There are two ways of travelling across the Pampas, in a carriage, or on horseback. The carriages are without springs, either of wood or iron, but they are very ingeniously slung on hide-ropes, which make them quite easy enough. There are two sorts of carriages, a long vehicle on four wheels, like a van (with a door behind), which is drawn by four or six horses, and which can carry eight people; and a smaller carriage on two wheels, of about half the length, which is usually drawn by three horses.

When I first went across the Pampas, I purchased for my party a large carriage, and also an enormous, two-wheeled, covered cart, which carried about twenty-five hundred weight of miners' tools, &c. I engaged a capataz (head-man), and he hired for me a number of peons, who were to receive thirty or forty dollars each for driving the vehicles to Mendoza.

The day before we started, the capataz came to me for some money to purchase hides, in order to prepare the carriages in the usual way. The hides were soaked, and then cut into long strips, about three-quarters of an inch broad, and the pole, as also almost all the wood-work of the carriage, were firmly bound with the wet hide, which, when dry, shrunk into a band almost as hard as iron.