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 Journal 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, after 

 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 



