1833.] SALT LANDS. 87 



when roasted in its shell, did not make a very substantial 

 breakfast and dinner for two hungry men. The ground 

 at the place where we stopped for the night was incrusted 

 with a layer of sulphate of soda, and hence, of course, was 

 without water. Yet many of the smaller rodents managed 

 to exist even here, and the tucutuco was making its odd 

 little grunt beneath my head, during half the night. Our 

 horses were very poor ones, and in the morning they were 

 soon exhausted from not having anything to drink, so that 

 we were obliged to walk. About noon the dogs killed a kid 

 which we roasted. I ate some of it, but it made me intoler- 

 ably thirsty. This was the more distressing as the road, 

 from some recent rain, was full of little puddles of clear 

 water, yet not a drop was drinkable. I had scarcely been 

 twenty hours without water, and only part of the time 

 under a hot sun, yet the thirst rendered me very weak. 

 How people survive two or three days under such circum- 

 stances, I cannot imagine : at the same time, I must 

 confess that my guide did not suffer at all, and was 

 astonished that one day's deprivation should be so trouble- 

 some to me. 



I have several times alluded to the surface of the ground 

 being incrusted with salt. This phenomenon is quite 

 different from that of the salinas, and more extraordinary. 

 In many parts of South America, wherever the climate is 

 moderately dry, these incrustations occur ; but I have no- 

 where seen them so abundant as near Bahia Blanca. The 

 salt here, and in other parts of Patagonia, consists chiefly 

 of sulphate of soda with some common salt. As long as 

 the ground remains moist in these salitrales (as the 

 Spaniards improperly call them, mistaking this substance 

 for saltpetre), nothing is to be seen but an extensive plain 

 composed of a black, muddy soil, supporting scattered tufts 

 of succulent plants. On returning through one of these 

 tracts, after a week's hot weather, one is surprised to 

 see square miles of the plain white, as if from a slight fall 

 of snow, here and there heaped up by the wind into little 

 drifts. This latter appearance is chiefly caused by the 

 salts being drawn up, during the slow evaporation of the 

 moisture, round blades of dead grass, stumps of wood, 

 and pieces of broken earth, instead of being crystallized at 

 the bottoms of the puddles of water. The salitrales occur 

 either on level tracts elevated only a few feet above the 

 level of the sea, or on alluvial land bordering rivers. 



