Richard Francis Burton

“ From the summit, looking east, you have a bird's-eye view of the city, which, set after a fashion upon a hill, cannot be hid. The site is a boot-shaped ridge, admirable for drainage, and everywhere commanding a broad view. This hog's back of stone forms, on the eastern part of the bay, a peninsula about one mile and a quarter long from south- west to north-east, with half a mile of average breadth. ”

“ The rheumatic gale is cutting as a Kent-coast black caster, and sailors complain that the Plate appears to them after the relaxing heat of Kio, the bitterest place they know. But it is a true relief in the seething summer ; it forms a break of invigorating freshness : cold and consequently dry, it renders even Buenos Aires of the fetid airs inhabitable. The Pampero Sucio comes out from a horizontal line of sable cloud, like the arch of the West-African tornado down-flattened ”

“ A crystal- clear, diaphonous atmosphere sets forth every feature of the approach to Sea^s End ; over the ocean horizon of the river in front the sun-glow is tempered by the cool crisp wind before which race up the white dots of sails, and the broad lights and shades of the shore and of the smokeless city are distributed with a charming picturesqueness. ”

“ And if stabbed or shot upon your own threshold, under your own roof-tree, you die without feeling the poor satisfaction that justice will be done to you upon the cowardly assassin who, bloodthirsty as a Shoho Dankali, offers a bowl of milk with one hand and knifes you with the other. In these fair lands the slaughterer of a stranger, even if seized red-handed, is never punished. ”

“ The larger ships of war lie in the outer roads, two or three miles distant; they want to up sail, and be off readily in case of a sudden and damaging Pampero. The half square-mile of watery sui'face in the basin, crowded as it is with ships in utter disorder, not aligned as at Valparaiso, urgently requires a breakwater : this has been proposed, and if it be soon thrown up, Monte Video will take the wind out of her big neighbour's sails, and will reign, for a time at least, the Queen City of the River Plate. ”

“ NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS.
The mixed population, Spanish and Portuguese, Brazilian and Italian, French and English, with a dash of Yankee in political matters, retains all the vices and few of the virtues that characterized its ancestors. Here nobody expects justice — nobody has any confidence in the honour of the Government, or in the honesty of the individual. The miserable administration of justice in the outstations secures impunity to the murderer, and executions, frightfully common in revenge for political misdemeanours, are unknown when the offence is taking life. ”

“ He is jolly, and perhaps at first somewhat loud, the effect of excitement at seeing once more his kind ; he is, however, a general favourite ; he flirts like a naval officer at Malta, he waltzes, he plays, and he runs up a bill like a man. ”

“ Knowing nothing of the land I follow a young leader, whose two sheep-dogs engross all his thoughts, and are voted by his friends precious bores. He asks me to visit his estancia or cattle estate, distant a few leagues. ”

“ Yet, when the last yearns West Indian typhoon lost four steamers, the Royal Mail, which has on board every ship begging-boxes for widows and orphans, could not afford to pay pensions, and was compelled to pass round the ignoble hat. Beware O ex-Great Company, and bestir thyself! We will not be made to go backwards. ”

“ Foreigners mostly complain that he is ignorant of cattle breeding, and, moreover, that compared with an Argentine, he is exceedingly duuderhended.
A goods tramway leads us through an open shed to the Custom-house, a big three- storied building, tinted slightly drab-yellow, with the inner windows of the upper-floor offices broken, like an Irish railway station after a Fenian row. The officers are mostly civil, they do not take douceurs, at least upon small matters — so far a great improvement upon the Brazil ”

“ There are a few Bra- zilians, wild as Kafirs : the men argue, gesticulate, thump fists on table, take places that are not their own, and seem strange to the appliances of civilization as might have been the Tupis ; the women are invariably sea-sick, wear calicos, wag the forefinger, and use bottines that never knew Paris. The Portuguese are Brazilians Europeanized, and personally not so clean : you easily know them, their talk is about nothing but dollars and the other sex. ”

