The Plain Here Looked Like That
Around Buenos Ayres; The Turf Being Short And Bright Green,
With Beds Of Clover And Thistles, And With Bizcacha Holes.
I Was Very Much Struck With The Marked Change In The
Aspect Of The Country After Having Crossed The Salado.
From
a coarse herbage we passed on to a carpet of fine green verdure.
I at first attributed this
To some change in the nature
of the soil, but the inhabitants assured me that here, as
well as in Banda Oriental, where there is as great a difference
between the country round Monte Video and the
thinly-inhabited savannahs of Colonia, the whole was to be
attributed to the manuring and grazing of the cattle. Exactly
the same fact has been observed in the prairies [7] of
North America, where coarse grass, between five and six
feet high, when grazed by cattle, changes into common pasture
land. I am not botanist enough to say whether the
change here is owing to the introduction of new species,
to the altered growth of the same, or to a difference in their
proportional numbers. Azara has also observed with astonishment
this change: he is likewise much perplexed by the
immediate appearance of plants not occurring in the neighbourhood,
on the borders of any track that leads to a newly-
constructed hovel. In another part he says, [8] "ces chevaux
(sauvages) ont la manie de preferer les chemins, et le bord
des routes pour deposer leurs excremens, dont on trouve des
monceaux dans ces endroits." Does this not partly explain
the circumstance?
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