FOOTNOTES:

They were superstitious in the extreme, and the credulous dupes and tools of a few artful men, who are to be found in every tribe, and in reality direct all its concerns by pretending to foretell the future, and to divine the cause of every evil. They are calledmachis, or wizards, and there is no tribe without them, and which does not implicitly submit to their decisions and advice. Their word is law, and the Cacique even, equally with the rest, submits to it. The commissioners themselves were nearly made the victims of the malice of some of these wretches, who probably anticipated a share of the plunder, if they could have induced their countrymen to destroy them. The old Cacique, named Pichiloncoy, already mentioned as living near the toldos of Lincon, and whose life was ofgreat consequence to his tribe, fell seriously ill, and, according to custom, the machis were assembled to pronounce on the nature of his complaint, and to denounce those whose evil machinations or influence could have reduced him to such a state, for in all such cases some one must be responsible, and, once denounced, his life is seldom spared if the patient dies. In this case the machis unanimously ascribed the old Cacique's illness to the presence of the Christians, who, they declared, had brought the Gualichù, or evil spirit, with them, probably deriving the notion from the report spread by their guides respecting the supernatural powers of the instruments they were known occasionally to consult. If the old man had not fortunately recovered it might have gone hard with them, for their lives would certainly have been in great peril. As Garcia observes, it would have been a pretty ending of their embassy to have been sacrificed to the manes of old Pichiloncoy by the mad machis.

Notwithstanding the excessive nastiness and filth of their general habits, the women seldom failed to perform their daily ablutions, repairing the first thing in the morning to the neighbouring lake to bathe with their children, although the cold was so intense, that the snow nightly beat through their tents during the whole time the commissioners were there. Amongst these females were some Christian girls, captives, whose fair skin was but too strong evidence of their origin, and who seemedfrom habit to suffer as little from the severity of the cold as their dusky mistresses. Their unfortunate lot excited the strongest feelings on the part of the commissioners, whose interposition to obtain their liberation they pleaded for, as well they might, with tears and the most earnest entreaties. Nor were the officers backward in urging upon the Caciques every argument to induce them to give them up; but it was amongst the greatest of their disappointments to find all their efforts on this point unavailing. The Caciques declared they had no power in a case touching the spoils of war, which, according to their laws, were the sole property of the individual captors, to whom they referred them to make the best bargain they could. These brutes, on being applied to, demanded in general so extravagant a ransom as to destroy at once every hope on the part of the poor women themselves of its ever being raised, their relatives in general being of the labouring classes employed in the estancias on the frontier; in many cases they too were no longer in existence, having perished in the same inroads of the savages which had deprived them of their liberty.

In expectation that the treaties to be made with the Indians would have led to the immediate liberation of all prisoners, some poor people had obtained leave to follow in the train of the commissioners, in the hope of finding their wives and daughters, andcarrying them back with them; and a most affecting sight it was, as may well be imagined, to witness their meeting again, and tender embraces after so cruel a separation; but it was piteous indeed to behold their subsequent despair on finding that the interference of the commissioners was unavailing, and that the purchase-money demanded for the prisoners was totally beyond what they could ever hope to raise. The parting again of these poor people was perhaps one of the hardest trials to which human nature could be subjected. Husbands and fathers forced to leave their wives and daughters to the defilement of brutal savages, with scarce a hope of ever being able to obtain their release; it need hardly be said that force was necessary to separate them, and to restrain the men from acts of violence which might have compromised the safety of the whole party.

If slavery as carried on by Christian nations appears so revolting to all our better feelings, and excites our strongest sympathies on behalf of the negro, whose condition, after all, is often perhaps in reality ameliorated by being brought under the protection of humane laws, and within the pale of Christianity, what must it be when the case is reversed, when the Christian woman, brought up in at least the decent and domestic habits of civilised society, falls into the power of a savage, whose home is the desert, and who, though little removedin his own habits from a beast of prey, looks down upon the weaker sex as an inferior race, only made to be subject to his brutal will and caprice?

Though the unhappy condition of these poor women excited the sensibility of the commissioners for an instant, it roused also their more manly feelings, and satisfied them that the government of Buenos Ayres owed it to its own honour, and to humanity, to act with energy, and make some effort of force to rescue these poor victims from the consequences of their own supine and too lenient policy. It was indeed evident that any attempt to secure a permanent and satisfactory state of peace would be futile without such a demonstration as would act upon the fears of the Indians, and oblige them to submit to such terms as the government might determine to impose upon them.

Under this conviction the officers would have returned at once to Buenos Ayres, had they not been earnestly solicited by the inhabitants of some other toldos about the Sierra Ventana to visit them before their departure; a request they acceded to in the hope of its enabling them to acquire some geographical information with regard to that range.

On the 2nd they set out with old Lincon, who insisted upon escorting them as far as the place of rendezvous. Their course lay west-south-west, through an undulating country, rich in pasturage, and studded with small lakes, about which were generally found small groups of Indians with their cattle. Theselakes in the summer season are for the most part dry, and then the Indians remove within reach of the mountain-streams. Towards evening they pitched their tents on the banks of a stream called the Quetro-eique, the Ventana about two and a half leagues distant, where they found a large encampment of Indians, who received them with rejoicings. As far as the eye could reach the plains were covered with their cattle and sheep.

