Railway Trip to Durazno. 25 



genous, said that he had rarely seen them clad with so dense a 

 foliage. We were told that these trees had been imported and 

 planted only twelve years previously ; yet such is their rapidity of 

 growth, that they are now of the magnitude of forest trees. On 

 reaching a distance of about twelve miles from Monte Video, the 

 number of trees (none of which, except the willows, were indigenous) 

 had so far decreased, that the few solitary representatives which 

 dotted the landscape served only to render the paucity of the race 

 the more remarkable. The surface configuration of the land was 

 everywhere the same — a gently undulating grass-covered plain, 

 where the depths from crest to hollow averaged about thirty feet, 

 admitting a range of vision of about twelve miles from the summit 

 of each rise. Of ravines, fissures, or gullies, there were none; and 

 as the railway track had evaded the difficulties of levelling by 

 pursuing a most meandering course, not even a cutting was to be 

 seen to afford means for arriving at a geological examination of 

 the district. About the station of Independencia, rock was to be 

 seen for the first time, consisting of a coarse-grained (apparently 

 felspathic) granite, showing itself through the alluvial soil in the 

 shape of low rounded masses, or as boulders disseminated in 

 streams directed radially from the outcropping source. At the 

 next station, appropriately named "Las Piedras" (the stones), the 

 rock was in greater proportion ; and during the remainder of our 

 journey north, perhaps once in every ten miles, the wide expanse 

 of grass-land would be varied by an odd-looking outcrop of granite. 

 Stone was evidently a rare commodity in these parts, most of the 

 huts being built of sticks and mud. 



As far as Santa Lucia, a station about forty miles from Monte 

 Video, the land (divided into fields by hedgerows of aloes) was 

 studded thickly enough with large prickly thistles of a very 

 coarse description ; but to the northward of this position the 

 prominent features of the landscape underwent a change. Trees 

 disappeared altogether, and except along the river banks, where 

 some bushes resembling bog-myrtle eked out an existence, no 



