ACROSS UNKNOWN SOUTH AMERICA 
cactus, ten feet and more in height, in appearance not 
unlike giant artichokes. 
Near its beginning, where it was three metres wide and 
six inches deep, we crossed the Estivado River, which, with 
a group of other streamlets, may share the honour of being 
one of the sources of the Arinos. It flowed in a north¬ 
westerly direction. 
We were pushing on for all we were worth, for we had 
come to the end of our food. Up and down we went over 
a troublesome series of great, elongated ridges, like 
parallel dunes, the highest elevation on them being 2,050 
feet, the depressions 1,950 feet. We came to a sweetly 
pretty streamlet, the Mollah, flowing north into the 
Paraguay River, and shortly afterwards to the Caitte 
and the Corisho (elevation 1,500 feet). They were the 
three real and true sources of the Paraguay, within a 
short distance of the Seven Lakes. 
We had marched fifty kilometres that day over rough 
country. My animals were quite exhausted. Yet early 
next morning we pushed on once more over transverse 
undulations and across grassy cuvettes , slightly conical, 
with circular pools of water in the centre and a florid 
growth of bamboos in the lowest point of the cuvettes . 
We ascended over more dyke-like obstructions on our way 
(elevation 1,700 feet) and descended once more into a 
vast basin of campos with stunted trees. At its lowest 
point there was from northeast to southwest a line of 
magnificent tall trees. The forest was so dense there that 
when we entered it we were quite in the dark, as if going 
through a tunnel. There were fine specimens of various 
kinds of the jua or juaz or jurubebci (solanum), a me¬ 
dicinal plant five to six feet high with enormous, dentate 
leaves, and shaped not unlike a vine leaf, possessing up¬ 
right spikes on their dorsal or midrib and on the veins of 
the leaf. 
Then there was plentiful cepa de pappo ” a common 
364 
