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an empty stomach in that herring-pool, when a man should be turning his attention to mutton chops and ham and eggs. Nothing could be more welcome, then, than the sight of the Clansman, steaming southward on the way to Oban. She answered the signals of distress, and bore down to the assistance of the wreck. The embarkation was a matter of time, and of some little inconvenience as well; but the reef acted as a kind of breakwater against the freshening gale, and the castaways were hospitably welcomed into snug quarters, where they had an opportunity of changing their damp garments.

"I seem to have known you from your boyhood," said Winstanley very warmly to his young acquaintance. "You have stood by me in a way I shall never forget; and as you were ready to do me one inestimable service in the way of risking your life, I mean to ask you to do me another. It's the way of the world, you know, so you need not be surprised."

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"Very willingly," answered Jack, with graceful readiness - not the less readily, no doubt, that he felt instinctively that the favor to be asked was to pave the way to some return for his generous devotion. Well, I fancy I may take it for granted that your time is at your disposal, otherwise you would hardly have shipped for a cruise in that miserable old tub. I mean to land at Oban, where I fear I may have to lay up and take medical advice. If you could bestow a day or two on a fretful invalid, I should feel, if possible, more grateful than I do at present." And he threw as much significance into his words as was compatible with consideration for a gentleman's feelings.

And as we know something of Mr. Venables's views and nature and as he made it a golden rule never to miss a chance - we need hardly add that he jumped at the invitation with a cordiality which greatly flattered his senior.

From Macmillan's Magazine. FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY.

I.

It was a clear, mild spring evening in the latter part of the month designated in almanacs as October, but in nature's annuary the April of this inverted antarctic world, when the Brazilian mail steamer Rio Apa was making her way cautiously up against the shallow and turbid waters of the River Plate, bound with cargo and

a full complement of passengers, mostly Brazilians, some Argentines or Uruguay. ans, a few Germans where are not Germans to be met now?- and myself as a solitary specimen of the British sub-vari. ety, from Montevideo to Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, and, indeed, further north yet, to the Brazilian capital of MataGrosso; but with that ultimate destination the present narrative has no concern. Viewed from anywhere the prospect of Montevideo is a lovely one, but most so from the sea. However ill-advised the old Spaniards may generally have shown themselves in their selection of sites for towns or seaports in South America, they, or their great captain, Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, chose well, could not, indeed, have chosen better, when, in 1726, they laid, after two centuries of inexplica ble neglect, the first foundations of Montevideo. As a town it is perfect; as a harbor nearly so. With the lofty conical hill and the adjoining high lands of the cerro on the west, and the bold jutting promontory itself a ridge of no inconsiderable elevation — on which the bulk of the town is built, to the east, the noble semicircular bay, deeply recessed in the rising grounds on the north, is well sheltered from every wind and sea, the south and the south-west - this last, unluckily, the worst "of a' the airts," being none other than the dreaded pampero, or pampas wind of these regions-excepted; at least until the long-projected breakwater, which is to keep out this enemy also, be constructed. But pamperos, like most other ills of this best of all possible worlds, are exceptions, and for most days of the year few harbors afford a safer or a more commodious anchorage than Montevideo; while landward a prettier sight than that presented by the white houses of the smokeless town, covering the entire eastern promontory down to the water's edge on either side, intermixed with large warehouses, public buildings, and theatres, and crowned by the conspicuous dome and towers of the massive and, pace Captain Burton, fairly well-proportioned cathedral, would be hard to find anywhere else. Beyond, and all round the curve of the bay, countless villas of Hispano-Italian construction, one-storied the majority, and recalling in general form and arrangement the Baian or Pompeian pleasure residences of the Augustan age, but not unfrequently distinguished by lofty miradores, or look-outs, gleam many-colored from between thickly planted orchards and gardens, in which the orange-tree, the

lemon, the acacia, the peach, the fig, the cherry-tree, the medlar, the vine, blend with the Australian eucalyptus, the bamboo, the banana, the palm, and other im ported growths of the outer world, and shelter a perennial profusion of lovely flowers, and pre-eminently of luxuriant roses, worthy of the gardens of ancient Pæstum and modern Damascus or Salerno. Shipping of every calibre and flag, steam and sail, make an apt foreground to the prosperous life implied by the landward prospect; and a bright sky, stainless sunlight, and pure, healthful air, supply those conditions of enjoyment so essential, yet so often wanting, one or all, from the nebulous seaside of northern Europe, or the treacherous beauty of equatorial

coasts.

