white and level expanses, in the
midst of the brown and desolate plain, offers an extraordinary
spectacle. A large quantity of salt is annually drawn from the
salina: and great piles, some hundred tons in weight, were lying
ready for exportation.

The season for working the salinas forms the harvest of Patagones;
for on it the prosperity of the place depends. Nearly the whole
population encamps on the bank of the river, and the people are
employed in drawing out the salt in bullock-waggons. This salt is
crystallised in great cubes, and is remarkably pure: Mr. Trenham
Reeks has kindly analysed some for me, and he finds in it only 0.26
of gypsum and 0.22 of earthy matter. It is a singular fact that it
does not serve so well for preserving meat as sea-salt from the
Cape de Verd islands; and a merchant at Buenos Ayres told me that
he considered it as fifty per cent less valuable. Hence the Cape de
Verd salt is constantly imported, and is mixed with that from these
salinas. The purity of the Patagonian salt, or absence from it of
those other saline bodies found in all sea-water, is the only
assignable cause for this inferiority: a conclusion which no one, I
think, would have suspected, but which is supported by the fact
lately ascertained, that those salts answer best for preserving
cheese which contain most of the deliquescent chlorides. (4/3.
Report of the Agricultural Chemistry Association in the
"Agricultural Gazette" 1845 page 93.)

The border of the lake is formed of mud: and in this numerous large
crystals of gypsum, some of which are three inches long, lie
embedded; whilst on the surface others of sulphate of soda lie
scattered about. The Gauchos call the former the "Padre del sal,"
and the latter the "Madre;" they state that these progenitive salts
always occur on the borders of the salinas, when the water begins
to evaporate. The mud is black, and has a fetid odour. I could not
at first imagine the cause of this, but I afterwards perceived that
the froth which the wind drifted on shore was coloured green, as if
by confervae; I attempted to carry home some of this green matter,
but from an accident failed. Parts of the lake seen from a short
distance appeared of a reddish colour, and this perhaps was owing
to some infusorial animalcula. The mud in many places was thrown up
by numbers of some kind of worm, or annelidous animal. How
surprising it is that any creatures should be able to exist in
brine, and that the