In this state of mind she looked round for some country that would satisfy her requirements, and decided upon Patagonia, because nowhere else could she find an area of 100,000 square miles for "equestrian exercise," where one would be free from the presence of savage tribes and obnoxious animals, as well as from the persecution of morning calls, invitations, garden parties, telegrams, letters, and all the other "resources of civilization." To these attractions was added the thought, always alluring to an active mind, that there she would be able to penetrate into vast wilds, untrod as yet by the foot of man. "Scenes of infinite beauty and grandeur might be lying hidden in the silent solitude of the mountains which bound the barren plains of the Pampas, into whose mysterious recesses no one as yet had ever ventured. And I was to be the first to behold them!--an egotistical pleasure, it is true; but the idea had a great charm for me, as it has had for many others." Accompanied by her husband, brothers, and three friends, Lady Florence left Liverpool on the 11th December, 1878. Early in January they reached Rio de Janeiro, of which she furnishes a pleasantly graphic sketch, that gives a true idea of her descriptive powers. "Nowhere," she says, "have the rugged and the tender, the wild and the soft, been blended into such exquisite union as at Rio; and it is this quality of unrivalled contrasts that, to my mind, gives to that scenery its charm of unsurpassed loveliness. Nowhere else is there such audacity, such fierceness even of outline, coupled with such multiform splendour of colour, such fairy-like delicacy of detail. As a precious jewel is encrusted by the coarse rock, the smiling bay lies encircled by frowning mountains of colossal proportions and the most capricious shapes. In the production of this work the most opposite powers of nature have been laid under contribution. The awful work of the volcano--the immense boulders of rock which lie piled up to the clouds in irregular masses--have been clothed in a brilliant web of tropical vegetation, purple and green, sunshine and mist. Here nature revels in manifold creation. Life multiplies itself a millionfold, the soil bursts with exuberance of fertility, and the profusion of vegetable and animal life beggars description. Every tree is clothed with a thousand luxuriant creepers, purple and scarlet-blossomed; they in their turn support myriads of lichens and other verdant parasites. The plants shoot up with marvellous rapidity, and glitter with flowers of the rarest hues and shapes, or bear quantities of luscious fruit, pleasant to the eye and sweet to the taste. The air resounds with the hum of insect-life; through the bright green leaves of the banana skim the sparkling humming-birds, and gorgeous butterflies of enormous size float, glowing with every colour of the rainbow, on the flower-scented breezes. But over all this beauty--over the luxuriance of vegetation, over the