WESTERN ARGENTINE WASTES 157 



barren dunes or medanos, some of them shifting; and 

 studded with tall tufts of dry, small-leaf Compositae, such 

 as baccharis. They grow out of little mounds, between 

 which the sand has been washed or blown away. Mis- 

 shapen opuntias and cerei are strewn here and there 

 among besoms of stiff grasses. The rivers, many of 

 them salt, are fringed with pampas-grass, which appears 

 also on the rare brackish or fresh-water marshes or 

 ' pantanos ' and in the hollows. 



The little rocky sierras and isolated hills, like the 

 sierra of Cordoba, are not, strictly speaking, redeeming 

 features, for their stony slopes are mostly barren, and 

 vegetation is scarce. Occasional low trees become 

 conspicuous landmarks amid a dry scrub of schinus, 

 larrea, and other bushes, recalling the chaparral of 

 California. Even the scrub frequently thins out and 

 scatters, leaving nothing but a jumble of rocks. 



The Fampa. ' On every side a sea of grass, grass and 

 more grass : paja y cielo (grass and sky), as the natives 

 of the country style their favourite landscape. Nothing 

 to break the brown eternity of the pampa but here and 

 there a green ombu, shaped like an umbrella, or an 

 occasional straggling line of pampas-grass, which breaks 

 the edges of some water- course, and by comparison 

 seems as tall as does a poplar in the plains of 

 Lombardy.' 



This describes the true pampa, extending from the 

 Atlantic, half-way over the continent, to the longitude 

 of San Luis, and from the lower Uruguay south to 

 Rio Colorado. The name pampa has, however, been 

 extended to other treeless, flat tracts surrounding the 

 ' pampa vera '. 



The pampa is entirely level, or slowly and gently 

 undulating, sometimes swollen into low mounds; the 



