164 
THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
to-day totally unknown. It is a vast plain, 
El Gran Chaco, partly in the Argentine 
Republic, partly in Paraguay, partly in 
Bolivia. It has been formed through the 
centuries by the silt brought down by many 
great rivers which, rising on the eastern foot¬ 
hills of the Andes, flow east and fall into the 
Paraguay River. That part of it which lies 
in the State of Paraguay, the Paraguayan 
Chaco, is flat, open country with patches of 
wood and scrub, covered with coarse grass, 
marshy, studded with palm groves, haunted by 
every known stinging insect and by innumerable 
birds. It is wandered over by nomad tribes, 
some still living in the stone age, many of 
them fierce and almost unknown. They differ 
entirely, in race and disposition, from the 
pleasant and easy-going Guaranis, who form 
the bulk of the population of Paraguay proper : 
and it is only on the edges, along the 
River Paraguay and its tributaries, that the 
missionary or the trader have made any inroad. 
This book recounts no heroic exploits, and 
it was only to a corner, more or less civilised, 
that our travels extended. We went there for 
game. Game was not there, though clearly it 
had been there not so very long before, for there 
were numberless tracks. So far, therefore, as 
game was concerned, the expedition was a 
failure; we shot enough to eat and that was all : 
but I would not have missed it for the world, 