Whilst waiting for the assembling of the Caciques, the officers devoted two or three days to surveying: following up the Quetro-eique about three and a half leagues, they traced it to its sources on the side of the Ventana. The height of the principal mountain, so called, they determined by measurement to be 2500 feet above the level of the plain from which it rises.[41]To the north-west a chain of low hills extends as far as a break by which they are separated from the minor group called the Curumualá. Through this break run two small streams, the one called Ingles-malhuida, from the circumstance of an Englishman having been put to death by the Indians there, the other Malloleufú, or the White River; the course of both is from south-west to north-east, running nearly parallel with the Quetro-eique, and all, according to the Indian accounts, losing themselves in extensive marshes beyond. The rivers Sauce-grande and Sauce-chico,which fall into Bahia Blanca, rise from the southern declivities of this range, according to the same authority. Beyond the Curumualá is the group of the Guamini, the most westerly part of this range. An observation taken from their tents on the Quetro-eique gave the latitude 37° 50´; longitude from Cadiz 56° 20´; and thence a clear day gave them a general view of the whole range. The Ventana bore south 18° west, prolonging its ramifications to south 40° west. The Curumualá south 60° west, extending to 80°. The Guamini extended through 30° as far as west 10° north. The whole range may be described as running from south-south-east to north-north-west. The variation by repeated calculations was 18° 30´, at the other range it had been found as stated to be 17° 10´, and at the Lake of Polvaderas 16° 30´ east.[42]

When the Caciques and their followers were all assembled there might be about 1500 men, who were paraded by their chiefs much in the same manner as before described. The same ceremonies to drive away the gualichú, and the same preliminary discussions amongst themselves, before they commenced their parleys with the officers; and these terminating precisely in the same unsatisfactory and indefinite manner. The presents it was evident were the only objects contemplated by the savages, and,when these were not produced quite so quickly as they expected, an attempt was made to seize them by force, and the officers themselves would have been stripped, if not sacrificed, had not old Lincon bravely protected them, and killed upon the spot with his own hand two of the most forward of the assailants: cowed by the old man's intrepidity, and the preparations of their escort to defend themselves, the wretches slunk away, and so ended in blood and confusion the labours of the commissioners. To old Lincon they owed their lives, and subsequent safety on their road back to Buenos Ayres, whither they were glad to return as fast as they could, under an escort furnished by him and some of the more friendly tribes of the Huilliches.

Their route homeward was by the Sierra Amarilla, on the eastern slope of which rises the river Barancas, which they followed some way: before it emerges from the mountains it is joined by the Quetro-leufú, and both together form the Tapalquen. Beyond the Sierra Amarilla was seen that group called by the natives the Huellucalel, from which proceeds the river Azul, the waters of which, running parallel with those of the Torralnelú and Chapaleofú, are lost in the marshes sixteen or twenty leagues distant towards the Salado. Crossing the Tapalquen, they once more found the beaten track to the Guardia del Monte, which they reached in safety on the 28th of May, after an absence of about six weeks.

In reporting the results of their mission they recommended that the range of the Vuulcan should be at once adopted as the boundary of the province in that direction, and that a chain of military posts should be established upon it, extending from the sea-coast as far west as the Laguna Blanca, with a sufficient force to overawe the savages and afford efficient protection to such settlements as might be made within that line.

The government, at last roused to the conviction of the necessity of some vigorous demonstration of physical force, in order to re-establish something like that salutary fear of the superior military power and discipline of the Christians, which, in old times, had, to a certain degree, restrained and kept the savages in order, adopted the suggestion, and preparations on a considerable scale were made for carrying it into effect. The construction of a fortification on the Tandil was determined upon, and the governor himself prepared to superintend the work, and take the field against the savages with an adequate force. The little army assembled for this purpose was ready to march about the close of February, 1823. It consisted of 2500 men, seven pieces of artillery, with a considerable accompaniment of carts and waggons, and everything requisite for the establishment of a permanent military settlement.

Instead of following the track of Garcia and his companions, by the Tapalquen, after a consultationwith some guides, who professed to be well acquainted with the intervening country, General Rodriguez determined upon marching direct across it to the Tandil; an attempt, as it proved, more adventurous than prudent. On the 10th of March the troops left the Guardia del Monte, and had hardly crossed the Salado when they found themselves in the midst of apparently interminable swamps, thickly set with canes and reeds higher than their horses' heads. It was with great difficulty that the waggons and artillery were dragged through; nevertheless they foundered onwards as far as a lake, to which, from the clearness of its waters, they gave the name of Laguna Limpia; but there it became absolutely necessary to halt in order to reconnoitre the country before proceeding further. So far they had been grossly misled by their guides, whose only knowledge of the country it appeared had been acquired in excursions in quest of nutrias, which little animals are found in vast numbers in these swamps; but nutria catching and the march of an army accompanied by heavy waggons and artillery are very different things, and the wonder is that all the guns and baggage were not left behind in the bogs. The marshes themselves are formed by the streams which run into them from the hilly ranges further south, and which seem not to have sufficient power to force their way through the low lands either to the Salado or to the sea-coast. Beginning from the morass in which the Tapalquen joins the Flores, they extend far eastward, and render useless a considerable tract of country south of the Salado.

