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Show 148 S1'. FE. Oct. 1833. half-a-dozen of the latter, which I had never seen at Buenos Ayres. Considering that there is no natural boundary between the two places, and that the character of the country · is n~rly similar, the difference was much greater than I should have expected. OcTOBER 3D AND 4'l'H.-I was confined to my bed by a headach for these t.;;o days. A goodnatured old woman, who attended me, wished me to try many odd remedies. A common practice is, to bind an orange-leaf, or a bit of black plaster, to each temple; and a still more general plan is, to split a bean into halves, moisten them, and place one on each temple, where they will easily adhere. It is not thought proper ever to remove the beans or plaster, but to allow them to drop off; and sometim~s, if a man, with patches on his head, is asked, what is the matter? he will answer, " I had a headache the day before yesterday." 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 power. 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 occupation 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 5TH.-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 they are, none have 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 Oct. 1833. FOSSIL HORSE. 149 their revolutions. At some future day this must he one of the ~ichest co.untries of ~a Plata. The soil is varied and productive, and Its almost msular form gives it two grand lines of communication by the rivers Parana and Uruguay.· ~ I was delayed here five days, and employed myself in exa, mining the geology of the surrounding country, which was very interes~i~g. We here see beds of sand, clay, and lime~ tone, c~ntammg sea-shells and sharks' teeth, passing above mto an mdurated marl, and from that into the red clayey earth of the Pampas, with its calcareous concretions and the hones of terrestrial animals. This vertical section clearly tells us, of a large bay of pure salt-water, gradually encroached on, and at last becoming the bed of a muddy estuary into which fl~ating carcasses were swept. I found near the Bajada a large piece, nearly four feet across, of the giant armadillolike case; also a molar tooth of a mastodon, and fragments of very many bones, the greater number of which were rotten, and as soft as clay. A tooth which I discovered by one point projectino- from the side of a bank, interested me much, for I at one~ perceived that it had belonged to a horse. Feeling much surprise at this, I carefully examined its geological position, and was compelled to come to the conclusion,* that a horse, which cannot from a comparison of the tooth alone, be distinguished from the existing species, t lived as a contemporary with the various great monsters that formerly inhabited South America. Mr. Owen and myself, at the College of Surgeons, compared this tooth with a fragment of another, probably belonging to the Toxodon, which was embedded at the dis- • The broken tooth mentioned at Bahia Blanca must not be forgotten. t As this horse existed at the same time with animals now extinct, it is not probable, that it is the same species with the recent kind, although from the similarity of the teeth it must have been closely allied. Cuvier, talking of the remains of the horse, found fossil under similar conditions in Europe, remarks, " It is not possible to say whether it was one of the species now existing or not, because the skeletons of these species are so like each other, that they cannot be distinguished by the mere comparison ofisolated fragments."-Theory of the Earth, English translation, p. 285. |