One cold June evening, with more than a hundred days and eight hundred miles of travel in Chile and the Argentine behind me, I took final leave of Buenos Aires—not without regret, for all its ostentatious artificialities. Or it may be that my sorrow was at parting from the good friends with whom I had been wont to gather toward sunset in the café across from the consulate for a “cocktail San Martin,” one of whom now volunteered to see me as far as Montevideo just across the river—a hundred and twenty miles away. Out the Paseo de Colón the Dársena Sud was ablaze with the lights of the several competing steamers, equal to the best on our Great Lakes, which nightly cross the mouth of the Plata. For the two cities are closely related. In summer Porteños flee to Montevideo’s beaches; in winter the white lights of Buenos Aires attract many Uruguayans; the year round business men hurry back and forth. Aboard the Viena of the Mihanovich Line I watched the South American metropolis shrink to a thin row of lights strewn unbrokenly for many miles along the edge of the horizon, like illuminated needle-points where sea and sky had been sewed together. Wide and shallow, exposed here to all the raging winds from the south, the Paraná Guazú (“River like a Sea”) often shows itself worthy of its aboriginal name in this winter season. I did not wake, however, until the red sun was rising over Montevideo and her Cerro and we were gliding up to a capacious wharf.

It was fitting that my sight-seeing should begin with the little rocky hill surmounted by an old Spanish fortress which is the first and last landmark of the traveling Uruguayan. To the Cerro, barely five hundred feet high, yet standing conspicuously above all the rest of the surrounding world, Montevideo owes both its name and its situation. When the Portuguese navigator Magalhães, whom we call Magellan, sailed up what he hoped might prove a passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a sailor on lookout, catching sight of this little eminence, cried out, “Monte vid’ eu! I see a hill!” On it was built the first fort against the Charrúa Indians, and its value both as a place of refuge and as a stone quarry made it natural that the chief town of the region should have grown up about it. The part the Cerro has since played in Uruguayan history is out of all keeping with its insignificant size; the poems that have been written about it are as legion as the legends which hover over it. It holds chief place in the national coat-of-arms and in the hearts of homesick sons of Uruguay. Never in all the rebellions and revolutions since its discovery has the Cerro been taken by force of arms; never will the people of Montevideo tire of telling haughty Porteños that Buenos Aires has nothing like it.

From its summit all Montevideo may be seen in picturesque detail and far-spread entirety, the point where the Plata, deep brown to the last, for all its sea-like width, meets the Atlantic and flows away with it over the horizon, then, swinging round the circle, the faintly undulating plains, broken here and there by low purplish hillocks, of the “Purple Land.” It is a pity that the Cerro, certainly not impregnable as a fortress, has not been made a place of residence, or, better still, transformed into such a park as Santa Lucía of Santiago. The fashionable section of Montevideo, however, has moved in the other direction, leaving the famous hill, with its garrison-sheltering old Spanish fort and its lighthouse, to squatters’ shanties, rubbish heaps, and capering goats, not to mention the insistent odors of a neighboring saladero where cattle are reduced to salt beef.

In many ways the Uruguayan capital is the most attractive city of South America; as a place to live in, contrasted with a place in which to make a living, it is superior to many American cities. There is a peculiar quality of restfulness about it unknown to its large and excited rival across the Plata, something distinctive which easily makes up for the handicap of being so near a world metropolis as to be overshadowed by it. For another thing, it is nearer the mouth of the river, making it a true ocean port and the most nearly a seaside resort of any national capital in Spanish-America. Built on a series of rocky knolls, roughly suggesting the fingers of a rude hand, the charm of its location is enhanced by undulations that recall by contrast the deadly flatness of Buenos Aires. The old town, all that existed two generations ago, is crowded compactly together in true Spanish fashion on what might be called the forefinger, though it had unlimited space to spread landward. On this rocky peninsula the cross streets are narrow and fall into the sea at either end, for here it is but eight or ten short blocks from the Plata to the Atlantic. On one side is an improved harbor with steamers of many nationalities, on the other is a bay lined with splendid beaches. Like that of its great neighbor, the harbor of Montevideo requires frequent dredging, and its problem is quite the contrary of that in Valparaiso and other bottomless west-coast ports.

Along with its seascape, this situation gives the city a very exhilarating air, especially in the winter season. Then it is often penetratingly cold, and frequently so windy that not only the most securely fastened hat but the hair beneath it threatens to abandon the wearer. On the day of my landing a windstorm caused several deaths and much property damage. Among other things it took the sheet-iron roof off a building in which four fishermen had taken refuge and as these ran away the roof followed and fell upon them. In the third story of the frame hotel that housed me I often woke from a dream of being rocked in a ship at sea, and Punta Brava in a far corner of Montevideo’s suburbs was rightly named indeed on windy days. Fierce thunderstorms also marked my stay in the capital, some of them accompanied by the mightiest of flashes and crashes, during which water fell in such torrents that one could scarcely see across a narrow street—tropical storms they might have been called, had it not kept right on raining long after it had done raging.

