370 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



larger than its Englisli congener, but not to be compared to it in flavour, the flesh 

 being white and rather tasteless. 



Most of the land about Buenos Ayres consists of an extremely rich alluvium, 

 where the alfalfa clover and some other herbaceous plants grow with amazing 

 rapidity. In some districts Dr. Edgcumbe speaks of five crops of clover being 

 raised in a single year.* Wheat also thrives well, and j'ields excellent returns. 



Hydrography of Argentina. 



The La Plata fluvial system, next to that of the Amazons the largest in the 

 New World, belongs at once to Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and to the 

 Republic which, from the estuary, takes its names of La Plata and Argentina. 

 This State comprises about one half of the whole basin, although by far the largest 

 part of the liquid mass is supplied by the conterminous territories. At the con- 

 fluence of the two great rivers, Paraguay and Parana, where the united waters 

 enter a region belonging entirely to Argentina, the discharge is actually greater 

 than at the head of the estuary. Below the confluence the contributions of the 

 feeble Argentine affluents are iu'^ufficient to make good the loss by evaporation. 



The Rio Bermejo. 



At the Très Bociis, name of the inland delta formed about the confluence, the 

 Rio Bermejo (Yermejo, " Red " ), largest of the Argentine tributaries, has already 

 joined the Paraguay branch. This river, which flows parallel to the Pilcoma^'o 

 farther north, has its source in the Andes, east of the Jujuy plateau. One of its 

 main branches, the Bermejo proper, is joined below Oran by the San Francisco, 

 a stream of equal volume, which collects the surface waters of the province of 

 Jujuy. Above the confluence — Las Juntas, as the Spaniards call it — both branches 

 are alike navigable ; but farther down so many difficulties, and even dangers, are 

 presented by shoals, quicksands, and armed natives, that no regular service has 

 yet been established on the lower reaches. The flat-bottomed boats, which carry 

 on a little trade, take whole months to ascend and descend the Bermejo, and 

 cannot pretend to compete with the railway, which now penetrates from Buenos 

 Ayres into the Jujuy district. 



In the region of its lower course the incline is so slight that the sluggish 

 current of the Bermejo ramifies right and left into numerous lateral branches and 

 shallow basins, where much of the water is lost by evaporation. Nearly all the 

 old forests have disappeared, killed by the superabundance of flood w^aters. About 

 the middle of the nineteenth century the Bermejo shifted its bed some twelve 

 miles northwards to the parallel Rio Teuco or Teuchtach, and since then the 

 lateral inundations have diminished on both sides, the stagnant backwaters have 

 been gradually filled by alluviiil matter, and the old bed of the Bermejo is now 



* Zephyr us, p. 196. 



