CHAPTER VI.
LA RIOJA.
"The sides of the mountain enlarge and assume an aspect at once more grand and more barren. By little and little, the scanty vegetation languishes and dies; and mosses disappear, and a red burning hue succeeds."—Roussée's Palestine.
THE COUNTRY COMMANDANT.
In a document dating as far back as 1560, I have seen recorded the name of Mendoza of the valley of La Rioja. But La Rioja proper is an Argentine province lying north of San Juan, from which it is separated by several strips of desert, although these are broken by some inhabited valleys. Its western portion is intersected in parallel lines by spurs branching off from the Andes and including in their valleys los Pueblos and Little Chili, as it was called by the Chilian miners, who frequented the rich and renowned mines of Famatina.
Further to the east stretches a sandy, barren, and sun-scorched plain, at the northern extremity of which, and near a mountain covered to its summit with rank and lofty vegetation, lies the skeleton of La Rioja, a lonely city with no suburbs, and withered away, as it were, like Jerusalem at the foot of the Mount of Olives. This sandy plain is bounded, far towards the south, by the Colorados, mountains of hardened clay, whose regular outlines take the most picturesque and fantastic forms;
