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Show 142 CHAPTER VII. Excursion to St. Fe-Thistle beds-Habits and range of BizcachaLittleowl- Saline streams-Level plains-Mastodon-St. Fe-Change in landscape- Geology-Tooth of extinct horse- Range of fossil quadrupeds- Pampas full of remains-Effects of gr~at droughts-~roughts periodical- Parana - Habits of Jaguar- Scissor-beak -Kmgfisher, parrot, and scissor-tail-Revolution-Buenos Ayres-State of government. BUENOS AYRES TO ST. FE. SEPTEMBER 27TH.-In the evening I set out on an excursion to St. Fe, which is situated nearly three hundred · English miles from Buenos Ayres, on the banks of the Parana. The roads in the neighbourhood of the city, after the rainy weather were extraordinarily bad. I should never have thouO'ht it possible for a bullock waggon to have crawled alon;: as it was, they scarcely went at the rate of a mile an hour, and a man was kept ahead, to survey the best line for making the attempt. The bullocks were terribly jaded: it is a great mistake to suppose that with improved roads, and an accelerated velocity of travelling, the sufferings of the animals increase in the same proportion. We passed a train ofwaggons and a troop of beasts on their road to Mendoza. The distance is about 580 geographical miles, and the journey is generally performed in fifty days. These waggons are very long, narrow, and thatched with reeds; they have only two wheels, the diameter of which in some cases is even ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks which are urged on by a goad at least twenty feet long : this is suspended from within the roof; for the wheel bullocks a smaller one is kept; and for the intermediate pair, a point projects at right angles from the middle of the long one. ~ The whole apparatus looked like some implement of war. SEP'rEMBER 28TH.-We passed the small town of Luxan, Sept. 1833. BIZCACHA. 143 where there is a wooden bridge over the river-a most unusual convenience in this country. We passed also Areco. ".rhe plains appeared level, but were not so in fact ; for in various places the horizon was distant. The estancias are here wide apart; for there is little good pasture, owing to the land being covered by beds either of an acrid clover, or of the great thistle. The latter, well known from the animated description given by Sir F. Head, were at this time of the year two-thirds grown; in some parts they were as high as the horse's back, but in others they had not yet sprung up, and the ground was bare and dusty as on a turnpike road. . The clumps were of the most brilliant green, and they made a pleasing miniature-likeness of broken forest land. When the thistles are fully grown, the great beds are impenetrable, except by a few tracks, as intricate as those in a labyrinth. These are only known to the robbers, who at this season inhabit them, and sally forth at night to rob, and cut throats, with impunity. Upon asking at a house whether robbers were numerous, I was answered, "The thistles are not up yet ;"-the meaning of which reply was not at first very obvious. There is little interest in passing over these tracts, for they are inhabited by few animals or birds, excepting the bizcacha and its friend the little owl. The bizcacha * is well known to form a prominent feature in the zoology of the Pampas. It is found as far south as the Rio Negro, in lat. 41°, but not beyond. It cannot, like the agouti, subsist on the gravelly and desert plains of Patagonia, but prefers a clayey or sandy soil, which produces a different and more abundant vegetation. Near Mendoza, at the foot of the Cordillera, it occurs in close neighbourhood with the allied alpine species. It is a very curious circumstance in its geographical distribution, that it has never been seen, fortunately for the inhabitants, in Banda Oriental, to the eastward of the river Uruguay: yet in that province • The bizcacha ( Calom;ys bizcacha) somewhat resembles a large rabbit, but with bigger gnawing teeth and a long tail : it has, however, only three toes behind, like the agouti. During the last three or four years, the skins of these animals have been sent to England for the sake of the fnr~ |