A cool Frenchman managed the gun; he stopped till the Indians approached close, and then raked their line with grape-shot: he thus laid thirty-nine of them on the ground; and, of course, such a blow immediately routed the whole party.
The town is indifferently called El Carmen or Patagones.

It is built on the face of a cliff which fronts the river, and many of the houses are excavated even in the sandstone.

The river is about two or three hundred yards wide, and is deep and rapid.

The many islands, with their willow-trees, and the flat headlands, seen one behind the other on the northern boundary of the broad green valley, form, by the aid of a bright sun, a view almost picturesque.

The number of inhabitants does not exceed a few hundreds.