THE LA PLATA AND ITS BASIN.—THE PAMPAS. 1. The Rio de la Plata, or "Silver Stream," is one of the three great rivers of South America. A traveller can take steamer at Monte Video and sail without a stoppage to the capital of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, 2,000 miles from the sea. At Monte Video the river is over sixty miles wide, and brackish. At Buenos Ayres, though it is twenty-eight miles from shore to shore, yet the water is drinkable. With the exception of the Amazon, this river discharges more water into the ocean than any river on the globe. 2. Twenty miles above Buenos Ayres the Uruguay flows in, and above this the main stream is called the Paraná. On the southern border of Paraguay is the confluence of the mighty stream of the same name, bringing its waters from the Cordilleras of Brazil and the eastern spurs of the Bolivian Andes. The scenery on the Uruguay and the upper courses of the Paraná is very beautiful. On the latter river, 450 miles above the city of Corrientes, built near the confluence of the Paraguay, are the Falls of Guayra. "The river a little above the falls is two and a half miles across, having more water than all the European rivers put together. The great mass of water narrows to 200 feet and falls at an angle of 50° a distance of nearly sixty feet. At a distance of thirty miles the noise is heard, as of distant thunder, and at three miles off it is difficult to hear any one speak. In the vicinity of the falls continuous showers fall from the spray which rises in columns at the moment when the waters strike the walls of the rocky gorge, and when the sunlight plays on it, rainbows of the most lovely colours may be observed." It is computed that a million tons of water per minute, at a velocity of forty miles an hour, falls over the precipice. 3. The Paraguay has its origin in seven little lakes in the diamond fields of the Brazilian province of Matto Grosso, and at no great distance from one of the head waters of the Madeira. It receives, on its left bank, many large streams from Brazil, and soon becomes a majestic and navigable river. Lower down, the great tributary the Pilcomayo, or the "Sparrow River," from the Bolivian hills, joins on the right bank. This river flows through the wilderness of Gran Chaco, the famous hunting grounds of the Indians. "Like the Paraná in its wildest parts, the Paraguay flows past virgin forests, lovely isles, and great pampas; or, in the vicinity of the numerous little towns on its banks, by mandioca and yerba fields down to the water's edge, or country houses embosomed in orange groves, seeming to the passing voyager the picture of peace, away from the busy world, and which, in reality, have been sacked by robbers and harassed by fire and sword." 4. The basin of the La Plata and the vast river system in connection with it, presents many and varied features. The east and the north of the basin include the vast regions of the forest-covered uplands and mountain ridges of Brazil, and a chain of hills runs southward from the great Brazilian table-land, between the Paraguay and Upper Paraná, forming a water-shed between the river basins of these two rivers. The eastern slope of this central chain of Paraguay is covered with dense forests as yet but little known; the western slopes are great grassy plains, 'fringed and patched with wood." South of this chain, near the confluence of these rivers, exist extensive marshes, admirably adapted for the cultivation of rice, and southward again, between the Paraná and Uruguay, are the alternately flat and undulating sheep-farming districts, sometimes called the Argentine Mesopotamia. 5. That portion of the basin of the La Plata River system which lies west of the Paraguay and Lower Paraná may be described as an almost unbroken plain. This plain commences in the south-east of Bolivia, and stretches southward through the Argentine Republic and Patagonia to the Straits of Magellan. The northern portions of this plain are the Gran Chaco, the middle parts the Pampas, and the southern the Plains of Patagonia. 6. The underlying formation of the best of these plains is a deposit of earth which seems to have been scoured away from the Andes and the highlands of the central parts of the continent, and is overlaid by three or four feet of rich mould, formed by the constant decay of the luxurious vegetation which grows on the surface of it. The worst parts of the western Pampas and the greater part of Patagonia is composed of coarse detritus and gravel from the Andes, and requires irrigation before it can become even moderately fertile. There are other portions of these plains which are mere saline or brackish marshes, or dry salt-white wastes, evidences of the position of former inland seas. 7. The word "Pampa" signifies a "valley " or " plain,” and the Pampas may be roughly described as the prairies of South America. The true Pampas of the south of the Argentine Confederation, which probably contain an area of a million and a half square miles, vary in quality from the waterless strips of desert, clothed only with a few boulders, to the more fertile ones lying on the slopes of the Cordilleras. All of them, however, from the rapid alternation from moisture to parching drought which they undergo, are incapable of supporting trees, and are accordingly clothed with, among other grasses, the luxuriant Pampas grass, in tufts six or eight feet high, and other herbaceous plants, and by sparse groups of stunted bushes. The sterile Pampa has a peculiar vegetation, consisting for the most part of "hard plants with long thorns;" but in the fertile Pampa, the rich grasses which, during at least a portion of the year-as in the province of Buenos Ayres -carpet it, supply abundance of food for stock. The sterile Pampas show themselves in the west and northwest, the more fertile Pampas occupy the south. 8. There are a number of water-courses on the Pampas which have their origin in swamps, but they frequently dry up during summer. Numbers of lakelets also occur, but as the supply of water in them depends upon rainfall, they are alternately filled and empty according to the season. 9. The Pampas of Buenos Ayres are best known. |