542 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



SAVAGE LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA. 



By Captain JOHN PAGE, 



OB THE ARGENTINE NAVT. 



THE Gran Chaco derives its name, according to Charlevoix, 

 from those great Indian battues, or collections of wild game, 

 which, surrounded by a cordon of fire and hunters, were gradually- 

 driven to a given center. It is a vast central tract of country lying 

 between the southern tropic and 29° south latitude, bounded on 

 the north by Brazil and Bolivia, on the south by the Argentine 

 province of Santa F^, on the east by the Parani and Paraguay 

 Rivers, and on the west by Santiago del Estero and Salta. It con- 

 tains about one hundred and eighty thousand square miles, or con- 

 siderably more than the superficies of Great Britain and Ireland. 

 About one third part of this vast area belongs to Paraguay, but the 

 exact demarkation of the limits between the Argentine Republic, 

 Bolivia, and Paraguay has still to be made, although between the 

 first and last of these countries an arrangement was entered into 

 through the arbitration of President Hayes, of the United States, 

 which must necessarily be called satisfactory. The Gran Chaco 

 has been called, particularly in allusion to the low -lying Paraguay 

 section, the " Oceano firme," or solid ocean. In fact, owing to the 

 comparatively limited means of communication, it was formerly 

 considered too vast for an undivided control, and the Argentine 

 part was constituted into two territorial governorships — one called 

 the Chaco Austral and the other the Chaco Central. A third sec- 

 tion is that belonging to Paraguay, part of which, along its north- 

 ern side, is disputed by Bolivia, and goes by the name of Province 

 of Azero. The Chaco Austral is the most favored in natural riches 

 of these three great sections, and has extensive primeval forests.* 

 The principal water-courses of these territories are the Pilco- 

 mayo and Bermejo, which are undoubtedly destined to become 

 highways of commerce. The waters of these rivers differ in color, 

 those of the Pilcomayo being dark and sometimes brownish, and 

 those of the Bermejo red, as its name indicates ; both are narrow 



* Mr. Clements Markham said, in the discussion on Captain Page's paper, that the Gran 

 Chaco was a most important region, lying between the plateaus of the Andes on one side, 

 and the great fluvial highway of riches. In the Quichua language " chacu " meant a hunt, 

 but under the government of the Tncas of Peru the word was used for that festival when 

 they surrounded and numbered their flocks. It was a counting of wealth. Hence the 

 Hatun chacu, or Gran chacu, was so named by the Incas, because those vast, forest-covered 

 regions to the east of their mountain homes were a source of wealth to them in wild ani- 

 mals, precious drugs, and the highly prized harvests of coca. In the distant future the 

 channels which flowed from the homes of the Incas across the Gran Chaco were destined 

 to bring down the produce of the Andes to markets beyond the Atlantic, but that time 

 bad not yet arrived, although the speaker believed it was near at hand. — Editor. 



