Dr. Bourgade la Dardye seems to think the circular eddies found in the whirls are the most curious features of the falls. He describes them thus: ‘They flow in falls varying from fifty to sixty feet in depth; these circular eddies, which are quite independent of one another, range along an arc of about two miles in its stretch. They are detached like giant caldrons yawning unexpectedly at one’s feet, in which the flood seethes with incredible fury; every one of these has opened for itself a narrow orifice in the rock, through which like a stone from a sling the water is hurled into the central whirlpool. The width of these outlets rarely exceeds fifteen yards, but their depth cannot be estimated. They all empty themselves into one immense central chamber about two hundred feet wide, rushing into it with astounding velocity. . . . A more imposing spectacle can scarcely be conceived, and I doubt whether abysses such as these exist elsewhere in the world.’ He places the falls in latitude 24° 2′ 59″, but corrects the longitude given by Azara as 56° 55′ west of Paris to 58° 18′ 8″—that is, 53° 57′ 53″ west from Greenwich, which certainly has some importance in fixing the breadth of the territory of Paraguay. But neither Azara nor the French traveller, with their yards and feet, their longitude and latitude, and the rest, give an idea of the grandeur of the place. Buried in the primeval forests, forgotten by the world, known to the wandering Indians who give no quarter (any more to-day than in Azara’s time), the giant cataract is a lost wonder of the world. In the ruined missions on the Paraná, two hundred miles away, I have heard the Indians talk of it with awe. They told how through the woods tangled with undergrowth, matted together with lianas, they had hewed a path. Monkeys and parrots chattered at them, and a white miasmatic vapour hung over trees and lakes, burying the clearings in its wreaths, and lifting only at mid-day, to close again upon the woods at night. They talked of alligators, jaguars, the giant ant-eater, and the mysterious bird known to them as the ‘ipetatá’, which in its tail carries a burning fire. In the recesses of the thickets demons lurked, and wild Caaguas, who with a blowpipe and a poisoned arrow slew you and your horse, themselves unseen. Pools covered with Victoria regia; masses of red and yellow flowers upon the trees, the trees themselves gigantic, and the moss which floated from their branches long as a spear; the voyage in canoes, whirled like a cork upon the rapids; lastly the falls themselves, and how they, awestricken at the sight, fell prostrate and promised many candles to the Virgin and the saints on their return, they talked of into the watches of the night.