Pampas

“ I have shown you the Pampas alive with the swarms of their new civilisation. We are far enough from the romantic descriptions so dear to story-tellers. We all know now that the redskin of North America bears no resemblance to the portraits painted of him by Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. The Pampas, in full process of evolution, are getting more human and losing their distinctive features. They were once as bare, to quote the joke of a poet, now a member of the Académie Française, "as the speech of an academician"; man has undertaken to raise up orchards, groves, and even forests. ”

“ CHAPTER IV. TEE PRAIRIE AND ITS INHABITANTS. The Pampas, or prairie lands of the Argentine, stretch to the south and west of Buenos Ayres, and cover some 800,000 square miles. On this vast level plain, watered by sluggish streams or shallow lakes, boundless as the ocean, seemingly limitless in extent, there is an exhilarating air and a rich herbage on which browse countless herds of cattle, horses, and flocks of sheep. The grass grows tall, and miles upon miles of rich scarlet, white, or yellow flowers mingle with or overtop it. ”

“ Innumerable slender leaves of a delicate sea green color, clothe in masses the tops of these huge stems, curving them downward by their weight, and giving them, especially when sporting with the soft breezes of the pampas, the appearance of waving plumes of most magnificent proportions, rising, bending, swaying in long, graceful sweeps over the tops of the surrounding trees. ”

“ Empty leagues upon leagues surround you on every side, "the inverted bowl we call the sky" above.
Who, having once seen them, can forget the pampas? Evening, and the sun sloping over the edge of the plain like an angry eye, an inky-blue mirage half blotting it out, in the middle distance grass rolling like an ocean to the horizon, lean thorn, and a mighty roaring wind.
Out there in the heart of the country you seem to stand alone, with nothing nearer or more palpable than the wind, the fierce mirages and the limitless distances. ”

“ It was the great southern road which leads from the city of Buenos Ayres, the Argentine capital, to the vast level cattle-country of the pampas, where I was born and bred. Naturally it was a tremendously exciting adventure to a child's mind to come from these immense open plains, where one lived in rude surroundings with the semi-barbarous gauchos for only neighbours, to a great civilised town full of people and of things strange and beautiful to see. ”

“ To these attractions was added the thought, always alluring to an active mind, that there she would be able to penetrate into vast wilds, untrod as yet by the foot of man. "Scenes of infinite beauty and grandeur might be lying hidden in the silent solitude of the mountains which bound the barren plains of the Pampas, into whose mysterious recesses no one as yet had ever ventured. ”

“ It is built right at the water's edge, with the grand mountain-wall of the Andes running so stiffly, loftily and impenetrably up behind, that you wonder how the rays of the rising sun ever reach the little city nestled at their rocky feet. At least you think they must have daylight on the level pampas beyond many moments before it surmounts those mountains to reach the narrow strip of plain between them and the sea. ”

“ Blunt. "Yes, a man feels fit and keen here. The air is a tonic to those who are weaklings when they come to the pampas, and many a delicate man have I seen get strong and healthy after a few months. Look at the sky! That is the sort of ceiling we have at night for the greater part of the year. The stars are brilliant, and that crescent of the moon makes the place almost as light as during the day." ”

“ We don't do a great deal of breeding on the rancho; Indian raids make that such a profitless game. We rely on the wild animals always roaming the pampas."
It was a glorious day, with a bright sun and a mild breeze. The scent of wild grasses was in the air, while one huge vista of pampas swept before the eye, with a few clumps of trees away in the distance, for Dudley was in the middle of one of those vast plains of South America famed to this day as grazing lands for cattle, and then the home of herds of wild beasts, including cattle, horses, and deer of many descriptions. ”

“ At the end of twenty days, we reached the verge of the Pampas, and now began to ascend the highlands, which rise by gradations for the distance of nearly two hundred miles, at the foot of the Andes. Industriously pursuing our journey, we rose step by step, and at last reached a village situated in a deep gorge at the foot of mountains that seemed to reach the skies. Here we sold our horses, and purchased mules, these animals being considered safer in climbing the dizzy precipices, over which our road now lay. ”

