i86 To the River Plate and Back 



The delta of the Parana represents pampas in the 

 process of formation. The wide level plains of Argen- 

 tina were no doubt originally laid down by the streams, 

 just as the islands at the head of the estuary are being 

 formed to-day. The evolution of the western cor- 

 dilleras in recent geologic time has been accompanied 

 by a lifting up of the whole continental mass, more 

 particularly in the west, but there seems no reason to 

 question that the vast pampean region stretching from 

 Paraguay to Patagonia represents the deposition of 

 eroded soil derived from the mountain masses to the 

 east and the west and to some extent to the south of 

 the prairie-lands of the northern and central provinces 

 of Argentina. The winds, it is true, have also played 

 their part, but the chief constructive agency w r as water. 



Here and there in the delta a beginning has already 

 been made in a small way to protect certain of the lesser 

 islands from inundation by throwing up dikes around 

 them. While it would be a very expensive undertaking 

 to construct dikes or levees about all of them, and to 

 install, as has been done in Holland, windmills to pump 

 the water from the land, I have no doubt that in the 

 lapse of years, with the enhancement of land values 

 and the increase of population, this will ultimately be 

 done, and the entire expanse of wonderfully fertile 

 soil will be made to blossom and bear fruit like a veri- 

 table Eden. The time for this, however, has not yet 

 come. 



