Bulletin - United States National Museum - si-pddr - Smithsonian ...

4 BULLETIN 133, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM
and old river channels, or esteros, adjacent. The Rio de Oro, a large
stream, drained an area farther north. Tracts of woodland, partly
open and partly dense jungle, bordered streams and channels, with
broad savannas on either side, through which were scattered groves of
trees, many 18 or 20 meters tall. Slight depressions in the prairies
were filled with water and many low tracts were grown with tall
stands of saw grass, laiown as paja hrava. Lagoons were bordered
by rushes and covered with floating masses of vegetation. Suitable
tracts in the higher savannas were under cultivation, and grazing
cattle had opened trails through forest that otherwise would have
been impassable. (Pis. 2, 3, and 4.)
Work was completed here on August 2, when I went down again to
the port to board another police boat bound up the Paraguay for
Formosa. The current was swift, rendering progress slow. The
banks were wooded, with game or cattle trails leading to water at
intervals, or with occasional clearings in the vicinity of the few
small towns. (PI. 4.)
Formosa, the capital of the Territory of Formosa, located on
the west bank of the Rio Paraguay, was reached early on August 3.
The land on the river bank near the town is comparatively high, but
inland and to the north becomes low and swampy. A line of railroad
built by the National Government to promote development of the
country extended northwest from Formosa for a distance of 297
kilometers, on a line midway between the Bermejo and Pilcomayo
rivers. It was contemplated to extend it finally to Embarcacion,
where it would connect with other lines from the south. Stations
on this road at this time bore numbers corresponding to their dis-
tance in kilometers from Formosa. On August 5 I took the biweekly
train to Kilometer 182, a point that had been recommended by
Mayordomo, Cacique of the Tobas, whom I had met at Las Palmas.
As the railroad leaves Formosa it enters the Chaco, a broad nearly
level area of alternate forest and marshy savanna, cut by several
large streams, that extends west of the Rio Paraguay from northern
Santa Fe north through Chaco, Formosa, and western Paraguay
into Bolivia. For miles our train traversed a roadbed built
through an interminable estero, with broad swamps and prairies
on either hand, dotted with slender trunked palms interspersed
with stands of saw-edged grass and rushes, and bordered by bands
of low-growing hardwoods, prominent among which was the quebracho,
valuable for its dye product. Hundreds of acres were
covered with ant hills built up 3 or 4 feet above the surrounding
level to raise them above inundations caused by the summer rains.
At intervals we crept out to higher ground and stopped at some
little station, with a cluster of low houses or grass-thatched huts
about it. Elsewhere no signs of man were visible; bands of rheas.