Uruguay claims 1,400,000 inhabitants, of whom all but the million are said to live in the capital, though the lack of a definite census makes guessing a popular pastime. But the city is much larger in extent than this number would imply. One can ride for hours on the lines of its two excellent tramway companies without once leaving town. Even in the older sections Montevideo is substantially and handsomely built, with many good modern monuments. Only a few old landmarks are left, such as the purely Spanish cathedral on the Plaza de la Constitución, for Uruguay seems to consider her first demand for independence in 1808 the beginning of her history and makes no effort to preserve the memories of her colonial or pre-colombian days. For all that, the capital has retained a considerable atmosphere of old Spain, a distinctly seventeenth-century echo, along with her South American style of up-to-datedness. The best houses along the fine avenues are generally in colonial style, an almost Moorish one-story building, with lofty ceilings and space-devouring patios. Especially in the roomy suburbs do the dwellings stop abruptly at one story, so abruptly sometimes as to suggest that ruin, or at least a laborer’s strike, has suddenly befallen the owner. The real reason is probably because it would be hard to marry off one’s daughters if their “dragons” had to begin their wooing by shouting up to the second or third floor windows.

Iron-work grilles are universal, and many house-doors have brass-lined peepholes through which the resident can see whether the man knocking is worth admitting. Gardens with subtropical plants are numerous and promenades under palm-trees by no means unusual. Especially along the edge of the sea there are over-ornate quintas, alternating with washerwoman shanties; but there is little oppressive poverty in Montevideo, and at the same time little of the conspicuous plutocracy so familiar across the river, a lack of contrast which adds, perhaps, to the monotony of many a street vista. Poor ranchos are by no means rare in the farther outskirts, but these are open-air and almost clean slums compared with the congested sections of our own large cities. Out beyond the older town are park improvements on an extensive scale. The Prado, with its great Rose Gardens, said to include hundreds of varieties, though but few were in bloom among the dead leaves of June, is worth coming far to see. Here real hills break the monotony of the landward vista and make artificial, over-polished Palermo with its deadly flatness seem disagreeable by contrast. The tale goes that a group of wealthy Porteños once set on foot a movement to buy one of Uruguay’s hills, carry it across the river, and set it up in one of their own plazas. No doubt they could have reimbursed themselves by charging admission and rights of ascension, but like many ambitious Latin-American plans this one died prematurely.

In general Uruguayans are well-dressed, and comfortably well-to-do, if one may judge from appearances; compared with roto Chile the capital is immaculate. “Beachcombers” are rare in this only important port of the country and beggars are seldom seen, though there is a plague of petty vendors. It had been like landing on a hostile shore to make our way through the amazingly impudent mob of hoarse-voiced cabmen, newsboys, hotel touts, lottery-ticket vendors, vagrants, pickpockets, useless policemen, and idle citizens into the tranquil waters of a Sunday morning in the Uruguayan capital; but this common waterfront experience did not last long. There is something extremely pleasant about most of the modest, unpretentious Fluvenses, as the people of Montevideo call themselves, a term we might translate as “rivereens.” They have, as a rule, a natural politeness, a frank and open simplicity all but unknown across the river, a leisurely, contemplative philosophy that will not be broken down even by the material prosperity of a country that is making perhaps the most intelligent use of its situation and resources of all the republics of Latin-America. It is said that the Uruguayan came mainly from the Basque provinces and the Canary Islands, while the argentino is chiefly of southern Spanish origin; that the former brought with him and still retains a sturdier, less facile, but more dependable, more thoroughgoing character. Those of wide commercial experience in the continent say that the Uruguayan is the most honest man south of Panama; every foreign resident I questioned rated Uruguay as the most lovable country in South America—and as a rule foreign residents do not see the best side first. Personally, I found the Uruguayan more sincere, less selfish, somewhat more solid and at the same time more of an impulsive idealist than his materialistic neighbors across the Plata. His country is far enough south to escape the indolence of the tropics, far enough north to make life itself seem of equal importance with making a living. With every natural advantage of the Argentine, except the doubtful one of size, and a more frugal and industrious population not greatly modified by recent immigration, Uruguay is still peopled by a kind of colonial Spaniard, somewhat improved by the breezy, generous quality of his New World domain.

