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CHAPTER VII. 



Excursion to St. Fe — Thistle beds — Habits and range of Bizcacha — 

 Little owl — Saline streams — Level plains — Mastodon — St. Fe — Change 

 in landscape — Geology — Tooth of extinct horse — Range of fossil quad- 

 rupeds — Pampas full of remains — Effects of great droughts — Droughts 

 periodical — Parana — Habits of Jaguar — Scissor-beak — Kingfisher, 

 parrot, and scissor-tail — Revolution — Buenos Ayres — State of govern- 

 ment. 



BUENOS AYRES TO ST. FE. 



September 27th. — In the evening I set out on an ex- 

 cursion to St. Fe, which is situated nearly three hundred 

 Enghsh miles from Buenos Ayres, on the banks of the Parana. 

 The roads in the neighbourhood of the city, after the rainy 

 weather were extraordinarily bad. I should never have 

 thought it possible for a bullock waggon 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 survey the best line for 

 making the attempt. The bullocks were terribly jaded : it 

 is a great mistake to suppose that with improved roads, and 

 an accelerated velocity of travelling, the sufferings of the 

 animals increase in the same proportion. We passed a train 

 of waggons and a troop of beasts on their road to Mendoza. 

 The distance is about 580 geographical miles, and the 

 journey is generally performed in fifty days. These wag- 

 gons are very long, narrow, and thatched with reeds ; they 

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

 is even ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks which are 

 urged on by a goad at least twenty feet long : this is sus- 

 pended from within the roof; for the wheel bullocks a 

 smaller one is kept ; and for the intermediate pair, a point 

 projects at right angles from the middle of the long one. 

 The whole apparatus looked like some implement of war. 



September 28th. — We passed the small town of Luxan, 



