[64] lo mismo que el Trampero sugiere. Cf. The Prairie, Chapter XXIII.
[65] los incendios del pasto. The dangers from such fires will be evident when it is known that not infrequently grass grows so tall in the pampas as to cover a man on horseback.
[66] la misteriosa operación del Pawnie. Cf. The Prairie, Chapter XXIV. The Pawnie is an Indian character in The Prairie, friend of the Trapper.
[67] A cowhide, fashioned so as to give it buoyancy, is often used in the pampas to cross streams. An improvised craft of this type is called a pelota, i.e., ball. Though the pelota is often mentioned and described by Argentine travelers and explorers, nowhere other than in this passage of Sarmiento have the editors read that they were towed by women. Cf. The Prairie, Chapter XXIV.
[68] con la pelota... lazo, with the pelota towed by means of a rope seized between the teeth.
[69] El procedimiento para asar una cabeza de búfalo. For reference V. The Prairie, Chapter IX. Sarmiento has evidently made a mistake here, meaning not the head but the hump of a buffalo.
[70] En fin,... In his Voyage of the Beagle, Chapter III, Darwin, writing almost contemporaneously of conditions on the pampas, says: “It is curious how similar circumstances produce such similar results in manners. At the Cape of Good Hope the same hospitality, and very nearly the same points of etiquette, are universally observed.”
[71] acaba. The verb is in the singular because lo palpable y vulgar are taken to be one and the same thing.
[72] se aleja. The subject of this verb and the following verbs of the sentence is horizonte.
[73] despierto, with concessive force, though awake.