68 
RIO NEGRO 
CHAP. 
Indians into a statue of bronze, his drapery would have been 
perfectly graceful. 
One day I rode to a large salt-lake, or Salina, which is 
distant fifteen miles from the town. During the winter it 
consists of a shallow lake of brine, which in summer is con¬ 
verted into a field of snow-white salt. The layer near the 
margin is from four to five inches thick, but towards the centre 
its thickness increases. This lake was two and a half miles 
long, and one broad. Others occur in the neighbourhood many 
times larger, and with a floor of salt, two and three feet in 
thickness, even when under water during the winter. One of 
these brilliantly white and level expanses, in the midst of the 
brown and desolate plain, offers an extraordinary spectacle. A 
large quantity of salt is annually drawn from the salina ; and 
great piles, some hundred tons in weight, were lying ready for 
exportation. 
The season for working the salinas forms the harvest of 
Patagones ; for on it the prosperity of the place depends. 
Nearly the whole population encamps on the bank of the 
river, and the people are employed in drawing out the salt 
in bullock-waggons. This salt is crystallised in great cubes, 
and is remarkably pure : Mr. Trenham Reeks has kindly 
analysed some for me, and he finds in it only 0.26 of gypsum 
and 0.22 of earthy matter. It is a singular fact that it does 
not serve so well for preserving meat as sea-salt from the Cape 
de Verd Islands ; and a merchant at Buenos Ayres told me 
that he considered it as fifty per cent less valuable. Hence 
the Cape de Verd salt is constantly imported, and is mixed 
with that from these salinas. The purity of the Patagonian 
salt, or absence from it of those other saline bodies found in all 
sea-water, is the only assignable cause for this inferiority : a 
conclusion which no one, I think, would have suspected, but 
which is supported by the fact lately ascertained, 1 that those 
salts answer best for preserving cheese which contain most of 
the deliquescent chlorides. 
The border of the lake is formed of mud : and in this 
numerous large crystals of gypsum, some of which are three 
inches long, lie embedded ; whilst on the surface others of sul¬ 
phate of soda lie scattered about. The Gauchos call the former 
1 Report of the Agricult. Chem. Assoc, in the Agricult. Gazette , 1845, p. 93. 
