1833.] GEOLOGY OF THE PAMPAS, 129 
This stability of government is owing to his tyrannical habits ; 
for tyranny seems as yet better adapted to these countries than 
republicanism. The governor’s favourite occupation is hunting 
Indians: a short time since he slaughtered forty-eight, and sold 
the children at the rate of three or four pounds apiece. 
October 5th—We crossed the Parana to St. Fé Bajada, a 
town on the opposite shore. The passage took some hours, as 
the river here consisted of a labyrinth of small streams, separated 
by low wooded islands. I had a letter of introduction to an old 
Catalonian Spaniard, who treated me with the most uncommon 
hospitality. The Bajada is the capital of Entre Rios. In 1825 
the town contained 6000 inhabitants, and the province 30,000; 
yet, few as the inhabitants are, no province has suffered more from 
bloody and desperate revolutions. They boast here of repre- 
sentatives, ministers, a standing army, and governors: so it is no 
wonder that they have their revolutions. At some future day 
this must be one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil 
is varied and productive; and its almost insular form gives it 
two grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and 
Uruguay. 
I was delayed here five days, and employed myself in ex- 
amining the geology of the surrounding country, which was very 
interesting. We here see at the bottom of the cliffs, beds contain- 
ing sharks’ teeth and sea-shells of extinct species, passing above 
into an indurated marl, and from that into the red clayey earth 
of the Pampas, with its caleareous concretions and the bones of 
terrestrial quadrupeds. This vertical section clearly tells us of a 
large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last 
converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into which floating 
carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda Oriental, I 
found an alternation of the Pampzan estuary deposit, with a 
limestone containing some of the same extinct sea-shells; and 
this shows either a change in the former currents, or more pro- 
bably an oscillation of level in the bottom of the ancient estuary. 
Until lately, my reasons for considering the Pampzean formation 
to bean estuary deposit were, its general appearance, its position at 
the mouth of the existing great river the Plata, and the presence 
of so many bones of terrestrial quadrupeds: but now Professor 