To those who approach it from the south, where they are almost unknown, negroes are noticeable in Montevideo and become more so as one proceeds northward through the country. No doubt they drift down from Brazil and, finding the wide Plata an obstacle, seldom reach its southern shores. Yet they are so few, and slavery is so slightly connected with them in the Uruguayan mind, that there is scarcely a “color-line.” The daughter of a former Uruguayan minister to Washington told me she had always informed inquiring Americans that there were no negroes in Uruguay, and had only discovered her error upon her return with a sharpened color sense. In Uruguay people are often called by nicknames of color, ample proof that there is no sensitiveness about the hue of the skin. These popular terms, usually preceded by the affectionate “Ché” of southeastern South America, run all the gamut of tints,—“Hola, Ché morocha.” “Diga, Ché trigueña!” “Cómo va, Ché negrito?” It is a common experience of visiting Anglo-Saxons to hear themselves addressed by familiar persons as “Ché rubio,” literally “red-head,” as a complimentary distinction from the universally black-haired natives. The latter, particularly the women, are almost always of plump form and comely face, whatever their color, with few of the cadaverous types so numerous in the north temperate zone. Uruguayan women, by the way, are perhaps a trifle more Moorish in their family life than those of Buenos Aires, but they are not wholly unaware of the “advanced” atmosphere of their environment.

Buenos Aires has long had the reputation of being the most expensive city on earth, probably because it is large enough to be famous, for certainly its neighbor Montevideo is still less of a poor man’s paradise. For one thing, the difference in basic coins favors the Uruguayan profiteer. Many things which cost an Argentine peso in Buenos Aires cost an Uruguayan peso, or two and a half times as much, in Montevideo. It is highly to the credit of Uruguay, and a constant source of pride to her citizens, that her dollar is the only one in the world normally worth more than our own; but it is painful for the visitor to be forced to purchase at so high a price pesos that will seldom buy what a quarter should. In hotel charges, public conveyances, laundries, lottery-tickets, and other necessities of life the Uruguayan dollar seems to go little farther than that of the Argentine, and certainly it has nothing like the purchasing power of our own. Not only are there substantial coins in circulation, instead of more or less ragged scraps of paper redeemable only in the imagination, or coins so debased that only a careless speaker would refer to them as silver, but any gold coin is legal tender in Uruguay. Throw down an English sovereign in the smallest shop in the most isolated corner of the republic and it is instantly accepted at a fixed value. An American $10 gold piece passed without argument as $9.66 Uruguayan, though our dollar bill was rated at only ninety centésimos before the war. I chanced to be in a pulpería far out in the interior of Uruguay when the shopkeeper asked the large estate owner of the vicinity to take a hundred pesos to the capital for him. By and by the pulpero returned from a back room with a small handful of gold and a bit of paper on which he had figured out the sum he wished to send. He handed the estanciero several English sovereigns, some German 20-mark pieces, a Brazilian gold coin, an American half-eagle, two French napoleons, and the rest of the sum in Uruguayan paper, silver, and nickel. There was no argument whatever as to the “exchange” on the foreign coins; each had its fixed value anywhere in Uruguay. It was something like what a universal coinage will be when the world grows honest and intelligent enough to establish one—though of course our bankers would not allow any such system to become universal, even did the perversity of human nature make it possible. This ready exchange, and the possibility of turning Uruguayan paper into gold upon demand, are among the reasons which make the Uruguayan dollar normally the most valuable in the world.

Down on one of its beaches the city of Montevideo runs a sumptuous hotel and an official Monte Carlo. Here it brings ambassadors and “distinguished visitors” for afternoon tea or formal banquets, gives balls, keeps an immense staff of liveried menials at public expense the year round, and during the season takes money away from the wealthy “sports” from across the river with an efficiency not exceeded anywhere along the Riviera. More than one passing observer has found this an excellent means of taxing the rich for the benefit of the poor, since the profits of the Casino go into the municipal treasury. As much can scarcely be said for the lottery run by the federal government, with its incessant appeal to the gambling instincts of all classes of the population. The tickets assert that “the lottery is run for the Hospital de Caridad and its profits are destined for exclusively beneficent ends,” but the statement rings as hollow as many similar attempts on the part of Latin-America to coax itself to believe that there is something good in an essentially vicious institution.

