hose of the Parana and Paraguay. Very little is known of
these three great streams, though of late years the Salado has received
some exploration. There is a better acquaintance with its upper
portion, where it passes through the settled districts of Santiago and
Tucuman. Below, even to the point where it enters the Parana, only a
strong military expedition may with safety approach its banks, by reason
of their being also traversed by predatory bands of the savages.

Geographical knowledge of the Vermejo is still less, and of the
Pilcomayo least of all; this confined to the territory of their upper
waters, long since colonised by the Argentine States and the Republic of
Bolivia, and now having many towns in it. But below, as with the
Salado, where these rivers enter the region of the Chaco, they become as
if they were lost to the geographer; even the mouth of the Pilcomayo not
being known for certain, though one branch of it debouches into the
Paraguay, opposite the town of Assuncion, the capital of Paraguay
itself! It enters the river of this name by a forked or _deltoid_
channel, its waters making their way through a marshy tract of country
in numerous slow flowing _riachos_, whose banks, thickly overgrown with
a lush sedgy vegetation, are almost concealed from the eye of the
explorer.

Although the known mouth of the Pilcomayo is almost within gun-shot of
Assuncion--the oldest Spanish settlement in this part of South America--
no Paraguayan ever thinks of attempting its ascent, and the people of
the town are as ignorant of the land lying along that river's shores as
on the day when the old naturalist, Azara, paddles his _periagua_ some
forty miles against its obstructing current. No scheme of colonisation
has ever been designed or thought of by them; for it is only near its
source, as we have seen, that settlements exist. In the Chaco no white
man's town ever stood upon its banks, nor church spire flung shadow
athwart its unfurrowed waves.

It may be asked why this neglect of a territory, which would seem so
tempting to the colonist? For the Gran Chaco is no sterile tract, like
most parts of the Navajo country in the north, or the plains of
Patagonia and the sierras of Arauco in the south. Nor is it a humid,
impervious forest, at seasons inundated, as with some portions of the
Amazon valley and the deltas of the Orinoco.

Instead, what we do certainly know of the Chaco shows it the very
country to invite