But Montevideo and the Banda Oriental, to give the vigorous little republic of which it is the capital its prædelict name, must not detain us now. Already the intervening mass of the cerro has hid them from our view, and we are far out on the monotonous waters of the sealike Plate estuary. Night sets in calm and clear; and I look for the fourfold stars, first visioned to the Florentine seer, when

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of Don Juan de Garay - the residence for more than two centuries of Spanish viceroyalty, and now the political and, to a great extent, commercial capital of that southern reflex of the northern Union, the vast Argentine Confederation, the city of Buenos Ayres. I remember how an Irish mate, when questioned on board a Chinabound steamer, on which I happened to be a passenger, as to what was the first land we should sight of the Chinese coast, answering and he could not have answered more appositely-"Faith! the first land ye will sight is a junk!" Were he now replying to a similar inquiry on board the Rio Apa, he might not less aptly say, "Faith! the first ye will see of Buenos Ayres is that ye will not see it at all!" So low is the coast, so great the distance from shore at which the shallowness of the river waters compels us to anchor, that a long, low line of confused buildings, and behind them the summits, no more, of cupolas, turrets, and towers, seen at intervals over the warehouse fronts along the edge, is all Buenos Ayres presents to our eyes on first beholding. The view, or non-view, of Venice herself when approached by rail from Padua is not more unsatisfactory. I long to land, Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiamelle. and resolve the illusion in the opposite O settentrional vedovo sito, Poichè privato se' di mirar quelle ! sense to that by which earth's illusions generally are dispelled, by finding, as I But the Cross, partly veiled, is just skirt- know I shall, the reality of the Argentine ing the southern horizon, and will not capital better than its introductory show. be visible in its full beauty till near But the earliness of the hour, and the midnight; so that those strange, un- shortness of the time allotted for stay, do canny-looking nebulæ, known, I believe, not for this occasion permit a nearer acto British seafaring vulgarity as the "coal-quaintance with the most populous, the sacks," but more truly resembling, if any thing, gigantic glow-worms, alone denote, by their proximity, the starless pole of the austral heavens. Truly, in more senses than one, a pole-star is yet to seek in the southern hemisphere, west or east -a fixed fulcrum, a central idea, a controlling and co-ordinating force. Yet the slow precession of the equinoxes may in time supply it to the courses of the concave above; but who or what shall give it to the seething, ever-restless convex be low? South America has her Bucolics, nor least the First; but the Fourth Eclogue is wanting from among the chaunted lays of Mantin Fierro and his peers. Does it bide a future date? Let us be content with the present; and trust, but not "feebly," the "larger hope."

And now, after ten hours, or thereabouts, of upward course, morning dawns for us on the world-famed New York of South America, the memorial and honor

wealthiest, and in many or most ways the
most important city of republican South
America. And, in fact, what knowledge
worth the having could be acquired by an
hour of hurried driving through square
and street? So I resign myself to cir
cumstances, and defer the accomplishment
of my desires till the promised opportu-
nity of the return voyage; though the
courtesy of the Argentine capitan del
puerto or harbor-master, has hastened to
place at my disposal the means of con-
venient landing, moved thereto by the
sight of the distinctive flag that notifies
the presence of a British official — rank
and name, of course, unknown, nor to my
readers worth the knowing
on board
the Rio Apa. It is a courtesy which will
be repeated, with scarce even a casual
exception, at every Argentine or Para-
guayan river station we halt at during the
seven days of up-stream voyage yet before
us.

guay, it belongs territorially to the Argentine Confederation by right of well the right of the stronger; a right too generally admitted for dispute or appeal. The channel on either side of it, deep enough for all mercantile navigation, is sufficiently commanded by the guns and forts of the place to make a hostile passage no easy matter.