The scouts returning brought accounts that they had found the river Chapeleofú, the course of which it was determined to follow to the Tandil, where it was known to rise; but they had hardly left the Laguna Limpia when they were beset by a new danger, which, for a short time, threatened a frightful termination to the expedition. A sweeping wind blew towards them clouds of dense smoke, followed by one vast lurid blaze, extending across the horizon, and indicating but too clearly the approach of one of those dreadful conflagrations, not uncommon in the pampas after dry weather, when the long dry grass, and canes and thistles, readily igniting, cause the flames to extend rapidly over the whole face of the country, involving all in one common and horrible destruction. The gauchos, on the first indication of danger, have sometimes sufficient presence of mind to set fire immediately to the grass to leeward, by which they clear a space on which to take refuge before the general conflagration reaches them; but there is not always time to do this, much less to save the cattle and sheep, great numbers of which perish in the devouring element. Upon the present occasion the guides seem to have lost their wits as well as their way; and, but for the fortunate discovery of asmall lake near them, into which men and beasts alike rushed, dragging the carts with them, the whole army would have been involved in the same tragical end. There, up to their necks in the water, they remained for three hours, during which the fire-storm raged frightfully round them, and then, for want of further fuel, subsiding, left a desolated waste as far as the eye could reach, covered with a black stratum of cinders and ashes.

After these dangers the army continued its march along the western bank of the Chapeleofú, through a country which improved every step they advanced towards the sierras beyond. Picturesque and fertile, the lands seemed only to require to be taken possession of to form a most valuable addition to the territory of Buenos Ayres. The wandering tribes of Indians usually dwelling there had, to all appearance, abandoned them, and withdrawn further south, no doubt in alarm at the preparations made by the Spaniards to occupy them.

The wild guanacoes, and the deer, and the ostriches ranged in thousands over the pastures of their native regions, and, with hares, partridges, and armadilloes, afforded abundant sport to those sent out to shoot them. For some days the army was almost entirely subsisted upon them. Vast quantities of armadilloes, especially, were caught by the soldiers. One memorable afternoon's chase is recorded, in which upwards of 400 were taken; and a more delicate dish than one of these littleanimals, roasted, in his own shell, I will venture, from my own experience, to say, is not to be had in any part of the world. The rivers and lakes swarmed with wild and water-fowl of every sort, named and nameless, from the snipe to the beautiful black-necked swan peculiar to that part of the world.[43]

An observation was taken on the Chapeleofú in latitude 37° 17´ 34"; shortly after which the army left its course, and marched eastward to the Tandil, where they encamped, and whence the surveying officers reconnoitred the surrounding country, and determined upon the site for the new fortification.

The position of the fort constructed there has been fixed by repeated observations in latitude 37° 21´ 43"; longitude, west of Buenos Ayres, 39´ 4"; variation 15° east. It stands upon a small eminence, one of a lower group of hills which skirts the more elevated range beyond, and from which it is divided by the bed of a streamlet, which, after passing the works, about a quarter of a league to the eastward, and being joined by another from the westward, forms the river Tandil, which runs north till lost in the marshes in that direction already spoken of. It is screened to the west and north-west by a range of hillsrising 300 or 400 feet above it, the summits of which are strewed with large masses of quartzose rock, having a very remarkable appearance when seen from a distance. The highest part of the range of the Tandil, about two leagues to the south-east of the fort, was ascertained to be about 1000 feet above the level of a small stream which runs along its base. It is visible from a distance of forty miles. The height of this part of the range gradually falls off till lost in a wide plain or vale, about twelve miles eastward of the fortification.

The climate in winter was found to be very cold; the prevailing winds from the south and south-west.[44]In the month of April the thermometer was twice 1½° below freezing-point; but variations of 20° and even 30° in the course of the day were of common occurrence. In that month (April) the highest of the thermometer was 68°, the lowest 28½°; in May the highest was 61°, the lowest 31°; in June the highest was 72°, the lowest 39°; in July the highest was 79°, the lowest 41°. In the summer the heat was almost insufferable, particularly in the low lands; but in the spring and autumn, which are the best seasons, the weather was found temperate and very agreeable.

Whilst the fort was building on the Tandil,communications were opened with the Indians residing near the Ventana, proposing to them to join in active operations against the Ranqueles tribes—the Spaniards thinking, as on other occasions, to invoke the tribes in war with each other, and to profit by the weakening of both parties; but the Indians were this time upon their guard. They saw clearly enough that the march of such an army into their territory could have only one object,—the forcible occupation of their lands,—and they took their measures accordingly with their usual astuteness and cunning. Assenting, apparently, to the general propositions made to them, they invited the Buenos Ayrean general to repair with his principal officers to the neighbourhood of the Ventana, there to enter into the definitive treaties. They probably hoped by someruseto get the governor himself into their hands, and were greatly disappointed at his only sending his second in command, General Rondeau, to treat with them. Rondeau marched into their territory with a force of 1000 men, passing to the west of the Tinta mountains, and, after going some distance, was met by the principal Caciques, with a large assemblage of their fighting men; and here commenced a negociation, in which the Buenos Ayrean general was fairly outwitted. The Indians, affecting distrust, proposed that some officers of consequence should be sent to them as hostages during the conferences, offering, on their part, to place some of their principal Caciques inthe power of the general. Rondeau fell into the snare, and took his measures so badly, that, before the exchange was made, his officers were suddenly made prisoners, and carried off at a gallop, enveloped by a cloud of Indians, who were soon out of sight. His cavalry was in no condition to follow the savages into the pampas, and he returned to the Tandil with the conviction that the Puelches tribes, as well as the Ranqueles, were combined in one and the same determination to have no more friendly intercourse with the Christians.

After this affair nothing further was attempted, except to send out a party to explore the continuation of the range of the Tandil to the coast, of which the following was the result.

