But here, seignior, says he, the case differs; for we neither take nor keep possession here, neither have we one Spaniard, as I said, in the whole country now before you, and therefore we call this country Coasta Deserta. Not that it is a desert, as that name is generally taken to signify, a barren, sandy, dry country; on the contrary, the infinite prodigious increase of the European black cattle which were brought by the Spaniards to the Buenos Ayres, and suffered to run loose, is a sufficient testimony of the fruitfulness and richness of the soil, their numbers being such, that they kill above twenty thousand in a year for nothing but the hides, which they carry away to Spain, leaving the flesh, though fat and wholesome, to perish on the ground, or be devoured by birds of prey. And the number is so great, notwithstanding all they destroy, that they are found to wander sometimes in droves of many thousands together over all the vast country between the Rio de la Plata, the city of Ascension, and the frontier of Peru, and even down into this country which you see before us, and up to the very foot of these mountains. Well, said I, and is it not a great pity that all this part of the country, and in such a climate as this is, should lie uncultivated, or uninhabited rather? for I understand there are not any great numbers of people to be found among them. It is true, added he, there are some notions prevailing of people being spread about in this country, but, as the terror of our people, the Spaniards, drove them at first from the seacoast towards these mountains, so the greatest part of them continue on this side still, for towards the coast it is very rare that they find any people. I would have inquired of him about rivers and navigable streams which might be in this country, but he told me frankly that he could give me no account of those; only thus, that if any of the rivers went away towards the north, they certainly run all into the great Rio de la Plata; but that if they went east, or southerly, they must go directly to the coast, which was ordinarily called, as he said, La Costa Deserta, or, as by some, the coast of Patagonia. That, as to the magnitude of those rivers he could say little, but it was reasonable to suppose there must be some very considerable rivers, and whose streams must needs be capable of navigation, seeing abundance of water must continually flow from the mountains where we then were, and its being at least four hundred miles from the sea-side, those small streams must necessarily join together, and form large rivers in the plain country. I had enough in this discourse fully to satisfy all my curiosity, and sufficiently to heighten my desire of making the farther discoveries which I had in my thoughts.