

SAVAGE LIFE IN SOUTH AMERICA. 545 



The Bermejo River in 1869-70 became deflected from its an- 

 cient course and actually wandered about for a long time before 

 finding a new bed. It formed for the time being an island nearly 

 two hundred miles in length by an average of fifteen miles in 

 width. This change of bed in our times enables us to understand 

 the mechanical work which this and the Pilcomayo rivers have 

 carried on for many centuries, resulting in the production of the 

 rich alluvial lowlands of the Gran Chaco. It is an interesting 

 fact that the Bermejo ie. this as in other changes of less magni- 

 tude has manifested a tendency to swerve to the eastward suffi- 

 ciently marked to suggest the idea of some physical cause. 



The Bermejo, like the Pilcomayo, has been the object of many 

 expeditions to open up its waters to navigation. Between 1853 

 and 1858 my father, Captain Page, under the auspices of the 

 United States Government, explored the fluvial system of the Rio 

 de la Plata, and, with the assistance of a staff of competent offi- 

 cers, made extensive collections in botany and natural history, 

 which were deposited at the Smithsonian Institution. He made 

 track surveys of all the rivers so far as he examined them, and 

 established wherever he went those positions which are the stand- 

 ards to this day used in the cartography of those countries. In 

 the course of these explorations he twice entered the Bermejo and 

 once the Pilcomayo, ascending the former to a distance of nine 

 hundred miles by river course, and turned back, paradoxical as it 

 may seem, on account of the excess of water which had flooded 

 the country, fearing that his steamer, in case of a sudden fall, the 

 course of the river being unrecognizable, would be left stranded 

 in the interior. This was the only expedition up the Bermejo- 

 undertaken with purely scientific views. Its results are embodied 

 in the book, " The La Plata, Argentine Confederation, and Para- • 

 guay." 



The author was commissioned in 1885 to examine the Bermejo- 

 and report upon its navigability. He started on the 25th of June. 

 The way for the first three hundred miles from the mouth of the 

 river was interrupted by obstructions caused by the wrecked ves- 

 sels of former exploring expeditions ; the falls of Yzo, a sharp 

 incline of some two feet in the mile over about that extent, which 

 causes the water to run swiftly and eddy around and look formi- 

 dable to the uninitiated ; and the argillaceous bars. The most for- 

 midable barrier of the last class was overcome by fixing a chain- 

 drag '.with four pickaxes fastened uprightly in it, which was 

 drawn forward and backward over the clay, marking a scratch 



from Sucre, in Bolivia, to Puerto Pacheco on the Paraguay. Both projected routes proved 

 impracticable from want of water, and M. Thouar is said to be satisfied that the only feasi- 

 ble route from Bolivia to the Paraguay lies by way of the Pilcomayo. — Editor, from " La 

 Nature" 



tol. xxxv. — 35 



