By the post-road it is 226 leagues distant from Buenos Ayres, and 84 from Mendoza; and it is the only place that exceeds the description of a straggling village throughout the whole distance. The road which runs through it has been often described by those who have crossed the pampas in the last twenty years, and they have left little to say about it. By all accounts it seems to be a most uninteresting one; and the grand object, therefore, is to get over it with the greatest possible expedition. The more common mode of performing the journey is on horseback; but this is necessarily attended with great fatigue, and he must have an iron constitution who attempts it; but if he can live upon meat yet warm with life, or barely toasted over a gaucho fire, dispense with bread, drink brackish water, and sleep as a luxury upon the ground in the open air, in spite of bugs as big as beetles, which will suck him like vampires, his saddle for a pillow, and the sky for his covering, and with such fare gallop a hundred miles a day, he may, barring accidents, reach Mendoza in about ten days. He will find no temptation to loiter on the way, though much to make him wish to reach his journey's end. There are post-houses, or stations, along the whole line of road, where relays of horses may be had; wretched animals in general, to all appearance, though the work they will sometimes do is almost incredible, and that of course entirely upon green food; it is true their gaucho riders never spare them, and their tremendous spurs, reeking with blood when they dismount, but too cruelly indicate in general the goad which has urged them on. Unlike the Arab or the Cossack, the gaucho seems to have no kind feeling whatever for his horse; the intrinsic value of the animal being of no importance, if he drops on the way his rider cares not, he lassoes and mounts another beast, and abandons the exhausted one to the condors and vultures, always on the look-out for such a chance, and which will tear the flesh from the poor brute's bones as soon as they find he has not strength enough left to shake or kick them off. The mares lead a better life, being kept entirely for breeding; and custom is so strong that no consideration would induce a gaucho to mount one. The pampa Indians have the same feeling, but they keep them for food as well as breeding; mare's flesh by them is preferred to all other, indeed it is their ordinary food.