THE PAMPAS. 83 



the thistles sprmg up to a lieight of ten feet — forming a 

 jungle so dense and so protected by spines as to be almost 

 impenetrable. During the summer the wind mows down 

 the dry stalks as with a sickle, and the lucern once more 

 clothes the soil with verdure. 



For fully four hundred miles westward of this thorny 

 waste the pampas are " a thicket of long-tufted luxuriant 

 grass," intermixed with bright flowers, and affording an 

 inexhaustible pasture to thousands of horses and cattle. 

 It is to this portion of the pampas an American writer 

 refers in the following passage : — 



" The pampas," he says, " surpass in majesty all the 

 marvels of the New Continent ; and yet they astonish the 

 traveller by the air of abandonment and sadness which is 

 impressed upon them, especially in the low country watered 

 by the Plata. Traces of life are there infrequent ; still 

 rarer are the objects which attract attention. Here, at 

 the bottom of a crevasse, a cactus conceals its head brist- 

 ling with spines ; there, a solitary tree rises majestically 

 toward heaven. Sometimes, upon the plain, the eye dis- 

 covers the monstrous skeleton of an animal which flourished 

 in those remote times when the Andes still slept in the 

 depths of ocean, and dreamed not of blending their snow- 

 burdened peaks with the clouds. The pampas serve as 

 the burial-place for races of gigantic men, now extinct, 

 who seem to issue from their silent graves in testimony to 

 the former being of vanished generations, and to bear wit- 

 ness to the Creator of all things. Above your head, and 

 far away in the azure of heaven, you perceive a l^lack 

 point : it is a condor describing slowly its sinister circles. 



