RIO NEGRO. 105 
both our admiration and astonishment. Nothing can exceed the ani- 
mation of both horse and rider on these occasions. 
Mr. Waldron, our purser, made an endeavour to purchase some 
vegetables for the crews, from an estancia on the river side, of which 
an old Spaniard was the owner, thus affording him an opportunity 
of disposing of many of them. But the conditions were that they 
must be on the beach in a few hours, which was ample time to have 
duo- up an acre. As soon, however, as he learned these terms, he 
shrugged his shoulders, and declared the thing impossible, took down 
his guitar, seated himself in front of his house, and began to play a 
lively air, which his two sons accompanied with their voices. 
The coast and the banks of the Rio Negro are composed of sand- 
hills of from thirty to fifty feet in height, covered with a scattered 
growth of grass, which prevents the sand from blowing away. 
These gradually rise to the height of one hundred feet, except to 
the southward of the river, where the bank is perpendicular ; at this 
height the ground stretches away in a level prairie, without a single 
tree to break the monotony of the scene, and affords a view as unin- 
terrupted as the ocean. 
The apparent hills along the river are found to be no more than 
the face of the excavation made or worn down by the river, forming 
the valley through which it flows. 
The only verdure on the prairie is a small shrub, which when the 
lower branches are trimmed off serves a useful purpose. From an 
optical illusion, (the effect of refraction,) they appear, when thus 
trimmed, as large as an ordinary sized apple tree, and one is not a 
VOL. I. ^7 
