36 IDLE DAYS IN PATAGONIA 



cattle and horses fared better, as they went out 

 into the uplands to browse on the bushes. The 

 valley soil is thin, being principally sand and 

 gravel, with a slight admixture of vegetable 

 mold ; and its original vegetation was made up of 

 coarse perennial grasses, herbaceous shrubs and 

 rushes: the domestic cattle introduced by the 

 white settlers destroyed these slow-growing 

 grasses and plants, and, as has happened in most 

 temperate regions of the globe colonized by Euro- 

 peans, the sweet, quick-growing, short-lived 

 grasses and clovers of the Old World sprang up 

 and occupied the soil. Here, however, owing to 

 its poverty, the excessive dryness of the climate, 

 and the violence of the winds that prevail in sum- 

 mer, the new imported vegetation has proved but 

 a sorry substitute for the old and vanished. It 

 does not grow large enough to retain the scanty 

 moisture, it is too short-lived, and the frail 

 quickly-perishing rootlets do not bind the earth 

 together, like the tough fibrous blanket formed 

 by the old grasses. The heat burns it to dust and 

 ashes, the wind blows it away, blade and root, and 

 the surface soil with it, in many places disclosing 

 the yellow underlying sand with all that was 

 buried in it of old. For the result of this strip- 

 ping of the surface has been that the sites of 

 numberless villages of the former inhabitants of 

 the valley have been brought to light. I have 

 visited a dozen such village sites in the course 

 of one hour's walk, so numerous were they. 



