42 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



situation and threw stones at his horse. This did not 

 tend toward a smooth gait, or to making Paddy any more 

 manageable. It was eight in the evening when the wagon 

 rolled into Rawson, and we got supper at the Paris Hotel. 



Next morning, the first day of August, we got away in 

 good season, accompanied by a policeman mounted on 

 the regulation mule, to act as our guide until we were well 

 on the right road. From the village we plunged at once 

 into the unsettled country and began toiling up the long 

 hill onto the pampa. This is not the rich grass-covered 

 prairie sprinkled with cattle, about which one reads, 

 and which lies far to the north in the neighborhood of 

 Buenos Aires, but a gravely barren level, covered with 

 several varieties of low thorny bushes, with a scant growth 

 of dwarfed grass between them, and occasionally a tuft of 

 coarse pampa grass two feet high. It was early spring and 

 what little grass there was, was just starting. As time 

 went on we learned the characters of the various bushes. 



The large malaspina is as typical and abundant as any, 

 ranging from two to six feet in height and leafless. The 

 branches end in forked greenish spines, containing the 

 chlorophyll which does the work usually carried on by the 

 leaves. Its hard woody stems often reach a diameter of six 

 inches and when dry make a fair fuel. In the branches of 

 this bush we often found large globular nests, made of in- 

 terwoven thorns, in the center of which a small sparrow-like 

 bird found a capital protection. Another bush was called 

 by the people chaca Colorado or red wood, and this proved a 

 real comfort, for its thorny branches with their small leaves, 

 seemed to be filled with some sort of pitch, which made 

 the wood burn well whether dry or entirely green. The 

 roots, which are much larger than the stems and run long 

 distances out from the bush, are even better fuel, so that 

 throughout the whole country the people grub them out 

 for fire wood; and slack, indeed, is the householder who has 

 not a goodly pile of the gnarled and irregular roots in 