“ Drainage is everywhere unknown, and the pavement is especially vile : in the rain muddy, under the sun dusty, and the thoroughfares are less like streets than " channels worn by the after currents of the deluge." This may be said of all the city, except a single dwarf bit subtending the cathedral fi'ont. The place is large, but practically it is bounded for foreigners by the Bay west, east by the main square and the Calle del Rincon — the neighbour of " 25 de Mayo,^' its Regent Street. ”

“ After the Custom-house comes the Hotel, the lodging- house of Buenos Aires being here unknown. Hotels swarm as at Boulogne ; practically, however, there are^ or rather there were, three — the Blin, the Oriental, and the Gran Hotel Americano. The first is a kind of restaurant famed for feeding ; the closeness of its box-like rooms is frightful. The Oriental is kept by Ramon and Thomaz Fernandez, Spaniards and quondam cooks or valets to a certain Hebrseo- Teutonico- Iberian capitalist, here well known. Being the best, it is always crowded when money is not dear. ”

“ The fogs, or rather the Scotch mists, of the calm nights are heavy, and as we are upon the beaten track of ships, our steam-whistle is not silent. At times the water is smooth as oil, a Pacific, not a moaning and misty Atlantic. The half-knot current sets at present to the south-west, the direction by which it doubles the Horn, but a southerly gale will drive it two knots per hour to the north. About
86 FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.
the Abrolhos Islands, infames scopulos, soundings even of fifty fathoms cannot be told by the colour. ”

“ But it is frigid with Andine snows, and dry as a Simoom after coursing over the naked south- temperate plains. It extends to Rio Grande, the southern- most province of the Brazil, but there it is comparatively innocuous, and the Temporal de Polvo shows to best ad- vantage, speaking of it as a curiosity, on the Pampas and where the soil is poorest. The spelF' from Rio to Monte Video is held by seamen the worst of the six acts which represent the total voyage-drama from England to Plate- land. Our wind veers during five days almost round the compass, and becomes notably rawer as we advance. ”

“ There is also a Bouffes Company, which oscillates between Monte Video and Buenos Aires. Other theatres are the Teatro de Titens, the Teatro Franco- Oriental, and the Great American Circus.
The bull-ring, I told you, is outside the city, and the fights are always on fetes and Sundays. The sport is pro- vided by the Sociedad de la Plata, and the beef is from Pando, near Maldonaro. The toreros are two first swords, including El Tuerto, two picadors and four capas, chulos, or bandilleros. The aspect of these bulldogs is peculiar as that of the English fighting-man ”

“ The fact is, many of these New World settlements are in point of comfort and civilization far nearer London and Paris than many an Old World city within five hours by rail. Their only fault is the absolute distance, and in this age of the world it is not to be remedied. ”

“ Monte Video amuses herself much more heartily than does her big rival ; the former cultivates, the latter neglects her theatre and amusements. The pianist, M. Gottschalk, prefers the smaller city. La Codazzi, the diva, receives 400/. per mensem, and others in proportion. Ristori would not disdain such inducements. Besides the Solis Theatre for the opera, there is the San Felipe, generally taken by the Compania de Zarzuela, a Spanish buffo, as yet little known to the world. ”

“ The Argentines in this matter are far behind the Spaniards, and the Moslems of India are a century in advance of both, being able to train a cock to fly at man or dog. The spur is not so artificial as ours or as that of Hindustan ; it is of metal, and made hollow to fit over the natural weapon, whose slope it imitates. There is scant art shown in choosing the angle, and the birds instead of being lifted are simply thrown into the pit. The pas- time is very slow, hours being often wasted till a good bargain is secured. ”

“ A single walk through the place suffices : one palazzo at Rome or Naples contains, I believe, far more of art than the combined treasures of South America. The cathedral, dedicated to the Purisima, and to the two patron saints, is grotesque outside and inside, plain to ugliness. It fronts the main square, a poor small place of recreation, at times crowded ”

“ Here for the mechanic's family — unless it be murdered — there is physical and moral improvement : it suffers from none of the penury which chilled the parents' blood, it is not frozen by the cold shade of its own bourgeois aristocracy ; the produce, there- fore, already born more delicate, gracieuses, and " ladylike,'"' because of a more nervous temperament, have their tempers better in hand and become more susceptible of civilization. ”

