one single ounce of her cargo, which must have entailed a very heavy
financial loss on the R.M.S.P. Company. We unfortunate passengers had
to undergo twenty-one days rigorous quarantine, during which we were
allowed no communication whatever with the outside world, and were in
addition mulcted of the exorbitant sum of 3 pounds a day for very
indifferent board and accommodation.

Having reached the estancia and placed our pupil on it, we liked the
place so well that we made arrangements to stay there for six weeks at
least, thus getting a very good idea of its daily life. The province
of Buenos Ayres is one great featureless, treeless, dead-flat plain,
and being all an alluvial deposit, it contains neither a pebble in the
soil nor a single spring of water. Water is found everywhere at a
depth of six or seven feet, and this great level extends for a
thousand miles. Where its undoubted fascination comes in is hard to
say, yet I defy any one not to respond to it. It is probably due to
the sense of limitless space, and to a feeling of immense freedom, the
latter being physical and not political. The only indigenous tree is
the ombu, and the ombu makes itself conspicuous by its rarity. Nature
must have fashioned this tree with her tongue in cheek, for the wood
is a mere pith, and a walking-stick can be driven right into the tree.
Not only is the wood useless as timber, but it is equally valueless as
fuel, for the pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are
poisonous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of the
slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all round, the solitary
indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres is about the most useless arboreal
product that could be imagined. The ombu is a handsome tree to the
eye, not unlike an English walnut in its habit of growth, and it has
the one merit of being a splendid shade-tree. During the last forty
years, poplars, willows and eucalyptus have been lavishly planted