Santiago is situated almost at the top of it. In its upper part the Rio Dulce is enclosed between high clay cliffs (department of the Rio Hondo). Below Santiago the river seems to run to the top of a sort of flattened alluvial cone, over which it wanders. Instances of the migration of rivers during the historical period are plentiful in the north of the Argentine plain. The scrub is scored east of the Salado with a network of dry beds, the edges of which gradually disappear as the vegetation extends over them. But there is no other part where the erratic nature of the waters is so marked, the vagabondage so considerable, as in this section of the basin of the Rio Dulce. The small towns of Atamisqui and Salavina, which lived on the waters of the Dulce, were suddenly ruined in 1825, when the river, in consequence of a particularly violent flood, turned away to the south and lost itself in the Salinas Grandes. A canal was dug in 1897 to irrigate the district of Loreto, on the left bank of the Dulce, but the entrance was badly protected, and the flood of 1901 swept into it, and, guided by it, reached the bed it had abandoned a century before, going south-eastward toward Atamisqui. That town and Salavina recovered their prosperity, while it was necessary to abandon the farms on the Rio des Salines, which now has water only during high floods. Actual beds, old beds that are always ready to serve again, and traces of canals changed and cut by the stream, form a great network in the midst of the plain; and the flood rolls to one side or the other according to the road open to it, and the facility with which the various elements of the network lend themselves to the passage of the water. Such is the land of the _banados_. You enter it to-day at Loreto station, where the line from Santiago to Frias approaches within a few miles of it. This station is erected in the midst of the arid _monte_, and owes its existence to the neighbouring _banados_. Turning eastward from the railway, as soon as one has crossed the broad, sandy bed of the Rio des Salines, one finds oneself in the heart of the _banados_ farms. The road passes between hedges (_cercas_), over the top of which one sees the green of the wheat and lucerne. The plots are very small: gardens rather than fields. In clearing the ground they have preserved the best-situated trees, and the light foliage gives a useful shade to the crops. The crown of the _algarrobas_ rises everywhere above the top of the hedges.