F?, which is
situated nearly three hundred English miles from Buenos Ayres, on
the banks of the Parana. The roads in the neighbourhood of the
city, after the rainy weather, were extraordinarily bad. I should
never have thought it possible for a bullock waggon to have crawled
along: as it was, they scarcely went at the rate of a mile an hour,
and a man was kept ahead, to survey the best line for making the
attempt. The bullocks were terribly jaded: it is a great mistake to
suppose that with improved roads, and an accelerated rate of
travelling, the sufferings of the animals increase in the same
proportion. We passed a train of waggons and a troop of beasts on
their road to Mendoza. The distance is about 580 geographical
miles, and the journey is generally performed in fifty days. These
waggons are very long, narrow, and thatched with reeds; they have
only two wheels, the diameter of which in some cases is as much as
ten feet. Each is drawn by six bullocks, which are urged on by a
goad at least twenty feet long: this is suspended from within the
roof; for the wheel bullocks a smaller one is kept; and for the
intermediate pair, a point projects at right angles from the middle
of the long one.
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