278 NOTES OF A NATURALIST. 



the shore, and, being nearly level, are well supplied 

 with tramcars ; but the cross streets are mostly steep 

 and badly paved. The flat roofs of the houses, en- 

 joying a wide sea-view, are the favourite resort of the 

 inmates in fine weather, and many of them have a 

 mirador, roofed in and windowed on all sides, whence 

 idle people may enjoy the view sheltered from sun or 

 rain. A stranger is at once struck by one marked 

 difference between the towns on the Atlantic coast 

 and those on the western side of South America. 

 Here people live free from the constant dread of 

 earthquakes, and do not shrink from making their 

 town houses as high as may be convenient ; but the 

 towns become more crowded, and one misses the 

 chaxming patios of the better houses of Santiago and 

 Lima. 



To a traveller fresh from Peru and Chili and 

 Western Patagonia, the region which I now entered, 

 with its boundless spaces of plain and its huge rivers, 

 appears by comparison tame and unattractive to the 

 lover of nature. It is true that the industrial develop- 

 ment of the last quarter of a century has been almost 

 as rapid here as in the great republic of North 

 America. The great plains are now traversed by 

 numerous lines of railway, and steamers ply on the 

 greater rivers and several of their tributaries. A 

 naturalist may now accomplish in a few weeks, and 

 at a trifling cost, expeditions that formerly demanded 

 years of laborious travel. The southern slopes of the 

 Bolivian Andes, stretching into the Argentine States 

 of Salta, Oran, and Jujuy, are easily reached by the 

 railway to Tucuman ; and yet easier is the journey by 



