Читать книгу The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay - J. A. Hammerton - Страница 6

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We had laughed at the story of some Englishmen in Lisbon, told us by a friend there. He overheard a group of typical John Bull tourists, who had been “doing” a fortnight in Portugal, discussing their experiences on their way to the boat. The weather had been superb all the time; they had been steeped in sunshine; yet the reflection which seemed to find most favour was the remark of a burly Yorkshireman: “Thank ’eaven, boys, no more of this damned glare for a while!”

But we were seekers of sunshine, prepared to accept all that came our way, so it was with light hearts we heard the engines throb and felt the vessel resume her voyage. The Franco-Portuguese couple with the little girl and ourselves were all who came aboard at Lisbon, which looked a veritable city of dream as we steamed out through the wide waters of the Tagus. Seen from the river, there are few finer prospects than the long and diversified coast line of Lisbon, culminating in the castled height of Cintra. A soft haze of heat blurred the outlines of the hills and touched them much in the manner of those feathery old landscape engravings that used to adorn the art books of fifty years ago.

There was a fairly large number of passengers aboard, but we soon discovered that the majority were only bound for Las Palmas, excluding the second class and some three hundred Spanish and Portuguese emigrants herded like cattle in the steerage. The dinner bell rang soon after we had settled in our new quarters, and for two weeks or so our days now slipped away, punctuated by the ship’s bells. This orderly division of time speedily produces a mental condition that makes for calm and good health. With nothing to do but engage in an occasional game of deck golf, or lounge in your canvas chair reading a novel, and be prompt to answer the summons of the bells that ring you to your meals, the days fade into each other, like the old-fashioned dissolving views, and with never a suggestion of weariness. Indeed, I often wondered if it might not be that a term of imprisonment would be almost as efficacious in bringing calm to the troubled spirit and health to the wearied body. Certainly a spell of monastic life would be as good a “rest cure.” But, on the whole, I felt the steamer chair had its advantages and although I had taken with me the notes for a book I had had in hand for years, intent on advancing that in my days of idleness, it was with a great content that I found it impossible to fix my mind on any thought of work in those serene days of sailing over sunny seas. Nothing seemed to matter, even the frequent ticking of the “wireless” was somewhat of an intrusion on our ocean peace.

In a voyage of so little incident, when the chief excitement is contrived by arranging sweepstakes on the day’s mileage of the vessel, there is plenty of time to study one’s fellow passengers, and for this a small company, such as we were after leaving Las Palmas, is probably more interesting than a large one. There were only some thirty saloon passengers and naturally there was much interchange of gossip, the ship’s officers proving especially companionable. A small company has the disadvantage, however, that the chronicler cannot well describe his companion voyagers with that easy frankness he may safely bestow upon a crowd. The possibilities of mutual identification are enormously increased.

Yet in the little handful of voyagers with whom we sailed there was a remarkable mingling of character: potentialities of tragedy and comedy, a microcosm of the social world. One could find much to say of them. I must content myself, however, with a few vague touches.

I found that one of the passengers who had made himself most eminent in the companionship of the saloon was an intimate of one of my oldest friends in a far-distant city—so tiny is this great world of ours. He was a gentleman in whom there survived something of the spirit of Mr. Pleydell in his Saturday evening “high jinks,” and maintained that character in the smoking room (where every night was Saturday) with a small but admiring audience whom he addressed as “my loyal subjects.” “Tell me,” he would say, “what thou would that we, of our royal will, might do this evening for our own and thy diversion.” And with varying qualities of the lamely jocular they would give their suggestions. It was all very pathetic to an onlooker: the frank and insatiable egotism of “Uncle” (as we dubbed this worthy of the ruddy visage), his determination to hear the beloved sound of his own voice in hoary anecdote and threadbare jest. I was very patient with him, as I shall ever be with one who has passed many years of his life in South America—he should be allowed a large charter of liberty for all that he has suffered of social hunger and intellectual thirst. At first I resented somewhat the obtrusive nature of this worthy Scot’s companionship, but, somehow, before the journey’s end we were good friends. I think a voyage of this kind teaches one tolerance, and it is surprising how the most apparently incompatible units may draw together by the practice of even a little toleration. As “Uncle” observed in his soft Scots voice: “Mun, I was even beginning to like Brixton,” naming a young man who joined us at Pernambuco, and who, by reason of a most pronounced tendency to “swank,” made a bad first impression.

