Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/134



104 MONTE VIDEO.

New arrivals gasp when asked seventy dollars for what is worth, perhaps, the same number of pence.

Now we run at a flight of steps between two dwarf un- imposing wooden piers â€” what can the guidebook mean by " commanding quays T' Of these incipient moles, one is attached to each warehouse, and they are mostly garnished with puffing steam-cranes â€” a whole generation ahead of Folkestone. Similarly I have seen a steam stone-crusher under the shade of the Brazilian virgin-forest, and four lumber- ing dray-horses dragging an obsolete roller up and down Baker Street, London, W. We are received by a crowd of porters, white, black, and brown, who run and push to garnish the steps ; the villain faces are, it is evident, mostly from Italy. These emigrants utterly reject peasant labour ; they remind us of hungry Leghorn^s rascaldom, the facchini in cacciatoras and cotton velvets, reeking with sweat and garlic, rude in look, word, and gest ; savages fresh from the Old World, and not yet tamed by the ease and comfort of the New World â€” this Paradise of Labour, this Purgatory of Capital. Of late the police has been obliged to regulate porterage amongst the foreign gentry ; the charge has been fixed at $0 50c. (2^. Id.) per package. In old times the Austrian Conqueror at once acknowledged the Argentine Republic, and used it as a healthy outlet for his disaffected Lombardo- Venetians. Then came the Genoese, and lastly, worst of all, the Neapolitan, a word insulting to the northern races and despised by the owners of the land, because their country has been made a Botany Bay for the lazzaroni, now almost extinct at home. Of late years, the Kingdom of Italy has naturally enough opposed the exodus of its sturdy limbs and hands fit to pull a trigger.

The other remarkable element is the Basque or Biscayan, who in 1717 began emigrating to Potosi. He is known at once by his alpargatas (spartelles), and by his pancake