ARGENTINE SUBTROPICAL ANDES 165 



exhibiting forests of the podocarpus, along with Peruvian 

 alders, elders, escallonias, &c. The mountain is no longer 

 clad with an uninterrupted forest, but rather displays a 

 park landscape where woodlands prefer the shelter of 

 valleys, and grass and bushlands cloak the ridges. With 

 increasing altitude the proportion of grass-land rises, and 

 soon comes a belt of pastures with grasses three feet 

 high, interspersed with clumps or isolated specimens 

 of the stout and gnarled quenoa- trees, barely twenty 

 feet high, which are hung with draperies of tillandsias. 

 Above 12,000 feet even the quenoa ceases, and alpine 

 pastures develop with the usual aspect, rich in flowers, 

 until the snow-line is reached. 



Continuing along the eastern slopes of the Andes, 

 there follows a truly arid strip extending far southward. 

 This district, like some others, has known prosperous 

 times, when nearly every valley had its lake and its area 

 of cultivation, and supported a fairly large population 

 with a comparatively high degree of civilization. 

 Whether by natural or human causes, or the combination 

 of both, this state of things ceased to be soon after the 

 invasion of Europeans. 



Dry Argentine Cordillera. A cross-section of these 

 slopes would show nowhere forests or even a parklike 

 landscape. Succeeding to the chanar or espinal vegeta- 

 tion comes first, on the lower slopes and foot-hills, a belt 

 of scattered scrub or chaparral, a dreary rocky landscape 

 where grass is scarce and parched. This subandine belt, 

 entirely useless, is dotted with thickets of creosote and 

 low acaceous bushes, but farther up, the bare ridges 

 are seamed with gorges, in the shelter of which meagre 

 woods and patches of the leguminous adesmia shrubs, 

 lefia amarilla, are conspicuous on the naked slopes. 

 Still lower and more scattered bushes occur above that 