Music and drama flourish during the winter in Montevideo; uncounted cinemas perpetrate their piffle in and out of season. An excellent Italian dramatic company, headed by the emotional actress Lyda Borelli, sometimes, and probably not unjustly, called the successor of Duse, was playing at the “Solis” during my visit—and bringing out in pitiless contrast the insufferable barnstormers usually seen on the South American stage. The opera season is in August, when that half of stars and troupe who do not cross to Santiago de Chile are on their way back from Buenos Aires to New York or Europe. Orchestra seats are then at least $12 each and boxes from $80 up, but as one must have a box for the season or be rated a social nonentity, there are sad rumors of Fluvense families scrimping all the rest of the year in order to buy their opera tickets. Naturally this makes them somewhat exacting and capable of giving an unpleasant reception to singers tired out at the end of a long season. Caruso himself has been roundly hissed in Montevideo. Plays and the opera begin at twenty-one o’clock. As in Italy and Brazil, and more recently in the Argentine, the law requires the use of the excellent twenty-four-hour system in all public buildings, and many a private timepiece has followed suit. The decree was new and throughout the city were many pasted-over signs such as:

Somewhere in South America I met a Dane who contended that a small country, like a man of modest wealth, is better off than a great nation. Uruguay bears out the statement. We have been accustomed to speak of the “A.B.C.” countries of South America as having the only stable and progressive governments in that continent. Only its slight size, as compared with its gigantic neighbors, has caused Uruguay to be overlooked in the formation of that list. As its near neighbor and relative, Paraguay, is perhaps at the bottom of the scale governmentally, so Uruguay, by its national spirit, its energetic character, and its advanced legislation is probably at the top, more nearly fulfilling the requirements of an independent state than any other nation south of the United States. Certainly it is superior to both Chile and Brazil in everything but size, and it is doubtful whether even the Argentine is governed with more intelligence and general honesty. Once as troublesome a state as any in Latin-America, Uruguay has settled down and developed her natural resources until she is noted for her financial stability, and revolutions are memories of earlier generations. Were she a large country, instead of being merely a choice morsel of land smaller than some counties of Texas, there is little doubt that she would stand at least as high as any of her neighbors—or would size, always an obstacle to good government in Latin-America, bring her down from her high level?

Uruguay has not always been a small country, nor for that matter a country at all. In the olden days the Banda Oriental, or “Eastern Bank,” of the River Uruguay was a province of the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires. To this day the official name of the country is “La República Oriental del Uruguay,” and the people still call themselves “Orientals.” In 1800 the whole “Eastern Bank” had but 40,000 inhabitants, of whom 15,000 lived in Montevideo. When Napoleon overran Spain and the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires revolted, the Banda Oriental remained loyal, thus opening the first breach between the two sections of the colony. Not long afterward the “grito de libertad” sounded in the interior of the province, and the man who was destined to become the national hero of Uruguay, the “First Oriental,” the “Protector of the Oriental Provinces,” soon took the head of the revolt.

José Gervasio Artigas was a mere estanciero of the “Eastern Bank” until he took up soldiering, some time before the “cry of liberty.” In 1811 he left the Spanish army and fled to Buenos Aires, but soon became an advocate of complete Uruguayan independence, a patriot or a traitor, according to the side of the Plata on which the speaker lives. Having won their freedom from Spain, the argentinos were finally defeated by the “Oriental” general, Rivera, and Artigas became ruler not only of the present Uruguay but of the now Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, Santa Fé, and Córdoba, these having formed the “Federal League” in opposition to the Buenos Aires Directory. To read Uruguayan school-books, “the Tucumán congress was secretly working to establish a monarchy on the Plata, and our five provinces sent no delegates.” One by one, however, the other provinces returned to the new mother country, only the “Eastern Bank” persisting in its isolation and demand for complete autonomy. Meanwhile Artigas was in exile—and at one time was offered a pension by the United States—but finally, in 1825, a band of “Orientals” besieged Montevideo and Uruguay declared her full independence.

The Uruguayan flag remains the same as that of the Argentine, with a golden sun superimposed. The revolutions of 1863 and 1870, each two years long, are the only serious disturbances that have occurred in the “República Oriental” since its independence, and with those exceptions the country has steadily advanced in health and prosperity. Its government is more centralized than our own, more like that of the Argentine, the congress being elected by popular vote in the departments, but the executives of the latter being appointed by the federal government. Argentinos speak of Uruguay with a kind of forced condescension, as of a member of the family temporarily estranged from the rest, or as a land of no great importance yet one worthy of again being a province of what they consider the greatest country on the globe, and they pretend at least to think that the great development of the Argentine will in time inevitably bring back to the fold this one lost lamb. But the “Orientals” consider their government superior and show no tendency to make the change.

