544 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Several attempts have been made to explore this river. The 

 story of one that was undertaken under the Bolivian Government 

 has been told with such exaggerations as almost mark it a work 

 of fiction, by Lieutenant Van Nivel. A tragic interest attaches to 

 the expedition of Dr. CreVaux, of the French Geographical Soci- 

 ety, who undertook to work along the banks of the river. The 

 party were enticed inland by the savages and murdered. A later 

 Bolivian expedition of one hundred troops, accompanied by a 

 French traveler, M. Thouar, were harassed but not actually at- 

 tacked by the savages, and, after wandering considerably out of 

 their course, succeeded in reaching the Paraguay, having trav- 

 ersed the Chaco in a southeast direction more or less along the 

 river, but without in any manner elucidating its geography.* 



miles in diameter, while above this swamp it was filled with falls, rapids, sand-banks, and 

 snags. The bed of the latter oscillated backward and forward to the extent of thirty or 

 forty miles, carrying with it great trunks of trees of very hard wood, the specific gravity of 

 which exceeded that of water. The rainy season was succeeded by one so dry that animal 

 life almost perished for lack of water. There was a distance of twelve hundred and fifty 

 miles along the Bermejo to its mouth in which it received but one branch. — Editor. 



* Dr. Crevaux, already distinguished for his work in exploring the boundary of Guiana 

 and Brazil, was commissioned to endeavor to reach the opposite side of the Amazon Valley 

 by way of the upper Paraguay. At Buenos Ayres the members of the local Geographical 

 Society interested him in the idea of tracing the course of the Pilcomayo. So, instead of 

 ascending the Paraguay, he went by railway to Tucuman, crossed the Bolivian border on the 

 16th of January, 1882, and made his way to Father Doroteo's mission, San Francisco, on 

 the Pilcomayo. At about the same time a military expedition sent against the Toba Indi- 

 ans of the Chaco to punish them for some depredations had returned, bringing seven chil- 

 dren as prisoners. It was deemed best to send a messenger to them — a Toba woman named 

 Galla or Petrona, who had lived for some time at the mission — to learn how they would 

 receive the explorers. The messenger did not return, but, as was afterward learned, insti- 

 gated the Indians to murder Dr. Crevaux and his companions. The party, numbering 

 twenty persons, without waiting longer, started on the 19th of April. On the 27th of the 

 same month they were all massacred but one. 



M. Thouar started from Santiago in May, 1883, on hearing that the Tobas held as pris- 

 oners two survivors of the Crevaux expedition. Following Crevaux's steps from Tarija and 

 the advanced post of Caiza, he reached the scene of the massacre and founded there 

 toward the end of August the colony Crevaux. He learned, from a number of the aborigi- 

 nes whom he interrogated, that none of the Crevaux expedition survived ; but, not satis- 

 fied with what the Indians affirmed, he plunged into the unknown region and undertook 

 with fifty Bolivian soldiers to descend the Pilcomayo in the midst of the hostile tribes. 

 His party, which was weakened from time to time by desertions, descended the right or 

 Argentine bank of the river, plunged through deep, brackish marshes, narrowly escaped a 

 surprise by two thousand Indians, repelled an attack by eight hundred of them, found fur- 

 ther traveling through the swamps impracticable, and crossed over to the other side of the 

 river ; and, finally, in October, having reached the beginning of the great delta of the Pil- 

 comayo, gave up the attempt to follow the river further, and took the shortest course for 

 the Paraguay, which they reached after a month's journeying in great suffering. M. Thouar 

 returned to the exploration in 1885, and, starting from the southern part of the delta, 

 went up by land eighty leagues to the place where he had left the Pilcomayo on his former 

 expedition, and thence descended the river in a canoe to its mouth. After this he was 

 engaged by the Bolivian Government in two attempts to find a route for a wagon-road 



