apparently no beginning and no end; it was as though one had suddenly
come face to face with Eternity.

All my experiences, however, are thirty years old. I believe that now,
within a radius of fifty miles from Buenos Ayres, most of the camp has
been broken up and ploughed. Growing wheat now covers the vast
khaki-coloured plains I recollect dotted with roving herds of cattle.
The picturesque and half-savage Gaucho, who lived entirely on meat,
and would have scorned to have walked even a hundred yards on foot,
has been replaced by the Italian agricultural labourer, who lives on
_polenta_ and macaroni, and will cheerfully trudge any distance
to his work. The great solitudes have gone, for with tillage there
must be roads now, and villages, and together with the solitudes the
wonderful teeming bird-life must have vanished, too.

I prefer to recollect the Espartillar I knew, a place of unending
spaces and glorious sunshine, with air almost as intoxicating as wine,
where innumerable spurred plovers screamed raucously all day long,
where the little ground-owls blinked unceasingly at the edge of their
burrows; where bronze-green ibises flashed through the sunlight, and
rose-coloured spoonbills trailed in pink streaks across the blue sky,
as they flew in single file from one _laguna_ to another. That
marvellous bird-life was worth travelling seven thousand miles to see;
wheatfields can be seen anywhere.




CHAPTER IX