Mention of this passenger, by the way, reminds me that his unfortunate habit of capping every story, going one better than everybody else, kept most of us at arm’s length for a day or two. If one said he had yellow fever, Brixton had had it twice; if another had made two voyages to Africa, Brixton had made five or six; if a third had shot a hare, Brixton had shot an elephant. Everywhere he had been he had met with hair-raising adventures. In Pernambuco, he had to use his revolver every night to scare away the burglars. How many had he killed? “I winged one of the devils anyhow!” And in proof he passed round his revolver. Yellow Jack was raging in the town when he left, he assured us; but somehow he had been allowed to come on board quietly and make us shiver with recital of the horrors he had escaped. Of course, we doubted every word that Brixton said and yet on many points I have since had occasion to test his statements and never once have I found that he lied. He told the truth as he saw it, and he was an entertaining and good-hearted Englishman, who had forgot in growing up to cast off certain habits of thought and talk which are delightful in Tom Sawyers and Huck Finns, but are apt to convey wrong impressions of handsome, well-groomed Mr. Brixtons!

Perhaps our quaintest voyager was an ugly Frenchman, who had been christened “Dr. Crippen,” before the ship had reached Lisbon. He certainly bore some resemblance to that misguided gentleman who stood so eminently in the world’s eye for a time, and the humour of the situation was that he had never heard of Crippen, and rather thought it was some sort of dimly conceived English compliment to him. He spoke no word of our barbaric tongue, and when “Uncle” presided at a mock trial of “Dr. Crippen” the prisoner was vastly amused, until he found himself condemned to an hour’s solitary confinement in a bathroom. He was much given to patronising the bar and passed the most of his days in a state of happy fuddle; yet I afterwards learned that his was one of the clearest brains that control a great and world-famous organisation in France and when he left us, it was a new and extremely sober “Dr. Crippen” who stepped ashore to carry out a very delicate and difficult business mission.

There was no American or English lady among the saloon passengers, but we had Scots, Irish, Danish, French, Spanish, and Peruvian. Of none that were ladies shall I speak, but two who were something else deserve a note. ’Tis ever thus; virtue is so lacking in the picturesque. As a connoisseur of dancing, I was interested to discover that we had aboard a famous danseuse, most charming of all the pupils of the great Loïe Fuller, who was on her way to the Casino at Buenos Ayres—a resort of dubious fame, according to current belief among our music-hall performers. But as I had many a time been charmed by the exquisite art of the said pupil of Loïe Fuller (whose name is as widely known as that of her teacher) I had no difficulty in deciding that the plain and vulgar Spanish contortionist who was going to stamp her heavy feet and twist her decidedly shapely body before the jovenes distinguidos of the Casino was merely trading in the name of a celebrity. Her luggage bore the famous name in huge letters, and I afterwards saw it “billed” widely in Buenos Ayres.

On the whole, the conduct of this Spanish dancer during the voyage was so openly without sense of shame that there was little one could object to! Sometimes she appeared in gorgeous raiment and an enormous “picture hat,” ready for the Bois or the Alameda; even, on one occasion, sporting a huge muff in the tropics! Again she would pass the day in bedroom slippers, her corsets put aside, her lithe body draped only in a dressing gown, and her golden hair of yesterday, completely doffed, leaving only a shabby little nob of faded brown. She entangled at least one of the male passengers, a Chilian who later found another flame in an attractive demi-mondaine of the second class, and it afforded us some amusement to watch the rivalry which now ensued, but there was little sympathy when the gay Lothario came to the end of his cash and attempted to borrow.

