270 OBSEEVATORY AT CORDOBA, ARGENTINE REPUBLIC. 



man, Mr, Wheelwright, whose energy and enterprise had given to Soiitli 

 America her first steamboat, first railroad, first telegraph, first water- 

 works, and first gas-illumination : and on the day following we traversed 

 the pampa westward for yet another 250 miles, over the railway which 

 he had jnst completed, and which had been inaugurated a few weeks 

 before. For the second time within two years, we raced with the ante- 

 lopes, and saw the prairie dogs and owls amicably seated at the threshold 

 of their common dwelling. Ostriches were running at speed across the 

 boundless and level expanse; herds with thousands of cattle, and flocks 

 with tens of thousands of sheep, roamed at will, ignorant of all restraint. 

 The spaise settlements could be seen for a dozen or more miles away, 

 their whitewashed walls and their few trees arresting the attention on 

 the horizon of this terrestrial ocean, just as a distant sail fixes the gaze 

 of a seaman. At intervals the ground was scarlet or white or purple 

 with great patches of verbena or portulacea ; the taller shrubs served 

 as trellises for the passion-flower or the white bignonia ; and many of 

 our most favorite exotics studded the prairie with brilliant colors. 



Sixteen hours brought us to the western limit of the pampa, and to 

 the city of Cordoba, the goal of 10,000 miles of journeying, where still 

 another cordial welcome awaited us. Here the provincial, or as we call 

 it the state, government empowered me to select for the observatory 

 whatever site might appear to me most desirable, and I chose one upon 

 the high pampa level, at the brink of the precipitous declivity bordering 

 the valley in which the city lies, 120 feet below. The floor of the obser- 

 vatory is on a level with the crosses upon the high church-towers, 

 three-quarters of a mile away. 



Such, portions of the building as could be constructed of wood or 

 metal had been made at home, and forwarded by vessel, and it was my 

 expectation that all the work of construction would be completed in 

 three months, so that the observatious could begin early in 1871. But 

 the Cordobese workmen had enjoyed no Yankee apprenticeship, and it 

 was not until July that the first dome was completed. We celebrated 

 the Fourth by mounting the equatorial — an instrument of American 

 construction, the joint work of the optician Fitz and of our neighbor 

 Alvan Clark. Meantime the instruments and books from Europe had 

 suffered unprecedented delays. Some were on a French ship, and some 

 on German vessels, and all were blockaded for many months by the 

 war, which had been declared a day or two before we sailed from Liver- 

 pool, and the first tidings of which were received after our arrival in 

 Cordoba. The war over, the ship with the meridian circle was frozen 

 up for the winter in the Elbe. When at last it reached Buenos Ayres, 

 the port was practically closed and the city laid waste by the yellow 

 fever, and many more months elapsed before the quarantine was re- 

 moved which closed the interior against the capital in conformity with 

 the yet prevalent traditionary prejudices inherited from Spain, and 

 which are so interwoven with all the popular ideas that more than one 



