Maize, and various kinds of beans, roots, and melons, serve the Indians as a seasoning, or substitute for meat: I therefore exhorted the Abipones to cultivate the ground, but agricultural implements were wanting; we had scarcely any oxen fit for the plough; and were even unprovided with a supply of seed for sowing. Some bushels of maize were sent from the city, but they had been terribly gnawed by the worms; also a sack of beans, in coming from thence, had been wetted in the river from the carelessness of the sailors, and had already pushed out shoots. Who would believe that the neighbouring savages, our former enemies, supplied us with various kinds of seeds, which we had so long and vainly sought from the Spaniards? The country itself, as I declared at first sight, was unfavourable to plants, because it abounded in chalk. After much rain, it bore the appearance of a lake—when the waters subsided it became as hard and dry as a stone. Notwithstanding this, the Abipones did plough and sow great part of it, but they lost their labour; in the woods, however, where the soil is more fertile, and the sun's heat kept off by the shade of the trees, they reaped an abundant and easily-earned harvest of various fruits. I found the soil extremely favourable to the tobacco which I planted, but could never find a situation fit for sowing cotton. The alfaroba was only to be found in distant forests, but the want of it was supplied by abundance of honey. Other fruits, which grow quite common elsewhere, are extremely scarce here. The country near the shore abounds in stags, deer, and emus, the neighbouring rivers in crocodiles, water-wolves, and capibaris, but are mostly destitute of fish. It is a remarkable circumstance, that the river near the colony swarmed, for some days, with every kind of fish, which were easily caught with the hand, as they swiftly hurried down the stream: they are thought to have been conveyed into this river by intermediate pools, from the Rio Grande, at the time of the annual flood.