134 ST. FE^ [chap. vtt. 



drowned. The arm of the river which runs by San Pedro was 

 so full of putrid carcasses, that the master of a vessel told me 

 that the smell rendered it quite impassable. Without doubt 

 several hundred thousand animals thus perished in the river: 

 their bodies when putrid were seen floating down the stream ; 

 and many in all probability were deposited in the estuary of the 

 Plata. All the small rivers became highly saline, and this caused 

 the death of vast numbers in particular spots ; for when an animal 

 drinks of such water it does not recover. Azara describes* the 

 fury of the wild horses on a similar occasion, rushing into the 

 marshes, those which arrived first being overwhelmed and 

 crushed by those which followed. He adds that more than once 

 he has seen the carcasses of upwards of a thousand wild horses 

 thus destroyed. I noticed that the smaller streams in the Pampas 

 were paved with a breccia of bones, but this probably is the 

 effect of a gradual increase, rather than of the destruction at 

 any one period. Subsequently to the drought of 1827 to '32, 

 a very rainy season followed, which caused great floods. Hence 

 it is almost certain that some thousands of the skeletons were 

 buried by the deposits of the very next year. What would be 

 the opinion of a geologist, viewing such an enormous collection 

 of bones, of all kinds of animals and of all ages, thus embedded 

 in one thick earthy mass ? Would he not attribute it to a flood 

 having swept over the surface of the land, rather than to the 

 common order of things?! 



October \2th. — I had intended to push my excursion further, 

 but not being quite well, I was compelled to return by a 

 balandra, or one-masted vessel of about a hundred tons' burden, 

 which was bound to Buenos Ayres. As the weather was not 

 fair, we moored early in the day to a branch of a tree on one of 

 the islands. The Parana is full of islands, which undergo a con- 

 stant round of decay and renovation. In the memory of the 

 master several large ones had disappeared, and others again had 

 been formed and protected by vegetation. They are composed 

 of muddy sand, without even the smallest pebble, and were then 



* Travels, vol. i. p. 374. 



t These droughts to a certain degree seem to be almost periodical ; I 

 was told the dates of several others, and the intervals were about fifteen 

 years. 



