Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/175



TO THE COLONIA AND BUENOS AIRES. 145

roguish : you certaiuly here will hear, in an hour, more scurrility and cursing with " omne quod exit in â€” ajo," than in a whole day elsewhere.

The land is truly Uruguayan, and one of the most charming known to me. The rolling surface of green turf, varied here and there with outcrops of grey stone, dips in gentle undulations which become horizontal as they near the soft hazy horizon ; and your only guides are an occasional Estancia house topping its prim lines of artificial " moute,^' or a thick-headed, gouty-footed Ombu, under which the cattle find rest and shade. Nothing can be more amene or gracious than this modified Pampa form in fine weather. Our modern poets have been charged with too exclusive a homage of colour. We travellers must bow even more lowly to the great diflPerentiator between beauty and deformity.

There is, however, with all its loveliness, a serious dis- advantage in living along this coast of the wee Republic. It is the flooding of the streams which rise at the least pretext, and which may keep you and your friends prisoners for a week, unless you prefer risking life by spurring your horse into the broad muddy torrents. The visitor who wishes thoroughly to enjoy the country about the Colonia has only to secure a letter of introduction for my most hospitable and agreeable host, Mr. William White, of Es- tanzuela. He will then see a most civilized style of shooting out of a four-in-hand waggonette, with a boy or two by way of retriever to bag the lesser partridge and the Cholo- plover. I wonder if my friend remembers how we sat in committee over the nettlestalk salad, and the salmi of prairie owls, which we pronounced to be well cooked and thoroughly detestable ? .

Nearly opposite the Colonia is " Quilmes '^ of the Red- skins, driven down in 1618 from the valleys of Santiago

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