Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/124



94 FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.

Uruguay, double the size of Ireland, would have been the best of termini for the Hibernian exodus ; with all due allowance for head-breaking and hedge-shooting, the popu- lation would now have numbered 1,000,000, not 300,000 souls, mostly Celts, and assuredly there would not have been, as there is now, a Fenian club at Buenos Aires.

The next remarkable point is the Isla de las Flores, which Davie and other old travellers found bright with rainbow blossoms, and fragrant with wild vegetation. Backed by the usual terra firma of tawny and tree-scattered points, it is now single, then double, according to the height of the water ; and whilst part of it supports rabbits and a revolving light, the rest is in its season a gull-fair. Buceo, loved by bathers, with its bonny sands and outlying quintas nestling under the tree-clumps that speckle the raised and rolling grasslands of the northern bank, and the Plaza de Ramirez, that glistening patch whereon cari'iages from the town stand, both point the way to a pleasing view. A crystal- clear, diaphonous atmosphere sets forth every feature of the approach to Sea^s End ; over the ocean horizon of the river in front the sun-glow is tempered by the cool crisp wind before which race up the white dots of sails, and the broad lights and shades of the shore and of the smokeless city are distributed with a charming picturesqueness.

At 2 '30 P.M. we sight to the north-west a forest of masts lying under the " Town of the Mount,^" backed by its Cerro, a splay-backed and high- shouldered hill, which, only 465 feet high, towers like a giant above the ridgy and peakless coast line. We know that we have reached our destination, and a classical person exclaims with the classical look-out man of yore, â€”

Montem Video !

Adieu.