Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/133



MONTE VID^O. 103

expected to clean out the offices. The single boatman who plies sculls and sail, charges us a " lira esterlina^' â€” not lira Toscana, the pund Scots â€” for a few minutes^ row, when he should land us from the outer Road for a dollar, and for half a dollar from the Bay. We now begin to realize the ex- tortions of Monte Video, and to learn something about the currency : why do travellers so persistently neglect to lecture their readers upon this important subject ?

The safest plan here, as in most parts of South America, is to carry sovs. â€” British or Brazilian, the latter popularly known as " Pedrinhos.^^ If you take the utterly unre- deemable local paper into the next-door Republic, you lose an arbitrary sum. Gold and silver are never coined by " Orientals /"* at times the government sends to France for a ton or so of one-cent, two- cent, and four-cent pieces, copper blended with zinc. The money is paper, following, not to speak of the United States and the Brazil, the example of Kussia^ Austria, and Italy, which has, or had, about two thousand banks of emission. The material is made by Messrs. Bradbury or by the American Bank-note Paper Company, and the notes are distinguished by dif- ferent tints and sizes : as a rule, the larger the format the higher the value. After a certain percentage has been surely falsified, the whole issue is called in ; and the banks, to save trouble, will always pay the first forgeries presented to them.

The unit of value at Monte Video is the Patacon, Peso, Piastre, or old Piece of Eight, formerly worth 4^. 6c?., and now somewhat less. This is decimally divided into 100 centesimos or centimes. The " Peso" is, however, a doubtful word, meaning either silver or paper â€” that repre- senting 45. 2d. ; the latter the pence minus the shillings. The former is denoted in Buenos Aires by " f " {i.e. fuertes) ; the latter by " m/c " (moneda corriente) ; and both by $.