the George Washington of the Argentine Republic, who liberated the country from the Spanish yoke and was then turned out to die in exile and poverty. In 1880 the remains of the Liberator were brought with great pomp from France, where he had died in 1850, in banishment, and were entombed under a costly and imposing sepulchre, which, however, looks very little like a tomb, and is entirely without sacred emblems. Four statues in marble guard the grave; not Faith, Hope, and Charity, but “Agriculture,” “Industry,” “Justice,” and “Liberty.” It looks rather queer to see the emblem of Industry with hammer and saw over a tomb in a church, but the Argentines evidently have not noticed the incongruity.

Besides the twenty-four churches belonging to the Catholics, the Protestant community is pretty well supplied with religious advantages. There are a Church of England society, a Scotch Presbyterian, an American Presbyterian, a German Evangelical, three Methodist churches, and a Jewish synagogue—the only one in all Spanish America. Jews are not allowed to live in some of the countries; but in the Argentine Republic, where religious as well as civil liberty is protected, they are numerous, and worship every Saturday. In 1884 the Methodists celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their missionary work in the country, and it was emphasized by an incident which attracted a great deal of comment, and was significant as showing the religious toleration that exists. Formal invitations were sent as a mark of courtesy to the President and all the prominent officials, but there was no expectation that they would attend, as the great majority of the people are Catholics and the public men are naturally politic. Just as the services were about to commence, however, the managers of the affair were astonished to see the President, followed by his Cabinet, walk into the church. Conspicuous seats were given them, and they seemed to take great interest in the exercises. After the Rev. Dr. Wood, the Superintendent of Missions, had concluded his address, in which he reviewed the history of Protestantism in the Argentine Republic, he invited President Roca to speak. The latter promptly responded; and as every one knew he had been born and reared in the Catholic Church, the audience were amazed at the eulogy he pronounced upon the Protestant missionaries, and the enthusiasm with which he complimented the work they had done. To their influence he attributed much of the progress of the republic, and urged them to enlarge their fields and increase their zeal. The President’s speech was commented upon in the newspapers the next day with a great deal of vigor, the Liberal press approving it, but the Conservative editors censuring what they considered an attack upon the prevailing religion of the people.

There is a peculiar order of monks in the Argentine Republic which is not found elsewhere. Its members are known as “Lazarists” (from Lazarus), and they live, as he is said to have done, on the crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table. They travel about the country like tramps, having no apparent aim or purpose, barefooted and bareheaded, eat what they beg from door to door, and sleep wherever night overtakes them. They are supposed to be members of the other orders of friars, who have sinned and are doing penance as Lazarists.

There is a place called Washington and another called Lincoln in the Argentine Republic, but the newest thing in the way of towns is La Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Ayres. Until within a few years that province, having more than half the population of the entire country, has considered itself entitled to rule the rest, as far as the Government was concerned, and the outlying provinces have had nothing to say about it, being regarded as insignificant dependencies of the city and State of Buenos Ayres. They tried to secede, but were whipped into the Union; but as immigration has come into the country the population of other provinces outnumbers Buenos Ayres, and often in Presidential campaigns the contest depends upon a geographical issue. Roca, the recent President, is an outside man, and the Buenos Ayrians determined to prevent his inauguration or overthrow his government; but to mollify them he announced a great scheme of building a new capital at Government expense. There was no time to lay out a town site and let it grow up in the ordinary way, so the President sent to the United States and had five hundred houses manufactured to order and shipped down here, like a box of toys, all ready to put up. A location was selected on the pampas, all the revolutionary leaders were let into the speculation, war was averted, and a brand-new city sprang up on the prairie, like a bed of mushrooms, almost in a single night. Two or three millions of dollars were spent by the Government, but the President considered that the cost of the town was much less than would have been the cost of the war that was averted; plenty of money was put into circulation, all the laboring men in the country got lucrative employment, and, as in the old-fashioned storybooks, everything came out happily in the end. These houses were made in Brooklyn and Chicago: a New York firm got the contract. There was so much haste and carelessness in their construction that they do not wear very well, and are no credit to their builders.

The gaucho (gowcho) of South America is the most interesting character on the continent, and if the writers of tales of adventure could get at him, he would afford them as much material as the Crusader of the Middle Ages or the North American savage. The Spanish colonies have produced no Fenimore Cooper or Mayne Reid, and such a writer as Ned Buntline is unknown to South American literature. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack would die of mortification if their horsemanship and endurance were placed in comparison with that of the genuine gaucho of the pampas, and even the centaur of mythology would blush with envy.

