18 BAHIA BLANCA. [cHar. Iv 
killed a kid, which we roasted. I ate some of it, but it made 
me intolerably thirsty. This was the more distressing as the 
road, from some recent rain, was full of little puddles of clear 
water, yet not a drop was drinkable. I had scarcely been twenty 
hours without water, and only part of the time under a hot sun, 
yet the thirst rendered me very weak. How people survive two 
or three days under such circumstances, I cannot imagine: at 
the same time, I must confess that my guide did not suffer at all, 
and was astonished that one day’s deprivation should be so trou- 
blesome to me. 
I have-several times alluded to the surface of the ground 
being incrusted with salt. This phenomenon is quite different 
from that of the salinas, and more extraordinary. In many 
parts of South America, wherever the climate is moderately 
dry, these incrustations occur; but I have nowhere seen them so 
abundant as near Bahia Blanca. The salt here, and in other 
parts of Patagonia, consists chiefly of sulphate of soda with some 
common salt. As long as the ground remains moist in these 
salitrales (as the Spaniards improperly call them, mistaking this 
substance for saltpetre), nothing is to be seen but an extensive 
plain composed of a black, muddy soil, supporting scattered 
tufts of succulent plants. On returning through one of these 
tracts, after a week’s hot weather, one is surprised to see square 
miles of the plain white, as if from a slight fall of snow, here 
and there heaped up by the wind into little drifts. This latter 
appearance is chiefly caused by the salts being drawn up, during 
the slow evaporation of the moisture, round blades of dead grass, 
stumps of wood, and pieces of broken earth, instead of being 
crystallized at the bottoms of the puddles of water. The salitrales 
occur either on level tracts elevated only a few feet above the 
level of the sea, or on alluvial land bordering rivers. M. Par- 
chappe* found that the saline incrustation on the piain, at the 
distance of some miles from the sca, consisted chiefly of sulphate 
of soda, with only seven per cent. of common salt; whilst nearer 
to the coast, the common salt increased to 37 parts in a hundred. 
This circumstance would tempt one to believe that the sulphate 
of soda is generated in the soil, from the muriate, left on the 
* Voyage dans Amérique Mérid. M. A. @Orbieny. Hist 
tom, i. p. 664, ? ae Doe  VOrbigny. Part. Hist. 
