THE VOYAGE OF THE BEAGLE 



141 



had a headache the day before yesterday." Many of the 

 remedies used by the people of the country are ludicrously 

 strange, but too disgusting to be mentioned. One of the 

 least nasty is to kill and cut open two puppies and bind 

 them on each side of a broken limb. Little hairless dogs are 

 in great request to sleep at the feet of invalids. 



St. Fe is a quiet little town, and is kept clean and in good 

 order. The governor, Lopez, was a common soldier at the 

 time of the revolution; but has now been seventeen years 

 in power. This stability of government is owing to his 

 tyrannical habits; for tyranny seems as yet better adapted 

 to these countries than republicanism. The governor's fa- 

 vourite occupation is hunting Indians: a short time since 

 he slaughtered forty-eight, and sold the children at the rate 

 of three or four pounds apiece. 



October 5th. — We crossed the Parana to St. Fe Bajada, 

 a town on the opposite shore. The passage took some hours, 

 as the river here consisted of a labyrinth of small streams, 

 separated by low wooded islands. I had a letter of intro- 

 duction to an old Catalonian Spaniard, who treated me with 

 the most uncommon hospitality. The Bajada is the capital 

 of Entre Rios. In 1825 the town contained 6000 inhabitants, 

 and the province 30,000; yet, few as the inhabitants are, no 

 province has suffered more from bloody and desperate revo- 

 lutions. They boast here of representatives, ministers, a 

 standing army, and governors: so it is no wonder that they 

 have their revolutions. At some future day this must be 

 one of the richest countries of La Plata. The soil is varied 

 and productive; and its almost insular form gives it two 

 grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and 

 Uruguay. 



I was delayed here five days, and employed myself in ex- 

 amining the geology of the surrounding country, which was 

 very interesting. We here see at the bottom of the cliffs, 

 beds containing sharks' teeth and sea-shells of extinct spe- 

 cies, passing above into an indurated marl, and from that 

 into the red clayey earth of the Pampas, with its calcareous 

 concretions and the bones of terrestrial quadrupeds. This 

 vertical section clearly tells us of a large bay of pure salt- 



