146 



PAMPAS. 



Oct. 1833. 



a clilf about sixty feet high over the Parana. The river 

 here is very broad_, with many islands^ which are low 

 and wooded; as is also the coast of the opposite shore. 

 The view would resemble that of a great lake^ if it were not 

 for the linear-shaped islets^ which alone give the idea of 

 running w^ater. The cliffs are the most picturesque part ; 

 sometimes they are absolutely perpendicular^ and of a red 

 colour ; at other times in large broken masses^ covered with 

 cacti and mimosa- trees. The real grandeur^ however^ of an 

 immense river like this^ is derived from reflecting how im- 

 portant a means of communication and commerce, it forms 

 between one nation and another; to what a distance it 

 travels ; and from how vast a territory it drains the great 

 body of fresh water which flows past your feet. 



For many leagues north and south of San Nicholas and 

 Rozario, the country is really level. Scarcely any thing 

 which travellers have written about its extreme flatness, can 

 be considered as exaggeration. Yet I could never find a 

 spot, where, by slowly turning round, objects were not 

 seen at greater distances in some directions than in others ; 

 and this manifestly proves inequality in the plain. At sea, 

 a person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water, 

 his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In like 

 manner, the more level the plain, the more nearly does the 

 horizon approach within these narrow limits : and this, in 

 my opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur, which one 

 would have imagined that a vast level plain would have 

 possessed. 



October 1st. — We started by moonlight and arrived at 

 the Rio Tercero by sunrise. This river is also called the 

 Saladillo, and it deserves the name, for the water is brackish. 



I staid here the greater part of the day, searching for 

 fossil bones. Falconer mentions having seen, in the bed of 

 this river, great bones, and the case of a giant armadillo. 

 By good fortune, I discovered a tooth embedded in a layer 

 of rock marl, which was afterwards found exactly to fit the 

 socket in the head of a strange animal, the Toxodon, which 



