flat but gently rolling. Groves dot the plain so that half the horizon or more is filled with them, much as the woodland clumps in our Middle West fill the horizon, only the groves are thinner and more distant. They encircle all of the ranch houses and occasionally there are stands in the open. On leav- ing Rosario on the banks of the Parané the groves become smaller and farther apart, so that the horizon is rarely inter- rupted by them. Instead of complete flatness, the pampa has great swells and alternating broad depressions, and a narrow belt just below the horizon is marked by delicately merging profiles. Standing at the crest of a gentle ascent and looking up it toward the horizon one sees a belt of plain occupied by a single field, strong in its details of wire fence, clumps of trees, rows of corn, or groups of cattle. Above and beyond that is the field in profile, and beyond this profile a gap. ‘The next basin or shallow-valley rim that comes into the narrow belt of pro- files just under the horizon is very distant and faint, and on it and succeeding profiles up to the horizon itself are abundant though dimly seen details of houses and clumps of trees, but the cattle and rows of corn are lost in all but the nearest slope. It is this contrast in the clearness of the details between two succeeding profiles seen almost edge to edge close to the hori- zon that makes the pampa seem so vast. There is no high relief to break the view, so that profile succeeds profile in seemingly endless fashion.
The true grassy pampas, wild, and bearing natural clumps of grass, with a Jittle bare earth here and there, appear still farther west and north on the way to Tucumdn. They are dusty, quite without trees except near the horizon where there is a stream or a settlement. Approaching nearer the base of the mountains bright green sugar-cane fields come into view, irrigating ditches, then the houses of the hacendados of Tucuman. Above the town and along the base of the moun- tains runs a belt of dark green chaparral and woodland—the monte, It consists of cedar, algarrobo, and quebracho, with cactus here and there, and other species of plants. [t becomes dense and the trees large and valuable on the higher slopes, and lumber, railroad ties, beams, and the like, are produced.
