84 THE HORSE IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



In the distance passes and disappears the ungainly figure 

 of a rhea (the nandu). The inexpressible charm of these 

 solitudes is their absolute freedom. And while traversing 

 them the wayfarer comprehends the love with which they 

 inspire the Indian, whose hope it is to meet beyond this 

 world with yet vaster horizons for the indulgence of his 

 wandering tastes." 



After crossing these romantic plains we come to a tract 

 of swamp and bog; which is succeeded by a region of 

 ravines and stones; and this by a belt, reaching to the 

 Andes, of thorny bushes and dwarf trees massed together 

 in an impervious thicket. 



ANIMAL LIFE IN THE PAMPAS. THE MAMMALS. 



Strange to say, prior to the conquest of South America 

 by the Spaniards, not a single species of the great family 

 of the Equidse inhabited the wide grassy tracts of the 

 pampas. Tlie New World possessed no animal analogous 

 to the horse, the onager, the hemione, the zebra, or the 

 quagga ; and the reader of the picturesque pages of Pres- 

 cott and Sir Arthur Helps will not fail to remember with 

 what terror the Peruvians in the south, and the Mexicans 

 in the north, regarded the mounted followers of Pizarro 

 and Cortes. Yet, when introduced by Europeans, the 

 horse, as might have been expected, multiplied rapidly in 

 the fertile regions of the pampas; where he soon became 

 wild, and, breeding with the ass, produced the mule — 

 which, in South America as in Europe, proves man's most 

 useful auxiliary. The European ox is likewise acclimatized 

 over the entire extent of the New Continent ; and immense 



