418 



THE NATIONAL OLOGRAPHIC MAGAZIX 



grazing and an occasional small 

 brown boy sauntering leisurely 



across. In the gardens arc 

 banana trees. 



THK PILCOMAYO, A I.OXC, UN- 

 CHARTED RIVER 



Early on the fourth morn- 

 ing we passed Formosa, a 

 town of some 3,000 people, 

 the capital of the almost 



wholly unexplored Argentina 

 territory of Formosa, which, 

 with an area about the size of 

 Pennsylvania, has a popula- 

 tion of 19,000 people, most of 

 whom live in a narrow belt 

 along the river. 



Formosa is administered by 

 a territorial governor ap- 

 pointed by the President. In 

 the interior are several forts, 

 maintained for protection 

 against the warlike Indians 

 who inhabit the forests. Re- 

 cently one of these forts was 

 destroyed and its garrison 

 massacred. 



During the morning the 

 mouth of the Rio Pilcomayo 

 appeared on our left. Rising 

 far away in the table-lands of 

 Bolivia, near the famous silver 

 mines of Potosi, it forms for 

 hundreds of miles the bound- 

 ary between Argentina and 

 Paraguay, but has never been 

 explored nor its course map- 

 ped. One hundred miles 

 above the mouth, navigation 

 on the Pilcomayo is stopped 

 by a gigantic morass, two hun- 

 dred miles long and fifty miles 

 wide, in which the river en- 

 tirely disappears. 



Nearly opposite the mouth 

 of the Pilcomayo is the Cer- 

 rito Lambare, a rounded knoll 

 which is separated from a 

 similar small hill behind Mon- 

 tevideo by seven hundred 

 miles of land nearly as flat as 

 a table. Behind Lambare the 

 country rises northeastward 

 toward low mountains in the 

 blue distance. 



