Letters of Mr, J. Graham Kerr. 13 



II. — Extracts from the Letters of Mr. J. Graham Kerr, 

 Naturalist to the Pilcomayo Expedition*. 



' Bolivia,' Rio Pilcomayo, 



Lat. 24° 25' S., Long. 58° 40' W., 



Tuesday, June 3rd, 1890. 



We entered the Pilcomayo on March 12th, and have therefore 

 been three months on the river. We have managed to pene- 

 trate about 300 miles by river in that time, but owing to the 

 extraordinary tortuosity of the Pilcomayo, our distance in a 

 straight line from Asuncion I do not suppose is more than 100 

 miles, if so much. The river is very disappointing from the 

 points of view of aesthetics, botany, zoology, geology, and 

 anthropology. As regards the first, the scenery in the lower 

 reaches is certainly beautiful, but of a type of beauty which 

 soon palls upon one and becomes intensely monotonous. The 

 scenery is very much that of a sluggish-flowing river at home. 

 When we first entered the river 1 was amazed at its small 

 size — only about fifty yards in width. Up here it seldom 

 measures twenty yards, and is frequently not more than ten, 

 and there is scarcely any water in it at all. For the last two 

 months we have not got forward more than ten leagues, at 

 the very outside, and what little we have done has been by 

 building dams, letting the water accumulate, and so getting 

 forward for a short distance, when another dam is built, and 

 so on. The larger steamer, the ' General Paz,^ we had to 

 leave far down the river. The military detachment, which 

 we had left a few miles down, was discovered the other day 

 to have departed, their provisions, no doubt, having run 

 short. We brought a corporal and two men on with us : 



* [See ' Ibis,' 1890, p. 350, for Mr. Kerr's previous letter, which was 

 dated November 1889, before the Expedition had started. It left 

 Buenos Ayres about the end of the year, and arrived at the mouth of 

 the Pilcomayo in March last. 



Letters dated from Buenos Aja-es in August last bring the sad intel- 

 ligence of the death of Capt. Page, the leader of the Expedition, on the 

 2nd of that month. About ten days previously, being seriously ill, he 

 had left the 'Bolivia' in about 23° 25' S. lat., under the charge of his 

 son, and came down the river in a canoe, in which he died before reaching 

 Asimcion. — Ed.] 