There exists widely diffused in the Old World, nor least in England, an opinion, the origin of which, correctly estimated or otherwise, is not perhaps far to seek, that a distinct want or even refusal of every. day courtesy, an ostentatious "I am as good as you, and better," bearing, a disregard of the social claims, or what are held to be such, of rank, office, station, age, and the like, are the habitual characteristics of the citizens of non-monarchical States; that, e.g., a republican boatman is more rudely extortionate, a republican porter more importunately aggressive, a republican official more neglectful of politeness than their counterparts elsewhere; and so on to the end of the chapter. How far this may really be the case in some republics, the United States for instance, I cannot say, never having had the fortune to visit them, nor trusting much to "Notes" where accounts vary so widely. Thus much I can say, that, in my own lim. ited experience of men and things, when a traveller loudly and habitually complains of incivility met with on his wanderings, the probability is that the traveller himself has been, at the least, deficient in courtesy towards those he has come across. In republican South America my own witness in these regards is, so far as it goes, of the most favorable kind. Certainly I had much sooner, if desirous of obliging civ-gether during the yearly floods, and, thus ility, have to do with an Uruguayan or Argentine, not boatman or porter merely, but policeman, official, or any chance acquaintance whatever, low or high, than with his like in many a European land that I could, but will not name.

Again we are on our up-stream way, but now obliquely crossing over towards the north side of the mighty estuary, till what seems at first sight a continuous shore-line of swamp and brushwood, but what is in reality an aggregate of island banks, only just raised above the water-level, and covered with scrub, stretches across our path. These islands are, in fact, the secular bar at the mouth of the Parana River, before it broadens into the wider Plate. We shape our course to the right, where, at a little distance from the mainland shore of Uruguay here a continuous succession of undulating downs, grazing-ground the most-the little granite island-rock, known, like Cape Palinurus of Virgilian fame, by the name of a pilot, Martin Garcia, guards the only available entry from Rio de la Plata and the sea, to the allimportant navigation of the Parana and Uruguay rivers. Itself geographically, no less than geologically, a fragment of Uru

As we leave Martin Garcia behind us, a broad, wedge-like streak of darker color, driven far into the muddy waters of the Plata, from its left or eastern bank, tells where the Uruguay, itself a mighty stream, merges in the great estuary, and marks the limit between the Argentine Confederation, between whose lands more than eight hundred miles of river navigation lie before us, and the Banda Oriental, or east shore, of which we now take our definite leave. Soon we have entered the Guazu, or great passage, one of the many that thread, between shoal and island, the Parana delta, and are by nightfall on the main river, here often whole mites in width; though its real breadth can rarely be taken in by the eye, partly owing to the general lowness of its reedy banks, partly to the countless islands, which, for its entire course, line at brief intervals now one shore, now the other. They, and the shores too, often disappear for weeks to

veiled, add not a little to the difficulties and dangers of the route. At present the water is at its lowest; but even now the stream is rapid and strong; its color is turbid yellow; its surface often specked with masses of tangled weed and floating drift-wood from forests yet far away.

For five days more we journey up the Parana; passing, and occasionally stopping for cargo or passengers at many places of South American note - each one the outcome of some special activity or enterprise proper to the young and vigorous Confederation, between whose provinces the river flows. And first, Rosario, the city capital, if fact fill up the outlines of forecast, of the Argentine commercial future; and already the principal focus and dividing point of the widestspread railroad system existent south of the Isthmus of Panama. Next we salute the memory of the able but ill-fated Urquiza, deliverer of his country from the tyrant Rosas, to fall himself a victim to treachery base as any imbedded in the ice of Dante's Tolommea; as we sight the city of Parana, conspicuous by the ambitious dimensions of its public buildings, and the nine-years' memory of its dignity,

