258 FROM ROZARIO TO CORRIENTES.
the intrusive President of Santa Fe. The next place of importance was La Vaz, distant 270 miles from Corrientes. It is a hamlet prettily situated upon a promontory forming placid bays in places almost land-locked from the river, whose flow here increases. About the Puerto canoes were drawn high up the golden sands : the upper part is the usual sprinkle of whitewashed houses and adobe huts. It is known in old books as Cavallo Cutia, the white horse — cutia meaning in Guarani_, primarily white; secondarily, paper and silver. In front are three distances of woodland, and presently the river opens a sea horizon. The land opposite La Paz will be laid out in colonies to connect with those of Santa Fe, on the very edge of the dangerous Chaco. Its nearest neighbour would be the Swiss colony La Esperanza, the most northerly of the three; the others being San Carlos and San Geronimo, echelonnes to the west. These agi'icolo- military colonies will be found most useful against the raids of Chaco Indians. All, I repeat, should be fighting men, and they should be assisted in extending the frontier and in freeing the land, without sentimentality, from the wolfish savages that infest it. The Argentine Confederation will presently extend the benefit to their vast Pampasian limits. Here the vegetation palpably changes. We notice for the first time bamboo-clumps (tacuaras) near the water, giving to the scene a tropical aspect. Large palms are scattered over the higher bank. The species is here called coquito — in the Brazil coqueiro (C. butyracea). There is a greater luxuriance of growth: we have now trees not brushwood, towering above the tall Pampas grass. Flowers begin to form a feature, and brilliant Brazilian epiphytes, dwarf copies of those further north, adorn the boughs ; not only on the dead trunks live columns of convolvulus, even the willows are tapestried with creepers from branch to root. Here the drift wood is heaped up on the Chaco or right
