202 To the River Plate and Back 



The reader may wonder why I go thus minutely into 

 these details. But if he will reflect for a moment he 

 will realize what great interest attaches to such a dis- 

 covery. The presence of this bit of pottery in this 

 deposit can lead to only one or the other of two con- 

 clusions, either that these beds are comparatively 

 modern from the standpoint of the geologist, or that 

 man must have existed at a very remote period in 

 South America. If the beds are modern then the great 

 ground-sloths, and their huge armadillo-like contempo- 

 raries, have only recently become extinct, and must 

 have been coeval with man as was the mammoth in 

 Europe. If the beds are not modern, but ancient, then 

 the antiquity of the human race is carried far back into 

 the past. That bit of a broken pot found embedded 

 in the loess thirty feet below the surface of the soil 

 as it is to-day, has a story to tell, and awakens a whole 

 world of inquiries. For my part I believe that the 

 Middle Pampean is a Pleistocene formation, from a 

 geological standpoint comparatively modern, possibly 

 laid down not more than fifty thousand years ago, and 

 that man was the contemporary of many of the strange 

 animals which tenanted South America at that time. 



Until noon we wandered along the barrancas, here 

 and there finding bits of bone, each having a story to 

 tell of the life of the past. At last we concluded that 

 the time had come for us to return to the hotel and 

 get our luncheon. No matter how interesting fossil 

 bones may be, there come moments in the experience 

 of the most ardent paleontologist when he feels that he 

 would prefer bones with a little muscular tissue and 

 fat still adherent to them. After luncheon my com- 

 panion, according to the custom of the country, indulged 

 in a siesta. Not being accustomed to taking a nap after 