The First Familiar Landmark for the Visitor To Buenos Ayres.

Part of the Paseo Colón, with the Government House on the right, and the tallest of the new commercial buildings on the left.

The other “interesting lady” of the saloon was of quite a different type. A French chanteuse of the smaller café concerts, she was extremely plain by nature’s wish, but the art of make-up and some potent hair-dye effected a magical change the day she left us. She behaved herself modestly enough and passed most of her time with her crochet needle, sitting side by side with the honest women aboard, yet I was told that her songs would have brought a blush to the cheeks of a stevedore! She sang to us several dainty and harmless little French and Spanish verses in the familiar café chantant manner, and altogether left the impression of a poor woman laying out her small gifts to the best advantage.

There was little or no intercourse between the saloon passengers and those of the second class, although it seemed to me that among the latter were many worthy people and a good-hearted companionship. They certainly showed to advantage in the diverting ceremony observed when Father Neptune held court on crossing the line. Included among them were a number of minor “artistes” bound for the music-halls of Buenos Ayres, not to mention several young women with a still less attractive journey’s end in view.

We heard much from the old South Atlantic voyagers on board about the doings on other and more popular lines than that to which our vessel belonged. The “muck-raking” magazines might work up a spicy stew of scandal about life on the South American liners if they gave themselves to the task. Wealthy Argentines and Brazilians travelling with their wives in the saloon and two or three concubines in the second class, offer quite attractive material for the journalist in search of the spicy, while the traffic in “white slaves” has long provided a certain percentage of the passengers for these very profitable lines, in which, perchance, some dear old christian ladies have their investments. How difficult it is to keep one’s hands clean in this soiled world!

From all that I have been told, and also from personal observation, the perils of the deep may have a curious resemblance to the perils of “the Great White Way.” And even those who ought to be the protectors of innocence may prove to be its assailants. A young married lady, lately arrived from England, was under the pain of having to travel alone from Buenos Ayres to a Brazilian port where her husband was lying in hospital with typhoid, and her plain story of how the purser, under cloak of sympathy for her in her distress, first ingratiated himself by talking sentimental slop about his wife and bairns at home, getting her to go into his cabin to look at the treasured photographs of his “dear ones,” and there, without more ado, attempted to assail the honour of the young wife, whose mental sufferings at the time were, to my knowledge, almost beyond endurance, is one of the ugliest I have heard. This was an English officer, note you: none of your sensual Italians.

It is to be feared that much co-mingling with pimps and procurers may have tended somewhat to blunt the native honour of the Englishman in these southern latitudes, for, up to a day so recent that it seems but yesterday, nothing had been done to dam the foul stream that has flowed so long from the human sewers of Europe into the still more noisome mares stagnantes of Buenos Ayres. Now, there is at least some pretence of stemming it, and from time to time one reads in the Buenos Ayres papers about the latest raid on the “apaches,” who are deported, with much pomp and circumstance, or about the rejected of Paris, in the shape of womankind, who are refused admission to the city of good airs.

But to return to a pleasanter, if less piquant subject, our voyage deserves at least a few words of description. We seemed to be lying off Las Palmas before the beautiful picture of Lisbon in sunshine had quite faded from our vision, and at this distance of time I would not undertake to say whether it was two or three days that had passed between the two ports, so dreamy was our progress. The sight of Las Palmas, with its grateful greenness of hill and valley, and far southward, cloud-high in a gorgeous flood of sunshine, the mighty mass of Teneriffe, thrusting itself boldly into the sky from the heaving wilderness of water, gave to the beholder one of those rare moments of spiritual exaltation which a first sight of such natural grandeur must always awaken in the thinking mind.

