CHAPTER VI 



Bahia Blanca to Buenos Ayres 



Set out for Buenos Ayres— Rio Sauce — Sierra Ventana — Third Posta — . 

 Driving Horses — Bolas — Partridges and Foices — Features of the 

 Country — Long-legged Plover — Teru-tero — Hail-storm — Natural 

 Enclosures in the Sierra Tapalguen— Flesh of Puma — Meat Diet — 

 Guardia del Monte — Effects of Cattle on the Vegetation — Cardoon 

 — Buenos Ayres — Corral where Cattle are Slaughtered. 



ryEPTEMBER i8th.—l hired a Gaucho to accompany me 

 • ^ on my ride to Buenos Ayres, though with some diffi- 

 culty, as the father of one man was afraid to let him 

 go, and another, who seemed willing, was described to me 

 as so fearful, that I was afraid to take him, for I was told 

 that even if he saw an ostrich at a distance, he would tnis- 

 take it for an Indian, and would fly like the wind away. 

 The distance to Buenos Ayres is about four hundred miles, 

 and nearly the whole way through an uninhabited country. 

 We started early in the morning; ascending a few hundred 

 feet from the basin of green tUrf on which Bahia Blanca 

 stands, we entered 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 with- 

 ered grass, without a single bush of tree to break the monot- 

 onous uniformity. The weather was fine, but the atmos- 

 phere remarkably 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, 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 ford for horses, 

 where the water does not reach to the horses' belly ; but from 

 that point, in its course to the sea, it is quite impassable, 

 and hence makes a most useful barrier against the Indians. 



