The Real
Grandeur, However, Of An Immense River Like This, Is Derived
From Reflecting How Important A Means Of Communication
And commerce it forms between one nation and another; to
what a distance it travels, and from how vast a
Territory
it drains the great body of fresh water which flows past
your feet.
For many leagues north and south of San Nicolas and
Rozario, the country is really level. Scarcely anything which
travellers have written about its extreme flatness, can be
considered as exaggeration. Yet I could never find a spot
where, by slowly turning round, objects were not seen at
greater distances in some directions than in others; and
this manifestly proves inequality in the plain. At sea, a
person's eye being six feet above the surface of the water,
his horizon is two miles and four-fifths distant. In like
manner, the more level the plain, the more nearly does the
horizon approach within these narrow limits; and this, in
my opinion, entirely destroys that grandeur which one would
have imagined that a vast level plain would have possessed.
October 1st. - We started by moonlight and arrived at the
Rio Tercero by sunrise. The river is also called the Saladillo,
and it deserves the name, for the water is brackish.
I stayed here the greater part of the day, searching for fossil
bones. Besides a perfect tooth of the Toxodon, and many
scattered bones, I found two immense skeletons near each
other, projecting in bold relief from the perpendicular cliff
of the Parana.
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