264 To the River Plate and Back 



skirted, were in blossom; and I could imagine how fine 

 must be the appearance of the great river-marshes, 

 where this plant still survives, when they are covered 

 by its bloom. 



As the sun mounted toward the zenith, and the 

 noonday heat became intense, I noticed that mirages 

 sprang up in the distance. Ranch-houses and groves 

 appeared above the horizon-line with reversed outlines, 

 as if reflected from the borders of a lake. Great 

 shining sheets of water seemed to spread over the land- 

 scape. The illusion was perfect. My attention was 

 called to another optical illusion, which for an instant 

 puzzled me. In the middle distance, and in fact quite 

 near at hand ahead of the train, I observed what ap- 

 peared to be broad reaches of blue water, filled with 

 low marsh-plants. When I first saw this, I did not 

 think anything about the matter, believing that what 

 I beheld was what my eyes taught me to see, but when 

 the train reached the spot where I had seen the water, 

 and where from appearances we ought to have been 

 running over piles through a marsh, I discovered that 

 the ground was solid. A little reflection revealed the 

 cause of the illusion. The land for square leagues was 

 sown with flax, and it was in flower. The lines of 

 Longfellow came back to memory: 



"Blue were her eyes as the fairy flax." 



The great sheets of water, which I had seen, were the 

 pampas covered with the bloom of the lowly plant, 

 millions of acres of which are annually sown in Ar- 

 gentina, not for the sake of the fiber, but for the sake of 

 the seed. Linseed is a standard article of export. 

 Such fields of flax I had never seen before, and unless it 



