Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/228



198 UP THE URUGUAY RIVER, AND

trout ; tills style of manuquassation is here, they say, the thing. We find the prairie gallop interesting. This Me- sopotamian Campo appears picturesque after the dull, dead flats, the treeless plains south of Buenos Aires, where high winds and low rainfall produce a modification of the Arabian desert. The ground is disposed in long billows, gently rolling down from the highlands of the Brazil ; ^' Monte^^ clothes the bottoms, and on the uplands solitary ombus (Ficus ombu) shed their dense cool shade, suggesting from alar English oaks. The sun sucks-the earth, but the clear, uright air shows distances well defined as those of Salisbury Downs on a fine October day. The one bad banado or swamp does not let or injure us, although the corrals or paddocks, and the rodeos or gathering grounds for cattle, are knee-deep in bone-dirt and mire. Thin cattle and thinner sheep browse upon the grass, which is coarse and luxuriant, and the ground is scattered with domes, barrow- shaped ant-hills large and small. Pufling up their wings and tail plumes, male ostriches troop leisurely away from us, fearing no " bolas^' â€” the hens are mostly laying in the bush, also under the protecting wing of D. Justo. Even the ^' tero-tero,^^ or horned plover, appears exceptionally secure as he hovers overhead, screaming abuse at the intruders.

After a four hours^ drive, now down, then along an avenue of young ombiis, we sight the twin towers of a Pampa palace, whose architect is D. Justo himself. " San Jose^^ will startle those who have not seen Mr. Hutchinson^s de- scription, or the sketch of Colonel du Graty. In due time the tall fa9ade rises in view ; then appear the garden and the aviaries, which contain even African lories and rosy- crested Leadbeater cockatoos. On the right are the hut lines occupied by the single battalion of gunners â€” ruSians kept in prime order by throat-cutting. Turkeys and other poultry strut about, the Laird being the only person that