“ With the exception of some scanty strips along its borders, and some wider ranges, thinly occupied by the half-nomade Gauchos, the Pampas are in reality an Indian territory, as they have always been; and the claim of the white man is no more than nominal,—a mere title upon the map. It is not the only vast expanse of Spanish American soil that never was Spanish. ”

“ Let us make a stride across the narrow strip of Chili, and over the Cordilleras of the Andes, and get into the heart of the Pampas. Shall we find any lack of rivers and streams and currents? No, for here are the Rio Negro and Rio Colorado, and their tributaries intersected by the 37th parallel, and any of them might have carried the bottle on its waters. Then, perhaps, in the midst of a tribe in some Indian settlement on the shores of these almost unknown rivers, those whom I may call my friends await some providential intervention. Ought we to disappoint their hopes? ”

“ The elevation of the Pampas, at least of the southern parts, has been slow and interrupted by several periods of rest, as may be inferred from the plains, cliffs, and lines of sand-dunes (with shells and pumice-pebbles) standing at different heights. ”

“ The heat is very great, and is accompanied with much humidity, and thick fogs, so that till the forests could be cleared, the Pampas would not be a desirable residence for Europeans; the missionaries have nevertheless been very active in founding villages in the most accessible parts, several of which now exist, and new communications are opened constantly with Peru. ”

“ After crossing these hills I observed beyond, along the bases of some low mountains, a few fields of corn and a number of mud huts, where dwelt, in all their indolence, a party of natives—half Indians, half Spanish, or Christians, as Don Manuel called all his countrymen on the pampas.
As our troop trudged slowly along, some fifteen men, women, and children followed in our track, offering to sell corn, soft cheese, and a few loaves of bread, very small, and containing a goodly proportion of sand. ”

“ Such is the ordinary equipment of travellers upon the Pampas.
The post houses upon the road were miserable tenements, generally of mud, and affording scanty accommodation. The lazy inhabitants seem to offer the commonest civility with reluctance or languid indifference. We occasionally met with huts inhabited by squalid Indians, who seemed sunk in indolence and apathy. ”

“ On the western selvage of this thistle tract lies the grass-covered section of the Pampas. It is much more extensive than that of the “cardonales,”—having an average width of three hundred miles, and running longitudinally throughout the whole northern and southern extension of the Pampas. Its chief characteristic is a covering of coarse grass,—which at different seasons of the year is short or tall, green, brown, or yellowish, according to the different degrees of ripeness. When dry, it is sometimes fired,—either by design or accident,—as are also the withered stems of the thistles ”

“ The pampas are dotted over with the dome-shaped huts and houses of the Quichuan Indians, and from their being built in mud and stones, the country presents features similar to many of the plains of Central India, with their stone and mud walled villages. We passed through the towns of Tarata and Cliza, both populous and flourishing places, built on the flat pampas, and at each of these towns we had to stop while politics were discussed, and vast quantities of pisco and chicha consumed ”

“ For nearly two hundred miles west of the La Plata, the soil produces a luxuriant growth of herbage, which is choked, however, in many places, by extensive forests of gigantic thistles, which grow to such a height that men, passing through them on horseback, are hidden by the lofty stems. So heavy is this growth that, at times, the thistle fields are impassable to man, and serve to the wild animals of the pampas as an undisturbed lair. ”

“ Pampas, vast grassy, treeless, nearly level plains in South America, in the Argentine State; they stretch from the lower Paraná to the S. of Buenos Ayres; afford rich pasture for large herds of wild horses and cattle, and are now in certain parts being brought under tillage.
Pampeluna or Pamplona (31) , a fortified city of Northern Spain, is 80 m. due SE. of Bilbao. It has a Gothic cathedral and a surgical college, with manufactures of pottery and leather, and a trade in wine. Formerly capital of Navarre, it has suffered much in war; has this century several times resisted the Carlists. ”

