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establishing a dependable strain.  What a luxurious coat white nutria would make!

Mostly we sat on the deck of the launch and watched the river life about us.  There are no roads or railroads in this part of the world, and for hundreds of miles all communication is by water.  We saw the butcher and the baker making their regular calls.  If the lady of the house was not at home, a generous hunk of beefsteak was impaled on a nail on a tree above the landing place, where she would be sure to find it on her return. Launches call for children and take them to school, just as our school buses transport our rural young ones.  We even passed a floating church "Christo Rey", complete with steeple and bell, chapel and priest, and a captain-organist.

At meal times there was room for ten of us around the table in the saloon.  Mr. Chiarelli sat at the head, and served us all with heaping portions of puchere, the native dish of Argentina - a sort of New England boiled dinner, using fresh beef instead of corned, and all sorts of vegetables including corn on the cob and squash.  For dessert there was always fruit, membrillo (quince) paste, and an excellent native cheese.  A crew of three ran ship and galley.

We saw little bird life, though once we passed a dead cow surrounded by a flock of scavenger birds, and there were plenty of orneros (oven birds) and their round mud nests - which are [[strikeout]] incidentally [[/strikeout]] miniature reproductions of the round mud ovens on stilts that the country people use for baking bread. 

At night time we tied up at the dock of Recreo Toledo, a very simple country hotel.  Here Dr. Gray and the students passed the night.  The Shippens and ourselves slept on board, there being two cabins, and slept very well except for on minor disturbance.  I awoke in the pitch dark with the realization that someone was touching my chest and my stomach.  As I moved suddenly, a light little bunch of fur bounded out of the open window over my head and I realized a stray cat had been promenading over me.  

[[underline]] May 6th - Delta [[/underline]]

We got under way at eight o'clock, and stopped again about nine to visit another citrus grove.  The owner also ran a small country store, where we invested in cigarettes, matches, and a bottle of liquor.  One of his trees was an orange tree over a hundred years old, that had been planted by Jesuit missionaries.  He also had the largest lemons we had seen.  Lemons are scarcer than oranges here and bring a much higher price.  One tree has been known to produce $25 of fruit a year. 

About eleven o'clock we stopped at Noel, a tremendous fruit orchard and canning place.  The membrillo we had been enjoying on board had come from here. With two handsome spirited bays hitched to a high and handsome rig, with a gaucho driving, and six of us sitting on the three seats, we made the rounds of the estate.  Here, also, the soil was so black that you knew anything would flourish in it, and we were told that the black "topsoil" went down for ten feet, rich with the silt brought down by the river at