- 15 - 
establishing a dependable strain, What a luxurious coat white nutria 
would makej 
Mostly we sat on the deck of the launch andwatched the river 
life about us. There are no roads or railroads in this part of the 
world, and for hundreds of miles all communication is by water. We 
saw the butcher and the baker making their regular calls. If the 
lady of the house was not at home, a generous hunk of beefsteak was 
impaled on a nail on a tree above the landing place, where she would 
be sure to find it on her return. Launches call for children and 
take them to school, just as our school buses transport our rural 
young ones. We even passed a floating church " Christo Hey" , complete 
with steeple and bell, chapel and priest, and a captain-organist. 
At meal, times there was room for ten of us around the table 
in the saloon. Mr. Chiarelli sat at the head, and served us all 
with heaping porti ons of puchero, the native dish of Argentina - a 
sort of New England boiled dinner, using fresh beef instead of corned, 
and all sorts of vegetables including corn on the cob and squash. 
For dessert there was always fruit , membrillo (quince) paste , and an 
excellent native cheese. A crew of three ran ship and galley. 
We saw little bird lif e , though once we passed a dead cow 
surrounded by a flock of scavenger birds, and there were plenty of 
orneros (oven birds ) and their round mud nests - which are 
ad jjj bj ^ni n i at ur e reproducti ons of the round mud ovens on stilts that the 
country people use f or baking bread . 
At night time we tied up at the dock of Recreo Toledo, a 
very simple country hotel. Here Dr. Gray and the students passed 
the night. The Shippens and ourselves slept on board , there being 
two cabins, and slept* very well except for one minor disturbance. I 
awoke in the pitch dark with the realization that someone was touch- 
ing my chest and my stomach. As I moved suddenly, a light little 
bunch of fur bounded out of the open window over my head, and I 
realized a stray cat had been promenading over me. 
May 6th - Delta 
We got under way at eight o * clock, and stopped again about 
nine to visit another citrus grove . The owner also ran a small 
country store, where we invested in cigarettes, matches, and a bottle 
of liquor. One of his trees was an orange tree over a hundred years 
old, that had been planted by Jesuit missionaries. He also had the 
largest lemons we had seen. Lemons are scarcer than oranges here 
and bring a much higher pri ce. One tree has been known to produce 
$25 of fruit a year. 
About eleven o’clock we stopped at Noel, a tremendous fruit- 
orchard and canning place. The membrillo we had been enjoying on 
board had come from here. With two handsome spirited bays 
hitched to a high and handsome rig, with a gaucho driving, and six 
of us sitting on the three seats, we made the rounds of the estate. 
Here, also, the soil was so black that you knew anything would 
flourish in it, and we were told that that black "topsoil" went down 
for ten feet, rich with the silt brought down by the river at 