The gauchos are the descendants of the aristocratic Spanish dons and Indian women; for the grandees and hidalgos who once ruled these colonies did not hesitate to seek the society of the Pocahontases of the Guarani race. They are at once the most indolent and the most active of human beings; for when they are not in the saddle, devouring space on the back of a tireless broncho, they are sleeping in apathetic indolence among their mistresses or gambling with their chums. Half savage and half courtier, the gaucho is as polite as he is cruel, and will make a bow like a dancing-master or thrum an air on the native mandolin with the same ease and nonchalance as he will murder a fellow-being or slaughter a steer. He recognizes no law but his own will and the unwritten code of the cattle-range, and all violations of this code are punished by banishment or death. Whoever offends him must fight or fly, and his vengeance is as enduring as it is vigilant. The statute of limitations is not recognized by him, and he will kill an enemy he has not seen for a quarter of a century. He never shoots or strikes with his fist, and his only weapons are the short knife, which is never absent from his hand or his belt and is used at short range, and the lasso, which is not only an implement of his trade but an instrument offensive and defensive.

A fight between gauchos always means murder, and it is the duty of him who kills to see that his victim is decently buried and the widow and orphans cared for. The widow, if she pleases him, becomes his wife or his mistress, and the orphans grow up to be gauchos under his tutelage. He is as superstitious as a Hindoo, and an inveterate gambler. When he is not asleep or in the saddle he is always engaged at quaint games of chance that are his own invention, and are known to no other race in the world. He is peaceable when sober, but a reckless dare-devil, regardless of God and man. When he is drunk he is a fiend incarnate, for a howling savage is like a prattling child when compared to a drunken gaucho. As brave as a lion, as active as a panther, with an endurance equal to any test, faithful to his friends, as implacable as fate to any one who offends him, he has exercised a powerful influence upon the destiny of the Argentine Republic, and kept that nation back in civilization until his influence was overcome by an increased immigration of foreigners. The gaucho has never taken any part in politics except as a soldier, and as such, under a leader that he will obey, he is without an equal in either civilized or savage fighting.

The Argentinians once had a gaucho President, Don Manuel Rosas, who ruled the country with a despotism of iron and blood for twenty-two years (from 1830 to 1852), and even now is seldom referred to without a shudder, for the marks of his cruel hand are still visible, and the ancient aristocracy still feel the sting of blows he inflicted upon them. He was the son of a wealthy Spaniard of the same name, who exercised a patriarchal sway over the peons that looked after his flocks and herds; and as the young Rosas grew up, the old man gradually yielded to the stronger will of the son, until the latter became a sort of gaucho leader, and commanded a regiment of them in the war of 1829 against the Indians. So powerful did he become that it was an easy step from the chieftainship of the gauchos to the Presidency of the Republic—a self-appointed Dictator, the head of an absolute despotism which existed for nearly a quarter of a century, in defiance of the constitution and the laws.

Rosas was a compound of the arrogance and stubborn superstition of the Spanish race and the cruelty and craft of the Guarani Indians, whose blood he inherited through his mother. He maintained his power by the loyalty of the gauchos, of whom the people of the towns lived in terror. With an inflexible will, with the cunning of a fox and the courage of a lion, with egregious vanity and arrogance, and a perpetual distrust of every living being except his daughter Mannileta—the only person to whose influence he ever

submitted or for whom he ever showed any affection—he ruled like a savage chieftain over the entire southern half of the continent, from Paraguay to the Strait of Magellan, relying solely upon the terror which his own cruelty and that of his gaucho lieutenants had inspired among the people. Blood flowed by his command as freely as water, and the extermination of those who opposed him was the policy under which he perpetuated his power. No citizen of the Argentine Republic or Uruguay felt himself safe. No man went to bed at night with any confidence that he would be alive in the morning; for neither friendship, relationship, nor even obscurity, was a shield from assassination. Rosas only ceased to murder when the great fear he had inspired paralyzed the people and rendered them absolutely prostrate to his will. He spared neither age nor sex. Even his oldest friend, a man who had been more than a father to him, and was supposed to be his confidential adviser, was murdered in cold blood by the masorqueros, the secret assassins or Danites on whom he relied to execute his atrocious designs. The official history of Buenos Ayres gives the following estimate of the numbers who died through the caprice or vengeance of the tyrant Rosas: poisoned, 4; executed by the sword, 3765; shot, 1393; assassinated, 722; total, 5884. Add to this the number slain in the constant struggle to overthrow his despotism, 16,520, and we have an aggregate of 22,404 victims to the ambition of a gaucho chief.

