when we sixty Europeans, accompanied by some Spanish natives, performed a journey of one hundred and forty leagues, from the port of Buenos-Ayres, where we had landed a little before, to Cordoba. Our company consisted of about a hundred waggons, each drawn by four oxen, but the number was doubled when they had to cross marshes: the driver goads them on with a long pole, armed with a spike, and a horseman generally goes before to show the way. These heavy waggons are supported by two huge wheels, and have an arch at the top covered with a hide, that the rain may run off them. The sides are sometimes enclosed with boards, sometimes with mats, and have the appearance of a basket. No iron is employed in any part of them. In the hind part where the door is, there is a ladder to ascend by; in front there is a window. Each waggon is generally occupied by one person, sometimes by two, and serves for house, bed, and dining-room; for in the midst is placed a mattress, on which you are conveyed along, with a jolting that, for the two or three first days, produces vomiting, like sea-sickness. Most of the journey is performed in the night, for the oxen cannot long bear the heat of the sun in the day-time. Six pair of oxen are assigned to each waggon, that they may relieve one another in the labour. To watch and feed so great a number of cattle, many guards are necessary, each of which have need of many horses. Neither they nor the drivers, nor the men who ride before the waggons, are supplied with any other food except beef, which is also the daily fare of the travellers in the waggons; so that a great many oxen are consumed every day to satisfy so many hungry stomachs. From this you may judge how great must be the number of men and beasts, when a hundred, or more frequently two hundred, waggons of this kind, travel a hundred and forty leagues of desert land together; and, good heavens! what a noise they make! for the wheels are never greased; they even catch fire sometimes by the continual friction of the wooden axle, and wrap the waggon itself in flames. Excepting a few estates and cottages in the neighbourhood of Buenos-Ayres and Cordoba, you find nothing but a plain, void of inhabitants, buildings, trees, rivers, or hills, but abounding in horses, wild asses, emus, does, skunks (zorrinos,) and tigers. Fuel and fresh water are forced to be carried for the daily consumption of the travellers. We were often obliged to drink the muddy rain water which remains in the ditches, though the very beasts, unless parching with thirst, would have refused it. This immense wilderness which we had entered daily threatened us with fresh difficulties and fresh dangers, greater than any we had experienced in a three months' voyage on the ocean. Scarce a day or night passed without tidings of the Spanish scouts having seen the footsteps of the savages, or heard their whistles or pipes; in consequence of which, most of the waggons were daily placed in the form