St. Vincent was a different story. Fully two days more steaming brought us thither to that vile haunt of malaria and all things unlovely. The Cape Verde Islands, of which St. Vincent is the principal, dishonour the name they bear, as there is scarce a speck of verdure to be seen upon them. Presumably there must be some natural reason for the naming of the Cape itself on the African coast, off which, nearly five hundred miles northwestward, these scabby isles show their horrid heads above the blue Atlantic. They are of a dirty red colour, and at a distance resemble some humpy monsters of the deep wallowing in the sunshine. The port is useful as a coaling and cable station. A town of shanties, it swarms with negroes, and ships’ pedlars. Here a small colony of young Britons are marooned in the cable service. At first the young cable operator is no doubt delighted to find how much more picturesque he has become than he was at home. To have to wear white duck suits and a pith helmet, and look like Stanley on his way to discover Livingstone, is extremely attractive to the eye of youth! Even the gentleman who sells coals to the liners comes on board looking for all the world like a colonial governor, or the leader of a mission to Abyssinia. Then there is much card-playing and a good deal of hard-drinking among “the boys,” who talk of “the service and all that sort of thing, dontcher know,” to feed youth’s fondness for swagger. But when the debilitating effects of the climate and the life make themselves felt, when the novelty has gone, what a husk remains! Lucky are the young men who escape from these rusty isles before the rot of the place has eaten too deeply into their natures. The harbour swarms with sharks, but the negro boys who dive for the amusement of the passengers on the ships that put in there make light of the sharks for a sixpence, or even for a humble penny thrown into the water.

St. Vincent gave us our last glimpse of the Old World. Its very ugliness sent our thoughts zestfully forward to the undiscovered beauties of the New, then so full of promise, now—but that’s a later story. It was pleasant to hear again the long soft swish of the water running past the vessel’s sides as she resumed her tranquil voyage into the sunset. Now succeeded many days of idle lolling in the deck chair, watching through the binoculars the swarms of flying fish skimming over the surface of the ocean like tiniest aeroplanes.

Bird life in these ocean solitudes is rare, yet we not only saw several journeying on confident wing several hundred miles from land, but for two or three days we were forcibly reminded of “Nature red in tooth and claw,” by witnessing a little drama in feathers. One day out from St. Vincent a bird, about the size of a pigeon, gorgeously coloured and sporting a plume of orange-red, alighted on the rigging of the ship, pursued by a larger hawk-like bird. Evidently the pursuit had lasted for a long time, as both were land birds and seemed very exhausted, for we were now some hundreds of miles from the African coast, whence hunter and hunted had no doubt flown. For two or three days a strange game of cross purposes ensued, the hunted, with the skill of desperation, cleverly selecting different positions in the rigging or on the smoke-stacks, which offered no opportunity to the hunter to swoop down on him from above. There were violent chasings at times around the ship, when the essential cruelty of the Spanish emigrants was displayed in their efforts to strike the pursued bird with all sorts of objects hurled at it as it swept past the bows. Eventually the hawk gave up and disappeared and soon afterward the bird of brilliant plumage took wing away.

Seldom did we sight another vessel; now and again we signalled a tramp or a collier heading south with its cargo from Wales to be sold eventually in Buenos Ayres at some $20 or $25 per ton—it was during the time of the coal strike. One only of the old “wind-jammers” did we pass. In full sail, she looked, in the blue immensity of the tranquil sea, no bigger than a toy boat, and an object of such appropriate grace and beauty that it was sad to think a day would come when no ship that goes by spread of glistening sail would cross those far waters again.

