EXCURSION xO ST. FE'. 123 



CHAPTER VII. 



Excursion to St. Fe— Thistle Beds— Habits of the Bizcacha— Little Owl- 

 Sal iue Streams — Level Plains — Mastodon — St. Fe' — Change in Landscape 

 —Geology — Tooth cf extinct Horse — Relation of the Fossil and recent 

 •Quadrupeds of North and South America — Effects of a great Drought — 

 Parana — Habits of the Jaguar — Scissor-beak— Kingfisher, Parrot, and 

 Scissor-tail — Revolution — Buenos Ayres — State of Government. 



BUENOS AYRES TO ST. FE'. 



September 27th. — In the evening I set out on an excursion to 

 St. Fe, which is situated nearly three hundred English miles 

 from Buenos Ayres, on the banks of the Parana. The roads in 

 the neighbourhood of the city, after the rainy weather, were 

 extraordinarily bad. I should never have thought it possible 

 for a bullock waggon to have crawled along : as it was, they 

 scarcely went at the rate of a mile an hour, and a man was kept 

 ahead, to survey the best line for making the attempt. The 

 bullocks were terribly jaded : it is a great mistake to suppose 

 that with improved roads, and an accelerated rate of travelling, 

 the sufferings of the animals increase in the same proportion. 

 We passed a train of waggons and a troop of beasts on their 

 road to Mendoza. The distance is about 580 geographical miles, 

 and the journey is generally performed in fifty days. These wag- 

 gons are very long, narrow, and thatched with reeds ; they have 

 only two wheels, the diameter of which in some cases is as much 

 as ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks, which are urged on 

 by a goad at least twenty feet long : this is suspended from 

 within the roof; for the wheel bullocks a smaller one is kept ; 

 and for the intermediate pair, a point projects at right angles 

 from the middle of the long one. The whole apparatus looked 

 like some implement of war. 



September 28th. — We passed the small town of Luxan, where 

 there is' a wooden bridge over the river — a most unusual conve- 

 nience in this country. We passed also Areco. The plains 