An idea of the arrogance and conceit of the man can be formed from the fact that the money coined during his administration was stamped with his portrait and the inscription “Eternal Rosas.” But he was not eternal, and was overthrown in 1852 by General Urquiza, escaping from the country with his daughter at night, both in the disguise of English sailors, and finding refuge on board the Centaur, an English man-of-war.

But the day of the gaucho is passing. Immigration and civilization have driven him to the extreme frontier, where nowadays he can only be found in his full glory. Like the North American Indian, he decays when domesticated, and a tame gaucho is always a drunkard, a loafer, and a thief. Civilization saps his vitality, quenches his spirit, and lowers his standard of morals. In his native element he will not steal nor do a mean act, but when he becomes a resident of a town he will rob a dog, and there is no end to his maliciousness. Few of the race have ever acquired land, and even at the present day he despises the estanciaro, who will not depend upon the public domain for pasturage. So the gaucho has to keep moving, faster and faster, to get out of the way of barbed wire fences and the restraints of civilization. A few years hence he will disappear or assume more of the character of the North American cow-boy. Even now, in the more settled portions of the country, the word gaucho has become a word of reproach, and is applied to worthless characters who live by cattle-stealing, and correspond to the rustlers of the United States.

The language of the genuine gaucho is a mixture of Spanish and the Guarani Indian tongue, and his food is beef and yerba mate. At every rodeo, or “round up,” there is a great feast, at which many good things are set forth; but the ordinary diet of the race consists of ribs of beef roasted on a spit before the fire, and eaten without salt or bread, while the ordinary drink is the Paraguayan tea, which is sucked through a tube. The gaucho lives like the Indian—gorges himself when he has plenty of food, or goes for days without eating; but he always has his mate cup with him, and the yerba contains a great amount of nutrition. He usually has a habitation in a hut at the headquarters of the estancia upon which he is employed, and there he keeps his family and goes on feast-days, for he is enough of a Catholic to keep as close a reckoning of the ecclesiastical calendar as the archbishop himself. He has no regard for the Sabbath, but recognizes every religious anniversary of the Church by leaving his cattle on the range and going to headquarters, where he spends the day in drinking, dancing, gambling, confessing his sins to the padre, cock-fighting, and testing horsemanship with his companions. These feast-days never end without a murder, and often more than one.

When dressed in his full regalia the gaucho’s appearance is picturesque; with his swarthy face, long hair, and long mustaches, he would create a sensation in any guise, for his physique is perfect, and his swagger as bold as that of a buccaneer or a bandit chief. The gaucho woman is said to be beautiful when young, but at twenty-five or thirty she is a dirty, unkempt slattern, with bleared eyes and tangled hair, and wears nothing but a soiled and faded gown, and perhaps a pair of brass or silver ear-rings. When she is a maiden the gauchos will kill each other out of jealousy, but when she becomes a wife or a mistress she is kicked about the camp, beaten, and abandoned at her master’s will.

All the finery in the family goes on the husband’s back and saddle. In place of trousers he wears a chiropa and calconcillas. The former is a square piece of cloth, drawn about the thighs and fastened around the waist with a belt. It descends as far as the knee, from which the rest of the leg is covered with the calconcillas—a wide pair of cotton drawers, handsomely and gaudily embroidered, and ornamented with two or three wide frills. The feet are incased in a pair of botas de potro, made of the skin of the leg of a colt rubbed until it is as soft as buckskin. The heels are decorated with a pair of immense iron or silver spurs weighing a pound or so each.

Instead of the sombrero and velvet jacket of the Mexican cavalier, the gaucho wears a hat of pita fibre—such as is commonly known as a Panama hat, and which may have cost him as much as would a dozen cattle—and a poncho. But in his saddle lies his wealth, for all his savings and gambling gains go to decorate that emblem of his trade. Silver ornaments for bridle and saddle are legal tender in exchange for anything salable wherever the gaucho goes, and what is his seat by day and his pillow by night he always uses as a sort of savings-bank. I have seen saddles worth a thousand dollars, with solid silver stirrups, pommels, and ornaments weighing as much as a man. A pair of silver spurs are worth anywhere from fifty to one hundred dollars, according to their size and the workmanship upon them. Stirrups of solid silver, made in the form of a heelless slipper, are very common, and the belles of the cities of the Argentine Republic consider them essential to a riding costume. Stirrups are often made of brass, and when highly polished add a unique feature to the accoutrements of an Argentine caballero. His belt is usually covered with a string of silver dollars, and all his buttons are of silver.