Early on the sixth day out from St. Vincent, on going on deck before breakfast we were not a little surprised to find that we were steaming close to a long and narrow green island on which many signs of careful cultivation were evident. In a cove the white houses of a township showed clear and inviting in the morning air, the blue smoke curling from some of the chimneys giving one an intense pang of home hunger. With the binoculars it was easy to make out people going about their tasks in the fields, others walking towards what seemed to be a signalling station. The surprise at this sudden coming upon a bit of the habitated globe in what, for all we had supposed the night before, was still mid-ocean, sent us questioning to the officers of the ship. The island turned out to be Fernando de Noroña, notable chiefly as a Brazilian penal settlement. A Brazilian—the only one among our company—told me a story about Fernando de Noroña which, speaking in Spanish, he considered muy graciosa. An Englishman in Pernambuco killed a native in a quarrel and was sent to the penal isle, but in the course of a year or less he was granted his liberty, that being a matter of simple negotiation: a little influence and a modicum of money can always save a criminal in that happy clime. But, the Englishman, having long suffered a shrewish wife, found so much peace in prison that he refused to quit the island and there remains. Fernando de Noroña lies some two hundred miles off the north eastern shoulder of Brazil, and by that token we were soon to be touching at Pernambuco and hugging the Brazilian coast for the rest of our voyage.

One felt almost sorry that the sunny days of serene steaming over shoreless seas were coming to an end and that presently we would be picking up the coast of the new world. By now we had grown so used to the companionship of the boat that we began to look forward to leaving it with something of regret.

At Pernambuco we had our first sight of a South American town and I should be departing widely from the truth were I to say that the “Venice of Brazil” tugged at my heart-strings. It is a town of evil-smelling waterways, half-finished streets, at their best no better than a London byway, with cut-throat quarters that harbour all uncleanness. The task of going ashore, first being lowered into a bobbing dingy by means of a rope and basket, is attended with a sensation of nausea which the merry assurance of the old skipper by your side as to the water being a favourite haunt of sharks does little to counteract, especially when his trained eye enables him, a moment or two later, to point out several of these hunting for garbage around the ship. It is fair to say of Pernambuco that it is undergoing transformation: the “avenida” craze has taken root and at the time of our visit innumerable shanties were being demolished to make way for wide avenues and new buildings.

The first sensation of crossing a great sea and making land on its farther shore, once experienced—and it is a “thrill” that never comes again—we sank back into the half-indifferent contemplation of the long, indented coast line of this prodigious land of Brazil. For hundreds of miles it is unchanging in its character of palm-fringed shores, with great dim mountain masses inland, a soft blur of heat overhanging all. There is plenty to suggest mystery and romance, and yet somehow beauty is lacking. I mean the wild beauty of peak and crag which we find along the coasts of Scotland, where the conformation is continually changing. These mountains of Brazil have that volcanic sameness which only becomes magnificent when you can ascend to some commanding pinnacle and look down upon a veritable wilderness of mighty earth mounds, such as it was my good fortune once to look upon from the tower of the ancient castle of Polignac in the volcanic heart of France.

For many nights the tropical skies had been a revelation of stellar glory, and often though I have gazed at the friendly skies of home on “a beautiful clear night of stars” (to quote the haunting phrase of “R. L. S.”), little had I imagined the glories that awaited the beholder of the heavens in a clear tropical night. The stars appear much larger and incomparably more brilliant than I have ever seen them in our northern latitudes, nor do they “stud” the sky so much as hang dependent from the dense dark blue. I had many starlight talks with the old skipper who was travelling to a “shore job” (the dream of every sailor!) on the Pacific, and who spoke of the stars which had guided him so long on his voyages with that familiarity of the worthy old Scots minister “who, ye micht hae thought, had been born and brocht up among them.” Yet I have failed on many occasions since to rediscover the interesting relationships of the constellations which he so clearly explained to me. I confess, however, to a keen sense of disappointment in the much vaunted Southern Cross. It is a lop-sided and unimpressive group of four stars.

The sight of Bahía, about one day’s steam from Pernambuco, was peculiarly pleasing. It might have been a bit of the French or Italian Riviera, with its rich verdure and bosky hills, while the residential suburbs looked quite European as seen from the ship. We made no closer acquaintance than a stay of some three hours in the beautiful bay, but I could well believe that much that looked most alluring in the picturesque sea-front of the town did not bear too close inspection.

