Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/129



MONTE VIDEO. 99

dingy we know that money has run out, and that the " beatas " and pious seniors.
 * ^ cura " waits to collect more from his little flock of

Round the heel of the boot, the eastern Punto de S. Jose projecting into the bay, we find the old Spanish castle '^ S. Joseph," whose fifteen saluting guns are supposed to command us. The once considerable outwork has now been levelled, and the " fort " is reduced to a small stone affair with two artless bastions on the land side, and sea- wards a double curtain fancifully whitewashed. Beyond it is the Mercado del Puerto, a new market-place, with a fine zinc dome of engineer architecture, built in Manchester, to shelter the stalls of butchers and fruiterers ; in the centre is a fountain which at present, curious to say, plays.

AYe now enter the bay or port, and the first glance at the semicircular inlet forcibly suggests the extinct crater punch-bowl of S. Vicente, whilst the dashes, sheets, and dunelets of yellow sand in the centre of the bight confirm the likeness. The larger ships of war lie in the outer roads, two or three miles distant; they want to up sail, and be off readily in case of a sudden and damaging Pampero. The half square-mile of watery sui'face in the basin, crowded as it is with ships in utter disorder, not aligned as at Valparaiso, urgently requires a breakwater : this has been proposed, and if it be soon thrown up, Monte Video will take the wind out of her big neighbour's sails, and will reign, for a time at least, the Queen City of the River Plate.

The Bay is lively enough on a fine day, when steam-tugs puff up and down amongst the swarm of boats, not civi- lized gigs, " yoles," or wherries, but heavy old tubs shaped like calabashes elongated fore and aft. They mostly bear the Uruguayan national flag, a washed-out, changed- coloured copy of the Stars and Stripes. The only star,

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