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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 
pow T er. 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 favourite occu¬ 
pation 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 5 th .—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 introduction 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 revolutions. 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 
examining 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 species, 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 water, gradually encroached 
on, and at last converted into the bed of a muddy estuary, into 
which floating carcasses were swept. At Punta Gorda, in Banda 
