The year 1812 was remarkable for the greatest flood in the memory of the natives. Vast quantities of cattle were carried away by it, and when the waters began to subside, and the islands which they had covered became again visible, the whole atmosphere for a time was poisoned by the effluvia from the innumerable carcases of skunks, capiguaras, tigers, and other wild beasts which had been drowned on them. On such occasions it frequently happens that the animals, to save themselves, swim off to the floating masses of canes and brushwood (called by the Spaniards "camelotes"), and are thus carried down the river, and landed in the vicinity of the towns and villages upon the coast. Many strange stories, are told of the unexpected visits of tigers so conveyed from their ordinary haunts to Buenos Ayres and Monte Video. One in my time was shot in my own grounds near Buenos Ayres, and some years before no less than four were landed in one night at Monte Video, to the great alarm of the inhabitants when they found them prowling about the streets in the morning. In the swampy region of Xarayes, where the inundation commences, the ants, which are in vast numbers there, have the sagacity to build their nests in the tops of the trees, far out of reach of the waters; and these nests are made of a kind of adhesive clay, so hard that no cement can be more durable or impervious to the weather. During the inundation the river is exceedingly turbid, from the great quantity of vegetable substances and mud brought down by it:--the velocity of the stream in the higher and narrower parts of the river at first prevents their deposition, but as it approaches the lower lands, or pampas, where it overflows its bed, these substances are spread over the face of the land, forming a grey slimy soil, which, on the abatement of the waters, is found to increase vegetation in a surprising degree. A calculation has been made by Colonel Monasterios, author of an excellent paper on this river, printed in the Statistical Register of Buenos Ayres for 1822, that no less than 4000 square leagues of country are annually covered by the waters during the periodical inundations of the Paranã.