Uruguay’s reputation as perhaps the most progressive republic in South America is largely based on her advanced legislation, most of it fathered by a recent president. Under his guidance stern minimum wage and maximum hour laws have been enacted, and many doctrines of the milder radicals have been put into modified practice. The legislators forbade bull-fights, cock-fights, and prize-fights in one breath. Uruguay is the only country in South America with a divorce law, and the church has been shorn of the militant power it still has in most of Spanish-America. Montevideo bids fair to become the Reno of the continent, as well as its only summer-resort capital. Dissatisfied husbands or wives move over from Buenos Aires; Spanish and Italian actors look forward to their Uruguayan engagement as an opportunity to air their conjugal grievances—though they are not “aired” in the American yellow-journal sense, for here divorce is strictly an affair between the parties concerned and the judge and lawyers, rarely being so much as mentioned even in the back pages of a provincial newspaper. Priests are comparatively rare sights in the Banda Oriental; religious festivals and public processions have been abolished, and the influence of the church on the government reduced to a minimum. Montevideo is the seat of an archbishop, but he exists only on paper, for the party in power is not friendly to the clergy and the papal appointment must be confirmed by congress. There are, to be sure, many crude superstitions left, especially among the poorer classes and in the rural districts, but they give Rome no such income as it derives from similar sources in the rest of the continent. Several Protestant churches have been built in Montevideo, and all faiths enjoy a freedom that would seem astounding on the West Coast. Indeed, comparative indifference to sect lines makes it an ordinary experience for Protestant ministers traveling in rural districts to be asked by persons professing themselves devout Catholics to baptize their children. “For one thing,” as one such rustic put it, “it is cheaper than when the priest does it.” It may seem a matter of slight importance to those who have never known the suffering inflicted by the infernal din of hand-beaten clappers against disguised kettles in the church towers of the Andes that on the evening of my first day in Uruguay real church bells, of a musical tone I had almost forgotten, were ringing in a way that must have been genuine music to the ocean-battered old windjammer just creeping into the harbor. Far off in the autumn twilight the sound was still carried softly to my ears by the wind before which gray clouds were scurrying like a battalion in broken ranks of defeat, toward the western sky, stained blood-red by the already dead sun.

Politically the Uruguayans are blancos or colorados, “whites” or “reds.” It is a splendid distinction. For one thing, the parties can print their arguments and their lists of candidates in posters of their own color and even the stranger has no difficulty in deciding which side is speaking. Townsmen can announce their political affiliation by wearing a red or a white cravat, or a bit of ribbon in their lapels; countrymen, by the color of their neckerchiefs. There is contrast enough between the two colors to obscure the lack of any other real difference between the two parties. In theory the “reds” are “advanced” and the “whites” more conservative. Evidently there are no neutrals in Uruguayan politics; everyone is either “red” or “white” from the cradle, not because Uruguayans take a greater interest in political matters than average republican societies, but because it is bad form, and lonesome, to be outside the ranks; and men who do not vote are fined. How an Uruguayan becomes attached to this or that party is a mystery; almost none of them can give any real reason for their affiliation. Evidently, like “Topsy,” they are “jes’ born” in their natural colors.

It is now fifteen years since the “reds” came to power on the heels of Uruguay’s last revolution. Possession is nine points, even in so progressive a corner of Latin-America, and the “whites” have been the “outs” from that day to this. Yet one often hears blancos speak of “when we start our new revolution,” for it seems to be taken for granted that the “whites” will come back some day with bullets, and virtually every man in the country is prepared to fight on short notice for one side or the other. Roughly speaking, “big business,” large estate owners, and the church, in other words the predatory classes, are “whites,” though neckcloths of that color are by no means rare on the peons and gauchos of the more backward country districts. The leader of the “reds,” now a private citizen merely because the constitution does not permit the same man to be president twice in succession, has often been described as “a mixture of idealist and predatory politician,” but he knows the secret of imposing his will upon the government and is generally credited with most of Uruguay’s progressive legislation. For all his efforts and many real results, however, there is still much that is rotten in the Republic of Uruguay. The most advanced laws are of doubtful use when they are administered by the bandits in office who still flourish throughout the rural districts. In contrast with the brave modern theories of government is the practice in such things as permitting scores of the lowest forms of brothels to flourish in the very heart of the capital. I cannot recall a more disgusting public sight in the western hemisphere than the long rows of female wrecks in scant attire who solicit at the doors of several streets radiating from the Anglican church, while veritable mobs of men and youths march back and forth to “look ’em over,” amid laughter, ribald witticisms, and worse.

Contrary to the usual custom in South America, there is no military conscription in Uruguay; recruits are enticed by posters covered with glowing promises. Yet for all the “advanced” principles of equality reputed to reign in the little republic, its army is largely made up of the poorer and more ignorant element of the population. It is not a dangerous military force, but it is very useful to the party in power not only in preserving law and order but for discouraging “white” revolutions. Whether or not only “reds” are recruited, or whether those placed on the government payroll automatically become “reds,” whether indeed youths in the political-ridden interior do not have redness thrust upon them, is a question not to be determined during a brief visit. As to the “national navy” of Uruguay, it consists, if my semi-official informant is trustworthy, of one gunboat, two cruisers, four steamers, and a transport, all of which, when they are not absent on one of the frequent “official missions” that make life in the Uruguayan navy just one festival after another, may be seen anchored in the harbor of Montevideo, their eyes turned rather toward the “whites” on shore than toward foreign foes.