Two more days brought us to Rio de Janeiro, full of expectation and curiosity for the pearl of South America. The bay of Rio has been so often photographed, so fully described, that any one who has read much must have a good mental picture of the place, which fortunately squares very neatly with the actuality. The fantastic islands of volcanic origin which peep up through the broad waters of the bay, or impudently flaunt their grassy cones high above sea level, in the most unexpected places, give to Rio, as seen from the bay, an aspect that is unique. The town spreads itself out with picturesque irregularity among the gentle valleys that lie between the many hills, trending swiftly upward some little way inland from the shore, the noble height of Corcovado crowning the whole lively and diversified scene. These hills being mostly tropical in the richness and character of their vegetation, the art of man had no great task to transform the situation into one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

On the whole, man has here done his work well, although it has to be confessed that much of the architecture is paltry and all of the plaster variety. The marine drive will match almost anything of the kind in Europe, and the Avenida Central is admirably devised at once to beautify the town and drain the pressing traffic of the narrower side streets. The suburbs are also spacious and well planned, so that one could imagine life being very pleasant here—when the weather is a little cooler than the norm. Although the summer was supposed to be over at the time of our visit, the atmosphere was enervating in the extreme, and even on the breezy heights of Corcovado, to which we ascended by the funicular, and whence one of the grandest prospects man may look upon rewarded us, we perspired at every step. Everywhere there was the moist, oppressive smell of the hot-house, so that one could guess what it meant to be afoot in Rio in the summer time, if this were autumn.

The Narrow Streets of Buenos Ayres.

The left illustration shows Calle Florida, the busiest thoroughfare of Buenos Ayres; the right is a bird’s-eye view of Calle San Martín, looking towards the Plaza Hotel. These are typical main streets.

As for living here: when we were charged twelve milreis ($6.50) for a dish of fruit that might have cost a dollar in New York, at a very ordinary hotel, where all other charges were proportionately appalling, we had our doubts, even granted a change of weather. One of our party paid the equivalent of four dollars for a tooth-brush, a cake of soap, a small tube of lanoline, and some shaving powder!

Paying an uniformed madman, who was plying for hire with a motor car, a few thousand reis (a milreis or one thousand reis go to 54 cents, so that you part with them in tens of thousands in a forenoon), we drove all around the city and the Marina at fully thirty miles an hour, turning busy corners at that speed. I myself can claim some dexterity at the wheel; but I confess that I sat in terror in that maniac’s car as we sped wildly through the highways and byways of Rio. Yet he was perfectly sane as motorists are accounted sane in that town; his performance evoking no remark. The speed limit is, I believe, eight or ten miles an hour, but, like all the laws of Latin America, that is laid down merely to be ignored. The municipal authorities, however, use the bylaw as a supplementary tax, and regularly fine all the motorists of the town, in succession, for exceeding the limit. A well-known English resident who owns a speedy car told me he had been fined a month before for exceeding the limit on a certain date, when he had been on the high seas returning from Europe. He protested, lodged his plea, and was fined all the same, on the ground that if he did not exceed the limit that day, he had done so in all certainty before or after.

Altogether our impressions of Rio were favourable. Every prospect pleased us; only man was vile, and none viler than the scum that haunt the sea-front to plunder visitors by getting them aboard their small boats for conveyance to the liners in the bay, then, with sundry sinister threats, endeavour (too often successfully) to make their victims disgorge a payment large enough to purchase the boat. The gentry who ply this trade at Naples are mild and benevolent by comparison.

