Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/117



FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VID:6o. 87

in fact, that begat our modern and English Anglophobia. This typical 10/. householder had waxed fat on River hide and tallow, and upon his mental toe I had unconsciously trodden by mistaking him for a gentleman's valet. He is characteristically servile to his superiors, pert, contradictory, and offensive to his peers, insolent to his inferiors. His beau ideal of a man is an anything married by the daughter of Lady Jones, and wedded to 180,000/. â€” of such, we are told, is the Kingdom of Heaven.

The return lot is not so pleasant. There are many Teutons, who form a distinct class. There are a few Bra- zilians, wild as Kafirs : the men argue, gesticulate, thump fists on table, take places that are not their own, and seem strange to the appliances of civilization as might have been the Tupis ; the women are invariably sea-sick, wear calicos, wag the forefinger, and use bottines that never knew Paris. The Portuguese are Brazilians Europeanized, and personally not so clean : you easily know them, their talk is about nothing but dollars and the other sex. Dictator Rosas allowed them and them only to congregate in the streets. " Yov" said he, " when two Portuguese meet, the talk will always be about * p'^'^^'^'^a,' in fact â€”

" To chatter loose and ribald brothelry."

All nationalities will be first class. I should suggest the example of a certain Argentine railway, where the ticket-clerk, glancing at the customer, determines his class â€” the larger the spurs the lower goes the wearer. The Creole English muster strong ; they speak Spanish amongst the English, English amongst the Spaniards ; their voices are curiously harsh and metallic ; they open the lips widely when pro- nouncing their English, as though it were Spanish, and the result nearly approaches to what we call the " Chichi boli," or Mulatto dialect of Bengal^ with not a little of the New