I traveled fifteen hundred miles on the network of the Ferrocarril Central of Uruguay. This and the equally British “Midland” reach all towns of importance in the republic, though they still by no means cover it thoroughly. Railway travel in South America is seldom as luxurious as in the United States, but in the dwarf republic both cars and service are, on the whole, excellent; the trains are so much more comfortable than many of the towns through which they run that it is not strange that scores of the inhabitants come down to sit in them as long as they remain. There are few accidents, the trains are seldom late, though not particularly swift, and while fares are high there are frequent low-priced excursions, announced on handbills as in our own land. The English-made cars are on a modified American plan, some of the first-class coaches having leather-upholstered divans as large as beds, even second-class boasting little tables between the seats for those who care to lunch or play cards. Between the two classes at opposite ends of the train there is usually a compartment with kitchen stove and pantry that serves as a combination café and dining-car, a generous dinner costing a peso, wine, or “cork rights” from those who bring their liquor with them, extra. Sleeping-cars, journeying on both lines in order to find distance enough for an all-night trip, run from Montevideo to Paysandú and Salto, on the shores of the River Uruguay bounding on the west the republic of the “Eastern Bank.” Compared with Chile, railroading in Uruguay is palatial and immaculate, though even here the only heating arrangements for bitter June days are doormats between the seats, and the only really serious criticism to be made is against the bad habit, common throughout South America, of starting the trains at some unearthly hour in the morning.

I took the shortest line first and, rambling at moderate speed across a somewhat rolling country more fertile in appearance than the Argentine, brought up at Minas. A broad stone highway, here and there disintegrated by the heavy rains, led the mile or more from the station to the town, an overgrown village in a lap of low rocky hills monotonously like any other Uruguayan or Argentine town of its size, with a two-towered church and a few rows of one-story buildings toeing wide, bottomless streets. As in the Argentine, there are no cities in Uruguay that compare with the capital; the present department capitals were originally forts against the Indians and the Portuguese around which people gathered for protection, and few of them have cause to grow to importance.

The second journey carried me into the northwestern corner of the country. As far as Las Piedras, a suburban town twenty miles from the capital, there are a score of daily trains in either direction. Street-cars come here also, the place being noted for a granite monument topped by a golden winged Victory commemorating a battle for independence in 1811, from the terrace of which Montevideo’s fortress-crowned Cerro still stands conspicuously above all the rest of the visible world. Then this chief “Oriental” landmark disappears and to the comparative cosmopolitanism of the federal district succeeds the bucolic calm of the campaña, as the pampa is called in Uruguay. The absence of trees alone gives this a mournful aspect. The “Oriental” has tried half-heartedly to make up for the natural lack of woods by planting imported eucalyptus and poplar, at least about his country dwellings, but nowhere do these reach the dignity of a forest. Uruguay has less excuse for poor roads than the Argentine, for if it has as much rain and even heavier soil, it has an abundance of stone, rare in the land across the Plata. Yet though several stone highways leave the capital with the best of intentions, they soon degenerate into sloughs seldom navigable in the wet winter season. Most Uruguayan roads are merely strips of open campaña, the legal twenty-two meters wide, flanked by wire fences, or occasionally by cactus hedges. Estates a few miles off the railroads have no chance of getting produce to market during a large portion of the year; yet the prosperity of the country depends almost entirely on the exporting of foodstuffs.

Fertile rolling lomas, with now and then a solitary ombú spreading its arms to the wind on the summit, made up most of the landscape, a scene not greatly different from, yet infinitely more pleasing than, the dead flatness of Argentine pampas. The ombú is the national tree of Uruguay, of majestic size and always standing in striking isolation on the crest of a loma, because, according to the poet, it loves to overlook and laugh at the silly world, though the botanist explains that it is planted by birds dropping single seeds in their flight and reaches maturity only on hillocks out of reach of stagnant water. Beyond Mal Abrigo, rightly named “Bad Shelter,” granite rocks thrust themselves here and there through the soil; for long stretches coarse brown espartillo grass covered the country like a blanket. This and the abundant thistles often ruin the black loam underneath, but the average “Oriental” estanciero abhors agriculture, preferring to give his rather indolent attention to cattle and sheep, for he considers planting fit only for Indians, peons, and immigrant chacreros. Nor is the lot of these Basque, Spanish, or Italian small farmers always happy, even though they hold their plots of earth on fairly generous terms, for locusts have been known to destroy a year’s labor in a few hours. There were a few riding gang-plows, however, drawn by eight or ten oxen, and many primitive wooden plows behind a pair or two of them. Sleek cattle, and horses of better stock than the average in South America, grazed along the hollows and hillsides; now and then an ostrich of the pampas, occasionally a whole flock of them, legged it away across the rolling campaña. Though most of the country people lived in thatched huts made of the rich loam soil, sometimes laid together with a clapboard effect and oozing streaks of mud at this season, both sexes were well and cleanly dressed.

