Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/181



TO THE COLONIA AND BUENOS AIRES. 151

swampy land, willow-clothed and provided with seats for those aspiring to rheumatism. It will presently run to and from the Custom-house.

The proper left " barranca^^ or raised river-bank of the Riachuelo Valley, is twenty feet high, and forms a verdant slope crowned by the Alto or Southern City. The roads which run down it must have metalling, consequently here, as in the Brazil, the railway will be the first step, and men perforce run before they walk. Yon large building is the British Hospital, under the charge of the amiable and benevolent Dr. Reid. Close in front of it is the establish- ment of M. Lezica (of the Commissariat), with steeple-like Belvidere and tall dead wall surrounding French gardens of various trees. Beyond it swells to a flattened dome the two mile long and well frilled ridge-line of the city, which looks better in nature than in counterfeit. The white belfries, the clock tower of the Cabildo, and the pottery-clad cupolas flash back the sun, and the colours are mostly Argentine â€” silver and azure. The site is evidently the old " barranca^^ of the Plate River, which bends away at the northern ex- tremity, and the water-line is a long plantation of green willows, whose foreground is a mile and a half of white, brown, and black Nausicaas.

Here we are in fine at the grand commercial centre of the Platine basin ; the port and outpost of a rapidly de- veloping and enormously improveable country ;"^ it was succinctly named the " very noble and very loyal city, the Puerto de Santa Maria, Ciudad de la Santisima Trinidad" â€” this new town built by the gallant de Garay on the Day of the Holy Trinity (June 11) 1580.

(30,000,000 iraucs having become 60,000,000) ; whilst in twelve years that of La Plata has risen from 4,000,000 or 5,000,000 to 40,000,000.
 * According to M. Thiers the Brazilian trade has doubled in ten years