About noon of the day following our stop at Rio, we were steaming up the picturesque estuary of Santos. A Frenchman on board had promised me that here I should see something tout à fait original, and much though I had been charmed with the actual sight of Rio, so long familiar to me in picture, the approach to Santos proved even more interesting, due perhaps in some degree to the charm of the unknown and unexpected. There is also a touch of romance in slowly approaching a town that lies up a river, instead of coming upon it suddenly from the sea. A negro pilot took command of the ship up to Santos, somewhat to the disgust of our captain, who had never before stood by a “nigger” on the bridge and seemed none too sure of his pilot, for he never let go the telegraph handle until his vessel was berthed.

The country through which the river runs (it is more an arm of the sea than a river) is undoubtedly “original,” abounding in low volcanic hills, with abundance of verdure, broken now and then by palm groves, and swampy flats. Here one is conscious of being in a strange land, and it is easy to imagine with what tense interest and straining eyes the first bold adventurers sailed up this narrow and beautiful water-way to found the city that has become the second port of Brazil. The city itself stretches by the riverside around the foot of a great green hill, disfigured by a monstrous advertisement announcing to adventurers of a different kind and a later day that somebody’s biscuits are the best! A considerable part of the town lies on land that still looks suspiciously swampy and used to be an ideal haunt of Yellow Jack, though I was told that to-day it would be difficult to find a healthier spot. That may be so, but I think I could succeed if I tried very hard. As for the town itself, a short ramble revealed one of the deadest and most uninteresting cities it has been my lot to see, and I gladly returned to the friendly shelter of the ship and the livelier locality of the quayside, where were congregated many vessels from British, American, and Continental ports.

Two days more and we found ourselves at anchor in the roads outside Montevideo, which presents a most engaging picture from the sea, the town covering a lumpy tongue of land that juts seaward with a rocky short, rambling inland in many directions and along the bay, which culminates in the conical mass known as the Cerro, crowned by an antique fortress and a modern light-house. At night, when the myriad electric lamps are lit, the light-house on the Cerro throwing its broad and regular beams athwart the bay, innumerable red and green lights blinking on the buoys in the harbour, much flitting of motor launches and brightly illuminated liners lying at anchor, there is no scene I know that better suggests one’s juvenile fancies of Fairyland.

The town itself delighted us, seen in generous sunshine, with refreshing breezes blowing from the sea, which at first sight, as we pass along the streets, seems completely to enclose it. But as I shall have something to say of my later stay in the Uruguayan capital, I shall not occupy myself with it further at the moment.

We bade good-bye to the ship that had been our most pleasant abode for so many days and made our first acquaintance with things Argentine by transferring ourselves to a musty, ill-managed river-steamer, on which the crudest elements of courtesy had still to be acquired by officials and stewards, who were all too conscious of being employed by a firm which then monopolised the river trade.

Still, although we realised what a change for the worse we had made in transhipping, we comforted ourselves with the knowledge that to-morrow we should awaken in the port of Buenos Ayres; in that genial land of sunshine to which we had so long looked forward with eager anticipation. The passage up the river—which, seaward of Montevideo, is some 150 miles in width, narrowing suddenly to sixty opposite the city, and to the eye has no farther shore, so that only the discolouration of the water distinguishes river from sea—was made in the roughest weather we had experienced, the steamer tossing like a cork and its paddle wheels beating the waves with feeble irregularity.

It was an early autumn morning when we walked off the gangway at the Dársena Sud to endure the pain of getting our belongings through the customs, an operation apparently regulated by the shipping authorities after studying all the worst methods in vogue, selecting the worst features of each, and combining these into a system that is the acme of inefficiency. Moreover, the wind bit as shrewdly this autumn morning as on a midwinter’s day in New York, and, believing in this land of sunshine with a simple faith that had yet to suffer rudest shocks, we stood there an hour or more, clothed for summer, chattering with cold.

But we were actually in Buenos Ayres, and soon all the marvels of that wonderful city, that “Paris of South America,” as Argentines who have never been to Europe are fond of describing it, were to reveal themselves to us starveling voyagers who knew nothing better than the Paris of France.

Vamos a ver, as they say in Buenos Ayres.