The War with Nature. 79 
track them to their hiding places in the thorny 
thickets overhanging the valley. I was told that 
not less than a hundred pumas were killed annually 
by the shepherds and herdsmen. The depredations 
of the locusts are on a much larger scale. In 
summer I frequently rode over miles of ground 
where they literally carpeted the earth with their 
numbers, rising in clouds before me, causing a 
sound as of aloud wind with their wings. It was 
always the same, I was told; every year they 
appeared at some point in the valley to destroy the 
crops and pasturage. Then there were birds of 
many species and in incalculable numbers. To an 
idle sportsman without a stake in the country it was 
paradise. At one spot I noticed all the wheat 
ruined, most of the stalks being stripped and broken, 
presenting a very curious appearance; I was sur- 
prised to hear from the owner of the desolate fields 
that in this instance the coots had been the culprits. 
Thousands of these birds came up from the river 
every night, and in spite of ll he could do to 
frighten them away they had succeeded in wasting 
his corn. 
On either side of the long straggling settlement 
spreads the uninhabited desert—uninhabitable, in 
fact, for it is waterless, with a sterile gravelly soil 
that only produces a thorny vegetation of dwarf 
trees. It serves, however, as a breeding-place for 
myriads of winged creatures; and never a season 
passes but it sends down its hungry legions of one 
kind or another into the valley. During my stay 
