43 



First Glimpses of South American Vegetation, 



By Thomas Morong. 



A voyage of seventy days may seem in these days of steam 

 an age, but if all ocean trips were distinguished by as pleasant 

 weather as that which the writer enjoyed in the good bark Evie 

 J. Ray, in crossing the Atlantic to the Rio de la Plata^ everybody 

 would wish to go to sea, no matter how long the passage. And 

 yet we had seen so much of the '' wild waste of waters/' that the 

 cry, '' Land ho ! '' on the afternoon of October 6th was very 

 welcome to our ears, when the Uruguayan coast came intov iew 

 at the mouth of the noble estuary into which the Plate River 

 empties. The land consists of low sand hills and beaches, appar- 

 ently quite barren, or showing a scanty and stunted vegetation. 

 On swinging across the stream to the Argentine side, one is 

 struck with the fact that the land itself is so low that it cannot be 

 discerned at a mile's distance from the deck of a vessel. Only a 

 few trees, single or in scattered clumps, consisting probably of cul- 

 tivated Lombardy poplars or the Ombu, the sole indigenous tree 

 of this region, rise above the level, revealing the coast line. The 

 land here is a part of that vast region known as the Pampas, low 

 plains very similar to the flat prairies of Indiana and Illinois, 

 which stretch westward unbroken for many leagues to the foot 

 of the Andes, and southward to Patagonia. 



The river, at least as far up as Buenos Aires, although a vast 

 volume of water from 60 to 100 miles in width, is very tame and 

 uninteresting. The water Is as yellow with mud as the Potomac 

 or the Mississippi. No plants whatever appear to grow in It. 

 The city of Buenos Aires presents a fine front to the river, but it 

 has no harbor, and the water is so shallow that steamships and 

 sailing vessels are obhged to discharge their cargoes in lighters, 

 unless they can enter the " Boca " (mouth), as it is called, the 

 mouth of the Riachuelo, a small stream some two or three miles 

 south of the city, which has been dredged sufficiently to admit 

 craft drawing 20 feet of water. In fact, most of the sailing ves- 

 sels are unladen here, and the little port is crowded with shipping 

 of all nationalities. 



It is now early spring, and the season corresponds with 



