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Further on, to the west, is a wide-extending pastoral district; and yet beyond, reaching to the foot of the Cordilleras, the soil is well-suited for agriculture. The pastoral region is almost a dead level, with large shallow salt-lakes, one of them measuring fifty miles in length by twenty in width. Scarcely a tree is to be found throughout this region, and but few permanent water-courses.
I had an idea that a mountain range similar to, but of course of less extent, than the McDonnell Ranges in Central Australia might be found an idea based on the fact that the vast swamps or salt-lakes, Lake Amadeus and Lake Macdonald, which apparently have no creeks to feed them from the East, must necessarily be filled from somewhere. Since it was not from the East, why not from the West?
On the East side of the spring is an open space of sand; surrounding it and the clay-pan is a luxuriant growth of pig-face a finger-like plant, soft, squashy, and full of moisture, but salt; it is commonly seen on the margin of salt-lakes. Beyond the pig-face, tussocks of grass and buck-bush, beyond that again a mass of ti-tree scrub extending to the foot of the sandhills.
Westward of the Parana and the Province of Buenos Ayres stretches out the wide-extended and almost level plain of the Pampas, reaching to the base of the Andes. It is a wild, savage region, sprinkled over here and there with salt-lakes and marshes, in which a few streams, traversing it at considerable distances apart, lose themselves.
No water had yet been discovered, nor had any place where it could lodge been seen, even if the latter rain itself descended upon us, except indeed in the beds of the salt-lakes, where it would immediately have been converted into brine.
Thus we have a little living world within itself, adapted to these inland lakes of brine. "Linnaean Transactions" volume 11 page 205. It is remarkable how all the circumstances connected with the salt-lakes in Siberia and Patagonia are similar. Siberia, like Patagonia, appears to have been recently elevated above the waters of the sea.
We have got amongst the half-dried salt lagoons, so our further progress North-West is cut off. . . we are quite amongst the salt-lakes, a large one lies to the West of us, sending out its arms to every point.
Every estancia, or farming estate, has one attached to it. The hovels of the Indians are thus called. Report of the Agricult. Chem. Assoc. in the Agricult. Gazette, 1845, p. 93. Linnaean Trans., vol. xi. p. 205. It is remarkable how all the circumstances connected with the salt-lakes in Siberia and Patagonia are similar.
In the evening, to our surprise and disgust, further passage that day was cut off by a salt swamp. Not wishing to get fixed in a lake during rain, we camped early, pitched our tent and hoped for the rain to stop an unholy wish in this country, but salt-lakes are bad enough without rain!
Rio Negro Estancias attacked by the Indians Salt-Lakes Flamingoes R. Negro to R. Colorado Sacred Tree Patagonian Hare Indian Families General Rosas Proceed to Bahia Blanca Sand Dunes Negro Lieutenant Bahia Blanca Saline Incrustations Punta Alta Zorillo. JULY 24th, 1833. The Beagle sailed from Maldonado, and on August the 3rd she arrived off the mouth of the Rio Negro.
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