1833.] SALT LAKES OR SALINAS. 47 



houses are excavated even in the sandstone. The river is about two 

 or three hundred yards wide, and is deep and rapid. The many 

 islands, with their willow-trees, and the flat headlands, seen one 

 behind the other on the northern boundary of the broad green valley, 

 form, by the aid of a bright sun, a view almost picturesque. The 

 number of inhabitants does not exceed a few hundreds. These Spanish 

 colonies do not, like our British ones, carry within themselves the 

 elements of growth. Many Indians of pure blood reside here : the 

 tribe of the Cacique Lucanee constantly have their Toldos * on the 

 outskirts of the town. The local government partly supplies them 

 with provisions by giving them all the old worn-out horses, and they 

 earn a little by making horse-rugs and other articles of riding-gear. 

 These Indians are considered civilized ; but what their character may 

 have gained by a lesser degree of ferocity, is almost counterbalanced 

 by their entire immorality. Some of the younger men are, however, 

 improving ; they are willing to labour, and a short time since a party 

 went on a sealing-voyage, and behaved very well. They were now 

 enjoying the fruits of their labour by being dressed in very gay, clean 

 clothes, and by being very idle. The taste they showed in their dress 

 was admirable ; if you could have turned one of these young Indians 

 into a statue of bronze, his drapery would have been perfectly graceful. 



One day I rode to a large salt lake, or Salina, which is distant fifteen 

 miles from the town. During the winter it consists of a shallow lake of 

 brine, which in summer is converted into a field of snow-white salt 

 The layer near the margin is from four to five inches thick, but towards 

 the centre its thickness increases. This lake was two and a half miles 

 long, and one broad. Others occur in the neighbourhood many limes 

 larger, and with a floor of salt, two and three feet in thickness, even 

 when under water during the winter. One of these brilliantly-white 

 and level expanses, in the midst of the brown and desolate plain, offers 

 an extraordinary spectacle. A large quantity of salt is annually drawn 

 from the salina ; and great piles, some hundred tons in weight, were 

 lying ready for exportation. The season for working the salinas forms 

 the harvest of Patagones ; for on it the prosperity of the place depends. 

 Nearly the whole population encamps on the bank of the river, and the 

 people are employed in drawing out the salt in bullock-waggons. This 

 salt is crystallized in great cubes, and is remarkably pure ; Mr. Trenham 

 Reeks has kindly analyzed some for me, and he finds in it only 0-26 of 

 gypsum, and 0-22 of earthy matter. It is a singular fact, that it does 

 not serve so well for preserving meat as sea-salt from the Cape de 

 Verd Islands ; and a merchant at Buenos Ayres told me that he con- 

 sidered it as fifty per cent, less valuable. Hence the Cape de Verd 

 salt is constantly imported, and is mixed with that from these salinas. 

 The purity of the Patagonian salt, or absence from it of those other 

 saline bodies found in all sea-water, is the only assignable cause for 

 this inferiority ; a conclusion which no one, I think, would have sus- 

 pected, but which is supported by the fact lately ascertained,! that 



* The hovels of the Indians are thus called. 



f Report of tlve Agricult Chem. Assoc. in the Agricult. GaeetU, 1845,?. 93, 



