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CHAPTER VII. 



Excursion to St. Fe — Thistle beds— Habits and range of Bizcacha — 

 Little owl — Saline streams — Level plains— Mastodon — St. Fe — Change 

 in landscape — Geology — Tooth of extinct horse — Range of fossil quad- 

 rupeds — Pampas full of remains — Effects of great droughts — Droughts 

 periodical — Parana — Habits of Jaguar — Scissor-beak — Kingfisher, 

 parrot, and scissor-tail — Revolution — Buenos Ayres — State of govern- 

 ment. 



BUENOS AYRES TO ST. FE. 



September 27th. — In the evening I set out on an ex- 

 cursion to St. Fe, which is situated nearly three hundred 

 Enghsh miles from Buenos Ayres^ on the banks of the Parana. 

 The roads in the neighbourhood of the city^ after the rainy 

 weather were extraordinarily bad. I should never have 

 thought it possible for a bullock waggon to have crawled 

 along : as it was, they scarcely went at the rate of a mile an 

 hour, and a man was kept ahead, to survey the best line for 

 making the attempt. The bullocks were terribly jaded : it 

 is a great mistake to suppose that with improved roads, and 

 an accelerated velocity of travelling, the sufferings of the 

 animals increase in the same proportion. We passed a train 

 of waggons and a troop of beasts on their road to Mendoza. 

 The distance is about 580 geographical miles, and the 

 journey is generally performed in fifty days. These wag- 

 gons are very long, narrow, and thatched with reeds ; they 

 have only two wheels, the diameter of which in some cases 

 is even ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks which are 

 urged on by a goad at least twenty feet long : this is sus- 

 pended from within the roof; for the wheel bullocks a 

 smaller one is kept ; and for the intermediate pair, a point 

 projects at right angles from the middle of the long one. 

 The whole apparatus looked like some implement of war. 



September 28th. — We passed the small town of Luxan, 



