162 THE PLAIN OF THE PAMPAS 



A close study will, however, enable us to detect 

 appreciable physical differences in the Pampean plain. 

 Neither climate nor soil is the same all over it. 



The name " Pampa " chiefly means a vegetal growth, 

 a prairie. Its limits are the frontier of the scrub 

 (monte), and strange as it may seem, it is still difficult 

 to trace them exactly. North of Santa Fe, between 

 the Salado and the Parana, the Pampa stretches as 

 far as Fives-Lille, a little beyond 30° S. lat.^ On 

 the Central Norte and the Central Argentine lines the 

 fringe of the monte reaches to Fuertin Inca and Malbran, 

 about 170 miles north-west of Santa Fe. It then 

 turns south-east and south, passing round the entire 

 depression of Los Porongos and Mar Chiquita ; and 

 the line from Santa Fe to Cordoba crosses it at Francia 

 and approaches the Rio Secundo. South of the Rio 

 Secundo it goes westward and joins the foot of the 

 Sierra de Cordoba south of the Rio Tercero (at the 

 stream Tequia). From this point to La Cambre, 

 some sixteen miles east of San Luis, the prairie extends 

 as far as the edge of the sierras, and penetrates into 

 the southern half of the Conlara depression, between 

 the hills of Cordoba and of San Luis (Pampa de Naschel). 

 The mimosa forest enters the steppe in narrow belts 

 along the Rio Quinto to within a few leagues below 

 Villa Mercedes, along the Rio Tercero as far as the 

 confluence of the Saladillo, and along the Salado to 

 the south of Santa Fe. There are, in addition, many 

 isolated clumps of chanares and more extensive patches 

 of wood in the north-west corner of the prairie (Santa Fe 

 province). The monte along the Salado is continued 

 south of Santa Fe along the Parana, as far as the point 

 where the chief arm of the river reaches the cliffs on 



I On the left bank of the Salado, west of the Resistencia railway, 

 a great gulf of low prairie penetrates into the forest of the Chaco in 

 the north, almost as far as 28° S. lat., but it has rather the character 

 of one of the floodable clearings of the Chaco {esieros) than of the 

 temperate Pampa. 



