The serenos were chanting the half-hour after midnight when the travellers left the last houses of Buenos Aires behind them.
[1] The "mashorca rounds,"—a nickname given to the bodyguards of the Dictator; literally, "more gallows."
[CHAPTER XVI.]
THE POST HOUSE IN THE PAMPAS.
The Pampas are the Steppes of South America, with this difference, that these immense plains, which extend from Buenos Aires, as far as San Luis de Mendoza, to the foot of the Cordilleras, are clothed with a thick carpet of long grass, undulating with the softest breath of the wind, and are intersected by numerous water courses, some of great magnitude, which cut it up in every direction.
The aspect of the Pampas is desperately monotonous and mournful. There is neither wood nor mountain; not a single break of ground to form an oasis of sand or granite, on which to rest the eye in the midst of this ocean of green.
Only two roads traverse the Pampas, and connect the Atlantic with the Pacific.
The first leads to Chili, passing by Mendoza; the second to Peru, by Tucumen and Salta.