- I hired a Gaucho to accompany me
on my ride to Buenos Ayres, though with some difficulty,
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 mistake
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 withered
grass, without a single bush or tree to break the monotonous
uniformity. The weather was fine, but the atmosphere
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.
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