It has been already said that the range of the Tandil gradually declines to the eastward till broken by a wide vale, which commences about twelve miles from the new fortification; the vale in question extends for a distance of forty-two miles:—many streams run through it, some few of which, inclining towards the coast, fall into the sea, though the greater part of them are lost in swamps in the low lands which intervene. It is the greatest break in the chain, and, from its rich pastures, a favourite resort of the Indians. They call it the Vuulcan, which signifies, in their language, an opening; and thence the sierra, which bounds it to the eastward, also takes its name. In many maps it is writtenVolcan, which has led to the erroneous idea of there being a volcano in those parts.

From the Vuulcan the range runs in a continuous line for thirty-six miles towards the sea, presenting, for the most part, towards the north the appearance of a steep dyke or wall. On the summits are extensive ranges of table-land, well watered, and with good pasturage, to which the Indians, who are well acquainted with the craggy ravines which alone lead to them, are in the habit of driving their horses and cattle, knowing that the nature of the ground requires but little care to prevent their straying. At a short distance from the coast the hills break off in stony ridges, running down to the sea, and forming the headland of Cape Corrientes, in latitude 38° 6´, and further south a line of rocky cliffs, which bounds the shore as far as Cape Andres.

Upon the borders of a lake a short distance from Cape Corrientes were discovered the remains of the settlement formed by the Jesuits in the year 1747,—a site chosen with all their characteristic sagacity, well suited for an agricultural establishment, of easy access to the sea, and with great capability of being rendered defensible. It is a striking proof of the indomitable nature of the pampas tribes that all the efforts of the missionary fathers to reduce them to habits of order and industry only ended in disappointment, and, after years of fruitless endeavours, to their being obliged to fly from an establishment where their lives were no longer safe. The Indians ofthe pampas, like the Arabs of the desert, inseparable from their horses, and wild as the animals they ride, were not, like the more docile people of Paraguay, to be subjected to the strict rules and discipline which it was the object of the fathers to introduce amongst them. The vestiges of their buildings, and the fruit-trees planted by them, are the only evidences remaining of their pious but unavailing labours.

Although this spot was in many respects a very inviting one for an agricultural settlement, it wanted the principal requisite of some tolerable roadstead or harbour to facilitate any direct communication from Buenos Ayres by sea with the new line of frontier, an object of great importance if possible to secure. The coast was vainly explored in search of one from Cape Corrientes some way to the south, and to the north as far as the great lake called the Mar-chiquita, which empties itself into the sea by a narrow channel, capable, perhaps, of being deepened by artificial means, so as to form a harbour for small vessels; but even this seemed extremely doubtful, and depending on a further examination and survey, which the officers were not at the time prepared to undertake.

Under these circumstances, it was thought advisable to postpone the construction of any further works till a more accurate survey of the coast should be made. This was subsequently commenced, and carried as far as Bahia Blanca, which was reported to be the only situation from the Salado on all the line of coast intervening which combined a tolerable harbour for shipping with the capability of being made a good defensible position. Although this was far beyond the line of frontier at first contemplated, which only reached to the range of the Vuulcan and Tandil, other considerations eventually determined the government of Buenos Ayres to extend their boundary to that point. Not only did it appear that Bahia Blanca was the only place capable of being made a harbour on the coast, but the want of some such harbour to the south became more than ever apparent when the war broke out with Brazil, and the River Plate was placed under blockade by the emperor's fleet; and, although that war at first necessarily diverted the attention of the government of Buenos Ayres from the completion of their original plan, it forced upon them a more enlarged view of their position, and led to the final adoption of an infinitely better boundary-line than that which was first thought of merely as a check upon the Indians.

The line in question, which was finally adopted in 1828, and which forms the present nominal frontier of the province of Buenos Ayres towards the pampas, will be found upon the map drawn about north-north-east, from the fort built on the river Naposta, which falls into Bahia Blanca, to the Laguna Blanca, another point occupied as a military position, at the western extremity of the range of theTapalquen; thence it runs north by the fort of Cruz de Guerra to Melinqué, the north-west point of the province. It will be obvious, on reference to the map, that, whilst this line embraced within it an infinitely greater extent of country than that at first projected, it was in reality, being straight, a shorter one, and required less defences than the ranges of the Tandil and Vuulcan, supposing all the passes to be fortified.

The whole area of the territory within this line and the Arroyo del Medio, which separates the province of Buenos Ayres to the northward from that of Santa Fé, comprises about 75,000 square English miles.

The Indians would listen to no terms of accommodation, and fought for their lands; whilst, unfortunately for the people on the frontier, the civil dissensions which broke out at the close of the Brazilian war once more drew off the forces of the government, and exposed them to the inroads of the savages, before the fortifications on the frontier could be completed and sufficiently garrisoned for their defence. The devastation they committed in consequence was frightful; but it was signally avenged in 1832 and 1833 by General Rosas, who, at the head of the largest force that ever entered their territory, marched southward as far as the rivers Colorado and Negro, scoured the whole intervening country, and put thousands of them to death. Many tribes were totally exterminated, and others fled to the Cordillera of Chile, where alone they were safefrom the pursuit of the exasperated and victorious soldiers.

