Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/118



88 FROM EIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.

England and the Australian nasalization. Here and there is a civilized Englishman ; the staple, however, comes from the bush, haggard with toil and discomfort, dressed in home-made clothes, and bringing half-a-dozen cubs, who, fresh out of a cattle-breeding ground, want breaking like wild colts. Truly terrible is this small infantry warred on by nurses, it is worse than the juvenile Anglo-Indian. Misther T'him O^Brien, for instance, rising six years, is requested by a polite Mail officer not to thrash his sister. He raises eyes blazing fiery green out of a freckled face, and briefly ejaculates â€”

" You go to h " Ending with Spanish which even

dashes will not make decent. If the officer add a word, his shins will feel the thickness of Mr. Tim^s double-soled highlows; and his mother will express the profoundest astonishment â€” she has always found her T^him such a " dear good little boy.^"*

You will want to hear something about colonizing in the River Plate, emigration to those lands being still believed in by a benighted public* At the present moment, whatever it may have been, sheep-farming is a snare and a delusion. The industry was introduced by foreigners, especially by Messrs. Sheridan and Harratt, in 1825 ; they greatly im- proved upon the Pampas breed, which in 1550 came with the goat from Peru. It was the third stage of progress, the first being the wild ^^ Indian^^ that killed out the

as developed in " Letters Concerning the Country of the Argentine Re- public (South America) being Suitable for Emigrants and Capitalists to Settle in." (1869. Second issue. London : Waterlow and Sons.) The able and energetic author and compiler, Mr. William Perkins, Secretary National Commission of Immigration, kindly sent me a copy. For my part I agree with Messrs. Jessop and " Old Scotchman," rather than with Mr. Purdie and Mr. Henly ; and my opinion is not valueless, as I have seen three times more of the country than any of them.
 * It is only fair for me to refer to the favourable side of the question