The railroad wound around every loma, refusing to take more than the slightest grades. Now and then we climbed ever so little up the flanks of such a knoll and discovered to vast depths of haze-blue horizon a plump, rolling country of purplish hue, dotted with dark little clumps of eucalyptus, from each of which peered a low farmhouse and occasionally a Cervantes windmill for the grinding of grain. There were many such estancia houses, yet they were all far apart in the immensity of the little Republic of the Eastern Bank. Why most stations were so far from the towns they served, in this level country, was a mystery. The towns themselves varied but slightly in appearance,—a scattered collection of one-story buildings, in most cases covered with a stucco that had at some time been painted or whitewashed, a pulpería, or general store, sacred chiefly to the dispensing of strong drink, and, radiating from it, wide roads plowed into knee-deep sloughs of black earth. A few sulkies and huge two-wheeled carts, an occasional country wagon with four immense wheels, from which produce was leisurely being loaded into freight-cars set aside by the local switch engine—to wit, a yoke of oxen—some real estate and auction signs offering the chance of a life-time, completed the background of the picture. In the foreground the inevitable gang of shouting, mud-bespattered hackmen was almost lost in the throng of wind-and-sun-browned men in bloomer-like trousers. Peons smoked their eternal cigarettes; gauchos shod in low alpargatas or high, soft, wrinkled leather boots, a white or a red kerchief floating about their necks, the short, stocky riding whip known as a rebenque hanging from a wrist, lounged about the door of the pulpería, to posts before which were tied trail-spattered horses saddled with several layers of sheepskins. An incredibly motley collection of dogs; a majestic policeman in full uniform and helmet above his voluminous bombachas, looking essentially peaceful for all the sword dangling at his side; a few men and youths, bare-legged to the knee, wading about with cheerful faces, as if the rainy season were at worst a temporary inconvenience more than offset by the long months of fine weather, added their picturesque bit to the gathering. Every movement and gesture showed these people to be of quicker intelligence than the dwellers in the high Andes. Few women were seen either on trains or at stations, except at the smaller towns, where there were sometimes groups of them, wholly white with few exceptions, but wearing earrings worthy the daughters of African chieftains. At each halt the station-master in his best clothes, looking busier and more important than a prime minister on coronation day, stood watch in hand, the bell-rope in the other, waiting for the time-table to catch up with us; the town notables looked on, half-anxiously, half-benignly, as if they considered themselves very indulgent in allowing the train to run through their bailiwick and felt deeply the responsibility involved; boys of assorted sizes, barefoot and shod, wormed their way in and out of the throng staring at everything with wondering eyes; a few comely girls sauntered about to see and be seen, and friends and relatives took the hundredth last embrace amid much chatter and mutual thumping of backs. Then all at once the station-master gives the bell three sharp taps, as much as to say, “I mean it, and I am not a man to be trifled with,” and as the train gets slowly under way some town hero grasps the opportunity to show his fearlessness by catching it on the fly, and dropping off again half a car-length beyond with a triumphant, sheepish grin on his sun-browned countenance.

Two days later the sun, rising huge and red over my left shoulder, painted a brilliant pink the rounded lomas flanking the Y-shaped line to Treinta y Tres (also written “33”) and to Melo, far to the northeast of Montevideo, then spread a pale crimson tint over all the gently rolling world. Fluffy lambs turned tail and fled as we approached, the watchdog, true to his calling even unto death, charging the train against all odds and putting it to ignominious flight. Here and there lay a whitening skeleton, the animal’s skull sometimes stuck up conspicuously on the top of a fence-post. There is no unsettled despoblado in Uruguay, no deserts or haunts of wild Indians, but there is still much land put to little or no use and not a few remains of the destruction wrought during the civil war that ended in 1852. Rare, indeed, is the standing structure in the rural districts that was not built since that time.

