Note 46 — Chapter X · GEOLOGY OF THE PAMPAS.
Reading edition
With respect to the past, it is, I fear, useless to look for any very positive data as to the state of the river previously to the last century:—the only allusion to it which I can find is in the 'Argentina,' an historical poem by Barco Centenera, who went out in 1572 with the Adelantado Zarate, and who, speaking of its depth between Buenos Ayres and San Gabriel, off Colonia, on the opposite shore, says:—
"De ancho nueve leguas ó mas tiene El rio por aqui, y muy hondable. La nave hasta aqui segura viene Que como el ancho mar es navigable." The river's here nine leagues or more, And very deep, twixt shore and shore; So far the navigation's free, As tho' twere on the open sea.
Argentina, Canto II.
And although, perhaps, a poet's authority to not the very best for a geological fact, I have the less hesitation in quoting his couplet, as it is, to a certain extent, corroborated by the circumstance that, amongst all the dangers and disasters recorded with so much minuteness by the historians of the first discoveries of those parts, there is no instance, that I am aware of, mentioned by them of a shipwreck in the river below San Gabriel, the port to which all vessels at that time directed their course after entering it:—from this I think any one who knows the dangers of the navigation of that part of the river now, will be disposed to infer that it really must have been in former times as Centenera describes it, much more free and safe than it is at the present day:—it is probable that the Ortiz bank especially has very much increased.