THISTLE-DOWN 3 



beautiful, but the scene was vividly reminiscent of 

 long gone summer days associated in memory with 

 the silvery thistle-down. The wide extent of unen- 

 closed and untilled earth, its sunburnt colour and its 

 solitariness, when no person was in sight ; the vast 

 void blue sky, with no mist nor cloud on it ; the burn- 

 ing sun and wind, and the sight of thousands upon 

 thousands of balls or stars of down, reminded me of 

 old days on horseback on the open pampa — an illimit- 

 able waste of rust-red thistles, and the sky above 

 covered with its million floating flecks of white. 



But the South American thistle-down, both of the 

 giant thistle and the cardoon with its huge flower- 

 heads, was much larger and whiter and infinitely more 

 abundant. By day the air seemed full of it, and I 

 remember that when out with my brother we often 

 enjoyed seeing it at night. After a day or days of 

 wind it would be found in immense masses in the 

 sheltered hollows, or among the tall standing stalks 

 of the dry plants. These masses gleamed with a 

 strange whiteness in the dark, and it used to please 

 us to gallop our horses through them. Horses are 

 nervous, unintelligent creatures, liable to take fright 

 at the most familiar objects, and our animals would 

 sometimes be in terror at finding themselves plunged 

 breast-deep into this unsubstantial whiteness, that 

 moved with them and covered them as with a 

 cloud. 



The smaller, more fragile English thistle-down, in 



