standing on his own legs, and in this way get a better idea of the
district in which ten of the most impressionable years of my life,
from five to fifteen, were spent.

We see all round us a flat land, its horizon a perfect ring of misty
blue colour where the crystal-blue dome of the sky rests on the level
green world. Green in late autumn, winter, and spring, or say from
April to November, but not all like a green lawn or field: there were
smooth areas where sheep had pastured, but the surface varied greatly
and was mostly more or less rough. In places the land as far as one
could see was covered with a dense growth of cardoon thistles, or wild
artichoke, of a bluish or grey-green colour, while in other places the
giant thistle flourished, a plant with big variegated green and white
leaves, and standing when in flower six to ten feet high.

There were other breaks and roughnesses on that flat green expanse
caused by the _vizcachas,_ a big rodent the size of a hare, a mighty
burrower in the earth. _Vizcachas_ swarmed in all that district where
they have now practically been exterminated, and lived in villages,
called _vizcacheras,_ composed of thirty or forty huge burrows--about
the size of half a dozen badgers' earths grouped together. The earth
thrown out of these diggings formed a mound, and being bare of
vegetation it appeared in the landscape as a clay-coloured spot on the
green surface. Sitting on a horse one could count a score to fifty or
sixty of these mounds or _vizcacheras_ on the surrounding plain.

On all this visible earth there were no fences, and no trees excepting
those which had been planted at the old estancia houses, and these
being far apart the groves and plantations looked like small islands
of trees, or mounds, blue in the distance, on the great plain or