That the Buenos Ayreans had ample cause for these hostilities may be judged from the number of Christian slaves whom they succeeded in rescuing from the hands of the savages; upwards of 1500 women and children were retaken by General Rosas' troops, who had all been carried off in some or other of their marauding incursions, their husbands, sons, and brothers having been in most instances barbarously butchered before them. Many of these poor women had been in their hands for years; some taken in infancy could give little or no account to whom they belonged; others had become the wretched mothers of children brought up to follow the brutal mode of life of these barbarians. General Rosas fixed his head-quarters on the river Colorado, midway between Bahia Blanca and the settlement of Carmen on the river Negro. Thence he detached a division of his forces, under General Pacheco, to the south, which established a military position on the Choleechel, now called Isla de Rosas, on the Negro, which river was followed to the junction of the Neuquen. Another detachment marched under the orders of General Ramos along the banks of the Colorado as far as latitude 36° and 10° longitude west of Buenos Ayres, according to his computation, from whence he saw the Cordillera of the Andes and believed he was not more than thirty leaguesfrom Fort Rafael on the Diamante. Unfortunately not the slightest sketch was made of the course of this river, respecting which, therefore, we have no new data beyond a corroboration of the accounts obtained by Cruz, in 1806, of its being a great river, which runs without interruption direct from the Cordillera to the sea.[45]Of the Negro, General Pacheco has been kind enough to send me a sketch, which strikingly confirms the general course of the river as laid down by Mr. Arrowsmith, from Villariño's diary.

FOOTNOTES:[37]The latitude of the Great Salt Lake was taken from about the centre of the north side of it, where the party were encamped.In 1786 Don Pablo Zisur, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy, had fixed the north-east angle of the lake in lat. 37° 10´, and 4° 36´ west of the meridian of Luxan (Guardia); according to him the lake of Cabeza del Buey is in lat. 36° 8´, and the Guardia de Luxan in 34° 36´. Azara fixed it in 34° 38´ 36".[38]In the life of theCarreras, given in the Appendix to Mrs. Graham's account of Chile, there is an account of some of these Indian forays in conjunction with Carrera's troops, particularly of their surprisal of the town of Salto, and the carrying off from thence of 250 women and children, after butchering all the men, in spite of every effort of their unnatural allies to prevent it.[39]Villariño found the Indians in the Cordillera opposite to Valdivia calling themselves Aucases.[40]Garcia seems to have believed that the language and origin of this people was different from the other Indians he fell in with. There is no proof, however, adduced of the difference of language, and I suspect they were only a further-removed branch of the Araucanian family, as were the Indians Viedma found at San Julian's in 1782.[41]Captain Fitzroy determined it to be 3350 feetabove the level of the sea, from which its true distance is 45 miles.[42]At Buenos Ayres the variation in 1708 was 16° 45´ east; in 1789 it was 16° 30´; and in 1818 it was 12½ east.[43]A collection of the birds of those regions would form a most interesting addition to any museum. A large proportion of them are, I believe, quite unknown in Europe.[44]An accident to the barometer prevented the officers making a series of observations with that instrument, which would have been of considerable interest. They made, however, good use of the thermometer, of which a daily register was preserved.[45]I understand, however, that General Ramos has expressed his opinion that it is not navigable for more thanforty leaguesfrom its mouth.

[37]The latitude of the Great Salt Lake was taken from about the centre of the north side of it, where the party were encamped.In 1786 Don Pablo Zisur, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy, had fixed the north-east angle of the lake in lat. 37° 10´, and 4° 36´ west of the meridian of Luxan (Guardia); according to him the lake of Cabeza del Buey is in lat. 36° 8´, and the Guardia de Luxan in 34° 36´. Azara fixed it in 34° 38´ 36".

[37]The latitude of the Great Salt Lake was taken from about the centre of the north side of it, where the party were encamped.

In 1786 Don Pablo Zisur, a lieutenant in the Spanish navy, had fixed the north-east angle of the lake in lat. 37° 10´, and 4° 36´ west of the meridian of Luxan (Guardia); according to him the lake of Cabeza del Buey is in lat. 36° 8´, and the Guardia de Luxan in 34° 36´. Azara fixed it in 34° 38´ 36".

[38]In the life of theCarreras, given in the Appendix to Mrs. Graham's account of Chile, there is an account of some of these Indian forays in conjunction with Carrera's troops, particularly of their surprisal of the town of Salto, and the carrying off from thence of 250 women and children, after butchering all the men, in spite of every effort of their unnatural allies to prevent it.

[39]Villariño found the Indians in the Cordillera opposite to Valdivia calling themselves Aucases.

[40]Garcia seems to have believed that the language and origin of this people was different from the other Indians he fell in with. There is no proof, however, adduced of the difference of language, and I suspect they were only a further-removed branch of the Araucanian family, as were the Indians Viedma found at San Julian's in 1782.

[41]Captain Fitzroy determined it to be 3350 feetabove the level of the sea, from which its true distance is 45 miles.

[42]At Buenos Ayres the variation in 1708 was 16° 45´ east; in 1789 it was 16° 30´; and in 1818 it was 12½ east.

[43]A collection of the birds of those regions would form a most interesting addition to any museum. A large proportion of them are, I believe, quite unknown in Europe.

[44]An accident to the barometer prevented the officers making a series of observations with that instrument, which would have been of considerable interest. They made, however, good use of the thermometer, of which a daily register was preserved.

[45]I understand, however, that General Ramos has expressed his opinion that it is not navigable for more thanforty leaguesfrom its mouth.

Geological Features of the Southern compared with those of the Northern Shore of the Plata. The Pampa Formation, probably derived from the Alluvial Process now going on, as exhibited in the Beds of the Plata itself and other Rivers. Fossil remains of land Animals found in it, above Marine Shells. Such Shells where met with, and of what Species. Mr. Bland's Theory of the Upheaval of the Pampas from the Sea, founded on the Deposits of Salt in them:—The presence of such Salt may be otherwise accounted for. Account of the Discovery of the Gigantic Fossil remains sent to England by the Author.

