i833-] 129 



CHAPTER VII. 



BUENOS AYRES TO ST. Fl^. 



Excursion to St. F^— Thistle Beds— Habits of the Bizcacha— 

 Little Owl — Saline Streams — Level Plains — Mastodon — St. 

 F^ — Change in Landscape — Geolog-y — Tooth of 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. 



September 2yth. — In the evening I set out on an excursion to 

 St. F6, 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 wagon 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 

 wagons and a troop of beasts on their road to Mendoza. 

 The distance is about five hundred and eighty geographical 

 miles, and the journey is generally performed in fifty days. 

 These wagons 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 imple- 

 ment of war. 



September T&th. — We passed the small town of Luxan, 

 where there is a wooden bridge over the river — a most 

 unusual convenience in this country. We passed also 

 Areco. The plains appeared level, but were not so in fact ; 

 for in various places the horizon was distant. The estancias 

 are hero wide apart ; for there is little good pasture, owing 

 K to tlio land being covered by beds either of an acrid clover, 



