UP THE PARANA RIVER TO ROZARIO. 235
native mouth concerning the nightly repose on the Atlantic. The lights, yellow, red, and green, are almost as good an illumination as that of Buenos Aires. It is suggestive to see the mighty river so populous, thus illustrating what it will be two centuries hence, when the sounds of war shall have died away from its banks, and the sights from its memory.
Above S. Nicolas the stream spreads out some six miles : its peculiarity is that the deeper water lies near the two sides. Ships therefore brush the bush to avoid grounding, and to save the curves. We passed unconscious the Vuelta de Montiel, that great bend whose delays are so much feared by sailors. Again the river narrowed, whilst the bank rose to eighty feet, tunnelled and pierced like salt licks, by the Viscacha — where it exists — by the martin, and by the parroquet. Below the side -slopes animals gather to get shelter from the wind, and to chew the cud in the presence of water. The approach to the city is a big unfinished brick house, bald all about, a small Saladero, that kills its 150 beasts per diem.
At 2 A.M. we halted off Bozario in the swiftly rushing stream of two and a half to three knots. Here the river, about one mile wide, is very deep, and the ships often lose anchors : friction and other obstacles make the under-flow faster than the surface current in proportion of eight (or eight and a half) to four and three-quarters, or five. The fall of the Parana from Bozario to the Puerto de las Piedras (thirty-three miles) is seven feet four inches duly measured, and giving a declivity of two and three-quarter inches per mile. Similarly the Mississippi Biver, from the mouth of the Ohio to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of 1200 miles, gives 275 feet, or two and a quarter inches per mile.
We must, I suppose, land at Bozario, if it only be to pay a visit to the Consul. His jurisdiction we are told extends no higher up. A tantot.
