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CHAPTER VI. 



Set out for Buenos Ayres — Rio Sauce — Sierra Ventana — Transportal of 

 pebbles — Third posta — Driving horses — Bolas — Partridges and foxes 

 — Features of country — Long-legged plover — Teru-tero — Hailstorm 

 — Natural enclosures in Sierra Tapalguen — Flesh of puma — Meat diet 

 — Guardia del Monte — Effects of cattle on the vegetation — Cardoon — 

 Buenos Ayres — Corral where animals are slaughtered. 



BAHIA BLANCA TO BUENOS AYRES. 



September 8th. — Having with some difficulty hired a 

 Gaucho to accompany me^ on my ride to Buenos Ayres, we 

 started early in the morning. The distance is about four 

 hundred miles, and nearly the whole way through an un- 

 inhabited country. Ascending a few hundred feet from the 

 basin of green turf on which Bahia Blanca stands, we en- 

 tered on a wide desolate plain. It consists of a crumbling 

 argillaceo-calcareous rock, which, from the dry nature of the 

 climate, supports only scattered tufts of withered grass, with- 

 out a single bush or tree to break the monotonous uni- 

 formity. The weather was fine, but the atmosphere remark- 

 ably hazy ; I thought the appearance foreboded a gale, but 

 the Gauchos said it was owing to the plain, at some great 

 distance in the interior, being on fire. After a long gallop, 

 having changed horses twice, we reached the Rio Sauce. It 

 is a deep, rapid, little stream, but not above twenty-five feet 

 wide. The second posta on the road to Buenos Ayres 

 stands on its banks ; a little above there is a pass for horses, 

 where the water does not reach to the horse's belly; but 

 from that point, in its course to the sea, it is quite im- 

 passable, and hence makes a most useful barrier against the 

 Indians. 



Insignificant as this stream is, the Jesuit Falconer, whose 

 information is generally so very correct, figures it as a con- 

 siderable river, rising at the foot of the Cordillera. With 

 respect to its source, I do not doubt this is the case ; for the 



