The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-04-23

try is a succession of stony steppes and grass-grown meadows, varied by salt lakes and brackish marshes. The peb- bly, surface is mixed with earth of a pale gray color, over-lying masses of porphyry and strewn with enormous boulders, gradually rising in natural terraces from the ocean to the Cordil- lera. The soil is strongly impregnated with saltpeter, and the numerous small salt lakes are surrounded by dag zling, snow-white crest.
 In several of these lakes the water is poisonous, and all have the peculiar ity of being extremely cold in summer time and correspondingly warm in win ter. Other places are overgrown with tall grass, so rank and coarse as to re- Semble rushesi alternated by patches of thorny brush-wood, morasses salter beds of solid salt, often several feet thick and covering miles; while toward the west the dead level of the land scape is broken by basaltic ridges, the home of hawks and eagles. The great Andean condor here crosses the conti- nent for the first and only time, and builds his clumsy nest upon bare rocks overhanging inland streams, as well as on cliffs that front the sea. Geologists tell us that all this country was once bottom. for everywhere marine shells are found, and other evidences that the ocean once rolled over it. Far inland the remains of fossil monsters are met-the agint arnadilla, and CO., lossal mylodous and megatheriums; and several hundred miles of the southern coast is one vast deposit of tertiary strata, underlying a white pumaceous substance composed of ma rine infusoria. In surprising contrast to western Patagonia, the eastern side is mostly dry and hot because the pre- vailing west winds, having been drained by the Andes, bring no mois- ture. Travellers who have seen both countries, declare that portions of this bear a striking similarity to the deserts of southern Africa, the resemblance be- ing heightened by the presence of os- triehes, which may always be seen scudding over the Patagonian plains like ships under sail. Others compare this to the Bad lands of the Colora- do, and the Barren Grounds" of the Hudson's Bay Company; and others (generally those who have not been here), to the Peruvian deserts, and even to Sahara, Gobi and the steppes of Kau- rezm. There are deep valleys which the dreaded pamperos cannot penetrate, furrowed by mountain torrents and dot ted with picturesque lakes blackened by wild ducks that are tame as barnyard fowls, having never learned he fear of man.
 The plague of eastern Patagonia is the pamperas, or prairie winds, cold and cutting, that occasionally sweep the country with the fury of hurricanes, de- molishing everything in their path.
 The principal industry" of Patagonia If such a term can be applied to the slovenly habits of Indians--is hunting guanacos and ostriches, for the skins of the former and the feathers of the lat ter are valued articles of commerce, and the flesh of both serves for food Time never hangs heavy for us in Punta Are mas, notwithstanding the dearth of what is generally considered good so- ciety, and however closely we may be confined indoors by bowling gales and storms of sleet for there are ostrich hunters to be interviewed. people who have been brought up, as it were, among those ungainly birds and have spent the best years of their lives in pursuing them. Our interest in the sub- ject never flags, and evening after even- ing we sit at the feet (fguratively speaking), of a grizfiled American, who hailed originally from Maine, I believe, but has lived in these parts more than thirty years and has come to be consid- cred authority on ostrich lore I wish I could reproduce for you his funny drawl and way-down-East expression; but space will not permit more than a condensed statement of the main facts I have gleaned concerning American ostriches.
 In the first place it should be under- stood that two distinct species of os- triches stalk over these plains, and that each species has it's range, confined within certain limits. Thus the great strutters rhea, which more nearly re- sembles the African ostrich, roarns the northern pampas, but never comes be- low the Chuput river; and the smaller struthero Darwinii, indigenous to the neighborhood of the Straits, is not found upon the pampas. The northern variety is hereabouts known as Ayes truz moro" (gray birds), their plumage being uniformly gray; while those of the south have brownish feathers tipped with white. Both build the rudsst kind of nests, merely a shallow hole scratched ir the ground under the shelter of bush, and softened by wisp of grass. The females are the laziest of birds, for one nest serves for several of them, who all deposit their eggs in it and then go gadding, leaving their husbands to hatch the chicks. There are usually from thirty to forty eggs in a nest and as each egg is about equal in size to ten hens eggs, it re- quires considerable spread to cover