The Argentine poncho is a great institution, and if some fashionable swell in New York would set the style by wearing one, it would add greatly to the comfort of our people, as well as to their convenience. There never was a garment better adapted for out-of-door use, and particularly for plainsmen or those who are much in the saddle. It is a blanket of ordinary size, with a slit in the centre through which the head goes. It rests upon the shoulders, and its folds hang down as far as the knee, allowing free use of the arms, but always furnishing them and the rest of the body with protection. In summer it shields the wearer from the heat of the sun, while in winter it is as warm as an ulster, and in rainy days takes the place of an umbrella. The native is never without it, summer or winter, afoot or on horseback, at home or abroad. It stays by him like his shadow, and serves him as an overcoat by day and as a blanket by night.

Ponchos were formerly made of the hair of the vicuña, an animal which is a sort of cross between the camel and the antelope, and is found in the Bolivian Andes. Before the Conquest vicuña skin was the royal ermine of the Incas, and none but persons of princely blood were allowed to wear it. A vicuña poncho is as soft as velvet, and as durable as steel. You can find plenty of them in the Argentine Republic and in Chili that have been, like grandfather’s clock, in the old families for two centuries or more, and have been handed down with the family jewels as heirlooms. They never wear out, and, like lace, improve with age. But genuine vicuña ponchos are hard to get, and very expensive, costing often as much as a camel’s-hair shawl, as the animal is becoming scarce. The color is a delicate fawn, and will not change when wet, which is a sure test of its genuineness. Most of the fine ponchos worn nowadays are made of lamb’s-wool in Manchester, England, and cannot be distinguished from vicuña except by experts; but tons after tons of a common sort, made of cotton and wool, of gaudy colors, are now imported annually, and answer the purpose of the gaucho just as well, while the bright tints please his taste better.

The gaucho always carries tobacco, cigarette paper, flint, and steel. He is an inveterate smoker, but confines himself to cigarettes, which he rolls at full gallop. He does everything on horseback, when he chooses—eats and sleeps, catches fish, carries water from the well in a pitcher or urn on his head, and even attends mass on horseback—at least, the nearest he ever gets to the altar is to ride up to the door of a church and sit in the saddle while the service is being celebrated.

A gaucho child is put into the saddle at as early an age as an American child is put into breeches. When he is eight or ten years old he will ride anything less than a tornado; and after he reaches his growth, if he is thrown from a horse he is disgraced forever; nothing he can do will recover for him the respect of the community. He is an ostracized and despised creature, as hopelessly lost as a fallen star.

The animals the gauchos ride are splendid native stallions, as swift as the wind and as enduring as time. Fifty or sixty miles a day is a gentle jaunt, for a well-bred pampa horse will gallop from sunrise to sunset without throwing a fleck of foam. During the recent war against the Patagonian Indians a gaucho courier made six hundred miles in forty-eight hours with only four changes of horses.

One of the sports of the gauchos is “breaking horses,” cruel and dangerous, like all their amusements. Two gauchos mount, and taking positions forty or fifty yards apart, at a given signal start at a full run and come together breast to breast, like two battering-rams, with a shock that often kills the animals, and nearly always unseats one or both of the riders. Another is called “crowding horses.” Two mounted gauchos place their stallions side by side, and crowd them against each other to see which will yield. A third game is to place across the entrance to a corral or other enclosure a bar about as high as a horse’s head. The gaucho mounts, retires to a distance of forty rods or so, rushes to the entrance at full gallop, and, without checking the speed of his horse, leaps out of the saddle when the bar is reached, throws himself under it, and regains his seat, passing under the bar without touching the ground.

The skill with which the gaucho handles the lasso is an everlasting source of wonder. While at full gallop he can throw a coil of raw-hide with as much accuracy as an expert rifleman can crack a glass ball, and will catch a running cow or sheep or hog, lassoing the horn or foot or head at will. Duels with the lasso are often fought, the contestants throwing nooses at the heads of each other, sparring and dodging like pugilists, until one or the other is caught and dragged out of the saddle. If the duel is an earnest one, as often occurs, and the gauchos are determined, the man who is caught is often dragged, with a noose around his neck, behind a galloping horse until the life is choked and pounded out of his body.

