120 RIO TEECERO. [CHAP. vn. 



how vast a territory it drains the great body of fresh water which 

 flows past your feet. 



For many leagues north and south of San Nicolas and Eozario, 

 the country is really level. Scarcely anything which travellers 

 have written about its extreme flatness, can be considered as 

 exaggeration. Yet I could never find a spot where, by slowly 

 turning round, objects were not seen at greater distances in some 

 directions than in others ; and this manifestly proves inequality in. 

 the plain. At sea, a person's eye being six feet above the surface 

 of the water, his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In 

 like manner, the more level the plain, the more nearly does the 

 horizon approach within these narrow limits ; and this, in my 

 opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur which one would have 

 imagined that a vast level plain would have possessed. 



October 1st. We started by moonlight and arrived at the Rio 

 Tercero by sunrise. This river is also called the Saladillo, and it 

 deserves the name, for the water is brackish. I stayed here the 

 greater part of the day, searching for fossil bones. Besides a 

 perfect tooth of the Toxodon, and many scattered bones, I found 

 two immense skeletons near each other, projecting in bold relief 

 from the perpendicular cliff of the Parana. They were, however, so 

 completely decayed, that I could only bring away small fragments 

 of one of the great molar teeth ; but these are sufficient to show 

 that the remains belonged to a Mastodon, probably to the same 

 species with that, which formerly must have inhabited the Cordil- 

 lera in Upper Peru in such great numbers. The men who took me 

 in the canoe, said they had long known of these skeletons, and had 

 often wondered how they had got there : the necessity of a theory 

 being felt, they came to the conclusion that, like the bizcacha, the 

 mastodon was formerly a burrowing animal ! In the evening we 

 rode another stage, and crossed the Monge, another brackish stream, 

 bearing the dregs of the washings of the Pampas. 



October 2nd. We passed through Corunda, which, from the 

 hixuriance of its gardens, was one of the prettiest villages I saw. 

 From this point to St. Fe the road is not very safe. The western 

 side of the Parana northward, ceases to be inhabited ; and hence 

 the Indians sometimes come down thus far, and wayLay travellers. 

 The nature of the country also favours this, for instead of a grassy 

 plain, there is an open woodland, composed of low prickly mimosas. 

 We passed some houses that had been ransacked and since deserted ; 



