LA PLATA. 147 



SOUTH AMERICA. 



English miles distant, on the banks of the Parana. The roads 

 in the neighborhood of the city, after the rainy weather, were 

 extraordinarily bad. I should never have thought it possi- 

 ble 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 select the best line for making the at- 

 tempt. The bullocks were terribly jaded : it is a great mis- 

 take to suppose that, with improved roads and a quickened 

 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 and narrow, and thatched w^ith reeds; they 

 have only two wheels, the diameter of which is in some cases 

 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 

 hung from within the roof: for the wheel bullocks a smaller 

 one is kept; and for the middle pair a point projects at 

 right angles from the middle of the long one. The whole 

 apparatus looked like some implement of war. 



At San Nicolas I first saw the noble river of the Parana. 

 At the foot of the cliff on which the town stands some large 

 vessels were at anchor. Before arriving at Rosario we crossed 

 the Saladillo, a stream of fine, clear, running water, but too 

 salty to drink. Rosario is a large town built on a dead level 

 plain, which forms a cliff about sixty feet high over the Pa- 

 rana. The river here is very broad, with many islands, which 

 are low and wooded, as is also the opposite shore. The view 



