100 BAHIA BLANCA. [CHAR vr. 



CHAPTEE VI. 



Set out for Buenos Ayres Kio Sauce Sierra Ventana Third Posta 

 Driving Horses Bolas Partridges and Foxes Features'of the Country 

 Long-legged Plover Teru-tero Hail-storm Natural Enclosures in 

 the Sierra Tapalguen Flesh of Puma Meat Diet Guardia del Monte 

 Effects of Cattle on the Vegetation Cardoon Buenos Ayres Corral 

 where Cattle are slaughtered. 



BAHIA BLANCA TO BUEXOS AYRES. 



September 8th. I hired a Gaucho to accompany me on my ride 

 to Buenos Ayres, though with some difficulty, as the father of one 

 man was afraid to let him go, and another, who seemed willing, was 

 described to me as so fearful, that I was afraid to take him, for I 

 was told that even if he saw an ostrich at a distance, he would 

 mistake it for an Indian, and would fly like the wind away. The 

 distance to Buenos Ayres is about four hundred miles, and nearly 

 the whole way through an uninhabited country. We started early 

 in the morning ; ascending a few hundred feet from the basin of 

 green turf on which Bahia Blanca stands, we entered on a wide 

 desolate plain. It consists of a crumbling argillaceo-calcareous 

 rock, which, from the dry nature of the climate, supports only 

 scattered tufts of withered grass, without a single bush or tree to 

 break the monotonous uniformity. The weather was fine, but the 

 atmosphere remarkably hazy ; I thought the appearance foreboded 

 a gale, but the Gauchos said it was owing to the plain, at some 

 gr.eat distance in the interior, being on fire. After a long gallop, 

 having changed horses twice, we reached the Eio Sauce : it is a 

 deep, rapid, little stream, not above twenty-five feet wide. The 

 second posta on the road to Buenos Ayres stands on its banks ; a 

 little above there is a ford for horses, where the water does not 

 reach to the horses' belly ; but from that point, in its course to the 



