LANDING AT LUENOS AYRES. 



CHAPTER VI 



Set out for Buenos A}'res — Rio Sauce- — Sierra Ventana — Third Posta — Driving 

 Horses — Bolas — Partridges and Poxes — Features of the Country — Long- 

 legged Plover — Teru-tero — Hail -storm — Natural Enclosures in the Sierra 

 Tapalguen — Flesh of Puma — Afeat Diet — Guardia del Monte — Effects of 

 Cattle on the Vegetation — Cardoon — Buenos Ayres — Corral wliere Cattle are 

 slaughtered. 



BAHIA BLANCA TO BUENOS AYRES 



September ZtJi — I hired a Gaucho to accompan}' me on my ride 

 to Buenos Ayres, though with some difficulty, as the father of 

 one man was afraid to let him go, and another who seemed 

 willing, was described to me as so fearful that I was afraid to take 

 him, for I was told that even if he saw an ostrich at a distance, 

 he would mistake it for an Indian, and would fly like the wind 

 away. The distance to Buenos Ayres is about four hundred 

 miles, and nearly the whole wa\' through an uninhabited 

 country. We started early in the morning ; ascending a few 

 hundred feet from the basin of green turf on which Bahia Blanca 

 stands, we entered on a wide desolate plain. It consists of a 



