The scouts returning brought accounts that they had found the river Chapeleofú, the course of which it was determined to follow to the Tandil, where it was known to rise; but they had hardly left the Laguna Limpia when they were beset by a new danger, which, for a short time, threatened a frightful termination to the expedition. A sweeping wind blew towards them clouds of dense smoke, followed by one vast lurid blaze, extending across the horizon, and indicating but too clearly the approach of one of those dreadful conflagrations, not uncommon in the pampas after dry weather, when the long dry grass, and canes and thistles, readily igniting, cause the flames to extend rapidly over the whole face of the country, involving all in one common and horrible destruction. The gauchos, on the first indication of danger, have sometimes sufficient presence of mind to set fire immediately to the grass to leeward, by which they clear a space on which to take refuge before the general conflagration reaches them; but there is not always time to do this, much less to save the cattle and sheep, great numbers of which perish in the devouring element. Upon the present occasion the guides seem to have lost their wits as well as their way; and, but for the fortunate discovery of a small lake near them, into which men and beasts alike rushed, dragging the carts with them, the whole army would have been involved in the same tragical end. There, up to their necks in the water, they remained for three hours, during which the fire-storm raged frightfully round them, and then, for want of further fuel, subsiding, left a desolated waste as far as the eye could reach, covered with a black stratum of cinders and ashes. After these dangers the army continued its march along the western bank of the Chapeleofú, through a country which improved every step they advanced towards the sierras beyond. Picturesque and fertile, the lands seemed only to require to be taken possession of to form a most valuable addition to the territory of Buenos Ayres. The wandering tribes of Indians usually dwelling there had, to all appearance, abandoned them, and withdrawn further south, no doubt in alarm at the preparations made by the Spaniards to occupy them.