I cannot leave the pampas without a few words upon their geological features, and upon the remarkable contrast exhibited in the appearance of the country on the northern and on the southern shores of the Plata. On the north side the formation is of clay-slate, gneiss, and granite, of which the islands in the river above Buenos Ayres are also composed, particularly Sola, Las Hermanas, and Martin Garcia, where the granite is quarried for the pavement of the city. On the southern side every trace of rock is entirely lost, and for hundreds of miles inland not even the smallest pebble is to be met with.

As far as we are yet acquainted with it, the whole of that vast level called the pampas, reachingfrom the eastern terminations of the Andes to the shores of the Plata, appears to be one immense bed of alluvium tranquilly deposited during the imperceptible lapse of ages; the delta perhaps, not of one, but of numerous rivers, originating in a once more general diffusion of the waters from the Andes before their courses were defined by their present channels. Some such process of formation appears still to be going on in many parts of the pampas, where muddy streams and streamlets, the collections from the mountains in the south and of the rainy seasons, too sluggish to force a way through the level country, inundate the plains, and gradually deposit the alluvial sediment, together with a prodigious quantity of decomposed vegetable matter, in the swamps and morasses, until accumulations of fresh soil take place in sufficient quantity to throw off the waters again in some other direction. The bed of the Plata, itself the reservoir of a hundred rivers, is, from all I could learn, gradually silting up, and, wide as it is at the present day, along its shores, and particularly above Buenos Ayres, may be distinctly traced the evidences of the waters having once occupied a bed of infinitely greater extent. Every observation tends to the inference that this now mighty estuary may, centuries hence, be reduced to similar bounds and rules to those which govern the outlets of the Amazons, the Mississippi, the Nile, and the Ganges. Nor will this require, perhaps, so long a period as might atfirst be imagined.[46]If we except the narrow channel between the Chico and Ortiz banks, below Buenos Ayres, the average depth of the river between that city and Monte Video does not exceed twenty feet. The prodigious quantity of mud and detritus brought down by it is well known,—the whole river, wide as it is, is at times discoloured by it. Now, if but enough of this sediment is deposited to cause thesmall annual increase of only half an inch in the bed of the river, it will not require 500 years to form a delta, which, in the language of the country, will be nothing more or less than an extension of the existing pampas.

Such, I conceive, may have been the origin of the far spread formation of the present pampas or plains, throughout which are to be found the fossil remains of gigantic animals of long lost species, such as the megatherium and mastodon, and other monsters yet unnamed, which in former ages may have grazed upon the abundant pastures produced in the rich loamy lands saved from the waters; whilst beneath, in strata of marine shells, are no less incontestable evidences of the ancient bed of the ocean.

It cannot be expected that, in a country so uniformly level as the pampas, sections of sufficient depth will frequently occur to exhibit the underlying strata. They must be looked for at the outlying extremities of the formation, where the upper bed thins out,—to use a geological term. Now there is nothing that I know of to interrupt the uniformity of the stratum between the southern shore of the Plata on the one side, and the eastern base of the Andes on the other, and at both these extremes marine remains are strikingly exhibited.

General Cruz, in his journey from Antuco to Buenos Ayres (noticed in chapter viii.), in passing through the valleys in the lower ranges of theCordillera, immediately before reaching the pampas, was exceedingly struck with the abundance of marine remains thereabouts. He says, in his diary, "In all the hills and valleys under the Cordillera, as far as the river Chadileubu, a great quantity of marine remains are met with, some of them constituting a sort of limestone. Not only may these remains be observed upon the surface, but also at great depths below it, in the sections formed by the torrents as they descend from the mountains: there can, therefore, be no doubt that the waters of the sea once occupied the place of the land in those parts."

Proceeding eastward, by the base of the mountain ranges of San Luis and Cordova, which bound the pampas to the north, we have the testimony of water-worn rocks and beds of shells in that direction, from Schmitmeyer, Helms, and other travellers, at Portezuela and on the banks of the Tercero; and beyond the Sierra de Cordova, on the great river Paranã, near Santa Fé, Mr. Darwin found in the cliff which skirts the river a stratum of marine shells distinctly exposed a little above the level of the water, and with the alluvial bed over it, forty or fifty feet thick, containing bones of extinct mammalia.

Here, then, I think, we may trace, all but continuously, the northern and western shores of a gulf, which must have been nearly as large as that of Mexico, and not very unlike it, perhaps, in general outline. Travelling south from Santa Fé, along the shores of the Plata, which bounds these pampas on the east, we find, at distances varying from one to six leagues inland from the river, and from fifty to one hundred and fifty miles from the sea, large beds of marine shells, which the people of those parts quarry for lime. From these deposits I have myself specimens ofVoluta Colocynthis,Voluta Angulata,Buccinum Globulosum,Buccinum Nov. Spe.,Oliva Patula;Cytheræa Flexuosa?Mactra?Venus Flexuosa,Ostrea, &c. In some places these shells are so compact as to form a sort of limestone, easily worked when first dug out, and hardening afterwards on exposure to the air. The church of Magdalena upon the coast is built of this material. They are generally in good preservation, and some of the species appear almost identical with those found upon the coasts of Brazil; others, on the contrary, found with them are not known. There is one, found generally by itself, unmixed with others, which is particularly interesting on this question, as strikingly proving the gradual growth of the pampas; it is the smallmya, namedpotamo-myaby Sowerby, usually found in estuaries at the junction of the fresh and salt water, and the existing type of which is now to be met with at the mouth of the Plata; but the bed from which my fossil specimens were taken is at the Calera de Arriola, to the north of Buenos Ayres, nearly 150 miles from its present habitat; and there (I think manifestly proved bythese little shells) must have been once the mouth of the mighty estuary, which is now more than 150 miles below it.

