San Miguel, Tucavaca, San Rafael, Agua Caliente, and the Otuguis, while numerous mountain streams course along the foot hills in all directions. Lakes Concepcion, Uberaba, Gaita, and Mandiore are the only known sheets of water within the limits of this sparsely settled and imperfectly explored region.
Along the base of the mountain ranges, especially of the Sunsas, are fine virgin forests, while the lake districts of the Province of Chiquitos contain the choicest pasture lands of this part of Bolivia. The country bordering the upper Paraguay is covered with extensive palm forests occupying, for the most part, the low lands subject to occasional slight inundations, but which afford excellent grazing by burning off from time to time the tangled grass and undergrowth.
From this point on south to the Pilcomayo River, these palm forests continue to skirt the banks of the Paraguay. The country along the left bank of the Pilcomayo, which comprises the extension of the Argentine pampas known as the Gran Chaco, possesses vast bodies of excellent grazing lands as far north as latitude 20° 20' S.
The country from Lake Concepcion, in the central portion of the Department of Santa Cruz, east to Lakes Uberaba, Gaita, and Mandiore, which have their outlets to the Paraguay, is exceptionally well watered, and therefore marks the most fertile portion of the province of Chiquitos. Running northwesterly from Lake Concepcion to San Javier, is a low range of hills, while to the west, a continuous forest-clad plain extends to the Rio Grande. To the north, the country is slightly undulating and to some extent open, but in approaching the river Itenez or Guapore, a dense forest is met with, which continues in a northeasterly direction to the vast Brazilian province of Matto Grosso. The plains in the vicinity of Santa Cruz are to some extent open, but the slopes of the Andes, a few leagues to the west, everywhere abound in vast virgin forests. In addition to the districts thus described,