At a small station we were joined by a youth of twenty, pure Caucasian of race, of the class corresponding to our “hired man.” His long, wavy, jet-black, carefully oiled hair contrasted strangely with his complexion, very white under the tan; his eyes were light-brown, as was also the labial eyebrow he now and then affectionately stroked. He wore a raven black suit, the coat short and tight-fitting, the trousers, or bombachas, huge as grainsacks, disappearing in great folds into calfskin half-boots. A black felt hat of the squared shape once popular at our colleges was held in place by a narrow black ribbon tied coquettishly under his chin. The bit of his speckless shirt that could be seen was light green; above it was a rubber collar and a cream-colored cravat adorned with a “gold” scarfpin; on the third finger of his left hand he wore a plain gold band; about his neck floated a huge, snow-white, near-silk kerchief, and a foreign gold coin hung from the long gilded watch-chain looped ostentatiously all the way across his chest. About his waist he wore a leather belt six inches wide, with several buttoned pockets or compartments in which he kept money, tickets, tobacco, and other small possessions, and from the back of which, barely out of sight, hung his revolver. A poncho of faint pink-white, as specklessly clean as all the rest of his garments, and thrown with studied abandon over one shoulder, completed his outfit.

He rode first-class, and having produced his ticket with a millionaire gesture meant to overawe the modest guarda whose duty it was to gather it, he strode into the dining-car with great ostentation and called for a drink. With the same air of unbounded wealth he paid his reckoning, flung a generous tip to the waiter, who probably got more in a week than this at best low-salaried farm-hand in a month, and strutted back to his seat. It was evident that he was not traveling far, or he would have sneaked into the second-class coach in his old clothes. At each station he got off to parade haughtily up and down the platform, casting peacock glances at the dark-tinted criolla girls who embroidered it. I approached him at one such stop and asked permission to take his picture. He refused in very decided and startled terms. I felt that his “no” was not final, however, and scarcely a mile more lay behind us before he came wandering up with a companion and sat down beside me. Why did I want his picture? Would it cost anything? How many copies of it would I give him? Well, if it was true, as I claimed, that they could not be finished on the spot—and why not?—I could of course send them to him? Gradually he reached the opposite extreme of begging me to take his picture. His companion having suggested that it might be published “allá en Europa,” he kept his delight down to becoming gaucho dignity with difficulty, and before we descended to take the picture at the station where he left the train, after a short and evidently his only railway journey in months, he was assuring me that I might publish it “over there in Europe, in ‘Fray Mocho’ of Buenos Aires” (which the raucous-voiced trainboy incessantly offered for sale) “or anywhere else.” Only when the train had gone on without him did I discover that he was a blanco fleeing from arrest in his own department for the killing of a rural official in some political squabble, a fact that seemed to be common knowledge among my fellow-passengers and which must have made a bit startling my sudden request to photograph him.

The Cerro lighthouse was still flashing through the dense black night when, late in June, on the shortest day of the year, I took the tri-weekly train for Brazil. By the time the edge of darkness was tinted pink by a cloudless day which gradually spread upward from the horizon, we were already halting at country stations where thickly wrapped rustics who had driven miles in their bulky two-wheeled carts, a lantern set on either side of them in a sort of wooden niche raised aloft on a stick, were unloading battered cans of milk. Durazno, a good-sized department capital strewn over a low knoll and terminating in a church, was so flooded by the River Yi at its feet that its parks, alameda, and “futbol” field were completely under water and many poor ranchos stood immersed to their ears. The names of the stations were often suggestive,—Carda, Sarandí, Molles, all named for indigenous trees, so striking is one of them in this almost treeless landscape. From Rio Negro, another of the department capitals which pass in close succession on this line, the “Midland” railway paralleled our own for a dozen miles before striking off over the brown lomas toward Paysandú. Well on in the afternoon the smoothly rolling country broke up into the little rocky gorge of a small stream lined with bushy trees. It was probably not five hundred feet anywhere from the bottom of the brook to the top of the rock-faced hill, but this was such unusual scenery to “Orientals” that I had been hearing since hours before of the extraordinary beauty of this natural phenomenon, and all prepared to drink their fill of it from the windows of the train. It was named Valle Eden, but times seem to have changed in that ideal spot, for a policeman in mammoth bombachas stood on the station platform, and of Eve there was not so much as a fig-leaf to be seen.

I had ridden the sun clear around his short winter half-circle when I descended at Tacuarembó. The town had a hint of tropical ways,—women going languidly down to the little sandy river with bundles of clothing on their heads, the streets running out into grassy lanes scattered with carelessly built ranchos. Features, which had grown more and more Indian all day along the way and in the second-class coaches, here sometimes suggested more aboriginal than Caucasian blood. Here, too, there had been much rain, and the very bricks had sprouted green on the humid, unsunned south ends of the houses. The shortness of the days was emphasized by the discovery that I was back in candle-land again, where there was nothing to do in the evening but stroll the streets or go to bed.