112 THE WORLDS MEAT FUTURE 



the River Uruguay, has an average width of one mile. Three 

 hundred miles from its mouth we find it broken in a series of 

 long, lagoon-like stretches, whose waters pour down in alter- 

 nating rapids, and render serious navigation impracticable. 

 Briefly, above the town of Concordia, where the first serious 

 barrage occurs, the Uruguay is a glorified trout stream. On 

 the northern and western limit we overlook the Parana, not, 

 as in its higher reaches, a deep, swift river, but a degenerate 

 Parana — a stream whose width may be three or thirty miles, 

 according to the caprices of its sudden floods, beyond the 

 scope of modern engineering to bridge, and puzzling, with its 

 shallow channels and shifting islands, the most experienced 

 of river pilots. To the south lies the Plate estuary, leading to 

 the ocean. 



'The Mesopotamia which is bounded by these rivers is 

 really a peninsula, whose neck in the X.E. corner is the terri- 

 tory of Misiones, the ancient stronghold of the Jesuit power 

 in the Southern Americas. On this side the red sandstone hills 

 fringing on Corrientes have as yet resisted the encroachment 

 of the tropic forest, which commences a few miles further 

 north. Here is the road by which the cattle from the uplands 

 of Brazil find their way to the south — a highway whose im- 

 portance will be increasingly felt as trade relations between 

 the two countries are drawn closer. 



; There is little doubt that at a former period the ocean 

 extended far further into the interior, when the continental 

 waters discharged at what is now the junction of the Alto 

 Parana, the Paraguay, and the Bermejo. From this spot 

 southwards the land rises. Corrientes is gently undulating 

 and traversed by numerous streams that wander confusedly 

 through marshy bottoms. Entre Rios, set upon the bar of 

 that ancient watershed, rises in ridges of an argillaceous for- 

 mat ion. running nearly due north and south. Both provinces 

 are covered with a rich cap of modern alluvium, save for a 

 strip along the banks of the Uruguay, where the red foothills 

 come down as far as the bar of Concordia, before mentioned. 



" Although it is only the north of Corrientes that crosses 

 the line of the tropics, life in this province frankly crosses the 

 semi-tropical stage. This is due to its low general altitude, 