The Argentine Republic will some day become a formidable rival of the United States. It has vast natural resources similar to ours, and is developing them rapidly. It has a magnificent fluvial system like that of the Mississippi, fertile plains like those of Illinois and Iowa, boundless pampas stretching for twelve hundred miles to the mountains, and affording pasturage for millions of cattle, horses, and sheep, like the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico. Towards the north, into Paraguay, which, although an

independent State, is a tributary to the Argentine Republic, are lands that will produce sugar, cotton, rice, and other semi-tropical staples like those of our own sunny South. There is also an almost unlimited supply of timber, hard and soft woods, easy of access, within reach of mighty streams; and the forests are greater than man knows, for they have never been measured. The latitude of the Argentine Republic corresponds with that of the United States; its climate is similar to that of our great West, and the people have an activity, an enterprise, and a patriotism that remind the North American of home.

Where rivers do not run the people are pushing railroads, and in a few years they will have a railway system second only to that of the United States. They are offering tempting inducements to settlers, and immigration is very large. The increase in population during the last fifteen years was one hundred and fifty-four per cent., while that of the United States was seventy-nine per cent. From Germany, Norway, and Switzerland, but especially from Italy, come ship-loads of hardy, thrifty, industrious men every week, and the passenger mole at Buenos Ayres resembles Castle Garden. The Government aids and encourages immigration more than does ours. The immigrant vessel that arrives at New York is required to pay “head-money” on every passenger it brings. At Buenos Ayres the vessel receives “head-money” from the Government as an inducement to bring passengers. The fare from Europe to the river Plate, or the Rio Plata, that great stream which divides the continent, is about the same as to the United States; and although I do not believe that the class of immigrants which arrives there is equal in intelligence and the other qualities that constitute good citizens to that which comes to the United States, every family arriving means so many more acres developed and an increase of population. They do not at once become citizens, as in this country. This is particularly the case with the Italians, who seldom take out naturalization papers. Foreigners are allowed to vote at municipal elections, and therefore the temptation to citizenship is not so strong; but nevertheless they go to make up the body politic, and as they are exempt from military service, the country is always sure of having its fields tilled and its crops gathered, whether there is a war or not.

In 1882, 51,503 immigrants arrived at Buenos Ayres from Europe; in 1883 the number increased to 63,242; in 1884, to 92,700; in 1887, to 138,000. In 1888 it was estimated that over 600,000 foreigners had settled in the country during the preceding ten years, and it is known that the population of the city of Buenos Ayres has doubled since 1872.

The greater portion of these immigrants are Italians, who go directly into the agricultural regions, take up land, and cultivate small but increasing farms. Some are Germans and Scandinavians, but more are French. The latter usually settle in the cities, and become small tradesmen or servants. Large numbers of English, Scotch, and Irish capitalists are securing estancias, and raising sheep and cattle upon a large scale. It is estimated that ten million dollars have been invested in this way within the last three years, and one Englishman alone has expended a million. The usual plan, as in the United States, is to organize companies, with headquarters in London, Glasgow, and other large cities, and send out capable superintendents. The cattle interests of the Argentine Republic, like those in our country, will ultimately be controlled by a few large corporations.

The colonization plan is popular there, and so far quite successful. Within the last five years 1,126,000 acres of land have been taken up by colonies, representing a population of 82,000 souls, mostly Italians and Swiss. The English and German immigrants will not colonize. The railroad development of the country is very rapid, and lines are now being constructed in various directions from Buenos Ayres and other commercial centres.

The result of the internal improvements made under this policy is plain to be seen. Within the last five years the cattle have been driven back gradually upon the pampas, towns have sprung up, and farms have been opened in territory that was inaccessible before the railroad improvements began. There is a natural tendency to overbuild, as has been the case in this country; but so far only the needs of the present have been met, and the roads have become at once self-sustaining. The prospective roads, however, are very numerous, and concessions for thousands of miles have already been granted on the most liberal terms. Two of these concessions are held by citizens of the United States.

