SALT. 



173 



tree flour j§h. There is nothing to do but plant and gather. At the 

 mouth of the river La Plata neither of these plants will grow. The 

 planter must study his heights above the sea-level, or reckon his dis- 

 tances from the equator, as the sailors do, and plant those crops which 

 are congenial to the climate he lives in ; watching also carefully on 

 which side of the hills he sows barley or plants sugar-cane ; for if he 

 gets them both on the same side, one will fail. 



The country at the mouth of these great rivers — Paraguay and La 

 Plata — is a grazing country; their trade is in hides, tallow, and glue. 

 The drover has no time to plant, sow, or gather grain ; he would rather 

 exchange hides for flour manufactured where wheat is produced. He 

 will give beef for coffee and sugar, which he cannot grow. He wants 

 copper boilers to prepare tallow, and the bark of the up-country to tan 

 hides. The climate at the mouth of the river for half the year is cold ; 

 the "pampero" winds blow across the pampas of Buenos Ayres from 

 the Irosty regions of Patagonia, where the hills are covered with snow 7 

 and icebergs float along the coast. The drover, therefore, requires the 

 wool of the table-lands, vicuna hats, and cotton ; he can make his own 

 shoes and boots, but his wife has no time to spin wool and knit his 

 stockings, even if she knew how. The merchants at the mouth of the 

 river do business with ships that come from all parts of the world. 



The cattle on the pampas of Buenos Ayres and Brazil suffer for want 

 of salt. They who prepare the beef of the southern provinces for the 

 markets of the northern parts of South America, require both salt and 

 saltpetre. 



The train of mules behind which we travel are partly loaded with 

 cakes of salt from the plains of Potosi, which the Indian arriero says 

 was produced from a lake of water formed by a mountain stream. 

 When he is questioned closely, as though it was doubtful about the salt 

 being produced from a /mA-water stream, he very knowingly looks up 

 and says: '-If I take my hoe and lead the upper waters between the 

 rows of my potatoes the lake will produce no salt." 



The people inhabiting the rainy regions are much, troubled with a 

 swelling in the neck and throat, called goitre, which they attribute to 

 the absence of salt in the water. 



The Indians of the desert of Atacama, where the rains are not hard 

 enough to wash away the earth from off the rock salt, lead small streams 

 directly over a vein of salt with their hoes, so that their cattle may 

 fatten the quicker on a poor pasture-ground. 



The mule, Rose, has carried me nearly two thousand miles, and is in 

 better order now than after she had travelled in a drove from Tucuman 



