[55] _=La Cautiva=_, name of the poem for which Echeverría is best known. It marks a departure from Spanish classical traditions, depicting a struggle typical of the pampas, its scenery, its inhabitants, and its poetry. [56] =Dido= and =Argía=, the titular heroines of dramas by Juan Cruz Varela, the foremost Argentine poet of the classical school; the first is based on the fourth book of Virgil's _Æneid_; the second on Alfieri's _Antigone_. [57] =proporciona=. The subject is =el espectáculo=. [58] =a ellos=. The use of the prepositional object pronoun adds emphasis to the sentence. [59] =Ojo de Halcón=, _Hawkeye_, character in Cooper's _The Last of the Mohicans_. [60] =Mingos=, epithet applied to the Huron Indians in Cooper's _Leatherstocking Tales_. [61] "=van a tapar el arroyo=," "_they are going to dam the brook_." Cf. Chapter XXI of _The Last of the Mohicans_. [62] _=La Pradera=_, Cooper's novel, _The Prairie_. [63] =el Trampero=, _the Trapper_; known also in the other works of Cooper's _Leatherstocking Tales_ as Deerslayer, Hawkeye, Pathfinder, Settler. [64] =lo mismo que el Trampero sugiere=. Cf. _The Prairie_, Chapter XXIII. [65] =los incendios del pasto=. The dangers from such fires will be evident when it is known that not infrequently grass grows so tall in the pampas as to cover a man on horseback. [66] =la misteriosa operación del Pawnie=. Cf. _The Prairie_, Chapter XXIV. The Pawnie is an Indian character in _The Prairie_, friend of the Trapper. [67] A cowhide, fashioned so as to give it buoyancy, is often used in the pampas to cross streams. An improvised craft of this type is called a =pelota=, _i.e._, _ball_. Though the =pelota= is often mentioned and described by Argentine travelers and explorers, nowhere other than in this passage of Sarmiento have the editors read that they were towed by women. Cf. _The Prairie_, Chapter XXIV. [68] =con la pelota... lazo=, _with the pelota towed by means of a rope seized between the teeth_. [69] =El procedimiento para asar una cabeza de búfalo=. For reference V. _The Prairie_, Chapter IX. Sarmiento has evidently made a mistake here, meaning not the head but the hump of a buffalo. [70] =En fin,...= In his _Voyage of the Beagle_, Chapter III, Darwin, writing almost contemporaneously of conditions on the pampas, says: "It is curious how similar circumstances produce such similar results in manners. At the Cape of Good Hope the same hospitality, and very nearly the same points of etiquette, are universally observed." [71] =acaba=. The verb is in the singular because =lo palpable y vulgar= are taken to be one and the same thing. [72] =se aleja=. The subject of this verb and the following verbs of the sentence is =horizonte=. [73] =despierto=, with concessive force, _though awake_. [74] =es poeta=, _is poetical_. Notice the use of a noun with the force of an adjective.