Five years ago the Argentine Republic was importing wheat and flour from Chili and the United States, and Uruguay only raised enough for her own consumption. The wheat crop of Uruguay in 1878 was 2,000,000 bushels; in 1880, 2,600,000 bushels; in 1882, 3,000,000 bushels; in 1884, 4,000,000 bushels; and the increase in the corn product was equally rapid. In 1854 only 375,000 acres were under cultivation in the Argentine Republic; in 1864 the cultivated area was 506,000 acres; in 1874 it was 825,000 acres. In 1879 the boom commenced, and in 1884 there were 4,260,000 acres under cultivation—an increase of 3,435,000 acres in ten years. In 1874 there were 271,000 acres in wheat; in 1884, 1,717,000 acres—an increase of 533 per cent. In 1874 there were 554,000 acres in other crops; in 1884 the area jumped to 2,543,000 acres—an increase of 360 per cent. The average yield of wheat throughout the republic in 1884 was eight and one-half bushels to the acre, and the total crop was nearly eleven million bushels. It was in 1880 that the importation of wheat ceased, the amount purchased of Chili that year being 11,330 bushels. It is estimated that the area in wheat the present year is as large as 5,000,000 acres, but no official returns have been received.

Wheat and flour are not the only agricultural products exported by the Argentine Republic. In 1884 the exports of corn were 1,160,000 bushels; of barley, 70,000 bushels; of baled hay, 11,460,000 kilograms; of linseed, 23,061,000 kilograms; of peanuts, 2,617,292 kilograms; of potatoes, 100,000 bushels. The production of sugar is becoming a very important industry, and is now almost sufficient to supply the domestic demand, the yield last year amounting to nearly 50,000,000 pounds. The increased area under cultivation and the improved methods of reducing the cane will soon make sugar an article of export. There are a number of Cuban exiles in the northern provinces and in Paraguay cultivating sugar and tobacco on the Cuban system with marked success.

It is estimated that the extent of agricultural land in the Argentine Republic equals six hundred thousand square miles—an area equal to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Missouri, Iowa, and Wisconsin, and capable of producing every crop in those States; and if the increase of population continues at its present rate they will hold a population of seven millions by the close of the century. The market which we shall first lose by Argentine competition in breadstuffs will be Brazil, where we now sell about $5,000,000 worth of flour annually. The Argentine Republic will also become our rival in the West India trade, which now absorbs most of its meat product; and we will soon feel the effect of the cheapness of Argentine products in the European market, where considerable beef, mutton, and grain, is now sent in exchange for manufactured merchandise. But in pork, lard, and dairy products the Argentinians cannot compete with us. The country does not seem to be adapted to hog-raising, and while there is always fresh pork to be had, the supply of bacon, hams, and lard is included in the imports. Nearly all the cured pork comes from the United States, but most of the hams and bacons are disguised under English trade-marks. The merchants here say that American packers do not prepare their meats in a proper way to get this market, and that our cured pork first goes to England, and there receives some treatment and a particular style of wrapping which make it salable in the River Plate country. There is some native butter made, but none is exported, the climate not being suitable to the dairy business. Most of the imported butter, as well as the cheese, comes from Holland and Copenhagen. The butter is packed in one-pound tins, hermetically sealed, and will keep any length of time if properly handled. There is no American butter or cheese to be had there, not even oleomargarine, an article that is unknown to the people. A comparatively small amount of lard and butter is consumed, however, as oil is commonly used for cooking. Most of the cooks are French and Italian, in both private and public houses, and use the same methods they were accustomed to in their respective countries.

The wool product of the Argentine Republic is not so valuable as that of Australia, although larger, because it is coarser, and contains a much greater percentage of dirt and grease. The people complain that our duty on wool, being levied by weight, is an unjust discrimination against their product, and in favor of the product of Australia, which is true. The only shipments to this country are of the coarser varieties, to be used in the manufacture of carpets, and we take annually about a million dollars’ worth. The great bulk of the product goes to Belgium, and is consumed in the Brussels carpet mills, the export to that country in 1883 amounting to $12,148,000. Some attempt is being made to improve the quality of the wool by grading up the flocks with imported bucks, but the judgment of the sheep-growers is generally against it, as the present quality is in demand for carpet manufacture.

The sheepskins go to Germany and France, but many of the hides come to the United States, being our largest item of import from the Argentine Republic. The same objection that is made to improving the sheep is made against the improvement of the breeds of cattle, as the native hides are heavier, and command a better price than the Durhams, Herefords, and Jerseys that have been introduced. The imported breeds yield a better quality of beef, but a less valuable hide, leaving the profit from the animal about the same. The number of hides exported in 1885 was less than usual, because of the demand for stock for new ranches; and the amount of jerked beef was smaller.