I must not omit to state that all these marine deposits are found in situations more or less above the present level of the ocean; this, in the neighbourhood of the Cordillera, which is so continually liable to volcanic disturbances, may be accounted for; but it leads to other speculations in the flat alluvial plains towards the Plata, where the phenomenon of an earthquake is utterly unknown, and where the apparently perfect horizontality of the strata would seem to negative the idea of any violent action by which it might have been upheaved.

Mr. Bland, one of the North American Commissioners sent to Buenos Ayres in 1818, reasoning upon the quantity of saline matter found in the pampas, hazards, as he says, the conjecture that the pampa formation "may have been gently lifted just above the level of the ocean, and left with a surface so unbroken and flat as not yet to have been sufficiently purified of its salt and acrid matter, either by filtration or washing:" and undoubtedly such saline matter does exist very extensively over this formation. Many of the running waters, as their names denote, are rendered brackish by it; and lakes which have no outlet become saturated with it, and deposit it in regular beds, where in the dry season it may be collected in any quantity. But it does not necessarily follow that it has been left there by the ocean:we know that salt abounds in the Andes, and that extensive beds of it occur, particularly in those parts of them from which we may conjecture that the greater part of the waters of the pampas are derived; and if for a moment we can suppose the pampas themselves to have originated in sedimentary deposits from those mountain chains, we must I think equally admit that the alluvial soil washed down can hardly fail to be impregnated with so soluble a substance as the salt which abounds in them. In a country of more varied surface we might expect the briny particles to be carried off by the streams and lost in the sea; but in the dead levels of the pampas the greater part of the streams themselves are lost long ere they reach the ocean. The waters deposit their sediment over the surface, and the salt is left to amalgamate with the mire of the marshes, until perhaps again the rains collect it, and either partially carry it off in brackish streams, or deposit it in the basins of the inland lakes, in which it is so abundantly found. That it is a superficial deposit I think is proved by the fact that (as elsewhere noticed) in the immediate vicinity of some of the saline lakes and rivers in the pampas, and where the surface of all the surrounding country appears to be incrusted with salt, the people dig wells, and find perfectly fresh and potable water, as I understand, at a depth of from twenty to fifty feet. The same may be said to occur throughout the city of Buenos Ayres, where all the wells which do not penetrate thetoscaproduce water more or less brackish, whilst those which go below it are sweet. Some of the best water I ever tasted was from a well sunk in the sandy stratum below the clay at Mr. Brittain's quinta outside the city. Further, I imagine that the discovery of the remains of land animals so generally throughout this formation is in itself conclusive of its depositionsubsequentlyto the existence of the ocean in those parts, the ancient bed of which it must very considerably overlie.

To speak of the megatherium alone, its remains have been found in all parts of the pampas, from the river Carcaraña, in the province of Santa Fé, to the south of the Salado, a distance of nearly 300 miles in a direct line, and in all the intermediate country. Such remains are much more common than is supposed, and I am satisfied might frequently be met with if searched for during the dry season, or after long droughts, either in the banks of the rivers, or in the beds of some of the numerous lakes which are then dried up. All the remains I sent home were so discovered, and so were those sent to Madrid by the Marquis of Loreto, which were found in the bed of the river Luxan, a short distance to the north of the city of Buenos Ayres. The great skeleton I obtained was discovered in the river Salado, to the south of Buenos Ayres, after a drought of unusually long continuance, by a peon in the service of the Sosa family, who, attempting to cross the river at an unfrequented spot,was struck by the appearance of a large mass of something standing above the surface of the water, and which, supposing at first to be some part of the trunk of a tree, he determined to get out if possible: in this he was assisted by some of his brother peons, who, throwing their lassoes over it, succeeded in dragging it out, fortunately without injury, for it proved to be nearly the entire pelvis of the megatherium: with it were also brought up several of the other bones, and amongst them some of the vertebræ. To the peons the pelvis luckily appeared to be useless: turn it which way they would, they all agreed that it did not make half so comfortable a seat as either a bullock's or a horse's head; but the vertebræ did not so easily escape, and in a place where not a stone is to be seen, were eagerly seized upon as excellent substitutes to boil their camp-kettles upon. The smaller ones being best suited to the purpose were the first to disappear, which may account for the deficiency of all the cervical vertebræ as well as of many of the smaller bones of the feet and other parts. After a time it was suggested that the pelvis and some of the largest bones should be sent as curiosities to the owner of the estancia on which they were found, Don Hilario Sosa, at whose house in Buenos Ayres I first saw them. He was good enough, seeing my great anxiety to obtain possession of them, after exhibiting them to his friends, to place them at my disposal, and to allow me to send people to hisestancia to search for the remainder of the skeleton: by their exertions many other portions of it were saved; and but for the destruction of some by the country-people, as described, and of others which, having been taken out in the first instance, had remained exposed for some months to the sun, and had become so brittle in consequence as not to bear removal, the skeleton would have been tolerably perfect. As it is, it was very fortunate that amongst the parts preserved were some of those which are wanting in the skeleton at Madrid, especially the bones of the tail, which singularly corroborate the anticipations of Cuvier, whose description of this remarkable monster was drawn from a representation of that specimen, the only one known to exist till mine reached Europe.

