PRIMITIVE TRAVELLING 211 



of the road from Cordoba to Tucuman via Totoral, 

 Dormida, Rio Seco and Sumampa, on the eastern 

 edge of the Sierra de Cordoba, etc.) Long stages with 

 no water supplies, the travesias, are not found on the 

 made roads, as a rule, except west of the meridian, 

 of Cordoba. However, the direct road from Santa 

 Fe to Santiago del Estero by the lagoon of Los 

 Porongos, which was used in the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, seems to have been abandoned afterwards, as 

 much on account of the difficulty of supplying water 

 as because it was exposed to attack from the 

 Indians. 



The only difficulty which the caravans encountered 

 on the roads over the plain was the crossing of the 

 rivers. They were forded. Fords with a muddy 

 bottom on the lower course of the rivers, such as that 

 on the Saladillo near the confluence of the Rio 

 Tercero, were more difficult for wagons than the fords 

 with sandy bottoms in the upper course, near the 

 fringe of the mountains, such as those of the Rio 

 Tercero on the Cordoba road, or of the Rio Cuarto on 

 the road to Chile. After rain, certain parts of the 

 plain are flooded and impassable. That is the case in 

 the district to the south of the lower Salado, at the 

 very spot where Pere Cardiel notices the lack of water 

 in the dry season (1747). The direct road from Buenos 

 Aires to the sierras was at that point exposed, alter- 

 nately, to drought and flood. The line of the Southern 

 railway, which crosses this low district, is still cut 

 periodically on both sides of Las Flores by floods. 

 The lack of an organized network of streams, the 

 irregularity of the rains, the difficulty of ascertaining 

 the inclination, and the flow of the waters over a 

 plain which seems to the eye to be perfectly level, 

 have led to more than one miscalculation on the part 

 of the railways, which were constructed hurriedly, 

 and before the general survey of the Pampa was 

 finished. Some lines, on the Pampa or on the Chaco, 