This jerked beef is the flesh of the animal cut into thin strips and dried in the sun, a weak brine being commonly used to hasten evaporation and arrest decay. It is packed in large bales, and sent to Brazil and the West Indies, where it is the staple food of the slaves and the laboring classes. We have nothing to compare with it in the United States except the jerked buffalo meat of the Indians, which is prepared in a similar manner. Of this product $1,710,000 worth was sent to Brazil last year, and $1,143,000 worth to Cuba.

No attempt has ever been made by our beef-producers to compete with the Argentine Republic and Uruguay—the only exporters of jerked beef—and it would undoubtedly be difficult for them to do so, as the cost of the cattle is so much greater in this country. Their transportation facilities to the West Indies are better than ours, notwithstanding the difference in distance, and a steamer leaves Buenos Ayres for the Brazilian ports every day. Various endeavors to introduce jerked beef into Europe have proved unsuccessful, but the attempt has not been abandoned. Samples are prepared with more than ordinary care, and the article is sold for five cents a pound, but it does not seem to be popular.

The Argentinians are beginning to ship large quantities of fresh beef to Europe in refrigerator ships, one or more leaving

Buenos Ayres every week, and the new steamers of the English and French lines contain compartments built especially for this purpose. They do not use ice, but have a cooling process similar to that adopted on transatlantic steamers. Companies are already formed to slaughter and ship beef in this way, and the business is growing so rapidly that it will soon be felt by our exporters. The whole carcass is shipped, and only choice beef is selected. They cannot now compete with us in quality, but their cattle are so much cheaper, and are being graded up by the introduction of improved stock from England. Their cattle are not sold by weight, but by the head, being graded according to size and condition, prime steers bringing only fourteen or fifteen dollars, the next quality twelve dollars, and the poorest ones ten dollars per head. Within a radius of fifty miles from Buenos Ayres are ranches larger than any in Texas, and cattle can be driven almost on the steamers in the harbor, so that the cost of transportation and shrinkage is merely nominal, while our ranches are from two to four thousand miles from the sea.

Fat steers can be set down at the slaughter-houses, not fifty miles from the harbor of Buenos Ayres, at a maximum price of fifteen dollars a head, and they are high now because of the demand for cattle to stock new ranches. The cost of transportation from the ranches in the Argentine Republic to Covent Garden market in London is never greater, and often less, than from Kansas City to New York; so that our producers, in addition to the difference in the price of beef, will have the freight from New York to Liverpool against them.

Sheep are also killed and frozen for exportation to Europe, a single saldero or slaughter-house, at Campana, fifty miles from Buenos Ayres, shipping five hundred carcasses daily. They are hung for an hour after killing, and then removed to a chilling-room, where the temperature is slightly above the freezing-point; from this they are taken to a still colder chamber, where they are left until as hard as stone. Then they are packed in canvas bags, and sent to the steamer in refrigerator cans. Live sheep in condition for killing are worth only three or four dollars for the best quality, and ordinary mutton is sold in the city market for seven cents a pound. In 1879 we exported ninety million pounds of dressed beef. In 1884 this total had been nearly doubled, with a fair prospect of continued increase. In 1884 the Argentine Republic exported sixty-five million pounds of dressed beef, with an increase quite as rapid as ours. In 1884 there were 49,000,000 head of cattle in the United States, and 30,000,000 in the Argentine Republic. The single province of Buenos Ayres has just twice as many cattle as Texas, and as many as Texas and all the territories of the United States combined. Then across the River Plata is the little republic of Uruguay, about as large as Iowa, with 500,000 people and 8,000,000 cattle, and presenting about the same ratio of increase.

The cattlemen of the Argentine Republic and Uruguay are going into the business of canning meats, and will soon compete with us in that line. It is not generally known that Liebig’s extract of beef, so largely used in hospitals as a tonic, is made in Uruguay, for the jars in which the tonic reaches the market bear trademarks to make it appear to come from England. The extract was invented by Dr. Liebig, the celebrated chemist, nearly half a century ago, but its process passed into the hands of an English company in 1866, which then removed the establishment from Antwerp to Fray Bentos, Uruguay. This company is now erecting buildings for the purpose of canning meats, and have Chicago men in charge of the work.

