Its cutting apparatus consists of two scimitar-shaped lancets, placed in a common sheath, with which it slices out a place beneath the skin, large enough to bury it entirely, anchors itself firmly with its hooked proboscis, and in a day or two dies. The abdominal section, however, still lives, absorbing nutritive material through its walls, and growing rapidly at the expense of the serum poured out by the irritated skin into which it is inserted. It increases in thickness as well as in diameter, and the eggs which now fill it grow also,—when mature, each being half as large as a perfect flea. Thus it is seen why the sand-flea cannot deposit its eggs as do the rest of the family. Probably it has no more food than it carries away within itself on quitting the egg, and therefore cannot provide the material for its greater development. Not only men and children, but dogs, suffer greatly from them—the latter almost tearing their feet to pieces in biting them out, and often getting them in their lips and outer nostrils, from which they cannot dislodge them.
Fish in the Parana.
Among the many fine fish in the river is the dorado,—something like a trout in colour, but deeper; in shape, more resembling the snapper. The natives catch it with unbaited hooks. The fisherman selects a point of rock jutting over the stream, and having secured three polished hooks, back to back, attached to a line, throws it as far from him as possible into the water, giving it several strong jerks to make it look like small fry darting about. The dorado makes a dash at them, and gets hooked—generally through the back.
Part 5—Chapter III.
The Pampas.
Westward of the Parana and the Province of Buenos Ayres stretches out the wide-extended and almost level plain of the Pampas, reaching to the base of the Andes. It is a wild, savage region, sprinkled over here and there with salt-lakes and marshes, in which a few streams, traversing it at considerable distances apart, lose themselves.
The tracks across it are marked by the whitened skeletons of the horses and bullocks which have succumbed to the fatigues of the journey, or the want of water, and have been picked clean by the carranchas, and others of the vulture tribe, or by the active teeth of the voracious little armadillos, which clear away the refuse of the feast left by their feathered companions. Here and there forts or post-houses are found, garrisoned by the wild Gauchos—their appearance in keeping with the scenery.
The huts are generally built of the stalks of huge thistles, and are sometimes mere enclosures, destitute of roofs. They are surrounded by stockades, in many instances formed of thick hedges of cacti, well calculated to resist an attack from the still savage Indians who roam throughout the region in search of plunder.