43 



owed its origin to the fact that in former years a number of 

 pumas or Chileno lions had been killed in the ravine. Here also 

 lovers of the chase had often come to hunt the guanaco, an ani- 

 mal somewhat smaller than the llama, but belonging to the same 

 family. Neither lion nor guanaco, however, appeared to welcome 

 me to his lair, a circumstance which I did not much regret. On 

 the way to this mountain defile we rode along the sea-shore for 

 several miles, and then struck inland over a wide track of loose, 

 shifting sand into which our horses sank nearly half way to the 

 knees, and which is continually blown about by the wind. Along 

 this route I gathered a number of interesting plants. Among 

 them was a Calandrhiia, the common name of which is ^'Pata de 

 guanaco,'' or guanaco's foot, so-called from the fancied resem- 

 blance of the shape of its leaves to the hoof of the guanaco. 

 This elegant flower throws up a tall, branching stem, each branch 

 bearing on long naked peduncles several large and brillant pur- 

 ple blossoms, a conspicuous object upon the desert. Another 

 species, or perhaps only a variety of this, much smaller in size, 

 grows near the sea-shore, having a bright yellow corolla. In clumps 

 around which the sand is often heaped in ridges as if against a 

 wall occurred an odd-looking, yellow-flowered shrub of the 

 Apocyneae, {Skytant/ms aciitus, Meyen), popularly named 

 '^Cuerno de cabra,'' or Goat's horn, from the singular habit which 

 its long, pointed follicles have of twisting themselves into the 

 shape of a pair of goat's horns. The resemblance is so exact, 

 that every one calls them by that name at first sight. In similar 

 situations is found an Ephedra, vulgarly "Pingo-pirjgo," the naked 

 sharp-pronged stems of which seem just in place in such a region. 

 We frequently rode through mounds of sand in which clumps 'of 

 these two shrubs were completely buried. 



Farther along the sand was firmer, but attended by a new 

 danger to the horseman. A small lizard, of a livid color and 

 some six or eight inches in length, the only animal that we en- 

 counted in our excursion makes its burrow in these inhospitable 

 wastes. As the animal is quite gregarious in its habits, we often 

 came upon spaces entirely honeycombed by scores of these 

 little creatures. Riding incautiously upon such ground our 

 horses would suddenly sink over the fetlock into these burrows 