Although horses are very cheap, there is a good deal of profit in raising them, and the stock is being improved very rapidly by the introduction of thorough-bred English stallions. The native Argentine horse is almost the counterpart of the North American broncho, tough, swift, and enduring, and when crossed with better blood loses none of his good qualities, but improves in size and appearance. They are usually kept in droves of five hundred, and run wild the year round, the stallions being turned loose among them at the proper season—about one to twenty mares. When the colts are two years old they are taken from the drove and kept separate until three or four years old, when the fillies are turned back with the mares, and the stallions broken for service. Mares are never broken, but run wild on the range from the time they are foaled until they are driven to the saldero at the age of twelve or fifteen years. A three-year-old mare is worth seven or eight dollars for breeding purposes—not as much as a heifer—while a fifteen-year-old brings three or four dollars at the saldero. Her hide is shipped to Europe, her bones turned into bone ash, and her hoofs sent to the glue factory.

The best kind of an improved saddle-horse, such as would bring two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars in the States, can be bought in the Argentine Republic for seventy-five dollars, fine carriage-horses for fifty dollars each, and work-horses for twenty or twenty-five dollars. The street-car companies pay about ten dollars a head for their stock. Everybody rides; even the old adage about a beggar on horseback is realized there.

There is a curious story about an island in the River Plata which was a horse ranch in early Spanish times. The animals became so numerous that there was not grass enough to feed them, and no demand for their export. The owners decided to reduce their stock in a barbarous way, and when the grass was dry they set fire to it. Every horse on the island was burned to death except those that ran into the river and were drowned. The stench was so great that navigation was almost entirely suspended on the river. The result of this method of reducing stock was a little more complete than the owners anticipated, so when the grass grew up again they had to buy stallions and mares and start anew. Singularly enough, every animal placed on the island since that fire has died of a mysterious disease, and no colt has been foaled there for one hundred and fifty years. Various breeds of stock have been tried, but never a hoof has left the island alive. Three months there finishes them. The island was unoccupied for fifty or sixty years, but is now used as a cattle ranch, and horned stock do not appear to be subject to the mysterious malady.

MONTEVIDEO.

THE CAPITAL OF URUGUAY.

Not three out of four men in the Congress of the United States could have answered the question correctly; and if the embryonic diplomatist had entered into an inquiry about the resources of the country, and the number and character of the people, he could not have found a man in our National Legislature, on the Supreme Bench, or in the Cabinet, who could have given him the information correctly, and he might have sought in vain for it in our modern school geographies. Yet Uruguay is one of the most enterprising, progressive, and prosperous nations on this hemisphere, growing faster in proportion to its area and population than the United States, and is beginning to be a formidable competitor of ours in the provision markets of Europe.

The country which appears on the map as Uruguay is known in South America as “the Banda Oriental,” with a strong accent upon the last syllable, which, being interpreted, means “the Eastern Strip,” as it was once a part of the Argentine Republic, which in those days was known as “the Banda Occidental.” Uruguay is the old Indian name, and the legal one, being recognized by the Constitution. The inhabitants are known as “Orientals,” with a strong accent on the “tals.” Uruguay is the smallest independent State in South America, and in its agricultural and pastoral resources the richest, with undiscovered possibilities in the mineral way. In the good old colony times the Viceroy of Spain and the Jesuits used to get a great deal of gold and silver—placer washings—from the interior of Uruguay, but during the long struggle for independence, and the sixty years of revolution that followed, the operation of the mines was suspended, and their localities forgotten or obliterated by the people, who were mercilessly robbed of the wealth they gathered in that way. They found it economical to do nothing, for as fast as they accumulated a few dollars they were robbed of it, and those who were suspected of knowing where the gold and silver came from were persecuted until they disclosed the secret, or else died with it concealed in their breasts.

No country ever suffered more from war than Uruguay, as for almost a hundred years a struggle of arms, under one excuse or another, has been going on within her borders, and until the present despotism—which makes only a mask of the nominal democracy it pretends—came into power, there was a change of government, or an attempt to secure one, under almost every new moon. Although Uruguay is as much of an absolute monarchy to-day as exists on the face of the earth, her people have peace and prosperity, her development is being hastened by large works of internal improvement, her population is increasing rapidly, her commerce is assuming immense proportions, and she is making more rapid strides towards greatness than any other country in South America, except her neighbor across the River Plate. With a republican form of government guaranteed by the constitution, with civil and religious freedom as the foundation-stone of the nation, the will of the President has been usually as absolute as was that of the ex-King Thebaw.