Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/395



entrance to the lagoon which forms a short cut to El Pilar. This feature is the '^ furado/' the *^ parana-mirim/' and the " ypoeira " of Brazilian rivers. In Lieutenant Day's chart it is laid down as the Rio and Guardia of Monte Rico, an error for La Monterita — the Little monte. At 12'40 p.m. we sighted that classical and important influent the Rio Bermejo (Red River), alias Rio Grande. Here, in 1528, " El buen Gaboto ^' first saw the savages adorned with gold and silver, and imagined the grand misnomer " Rio de la Plata." The valuables, according to Herrera, were taken by the Payaguas, who had entered into the dominions of Huana Ceapac : Charlevoix, however, asserts that they were the spoils of the Portuguese Alexis Garcia, who crossed the continent from the Brazil to Peru, and who was killed in Paraguay by the Payaguas, not without suspicion of foul play on the part of the Spaniards.

The general opinion now is that the streams feeding the main artery from the west run through red saliferous marls and sandstones, whereas that the waters of the Parana are clear, sweet, and wholesome. But DobrizhofFer declares that the Bermejo is especially salubrious in cases of vesical disease ; and all the travellers who have lately investigated it assert that the colouring matter is merely oxide of iron from the red clay, probably the drift of Professor Agassiz. The Bermejo draining the Eastern Andes and the Gran Chaco plain, averages five feet deep from Oran in the Salta Province to the Paraguay. About ] 856 Sor Arce, a Bolivian^ navigated 2000 miles with a raft, and in 1862-3, Captain Lavarello took up the steamer Gran Chaco.

The mouth of the great influent is about 200 yards across. The southern or right jaw is low, sandy, and densely grown with bush : that opposite is high and per- pendicular, and the two contain a small delta of monte and water-grass. Fine timber appears up stream, where