GEOLOGY OF THE PAMPAS. 123 





This stability of government is owing to his tyrannical habits ; 

 for tyranny seems as yet better adapted to these countries than 

 republicanism. The governor's favourite occupation is hunting 

 Indians : a short time since he slaughtered forty-eight, and sold 

 the children at the rate of three or four pounds apiece. 



October 6th. — We crossed the Parana to St. Fe Bajada, a 

 town on the opposite shore. The passage took some hours, as 

 the river here consisted of a labyrinth of small streams, separated 

 by low wooded islands. I had a letter of introduction to an old 

 Catalonian Spaniard, who treated ine with the most uncommon 

 hospitality. The Bajada is the capital of Entre Bios. In 1825 

 the town contained 6000 inhabitants, and the province 30,000 ; 

 yet, few as the inhabitants are, no province has suffered more from 

 bloody and desperate revolutions. They boast here of repre- 

 sentatives, ministers, a standing army, and governors: so it is no 

 wonder that they have their revolutions. At some future day 

 this must be one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil 

 is varied and productive ; and its almost insular form gives it 

 two grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and 

 Uruguay. 



I was delayed here five days, and employed myself in ex- 

 amining the geology of the surrounding country, which was very 

 interesting. We here see at the bottom of the cliffs, beds contain- 

 ing sharks' teeth and sea-shells of extinct species, passing above 

 into an indurated marl, and from that into the red clayey earth 

 of the Pampas, with its calcareous concretions and the bones of 

 terrestrial quadrupeds. This vertical section clearly tells us of a 

 large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last 

 converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into which floating 

 carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I 

 found an alternation of the Pampaean estuary deposit, with a 

 limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and 

 this shows either a change in the former currents, or more pro- 

 bably an oscillation of level in the bottom of the ancient estuary. 

 Until lately, my reasons for considering the Pampaean formation 

 to be an estuary deposit were, its general appearance, its position at 

 the mouth of the existing great river the Plata, and the presence 

 of so many bones of terrestrial quadrupeds : but now Professor 



