Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/120



90 FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.

he must be ruined in five or six years if not permitted to trade them off. Every tongue spoke harshly of those agents at home and abroad whose business it is to attract as many emigrants as possible. Mr. David Robertson^ M.P., "vvas accused of having deluded many a wretch to his doom, and of keeping up the lure. Dr. Juan M'Coll â€” Huan is more Spanish than John â€” a broker, especially of estates, alias a " Titan in Monte Videan progress," was charged with having written the " Republic of Uruguay and Life in the River Plate,^^* alliteratively characterized as " all rot and rubbish/^ whilst his "â– sheep farmer^s paradise^^ was defined to be a limbo of fools. Mr. Wilfred Latham was soundly rated for his calculation of 75 per cent, profits : this may once have been the case, but the repetition of it calls for contradiction. As harsh-judged were all the handbooks, the guides, and other publications which Messrs. Drabble, Maua, and others have cast broad- scattered upon the w^aters of emigration. Some, it is true, opined the present to be the crisis preceding the cure : they believed their own hopes, that the industry, like tobacco, cotton and sugar growing in the Southern States of the Union, where the great landlord has been " wiped out,"*^ will gain a new term of life by spreading to the masses. Others would establish '^^ Anonymous Companions'^ (Limited Liability) with capitals of at least 60,000/., combining grease-melting with cattle-slaughtering, and with the latest improvements for utilizing everything, even the blood of the slain. All, however, agreed that in the actual status there are many poor to very few rich, and that those who send their " young friends" â€” and gentle- men with small capitals, to make fortunes on the Plate are cruelly unkind. I afterwards heard of a widow who, blessed with an overstocked quiver, including a son of six-


 * Effingham Wilson. London: 1862.