Some mention has been made of the rivers which flow through Chaco: yet much remains to be said of the Parana, the chief and receptacle of them all, which at Buenos-Ayres obtains the splendid but inappropriate title of La Plata. Historians have made many mistakes respecting the source of this river, and the origin of its name. For they think that La Plata takes its rise chiefly from the Paraguay, and that this latter comes from the lake Xarayes. But in both these conjectures they are wide of the mark. For the river La Plata is in reality the vast Parana, enriched in its course by the Paraguay, Uruguay, and innumerable other streams. From its distant source, as far as the Pacific Ocean, it is invariably distinguished by the Guarany natives with the name of Parana, which word signifies something akin to, or resembling the sea. In the year 1509, Juan Diaz de Solis, sailing from Europe, discovered the river Parana, and gave it his own name, Solis. In the year 1527, Sebastian Cabot and Diego Garcia called it the Silver River, Rio de la Plata, because they found among the Indians dwelling near it some plates of silver, brought from Peru by the Portugueze, and robbed from them, but suspected by the Spaniards to have been taken out of the bosom or shores of this river. But after nearly three centuries had elapsed, no silver had yet been discovered there. This river, which, though destitute of silver, is perhaps the greatest in the world, retains to this day the name of the Parana, which it received at its rise. It first bears the name of La Plata at the river Las Conchas, six leagues distant from Buenos-Ayres, where appears a remarkable rock, La Punta Gorda, a little beyond which place, on the western shore, it absorbs the Uruguay, which has already received the waters of the Rio Negro. By which means, the Parana is augmented to such a degree, that at Las Conchas it is ten leagues in width. Hence vessels that have sailed through the Paraguay and Parana rest here as in port, and are here unloaded, and loaded afresh before their return. For those small vessels which are sent from the cities of Asumpcion and Corrientes and from the Guarany towns, could not safely proceed farther.