66 RIO COLORADO. [CHAV. iv, 



have altered, ill a wide, uninhabited, and rarely-visited country, 

 the range of an animal like this ? It appears also, from the number 

 shot by Captain Wood in one day at Port Desire, that they must 

 have been considerably more abundant there formerly than at 

 present. Where the Bizcacha lives and makes its burrows, the 

 Agouti uses them ; but where, as at Bahia Blanca, the Bizcacha is 

 not found, the Agouti burrows for itself. The same thing occurs 

 with the little owl of the Pampas (Athene cunicularia), which has 

 so often been described as standing like a sentinel at the mouth of 

 the burrows ; for in Banda Oriental, owing to the absence of the 

 Bizcacha, it is obliged to hollow out its own habitation. 



The next morning, as we approached the Rio Colorado, the 

 appearance of the country changed; we soon came on a plain 

 covered with turf, which, from its flowers, tall clover, and little 

 owls, resembled the Pampas. We passed also a muddy swamp of 

 considerable extent, which in summer dries, and becomes incrusted 

 with various salts ; and hence is called a salitral. It was covered 

 by low succulent plants, of the same kind with those growing on 

 the sea-shore. The Colorado, at the pass where we crossed it, is 

 only about sixty yards wide ; generally it must be nearly double 

 that width. Its course is very tortuous, being marked by willow- 

 trees and beds of reeds : in a direct line the distance to the mouth 

 of the river is said to be nine leagues, but by water twenty-five. 

 We were delayed crossing in the canoe by some immense troops of 

 mares, which were swimming the river in order to follow a division 

 of troops into the interior. A more ludicrous spectacle I never 

 beheld than the hundreds and hundreds of heads, all directed one 

 way, with pointed ears and distended snorting nostrils, appearing 

 just above the water like a great shoal of some amphibious animal. 

 Mare's flesh is the only food which the soldiers have when on an 

 expedition. This gives them a great facility of movement ; for the 

 distance to which horses can be driven over these plains is quite 

 surprising: I have been assured that an unloaded horse can travel 

 a hundred miles a day for many days successively. 



The encampment of General Rosas was close to the river. It 

 consisted of a square formed by waggons, artillery, straw huts, etc. 

 The soldiers were nearly all cavalry ; and I should think such a 

 villanous, banditti-like army was never before collected together. 

 The greater number of men were of a mixed breed, between Negro, 

 Indian, and Spaniard. I know not the reason, but men of such 



