134 ST. FE. !CHAP. VII. 
drowned. The arm of the river which runs by San Pedro was 
so full of putrid carcasses, that the master of a vessel told me 
that the smell rendered it quite impassable. Without doubt 
several hundred thousand animals thus perished in the river: 
their bodies when putrid were seen floating down the stream ; 
and many in all probability were deposited in the estuary of the 
Plata. All the small rivers became highly saline, and this caused 
the death of vast numbers in particular spots; for when an animal 
drinks of such water it does not recover. Azara describes* the 
fury of the wild horses on a similar occasion, rushing into the 
marshes, those which arrived first being overwhelmed and 
crushed by those which followed. He adds that more than once 
he has seen the carcasses of upwards of a thousand wild horses 
thus destroyed. I noticed that the smaller streams in the Pampas 
were paved with a breccia of bones, but this probably is the 
effect of a gradual increase, rather than of the destruction at 
any one period. Subsequently to the drought of 1827 to ’82, 
a very rainy season followed, which caused great floods. Hence 
it is almost certain that some thousands of the skeletons were 
buried by the deposits of the very next year. What would be 
the opinion of a geologist, viewing such an enormous collection 
of bones, of all kinds of animals and of all ages, thus embedded 
in one thick earthy mass? Would he not attribute it to a flood 
having swept over the surface of the land, rather than to the 
common order of things? 
October 12th.—I had intended to push my excursion further, 
but not being quite well, I was compelled to return by a 
balandra, or one-masted vessel of about a hundred tons’ burden, 
which was bound to Buenos Ayres. As the weather was not 
fair, we moored early in the day to a branch of a tree on one of 
the islands. ‘The Parana is full of islands, which undergo a con- 
stant round of decay and renovation. In the memory of the 
master several large ones had disappeared, and others again had 
been formed and protected by vegetation. They are composed 
of muddy sand, without even the smallest pebble, and were then 
* Travels, vol. i. p. 374. 
{ These droughts toa certain degree scem to’ be almost periodical; I 
was told the dates of several others, and the intervals were about fifteen 
years. 
