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Updated: June 20, 2025
The sterile plains of Mendoza and Patagonia consist of a bed of shingle, worn smooth and accumulated by the waves of the sea; while the Pampas, covered by thistles, clover, and grass, have been formed by the ancient estuary mud of the Plata. After our two days' tedious journey, it was refreshing to see in the distance the rows of poplars and willows growing round the village and river of Luxan.
Luxan told even more extraordinary things, which he had heard from the natives, but he brought back nothing; it is probable that he did this in obedience to the Admiral's orders.
The mammiferous remains occur at all depths from the top to the bottom of the deposit; and I may add that nowhere in the Pampas is there any appearance of much superficial denudation: some bones which I found near the Guardia del Monte were embedded close to the surface; and this appears to have been the case with many of those discovered in Banda Oriental: on the Matanzas, twenty miles south of Buenos Ayres, a Glyptodon was embedded five feet beneath the surface; numerous remains were found by S. Muniz, near Luxan, at an average depth of eighteen feet; in Buenos Ayres a skeleton was disinterred at sixty feet depth, and on the Parana I have described two skeletons of the Mastodon only five or six feet above the very base of the deposit.
This species of locust closely resembles, and perhaps is identical with, the famous Gryllus migratorius of the East. We crossed the Luxan, which is a river of considerable size, though its course towards the sea-coast is very imperfectly known: it is even doubtful whether, in passing over the plains, it is not evaporated and lost.
While building this fortress, as it was proudly called, he sent a young cavalier named Luxan for further exploration. Luxan returned with stories even greater than they had heard of before, but with no gold, "because he had no orders to do so." He had found ripe grapes. And at last they had found a region called Cipangi, cipan signifying stone. This name recalled the memory of Cipango, or Japan.
Proceeding northward, along the west bank of the Parana, we come to the Rio Luxan, where two skeletons of the Megatherium have been found; and lately, within eight leagues of the town of Luxan, Dr. At Areco, large bones have been found, which are believed, by the inhabitants, to have been changed from small bones, by the water of the river!
On his return journey, towards the ides of March, Luxan found wild grapes of excellent flavour, already ripe in the forest, but the islanders take no account of them. It is even said that the growth on the mountains, which strictly speaking is only grass, grows taller than wheat within four days after it has been mown.
Diego was again left in command of the colony, with four counsellors, Friar Buil, Fernandez Coronel, Alonso Sanchez Carvajal, and Juan de Luxan, to assist his authority. The Admiral sailed on April 24th, steering to the westward and touching at La Navidad before he bore away to the island of Cuba, the southern shore of which it was now his intention to explore.
It is difficult to form an opinion in what part of the Pampas they are most numerous; in a limited spot they could not well have been more numerous than they were at P. Alta; the number, however, lately found by Senor F. Muniz, near Luxan, in a central spot in the Pampas, is extraordinarily great: at the end of this chapter I will give a list of all the localities at which I have heard of remains having been discovered.
He gave authority in Isabella to Don Diego, and made him a council where sat Father Buil, Caravajal, Coronel and Juan de Luxan. Then out of five ships we took the Cordera, the Santa Clara and the San Juan, and we set sail on April the twenty-fourth. THE island, we learned, was named Jamaica. The Admiral called it Santiago, but it also rests Jamaica.
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