nia, and averaging in width five
hundred miles. Stretching, as do these plains, across a large portion
of the South Temperate Zone, they present great varieties of climate.
The northern portion is watered by the River La Plata and its
tributaries. To the south of Buenos Ayres the rivers are fewer and of
less extent. The north-western Pampas consist of slightly undulating
and dry plains, though interspersed with vast tracts on which lofty
thistles rear their heads--useful, however, as fuel to the inhabitants.
Further on, to the west, is a wide-extending pastoral district; and yet
beyond, reaching to the foot of the Cordilleras, the soil is well-suited
for agriculture. The pastoral region is almost a dead level, with large
shallow salt-lakes,--one of them measuring fifty miles in length by
twenty in width. Scarcely a tree is to be found throughout this region,
and but few permanent water-courses. To the north extends a salt desert
for upwards of one hundred miles, with a width of two hundred miles. It
is crossed by the River Salado, which, rising in the Cordilleras, falls
into the Plata, to the south of which rises a number of step-like
terraces, sterile during the heats of summer, but covered with verdure
after the rains of spring. Huge boulders, brown grass growing in tufts,
and low spine-covered bushes, diversify the surface. In this
inhospitable region transitions from heat to cold are very great. Now
the traveller is panting under the intense heat of the sun's rays; and
anon an icy blast rushes across the plain, compelling him to draw close
around his body his thick poncho, for protection against its chilling
influences.

Further to the south are found large swamps and lagoons, one of them
having an area of one thousand square miles, its surface covered with
aquatic plants. In the rainy season, the rivers, overflowing their
banks, inundate the plains--leaving behind, however, a thick deposit of
fertilising soil, from which, as elsewhere, rich crops are capable of
being produced. Further on, to the south, the Pampas, over which the
yet savage and untamed Patagonians roam, and hunt the huanacu and
ostrich, is generally higher and drier.

The South American continent, it will thus be seen, consists of several
distinctly different descriptions of country:--the long line of the
Cordilleras, with their snow-capped peaks and their lofty punas or high
table-lands, and the narrow strip of arid soil at their weste