Omaha daily bee., 1899-02-05
mG ME n will buy boys
. r 1EEM shoes worth up
. Ia Gm W to $3.50 pair.

stopped at night again and again on our
way to Ascuncion for fear of the sand
banks.
There is no good chart Of the Parana.
The river often changes its course and 1t
is always building up and tearing down bars
and islands within it's channel. The waters
carry so much mud that snag will form
a bar and wreck will soon build up an
island One of the largest islands in the
river near Rosario was started by sub
merged hay barge and further up the stream
there are hundreds of islands the soil of
which has gathered about the water-logged
trees which have hoated down from the for
ests of Paraguay and Brazil.
Ten Thousand Islands.
Put on the thinking cap of your imagina-
ton and take trip with me up through
the thousand islands of the Parana. You
may have seen the thousand islands of the
st. Lawrence. They are nothing in COM
parison with the 10, 900 islands of this won
derful river. There are, indeed so many
islands that they have never been counted.
The river for hundreds of miles is a great
inland sea, SO wide in places that among
the islands you cannot see the banks. Some
of the islands are covered with willows,
feathery reeds line their shores and gnarly
trees hang down low and mirror themselves
in the water. Others further up the river
are forest grown. Few are cultivated. al
though II has been said that there is enough
good soil upon them to raise food for all
Europe, and on a few there are cattle and
sheep.
Most of the Islands are great fields of
grass, and of these some are not fixed but
foating, and they glide by our steamer down
fhn a
way up it. These floating islands are called
camelots. They are great masses of grass
weeds, and flowers which the rushing floods
have torn from their foundations and are
carrying down to the sea. Some are so Arm
that they Will support man. and upon them
tigers, jaguars and snakes are often carried
to the islands about Buenos Ayres.
Just after leaving Buenos Ayres we
steamed through the delta OF the Parana
Ihls delta is about twenty miles wide, and
1t extends up the river as far as Rosario, a
distance or 800 miles 1t is peppered with
ISLANDS, some OF which are covered with
forests of peach trees, and Others with
gardens kept by Italians to supply the mar
kets of Buenos Ayres. Many of the houses
are raised upon piles to be out of the way
OF the foods and the tides when they
carry, as they sometimes do. great waves
In from the ocean.
At the entrance to the Parana we pass
the Island OF Martin Gracla, the Gibraltar
OF the River Plata, which once belonged to
Uruguay, but which now is the property or
the Argentine Republic. 1t has naval
school and fort upon It, the batteries of
which are worked by electricity 1t is one
OF the historic points OF the Rio de la Plata,
and as we go by 1T We recall the fact that
this same tour was first made by the white
man who was the first TO set foot upon the
soil of the continent Of North America
| Sebastian Cabot in 1926 plowed his way
through this same labyrinth of islands. and
after long voyage on the PaTana reached
the Paraguay and sailed up it to a point
some distance beyond Asuncion.
The Steamers of the Paraguay.
II Sebastian Cabot could take a trip on
the boats which now sail up the Paraguay
he would think them more wonderful than
anything he met with in his travels His
voyage was made in a sailing boat. Ours
Is IN a comfortable steamer of 500 tons 1t
took him months to sail up the river. We
make the trip in six days HIS lights were
tallow dips. ours are incandeseent globes