Tambores has been left behind, and the train is speeding once again through the undulations and table-lands of the pastures. Although the new-comer is unaware of the fact, the climax of the journey is drawing near, and one of the most remarkable transformations in Nature is about to reveal itself with the suddenness of a pantomimic stage-shifting. That the stranger to the land should remain unaware of what lies before him is not surprising. The rolling downs have encompassed him in unbroken sequence from the moment that the outermost suburb of Montevideo was left behind. They are about him now, sinking and rising until their smooth green sweeps upwards in long waves against the blue horizon. Never was a fresher, blowier country, with its every inch open and bare to the sunlight and breeze. It is difficult to imagine such a land rubbing shoulders with a landscape less frank and guileless. Its only fitting boundaries are white cliffs, and, beyond them, the wide ocean. Yet if Nature aspired to human ideals of consistency the hills would go hopping to many a queer tune. After all, it is best to leave it to arrange its surprises in its own way. The first symptom of a coming change is afforded by the appearance of a growth that has remained a stranger to the landscape until now. Rock plants, with thick, heavy, silver leaves and snowy blossoms rise up thickly of a sudden to whiten the ground. Then without warning the train is speeding downwards through the rock walls of a cutting that seems to have opened out from the ground at the call of an Open Sesame steam-whistle. Two or three hundred yards of a steep descent that makes a precipice out of the stone side on either hand, then a rapid widening of the barrier to the view--and the thing is done! The train has entered the Valley of Eden. Just as Adam in his fig-leaf gasped in dismay at his eviction from the garden, so does the modern traveller in boots and buttons exclaim in surprise as he passes through the stone gateway of this later Eden. The two or three hundred yards have made an incredible memory of the open downland. In its place are rugged cliffs to right and left, at the base of which dense sub-tropical forest sends its waves upwards to cling to the stone sides as far as they may. In the centre of the valley is a stream that goes rippling over its rocky bed, overhung with a curtain of flowering trees that hold strange nests within their branches, and the festoons of the lianas that plunge thickly downwards towards the earth. The scene, in fact, holds all the enthusiastic variety of the sub-tropics. Nothing is wanting to the picture. The rock, leaves, flowers, palms, and the vivid patches of smooth green by the edge of the stream have as accessories the turkey-buzzards and black vultures carving their lazy circles above, and the brilliant host of butterflies beneath that float airily to and fro as though to outflash even the wonderful feathers of the local woodpecker.