M. Cuvier was not I believe aware of the grounds which now exist for supposing that the animal was covered with a coat of mail, like the armadillo, which has led other comparative anatomists to ally it to that family. There were no remains of such a shell appertaining to the specimen at Madrid, neither were any found with the bones which I have spoken of as discovered in the Salado. Portions, however, of a shelly covering in a fossil state, which must have belonged to some gigantic animal, had been at various times dug up in the pampas, which had excited the attention and speculations of the curious. Even father Falkner in his account of the country speaks of them:—he says, that he himself found theshell of an animal composed of little hexagonal bones, each bone an inch in diameter at least, and the whole shell nearly three yards over: it seemed to him to be in all respects, except its size, the upper part of the shell of an armadillo.

The researches I set on foot after finding the skeleton in the Salado led to fresh discoveries, which, if they do not identify these shells with the megatherium, must lead us to conclude that these regions were once inhabited by other gigantic animals no less extraordinary. When the country-people saw the eagerness with which the big bones from the Salado were sought for, they were not backward in speaking of other places where similar remains had been met with, and were still, as they believed, to be found. Upon this information I once more despatched my agent to the south of the Salado, and the governor, Don Manuel Rosas, taking an interest in the matter, was good enough to furnish him with a letter of recommendation to the local authorities, desiring them to give him not only protection, but every assistance he might need to ensure his success. In little less than three weeks we were repaid by the discovery of two more enormous skeletons on the estancias of the governor himself, called Villanueva and Las Averias, and in both instances with the novelty of their being encased in a thick coating or shell resembling that of the armadillo. The first, found at Villanueva, though still of gigantic proportions, appears to have been very much smallerthan that which had been taken out of the Salado: it was discovered in the bed of a small rivulet, and upon exposure to the air nearly all crumbled to dust. The only portions it was possible to preserve being part of a scapula, a small portion of the jaw with one small but perfect tooth remaining in it, and a fragment of a hind leg, with some of the feet bones. The shell lay, as Mr. Oakley, my agent, described it, a little below the principal mass of the bones, looking like the section of a huge cask; the form of it when first discovered appeared natural and perfect, but it would not bear to be lifted out of its bed, and broke into small pieces and crumbled away immediately.

From the account given by Mr. Oakley, and the apparent resemblance of the remains of this specimen to those previously discovered, although of a much smaller size, I was induced to believe that they belonged to a younger animal of the same species; other persons, however, who have since had an opportunity of comparing them with recent specimens of the dasypus family, have suggested that it is more probable that they belonged to a gigantic armadillo. Such is the belief entertained, I am told, at Paris, where casts of the bones in question have been sent. The other skeleton, found at Las Averias, was described to be as large as that of the megatherium. It lay in a bed of hard clay, on the side of the lake of Las Averias, partly exposed to view by the action of the water against it in stormy weather. Here alarge portion of the shell appeared in a perfect state, and the country people, who took Mr. Oakley to the spot, assured him that, when first discovered, it was at least twelve feet in length, and from four to six in depth. It was very hard, but could not be got out whole. Mr. Oakley, however, brought away some considerable portions of it, which, in this instance, became harder the longer they were exposed to the external air. Not so the bones within, which, like those at Villanueva, almost immediately mouldered away on being taken out of the earth. A very imperfect fragment of the pelvis only reached Buenos Ayres.

On my return to England I exhibited these remains at the Geological Society, and afterwards made them over to the Royal College of Surgeons, whose collection of comparative anatomy is by far the finest in this country. Mr. Clift, the curator of that collection, undertook to describe them, and his paper upon them will be found in the "Transactions of the Geological Society for 1835." Casts of them, which were made at my desire, were also deposited in other museums, abroad as well as at home. Sir Francis Chantrey was kind enough to superintend the making of them, and to a simple suggestion of his, a solution of linseed-oil and litharge,[47]with which they were very thoroughly saturated, may be ascribed their restoration to a statehardly to be distinguished from that of the most recent bone.

Dr. Buckland, the learned professor of geology at Oxford, has since made the megatherium the subject of a chapter in his "Bridgewater Treatise," wherein he has fully described the remarkable peculiarities of its structure, in which, as he observes, it exceeds its nearest living congeners in a greater degree than any other known fossil animal. With the head and shoulders of a sloth, it combined, in its legs and feet, an admixture of the characters of the ant-eater, the armadillo, and the chlamyphorus: the latter it probably still further resembled in being cased with a bony coat of armour. Measuring the bones only, its haunches were more than five feet wide;[48]its thigh bone was twice the thickness of that of the largest elephant; the fore foot was a yard in length, and terminated by a gigantic claw; the tail, the width of the upper part of which was at least two feet, and which was probably clad in armour, must have been infinitely larger than that of any other known beast, amongst extinct or living mammalia. The whole body, according to the learned professor's calculations, was about eight feet in height, and twelve in length.[49]The annexed plate, carefully drawn from the original bones, under Mr. Clift's superintendence, will serve not only to give a general idea of the strange structure of this extraordinary monster, but to show the parts which are still wanting to make up the specimen. I will only add that, if any of those parts should fall into the hands of a casual collector, he will render a service to science by transmitting them to the curator of the College of Surgeons in London.

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