THE OX WAGON 217 



ever, to offer to carry goods at two-thirds the price 

 charged by the wagoners. It appears that this inva- 

 sion by the muleteers is connected with a transport- 

 crisis in the Andean area, which left a number of the 

 San Juan muleteers without work. It did not last. 

 By 1862 mule-back transport between Rosario and 

 the interior was almost over. 



The wagons of the Argentine plain have often been 

 described by travellers. They were heavy vehicles, 

 carrying 150, sometimes 180, arrobes (1,725 to 2,070 

 kgs.), covered with a leather hood stretched on hoops. 

 A long spur decorated with ostrich feathers was 

 balanced on a ring fixed in the roof, and was used to 

 guide the front pair of oxen. An earthenware pot 

 containing water enough for each stage hung between 

 the rear uprights. As a rule, three pair of oxen 

 were yoked to it, one pair being in the shafts. At 

 Corrientes it was necessary to cross the marshes and 

 esteros, and a special type of wagon had been evolved. 

 It had a sort of horizontal division forming an upper 

 story, and the driver sat in this. Everywhere, on 

 the Pampa as well as at Corrientes, the wheels were 

 enormous ; sometimes, as Darwin says, ten feet in 

 diameter. They were, therefore, able to get through 

 the bad parts. Mud was, as a matter of fact, the 

 worst enemy of the convoys. The soil of the Pampa 

 is clayey and soft in the districts near the river. As 

 the road was not limited in width, the wagons turned 

 to the right or the left when the ruts became too 

 deep, and the track in time covered a broad belt of 

 ground. This, however, could not be done in the 

 vicinity of towns, where the traffic was concentrated. 

 Buenos Aires came to be surrounded by formidable 

 quagmires that dried up only in the summer. The 

 paving of the streets and environs was becoming a 

 problem of national importance when the construction 

 of the railway began. 



Wagons did not travel singly. The tropero, or 



