COLLECTING PLANTS, ETC. 57 



llama, as beast of burden, but they have been replaced 

 for this purpose by the burros. While the hair of their 

 near relative, the alpaca, makes valuable cloth, that of 

 the guanaco is so short, wiry and tangled that it is useless. 

 The skin makes a weak irregular leather, so as yet no good 

 use has been found for the animals. In December and 

 January they drop one or two long-legged fawn-like young, 

 which follow the parents from the beginning, but of course 

 cannot run so fast: so during the first fortnight they are 

 easily run down by men and boys on horseback, and killed 

 with clubs. The skins of these young being thin and the 

 hair soft, have a much greater value than those of the 

 adults, and eight to ten of them are sewed together to 

 make a very pretty, light and warm blanket. These are 

 much used by the natives, and are also sent to Buenos 

 Aires where they are displayed in the windows of all fur- 

 riers. The finest robes, however, are made by the Indians 

 from the skins of unborn young. 



The day was spent getting and pressing plants, skinning 

 birds and collecting lichens. We did not get any water 

 fowl, however, as the wind was so strong that it made the 

 lake too rough for them to settle on it. We also collected 

 one of the large bird's nests made of thorns. We finished 

 by collecting a series of stones from the surface of the 

 pampa. 



The whole top of the plain is covered with a layer, two 

 to fifteen feet thick, of water worn pebbles, which looks 

 very much like beach shingle, and by geologists is generally 

 attributed to the whole southern pampa having been 

 recently submerged beneath the ocean, and then having 

 risen again so that this is the last deposit made on it. 

 There are many places near the shore, where today one 

 can see beach after beach, each a little further from the 

 water, showing that the rising of that country is still in 

 progress. The broad spread of this top layer of shingle 

 is unique, and its regularity and thinness indicate that 



