EIVEES OP PAEAGUAY. 299 



soil is extremely rich, and grows excellent tobacco. The black alluv-ia deposited 

 by the inundations are also very fertile in some favoured districts ; but in many 

 places they consist of argillaceous layers, which when dry become very hard, 

 forming a sub-soil impenetrable to the plough. Elsewhere the surface is strewn 

 with a fine sand derived from the decomposition of quartzose rocks, and producing 

 nothing but tufts of scanty grasses. In the hills all minerals, except iron and 

 salt, are rare. 



Hivers. 



The Parana belongs to the republic only on its right bank between the 

 Guayra Falls and its confluence with the Paraguay, which in its lower course 

 traverses the State to which it gives its name. The Paraguay flows in a sluggish 

 sinuous stream about 1.000 feet broad in the normal direction from north to south. 

 During the summer floods it rises over 20 feet above the Parana confluence, and 

 at this period the flood waters cover the plains on both sides, stemming the current 

 of the affluents, but developing no great lakes like those of Matto Grosso, ex- 

 cept in the low-lying tracts above the confluence. It i-eceives far more copious 

 contributions from the east than from the west, a fact parlly due to the extremely 

 slight incline in Gran Chaco, where the flood waters spread out in vast shallow 

 basins, and are thus exposed to immense loss by evaporation. 



South of the Apa^ forming the frontier towards Brazil, the Paraguay is 

 joined on its left bank by tlie picturesque Aquidaban, and lower down by the 

 Ipané and the Jujuy, the last mentioned being navigable by boats throughout 

 most of its course, which is interrupted only by a single cataract below the superb 

 cascade discovered by the Yerbateros in 1879. In the southern parts of Paraguay 

 the largest eastern affluent is the Tibicuary, which winds in enormous bends 

 through marshy plains, formerly a Itcustrine basin, still represented by the exten- 

 sive freshwater Ipoa lagoon below Asuncion. 



On the right (west) side, the chief affluent is the Pilcomayo (Piscu-Mayu, 

 "Bird-River"), which so many modern travellers have vainly attempted to 

 thoroughly explore, although ascended in 1721, a great distance above the 

 confluence ("^64 leagues"?) by the Jesuit Gabriel Patino with a party of 

 seventy priests, Spanish soldiers and Guarani Indians. But Patino, attacked by 

 the fierce Toba nation, was compelled to return before reaching Bolivia. Twenty 

 years afterwards Castailares, also a Jesuit, navigated the stream for 83 days 

 without penetrating to Bolivia, and, during a second expedition, he was murdered 

 by the Indians. 



Then followed after a long interval the Bolivian expedition under General 

 Margarines, which failed to get much below las Juntas, that is, the "Junction " 

 of the two main head streams. The next j-ear another party pushed farther 

 down, but the current becoming shallower instead of deeper, the boats had to be 

 abandoned, and the explorers retraced their steps from a point at an unknown 

 distance above the Paraguay confluence. 



