1833. EXCURSION TO ST. FE’. 123 
CHAPTER VIi. 
Excursion to St. Fé—Thistle Beds—Habits of the Bizeacha—Little Owl— 
Saline Streams—Level Plains—Mastodon—St. Fé—Change in Landscape 
—Geology—Tooth of extinct Horse—Relation of the Fossil and recent 
Quadrupeds of North and South America—Effects of a great Drought— 
Parana—Habits of the Jaguar—Scissor-beak—Kingfisher, Parrot, and 
Scissor-tail—Revolution—Buenos Ayres—State of Government. 
BUENOS AYRES To ST. FE’. 
September 2'Tth.—Iw the evening I set out on an excursion to 
St. Fé, which is situated nearly three hundred English 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 rate 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 as much 
as ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks, which are urged on 
by a goad at least twenty feet long: this is suspended 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, where 
there is a wooden bridge over the river—a most unusual conve- 
nience in this country. We passed also Areco. The plains 
