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Updated: May 13, 2025
The level Pampas inhabited by those bold and daring riders, the Gauchos, and still wilder tribes of Indians extending to the base of the Andes, from its peculiar and interesting character demands a separate description. The pampero, dreaded on shore as well as at sea, blows with tremendous force across this region. There is not a cloud in the sky. The night may be perfectly calm.
"The Elsinore behaved very well last night," I put in cheerily. "Oh, hell, that wasn't nothing," Mr. Pike grumbled. "Wait till you see a real pampero. It's a dirty stretch hereabouts, and I, for one, 'll be glad when we get across It. I'd sooner have a dozen Cape Horn snorters than one of these. How about you, Mr. Mellaire?" "Same here, sir," he answered. "Those sou'-westers are honest.
"Now, men, take in the flying jib," cried Captain Billings, when we had come below, having so far stripped the ship for the coming fight; and the headsail was stowed, the spanker and trysail were brailed, the courses hauled up and the yards squared, when we awaited the attack of the pampero.
Along with the pampero came a terrific shower of hail that lacerated our faces and almost took away our breath for the moment; but, never heeding this, on the skipper issuing his orders, we were up aloft again reefing topsails in a jiffey, and, as soon as the halliards had been manned and the yards rehoisted, the courses were furled and the jib hauled down, the fore-topmast staysail being set in its place.
A pleasant "pampero" tempered the ardor of the sun one of those winds which in June or July come from off the Cordilleras, many hundred leagues away, after having swept across the huge plain of the Sacramento.
In conclusion of this chapter I will return for a page or two to the subject of the pampero, the south-west wind of the Argentine pampas, to describe the greatest of all the great pampero storms I have witnessed. This was when I was in my seventh year.
In very oppressive weather, and when the swiftly advancing pampero brings no moving mountains of mingled cloud and dust, and is consequently not expected, the sudden apparition of the dragon-fly is a most welcome one, for then an immediate burst of cold wind is confidently looked for.
But all efforts were unavailing the earth remained covered. A Waldensian acquaintance suffered for several years from this fearful plague. Some seasons he was not even able to get back so much as the seed he planted. If the locusts passed him, it so happened that the pampero wind blew with such terrific force that we have looked in vain even for the straw.
Pike, clinging to my door- casing while his legs sprawled adrift in a succession of terrific rolls, paused to tell me that it was a new one on him in the pampero line. It was all wrong from the first. It had not come on right. It had no reason to be. He paused a little longer, and, in a casual way, that under the circumstances was ridiculously transparent, exposed what was at ferment in his mind.
Glenarvan was afraid they would be delayed by the continuance of the hurricane, but Paganel was able to reassure him on that score, after consulting his barometer. "The PAMPERO generally brings a tempest which lasts three days, and may be always foretold by the depression of the mercury," he said.
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