billa. The gourd is called the mazé, the leaves are called yerda. 
This beverage is very common throughout South America. It 
tastes like tea, but has a peculiar bitter flavor, which is not very 
agreeable to a novice. It is taken very hot, and is usually sweet- 
ened with sugar. Frequently, from the scarcity of gourds, or 
perhaps as a social custom, the same gourd and domézl/a is passed 
around; but the custom is not so common as formerly. The 
Indians of the Pampas are said to be very fond of mazé. I after- 
wards saw it for sale in Punta Arenas, Patagonia, and all along 
the coast of Chile. 
I noticed a rancho in process of construction, and it occurred 
to me that it would be interesting to know of what materials it 
was composed. The posts, I learned, were made of the Nan- 
dubay, a leguminaceous tree related to the A/garoba, which, as I 
have before remarked, resists decay when buried. _ All of the 
posts which I saw were riddled with holes made by the larva of 
some boring insect. The tree is now becoming scarce near 
Montevideo. The posts used in building the rancho were each — 
composed of two pieces, the lower of Vandudbay, which entered 
the ground, and the upper of sauce del pais (native willow), 
which is very abundant along the banks of the streams. I think 
the Nandubay is a species of Prosopis : the willow Salix Hum- 
boldtiana is the only species of the. genus indigenous to the re- 
gion. It is a beautiful tree, the light-green foliage appearing at 
the same time as the blossoms. We found it in full bloom, and 
collected a number of specimens of both staminate and pistilate 
flowers. The roof of the rancho was thatched with Paspalum 
quadrifarium, Lam. The sides were to be of wicker-work of 
