CHAPTER VI 

 BAHIA BLANCA TO BUENOS AYRES 



Set out for Buenos Ayres Rio 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. 



i8th. I hired a Gaucho to accompany me 

 on my ride to Buenos Ayres, though with some diffi- 

 culty, 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 mis- 

 take 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 with- 

 ered grass, without a single bush or tree to break the monot- 

 onous uniformity. The weather was fine, but the atmos- 

 phere remarkably hazy; I thought the appearance foreboded 

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

 some great distance in the interior, being on fire. After a 

 long gallop, having changed horses twice, we reached the Rio 

 Sauce : it is a deep, rapidj 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 sea, it is quite impassable, 

 and hence makes a most useful barrier against the Indians- 



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