“ Full of vegetable matter, it never strains clear and colourless; some say it is good to drink, others, myself included, that it causes trouble. On board we drink the produce of Monte Video tapped by Norton^s American system of tube-pumps, published to the world by the Abyssinian campaign. Here men are not slow to import improvements ; the invention was at once tried, it succeeded in the Banda Oriental, but it failed in the province of Buenos Aires — where blessed with all the gifts of Plutus shall be the wight that invents water. ”

“ The lower, that is to say, the uneducated classes, everywhere brutal rather than cruel, enjoy the spectacle of a tortured animal rushing about the ring, and this is the only un- pleasant part of the noble sport. ”

“ Around the Boca is a swampy flat where the lumber-houses must perch high upon piers and stilts ; a few of yesterday^s build are of brick, but the walls sag and split. The Boca is connected with Buenos Aires by a branch railway in the good old style, chair and sleepers. ”

“ Further south is the sea ; dyked in by lines of gneiss stained with yellow lichen, and often snowy with the washerwoman's work. The land approach was once imperfectly defended by thirty- two guns, in a curtain with four bastions, of which two were at the angles — they are now supplanted by a hedge of cactus and aloes. North-west of the main square are the remains of a bastion and its old " Aljibe, or rain cistern : ground has waxed valuable, much of the relic has been broken up for building materials during the last three years, and in a few more it will completely disappear. ”

“ As the policeman is the chief do-nothing, and the soldier is the head bandit, so is the Sereno head-thief, an accomplice in almost every robbery. The combined result is, that five stabbings in three days distinguish as an average the 90,000 souls of Buenos Aires — the sum would represent 10,000 murders per annum in London. ”

“ All nationalities will be first class. I should suggest the example of a certain Argentine railway, where the ticket-clerk, glancing at the customer, determines his class — the larger the spurs the lower goes the wearer. The Creole English muster strong ; they speak Spanish amongst the English, English amongst the Spaniards ; their voices are curiously harsh and metallic ”

“ The stream is felt at an offing of ninety miles, but its great specific gravity prevents the Plate from being a tidal river. In Maldonado Bay the water is so fresh that it makes a difi'erence of three inches in a ship^s draught. Off Monte Video there is said to be an under- current of salt water, as at Gibraltar Gut and Bab el Mandab ; the limit of the ebb and flow is laid down at the mouth of the little Sta. Lucia Biver, some nine to ten miles to westward of the city. Like the Mediterranean and the Caspian, it is subject to wind tides ”

“ The single boatman who plies sculls and sail, charges us a " lira esterlina^' — not lira Toscana, the pund Scots — for a few minutes^ row, when he should land us from the outer Road for a dollar, and for half a dollar from the Bay. We now begin to realize the ex- tortions of Monte Video, and to learn something about the currency : why do travellers so persistently neglect to lecture their readers upon this important subject ?
The safest plan here, as in most parts of South America, is to carry sovs. ”

“ The wild native shows far better lounging on horseback than on foot. Here the equine is the only comfortable locomotion, and strangers wonder how the animals keep their footing as they gallop down the slippery hill-pavement. ”

“ The United States, formerly the best customer, came into the wool market, and the Morrill tariff imposed a protective duty prohibitory to all but the cheapest articles, these paying only six cents per pound. The last straw was the export duty of 10 per cent. (Mr. Ross Johnson says 15) levied by the Argentine Government — 5 in ready money, and 5 after fouv months. The Platines have reason to say, " The English are the only people who come here with money, and who go away without.^^ Certainly, Spaniards and Italians, Portuguese and Basques, Brazilians and Germans do not. ”

“ Some are putting in a first appearance ; others, older hands, are returning to their muttons. With us is a Plenipo., accompanied by Mrs. P. ; there is a gentle- manly person in knickerbockers and poor health; there is the " Mail abroad, wending home to Argentine- land, with a remarkably pretty and pleasing " Mail-ess," who admirably "ryles up;" and there are some nondescripts, many Germans, and a few French, the latter a race that never feels thoroughly at home on board English steamers. ”