n BAlllA BLANCA. [chap, iv 



killed a kid, which we roasted. I ate some of it, but it made 

 me intolerably thirsty. This was tlie more distressing as the 

 road, from some recent rain, was full of little puddles of clear 

 water, yet not a drop was drinkable. I had scarcely been twenty 

 hours without water, and only part of the time under a hot sun, 

 yet the thirst rendered me very weak. How people survive two 

 or tliree days under such circumstances, I cannot imag^ine : at 

 the same time, I must confess that my guide did not suffer at all, 

 and was astonished that one day's deprivation should be so trou- 

 blesome to me. 



I have several times alluded to the surface of the ground 

 being incrusted with salt. This phenomenon is quite different 

 from that of the salinas, and more extraordinary. In many 

 parts of South America, wherever the climate is moderately 

 dry, these incrustations occur ; but I have nowhere seen them so 

 abundant as near Bahia Blanca. The salt here, and in other 

 parts of Patagonia, consists chiefly of sulphate of soda with some 

 common salt. As long as the ground remains moist in these 

 salitrales (as the Spaniards improperly call them, mistaking this 

 substance for saltpetre), notliing is to be seen but an extensive 

 plain composed of a black, muddy soil, supporting scattered 

 tufts of succulent plants. On returning through one of these 

 tracts, after a week's hot weather, one is surprised to see square 

 miles of tiie plain white, as if from a slight fall of snow, here 

 and there heaped up by the wind into little drifts. This latter 

 appearance is chiefly caused by the salts being drawn up, during 

 the slow evaporation of tlie moisture, round blades of dead grass, 

 stumps of wood, and pieces of broken earth, instead of being 

 crystallized at the bottoms of the puddles of water. The salitrales 

 occur either on level tracts elevated only a few feet above the 

 level of the sea. or on alluvial land borderino;- rivers. M. Par- 

 chappe* found that the saline incrustation on the plain, at the 

 distance of some miles from the sea, consisted chiefly of sulphate 

 of soda, with only seven per cent, of common salt ; whilst nearer 

 to the coast, the common salt increased to 37 parts in a hundred. 

 This circumstance would tempt one to believe that the sulphate 

 of soda is generated in the soil, from the muriate, left on the 



* Voyage dans rAmerique MCr'A. par M. A. d'Orbigny. Part. Hist 

 torn, i. p 6(34. 



