IV 
SALITRALES 
81 
the morning they were soon exhausted from not having 
had anything to drink, so that we were obliged to walk. 
About noon the dogs killed a kid, which we roasted. I ate 
some of it, but it made me intolerably thirsty. This was the 
more distressing as the road, from some recent rain, was full of 
little puddles of clear water, yet not a drop was drinkable. I 
had scarcely been twenty hours without water, and only part of 
the time under a hot sun, yet the thirst rendered me very weak. 
How people survive two or three days under such circum¬ 
stances, I cannot imagine : at the same time, I must confess 
that my guide did not suffer at all, and was astonished that one 
day’s deprivation should be so troublesome to me. 
I have several times alluded to the surface of the ground 
being incrusted with salt. This phenomenon is quite different 
from that of the salinas, and more extraordinary. In many 
parts of South America, wherever the climate is moderately 
dry, these incrustations occur ; but I have nowhere seen them 
so abundant as near Bahia Blanca. The salt here, and in 
other parts of Patagonia, consists chiefly of sulphate of soda 
with some common salt. As long as the ground remains 
moist in these salitrales (as the Spaniards improperly call 
them, mistaking this substance for saltpetre), nothing is to be 
seen but an extensive plain composed of a black, muddy soil, 
supporting scattered tufts of succulent plants. On returning 
through one of these tracts, after a week’s hot weather, one is 
surprised to see square miles of the plain white, as if from a 
slight fall of snow, here and there heaped up by the wind into 
little drifts. This latter appearance is chiefly caused by the 
salts being drawn up, during the slow evaporation of the 
moisture, round blades of dead grass, stumps of wood, and 
pieces of broken earth, instead of being crystallised at the 
bottoms of the puddles of water. 
The salitrales occur either on level tracts elevated only 
a few feet above the level of the sea, or on alluvial land 
bordering rivers. M. Parchappe 1 found that the saline in¬ 
crustation on the plain, at the distance of some miles from 
the sea, consisted chiefly of sulphate of soda, with only seven 
per cent of common salt; whilst nearer to the coast, the 
1 Voyage dans F Amerique Merid. par M. A. d’Orbigny. Part. Hist. tom. i. p. 
664. 
G 