less, and ever less, likely to recur; while the tale of those who have a vested interest in the tranquillity of the country continues to grow, and with it grows the best probability and pledge of that tranquillity itself. Meanwhile, many detail inventions, some of them undoubted improvements of recent introduction, such as the increased use of machinery on the farms, the network of strong wire fences, now spread over the face of the pasture land; the extension of railway lines, and whatever other appliances tend to the facilitation of orderly communication, to the safeguarding of property, and to the substitution of methodized labor for the once over-numerous troops of half-wild horsemen and cattle-drivers-ready allies in the cause of riot and plunder - all lead up to the same result. It would be diffi cult now for a caudillo or an adventurer chief, however popular his name or cause

as Urquiza's choice as capital of the entire or to grant the desirable immunity from Argentine Confederation. Further up the agitations and vicissitudes consequent Bella Vista, or Fair Prospect, shines out on the frequent and abrupt political on us worthy of its name, where its white changes of Buenos Ayres itself-commuhouses crown the high white cliffs that nicated thence like earthquake waves to overlook the mighty river; and many the furthest provinces of the Confederaother are the places of provincial or even tion. Still, enough advance on the path national note, till we reach the confluents of law and order has been made to give or Corrientes of the Argentine-Paraguayan reasonable assurance that the days of frontier. But it may, indeed must, be Oribe and Rosas, of gaucho leaders, and here enough for us to note that during partisan plunders are, year by year-as these nine hundred miles of up-stream the settled population of the land increases voyage, south to north, the scenery of steadily in numbers, wealth, and strength either bank, while remaining essentially the same in its main geographical features all the way, is yet gradually modified by the progressive approach to the tropics into ever-increasing beauty and interest. The eastern length of shore, along the fertile provinces of Entre-Rios and Corrientes, gently rising from the river level into a succession of green uplands, studded with tree clumps, and brightened by white groups of cottages and farmhouses, with a tall church tower here and there, passes by degrees from pasture land into agriculture, fields of maize, orange-groves, tobacco plantations, and even sugarcane; a landscape which, allowance made for brighter color and glossier vegetation, not without dwarf palms and Japanese-looking bamboo clusters here and there, often reminded me in its general, and even in its detailed, features of the noble backgrounds painted by Rubens, of which an example may be seen in the " "Judgment of Paris" in our own National Gallery. There is something Flemish, almost English, in their fertile repose; but here the scale is grander. In this southern Mesopotamia as Entre-Rios may be literally translated nature has bestowed without stint whatever goes to make up those two solid and enduring bases of national prosperity-agriculture and pasture; the third foundation, indicated by our Laureate in his exquisite landscape scene, “Ancient Peace," is waiting here as yet. A few years, indeed, of comparative security and quiet have already done much, as the glimpses of cattle stocked meadows, and the dark green patches of Indian corn show us, as our steamer rap. idly glides past the gully-indented banks; but the peaceful years that have given these good things are, as yet, of recent date; a very different condition of tumult, insecurity, and not infrequent war prevailed here at a very short distance back from the present epoch. These evils are past, yet not so wholly as absolutely to bar the danger of their possible renewal,

to gather round his standard the formidable gaucho bands, all ready armed and mounted for march or fray, that were, scarce a quarter of a century ago, the terror of farmers and proprietors, of landowners and peasants, nay, even of townsmen and towns, of place-holding profes sionals and city officials through the regions of La Plata and La Banda Oriental. But the surest guarantee of national stability is to be sought and found in the extension of agriculture, and in the yearly encroachment of peasant, or small farmer, proprietorship on the scantily peopled pasture grounds and cattle-breeding lands.

