Entre Rios in Uruguay, those of Santa Fé, and a great part of Cordova and Tucuman, are of sward, with cattle-farms. The banks of the Paraná, and other tributaries of the La Plata, are adorned with an infinite variety of tropical productions, especially the graceful tribe of palms; and the river islands are bright with orange-groves. A desert of sand, called El Gran Chaco, exists west of the Paraguay, the vegetable produce of which is confined to a variety of the aloe and cactus tribes. Adjoining this desert are the Bolivian provinces of Chiquitos and Moxos, covered with forests and jungle, the scene of the most laborious and benificent exertions of the Jesuit Missionaries towards the civilization of the aborigines of South America in the last century. The Pampas of Buenos Ayres, 1000 feet above the sea, sink to a low level along the foot of the Andes, where the streams from the mountains collect in large lakes, swamps, lagoons of prodigious size, and wide-spreading salines. The swamp or lagoon of Ybera, of 1000 square miles, is entirely covered with aquatic plants. These swamps are swollen to thousands of square miles by the annual floods of the rivers, which also inundate the Pampas, leaving a fertilizing coat of mud. Multitudes of animals perish in the floods, and the drought that sometimes succeeds is more fatal. Between the years 1830 and 1832 two millions of cattle died from want of food. Millions of animals are sometimes destroyed by casual and dreadful conflagrations in these countries when covered with dry grass and thistles.[53]