“ Cattle, horses, and sheep are never long out of the line of a traveller’s vision, and with them the herdsmen of the plains, the “gauchos.” Although the Pampas form so large a part of the territory, they do not occupy it all, for the country is so long that it boasts all sorts of climates, from the tropical to the arctic. To the north subtropical forests abound; to the west the plains fade away into the mighty Andes, which tower 23,000 feet towards the sky; while to the south lie the bleak hills and arid plains of Patagonia. ”

“ This surface of the Pampas or Llanos of Manse, Tucuman, Buenos Ayres and eastern Patagonia is consequently four times greater than the surface of the whole of France. The Andes of Chile narrow the Pampas by the two spurs of Salta and Cordova; the latter promontory forms so projecting a point that there remains (latitude 31 to 32 degrees) a plain only 45 leagues broad between the eastern extremity of the Sierra de Cordova and the right bank of the river Paraguay, stretching in the direction of a meridian, from the town of Nueva Coimbra to Rosario, below Santa Fe. ”

“ The soil is a rich, deep loam, from four to six feet in depth, excepting in Patagonia and the western pampas, where there is a coarse gravel and detritus from the Andes. Instead of the dense tropical forest of the Amazon valley, the pampas are covered by a coarse grass, three or four feet high, growing in large tussocks and all the year round of a dark green. The strong grass crowds out all trees and almost all plants, so that scarcely a flower relieves the uniform, everlasting verdure. ”

“ ALGONQUIAN FAMILY. PAMPAS. LLANOS. "In the southern continent [of America] , the regions which correspond with the prairies of the United States are the 'pampas' of the La Plata and the 'llanos' of Columbia [both 'pampa' and 'llano' having in Spanish the signification of 'a plain'] . ... The llanos of Venezuela and New Granada have an area estimated at 154,000 square miles, nearly equal to that of France. The Argentine pampas, which are situated at the other extremity of the continent, have a much more considerable extent, probably exceeding 500,000 square miles. ”

“ The selvas are for the most part vast unbroken forests, in which giant trees, thick undergrowth, and entwining creepers combine to form a nearly impenetrable region. The pampas lie between the Andes and the Atlantic Ocean, stretching southward from northern Brazil to southern Patagonia, affording grass sufficient to feed innumerable herds of wild cattle, but at the extreme south the country sinks into half overflowed marshes and lagoons, resembling the glades and savannahs of Florida. ”

“ Without any disguise, the sight of him is sufficiently horrifying,—sufficiently suggestive of “blood and murder.”
290 THE PEHUENCHES, OR PAMPAS INDIANS. The vast plain known as the “Pampas” is one of the largest tracts of level country upon the face of the earth. East and west it stretches from the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to the foot-hills of the Andes mountains. It is interrupted on the north by a series of mountains and hill country, that cross from the Andes to the Paraguay River, forming the Sierras of Mendoza, San Luis, and Cordova ”

“ The men of the pines and thistles seem to have lost this quality, while passing through the snows of the Cordilleras, or left it behind them, as they have also left the incipient civilization of their race. On the Pampas we find them once more in the character of the true savage: living by the chase or by plunder; and bartering the produce of the latter for the trappings and trinkets of personal adornment, supplied them by the unprincipled white trader. Puelches and Picunches, Pehuenches and Ranqueles, all share this character alike,—all are treacherous, quarrelsome, and cowardly. ”

“ The day will come, perhaps less than a century hence, when the townsfolk of a then populous Argentina, weary of the flat monotony of their boundless Pampas, will find in this wilderness of lake and river and mountain such a place, wherein to find rest and recreation in the summer heats, as the North Americans of the Eastern states do in the Appalachian hills; and the North Americans of the West, in the glorious ranges along the Pacific coast. ”