Thus much for the east bank of the

river. But on its western side a very dif ferent range of scenery, little modified by man and his works, shows the gradual transition from cool to almost tropical climes. For here stretches back for hundreds of miles from the water's edge, up to the first outlying bulwarks of the great Andes Cordillera, the vast plain, level as the sea, of which it must have been the bed in times almost recent by geological computation, and known for the "Grand

ever slightly, by difference of elevation or by the hand of man, presents in its changing vegetation a kind of scale by which to measure, not incorrectly, the ever-ascending range of its thermometric temperature. The solitary, oak-like ombu-tree, and the dwarfish willow and light-leaved poplar of the neighborhood of Rosario and Santa Fé, gradually associate themselves further up with more varied and vigorous South American growths, and the tall outlines of forest trees, worthy the name, trace themselves more and more frequently on the low sky-line, till, as we approach about halfway to Corrientes, palms, at first sparse and stunted in structure, then loftier and grouped in clusters and groves, give evidence of a more genial temperature; while the bamboo, not, indeed, the feathery giant of the Philippines or Siam, but liker in size and fashion to the Chinese or Japanese variety, bends over the doubtful margin of river and swamp, often tangled with large-leaved water plants and creepers, the shelter and perch of gay kingfishers and flocks of parti-colored aquatic birds, the only visible inhabitants of this lone region, for the Indian tribes, shy, nor unreasonably so, of contact with the white races, keep aloof from the river coast, or, if they visit it, leave no trace of their having been there.

Chaco," the "Sahara" or Flat of South | beyond the furthest limits of Paraguay, America, like in relative position and tel- its level surface, seldom modified, how luric formation to its African counterpart, yet most unlike in the all-important attributes of moisture and fertility. For this, the Chaco, is a land of streams and springs, of marsh even and swamp, with abundant growth of grass, plant, and tree, especially to the north; its total extent is roughly estimated as that of the British islands fourfold. Nominally included, though not without rival claims on the part of Paraguay and of Bolivia, in the Argentine Confederation, it is practically independent of all these, or of any other Europeanfounded rule, being still, as of old times, the territory and dwelling-place of native Indian tribes, warlike the most part, tenaciously attached and small blameto their own autonomous existence, and resistent to the last -a "last" which can hardly now be far distant — against every Argentine attempt at civilizing, that is, in plain language, subjugating and ultimately effacing them. Passively strong in their unincumbered activity for escape even more than for attack, and protected by the vastness of the open space over which they wander at will, they have thus far not only succeeded in baffling the organized military expeditions, successively directed against them by the Buenos Ayres government, but have even baffled all but the narrowest encroachments of settlement and colonial proprietorship on their borders. Known, or rather desig. nated by various names Tobas, Mbayas, Lenguas, Abipones, Payaguas, and others the tribes, with a certain general similitude of features and habits, much like that existing, say, between the various subdivisions of Teutonic or Slavonic origins in Europe, yet differ widely in character, dispositions, and language; some are pacific, and not unacquainted with agriculture and settled life; others, more warlike, subsist, it is said, almost wholly on the chase and foray; some are almost exclusively fishermen, others herdsmen or shepherds. Their dialects, equally diversified, for each tribe has its own, can all, it seems, be without exception referred to the two great mother tongues of South America, the Quichna, language of Peru and Bolivia, and the Guarani, spoken in one form or other over the entire eastern half of the continent, and of which more anon.

Such are, summarily taken, the inhabitants of the Chaco. Extending from the populous province of Santa Fé, opposite to that of Entre-Rios northward, up to and

At last, on the sixth noon since we left Montevideo, we are off the shelving banks and scattered houses of Corrientes, a large town, whose importance and future growth are sufficiently assured by its position close to the junction of the two chiefest rivers of central and eastern South America, the Parana and the Paraguay. Of these the former - now subdividing itself into a network of countless and ever-shifting channels and isl ands, now united in one mighty stream of turbid yellow, here, a few miles north of the town makes a stately bend, that half surrounds the fertile grazing-lands of Corrientes, and passes upwards to the north-east, where the eye loses sight of it among the dense forests of either bank; while from the north, exactly on the line thus far occupied by the Parana, descend the darker-colored waters of the Paraguay, itself a noble river, here over half a mile in width, with an open, welldefined channel, few islands, and a current strong even now, at the lowest water time of the year. At this junction of the three great streams, a scene surpassing in

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