The Desert Pampas. 5 
‘in vast fluctuations fixed,’ but in comparative 
calm—I should like to conduct the reader in ima- 
gination: a country all the easier to be imagined 
on account of the absence of mountains, woods, 
lakes, and rivers. There is, indeed, little to be 
imagined—not even a sense of vastness; and 
Darwin, touching on this point, in the Jowrnal of a 
Naturalist, aptly says :—‘‘ At sea, a person’s eye 
being six feet above the surface of the water, his 
horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In 
like manner, the more level the plain, the more 
nearly does the horizon approach within these 
narrow limits; and this, in my opinion, entirely 
destroys the grandeur which one would have 
imagined that a vast plain would have possessed.” 
I remember my first experience of a hill, atter 
having been always shut within ‘these narrow 
limits.” It was one of the range of sierras near 
Cape Corrientes, and not above eight hundred feet 
high; yet, when I had gained the summit, I was 
amazed at the vastness of the earth, as it appeared 
to me from that modest elevation. Persons born 
and bred on the pampas, when they first visit a 
mountainous district, frequently experience a 
sensation as of ‘‘a ball in the throat,’ which seems 
to prevent free respiration. 
In most places the rich, dry soil is occupied by a 
coarse grass, three or four feet high, growing in 
large tussocks, and all the year round of a deep 
green; a few slender herbs and trefoils, with long, 
twining stems, maintain a frail existence among 
the tussocks; but the strong grass crowds out 
most plants, and scarcely a flower relieves its 
B 
