1833.] &I6 TERCERO. 



country I should think lour additional miles for turnings would be a 

 sufficient allowance. 



September i^th and y>th. We continued to ride over plains of the 

 same character. At San Nicolas I first saw the noble river of the Parana. 

 At the foot of the cliff on which the town stands, some large vessels 

 were at anchor. Before arriving at Rozario, we crossed the Saladillo, 

 a stream of fine clear running water, but too saline to drink. Rozario is 

 a large town built on a dead level plain, which forms a cliff about sixty 

 feet high over the Parana. The river here is very broad, with many 

 islands, which are low and wooded, as is also the opposite shore. The 

 view would resemble that of a great lake, if it were not for the linear- 

 shaped islets, which alone give the idea of running water. The cliffs 

 are the most picturesque part ; sometimes they are absolutely per- 

 pendicular, and of a red colour ; at other times in large broken masses, 

 covered with cacti and mimosa-trees. The real grandeur, however, 

 of an immense river like this, is derived from reflecting how important 

 a means of communication and commerce it forms between one nation 

 and another ; to what a distance it travels ; and from how vast a 

 territory it drains the great body of fresh water which flows past your 

 feet. 



For many leagues north and south of San Nicolas and Rozario, the 

 country is really level. Scarcely anything which travellers have written 

 about its extreme flatness, can be considered as exaggeration. Yet I 

 could never find a spot where, by slowly turning round, objects were not 

 seen at greater distances in some directions than in others ; and this 

 manifestly proves inequality in the plain. At sea, a person's eye being 

 six feet above the surface of the water, his horizon is two miles and 

 four-fifths distant. In like manner, the more level the plain, the more 

 nearly does the horizon approach within these narrow limits ; and this, 

 in my opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur which one would have 

 imagined that a vast level plain would have possessed. 



October \st. We started by moonlight and arrived at the Rio Tercero 

 by sunrise. This river is also called the Saladillo, and it deserves the 

 name, for the water is brackish. I stayed here the greater part of the 

 day, searching for fossil bones. Besides a perfect tooth of the 

 Toxodon, and many scattered bones, I found two immense skeletons 

 near each other, projecting in bold relief from the pendicular cliff of 

 the Parana. They were, however, so completely decayed, that I could 

 only bring away small fragments of one of the great molar teeth ; but 

 these are sufficient to show that the remains belonged to a Mastodon, 

 probably to the same species with that, which formerly must have 

 inhabited the Cordillera in Upper Peru in such great numbers. The 

 men who took me in the canoe, said they had long known of these 

 skeletons, and had often wondered how they had got there: the necessity 

 of a theory being felt, they came to the conclusion that, like the 

 bizcacha, the mastodon was formerly a burrowing animal 1 In the 

 evening we rode another stage, and crossed the Monge, another 

 brackish stream, bearing the dregs of the washings of the Pampas. 



October 2nd. We passed through Corunda, which, from the luxuri- 



