[54] Echeverría, one of Argentina’s foremost poets.
[55] La Cautiva, name of the poem for which Echeverría is best known. It marks a departure from Spanish classical traditions, depicting a struggle typical of the pampas, its scenery, its inhabitants, and its poetry.
[56] Dido and Argía, the titular heroines of dramas by Juan Cruz Varela, the foremost Argentine poet of the classical school; the first is based on the fourth book of Virgil’s Æneid; the second on Alfieri’s Antigone.
[57] proporciona. The subject is el espectáculo.
[58] a ellos. The use of the prepositional object pronoun adds emphasis to the sentence.
[59] Ojo de Halcón, Hawkeye, character in Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans.
[60] Mingos, epithet applied to the Huron Indians in Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.
[61] “van a tapar el arroyo,” “they are going to dam the brook.” Cf. Chapter XXI of The Last of the Mohicans.
[62] La Pradera, Cooper’s novel, The Prairie.
[63] el Trampero, the Trapper; known also in the other works of Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales as Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Settler.