1918.] Cape San Antonio, Buenos Ay res. 369 



consists principally of the poisonous (to livestock) " Duras- 

 nillo negro" [Cestrum parqui L'Herit.) and the prickly 

 sweet-fiovvered " Brusquilla." The blue Passion-flower with 

 its golden fruit is common in all the woods, as are various 

 other creepers^; and a few Air-plants {Oncidium? sp.), 

 with purple and crimson blossoms. The preceding are the 

 most salient features in the woodlands. 



The " camp/' as all the English familiarly call it (from 

 " el campo/' the country, or plains), is quite level in this 

 district, no roll in the prairie. Sir Francis Head, who, 

 in his ' Ride Across the Pampas,' delineates them better 

 than anyone I know, gives a most graphic description of 

 the way in which a rancho, a tree, or a herd of cattle 

 or horses, appears on the horizon, is reached, passed, and 

 fades in the distance, to be replaced by some such other 

 object, as the rider gallops steadily on — fifty miles before 

 noon, ninety or a hundred by the time he finally dismounts 

 for the last time and unsaddles his second, third, or fourth 

 horse (verily, he was a mighty rider before the Lord^ was 

 the said Sir F. Head !), Words, however, cannot describe 

 the Pampas ; they need to be seen to be appreciated pro- 

 perly. It is strange that various writers find their influence 

 to be gloomy and saddening, and attribute the natural gravity 

 of the Gaucho (the Horseman of the Plains) to this most 

 unnatural cause. They are solemn and impressive at times 

 — in a magnificent thunderstorm, rolling up from the horizon 

 to the zenith in a few minutes ; or at night, with a fierce 

 Pampero wind driving a few white clouds across the full 

 moon, and bearing on its blast the uncanny shrieks of the 

 "Mad Widow" (the Southern Courlan, Aramus scolopaceus 

 Gm.) from the swamps; or again, when the said swamps 

 have been fired in a great drought, and by day or night the 

 landscape becomes a roaring crackling inferno of fire and 

 smoke. But commend me to the warm sunlight and the 

 pure air, the sensation of perfect freedom in that vast soli- 

 tude, the line where plain and sky meet so palpably yet so 



* The well-known Solanum — green and scarlet-berried — is also 

 indigenous and abundant. 



