The universal geography : earth and its inhabitants

TvIVEES OF PAEAGrAT. 299
soil is extremely rich, and grows excellent tobacco. The black alluvia deposited
by the inundations are also very fertile in some favoured districts ; but in many
places they consist of argillaceous layers, which when dry become very hard,
forming a sub-soil impenetrable to the plough. Elsewhere the surface is strewn
with a fine sand derived from the decomposition of quartzose rocks, and producing
nothing but tufts of scanty grasses. In the hills all minerals, except iron and
salt, are rare.
ElVERS.
The Parana belongs to the republic only on its right bank between the
Guayra Falls and its confluence with the Paraguay, which in its lower course
traverses the State to which it gives its name. The Paraguay flows in a sluggish
sinuous stream about 1,000 feet broad in the normal direction from north to south.
During the summer floods it rises over 20 feet above the Parana confluence, and
at this period the flood waters cover the plains on both sides, stemming the current
of the affluents, but developing no great lakes like those of ilatto Grosso, ex-
cept in the low-lying tracts above the confluence. It receives far more copious
contributions from the east than from the west, a fact partly due to the extremely
slight incline in Gran Chaco, where the flood waters spread out in vast shallow
basins, and are thus exposed to immense loss by evaporation.
South of the Apa, forming the frontier towards Brazil, the Paraguay is
joined on its left bank by the picturesque Aquidaban, and lower down by the
Ipane and the Jujuy, the last mentioned being navigable by boats throughout
most of its course, which is interrupted only by a single cataract below the superb
cascade discovered by the Yerbateros in 1879. In the southern parts of Paraguay
the largest eastern affluent is the Tibicuary, which winds in enormous bends
through marshy plains, formerly a lacustrine basin, still represented by the exten-
sive freshjvater Ipoa lagoon below Asuncion.
On the right (west) side, the chief affluent is the Pilcomayo (Piscu-ilayu,
" Bird-River "), which so many modem travellers have vainly attempted to
thoroughly explore, although ascended in 1721, a great distance above the
confluence ("364 leagues"?) by the Jesuit Gabriel Patino with a party of
seventy priests, Spanish soldiers and Guarani Indians. But Patino, attacked by
the fierce Toba nation, was compelled to return before reaching Bolivia. Twenty
years afterwards Castauares, also a Jesuit, navigated the stream for 83 days
without penetrating to Boli\-ia, and, during a second expedition, he was mtirdered
by the Indians.
Then followed after a long interval the Bolivian expedition under General
Margariuos, which failed to get much below las Juntas, that is, the " Junction "
of the two main head streams. The next year another party pushed farther
down, but the current becoming shallower instead of deeper, the boats had to be
abandoned, and the explorers retraced their steps from a point at an unknown
distance above the Paraguay confluence.