SOUTHWARD HOI 



29 



such a chase over the broken ground of the pampa, where we were 

 often successful, but among hummocks and hills the quarry- 

 frequently made good its escape. 



On the 25th we passed a farm that was quite English in appear- 

 ance — wire-fences en- 

 closing sheep and lambs 

 ondowns that descended 

 in undulations to the 

 sea. By evening we 

 were in broken country 

 patched with red rock. 

 The horses were rather 

 troublesome ; Hughes, 

 one of the Gauchos, 

 rode an untamed mare 

 and gave a good exhi- 

 bition of horsemanship. 

 Among the sheep and 



the hills an Indian rode down from the high ground; he wore 

 a poncho of red and black, tinted like autumn trees. His camp 

 consisted of a little fire of three or four sticks, by which squatted 

 his china. He took his place beside her, and watched our line of 

 waggons and horses wind away out of sight. 



From Trelew to Camerones the country was for the most part 

 like the bare deer-forests of the Scottish Highlands, brown bracken 

 being replaced by espinilla (thorn, a general term) and the green 

 shrub called by the Welshmen " poison-bush," the same blue sky 

 above, the same occasional lochlike lagoons. For the first two 

 days or more the pampas stretched to the rim of the horizon, 

 empty and somewhat harsh even in the sunlight. Now and then 

 mirages like squadrons of cavalry hovered along the edges of them. 

 A few guanaco and ostriches, a sprinkling of cavy, and many 

 pampa foxes seemed to eke out an existence there. It was a land 

 of vast prospects, a scene laid forth with a sort of noble parsimony, 



which as in the case of a miser so miserly that for the very 



exceedingness of his vice you respect him — was yet stupendous in 

 its one or two grandly simple salient features, and drove the 



MR, LANGLEY S ESTANC/A ON THE ROAD TO BAIIIA CAMERONES 



