Fifth day (from Buenos Aires). We arrived an hour after sunset—fortified post—scrambling in the dark for the kitchen—cook unwilling—correo (the courier) gave us his dinner—huts of wildlooking people—three women and girls almost naked—their strange appearance as they cooked our fowls. Our hut—old man immoveable—Maria or Marequita's figure—little mongrel boy—three or four other persons. Roof supported in the centre by a crooked pole—holes in roof and walls—walls of mud, cracked and rent—a water-jug in the corner on a three-pronged stick—Floor, the earth—the eight hungry peons, by moonlight, standing with their knives in their hands over a sheep they were going to kill, and looking on their prey like relentless tigers.

In the morning, morales and the peons standing by the fire—the blaze making the scene behind them dark and obscure—the horizon like the sea, except here and there the back of a cow to be seen —waggon and coach just discernable.

In the hut all our party occupied with the baggage—lighted by a candle crooked and thin— Scene of urging the patron (Master) to get horses, and Marequita to get milk—the patron wakening the black boy.

Twelfth day.—Left the post hut with three changes of horses to get to San Luis, distant thirty-six miles—inquired the way of one of the Gauenos who was drawing the carriage—he dismounted and traced it with his finger on the road—we were to turn off, when about three leagues, at a dead horse which we should see.