Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/197



A DAY AT BUENOS AIRES. 167

battle of Monte Caseros, and in the same year (1852) he appeared as the biographer of Belgrano. Like Echevarria, he is a poet, inspired, as were the Magyar Potoefi, the Russian Gogol, and the North American Cooper, by the glory and grandeur of the Pampas, the Steppes, the Prairies. His Muse has been the magnificent uniformity extending from horizon to horizon, with its rim-line level as the ocean, a sea on land, whose waves of ground represent the billows, whilst grass bowing before the wind is the water, and the foam-flakes are simulated by scatters of blossom. Man feels comparatively helpless in the tropical forest and in the sub-tropical valley, on the jungly mountain, and on the stony or icy hill. Mounted on his Pampa horse, however, he is master of space ; Nature may be less superb, still he is her lord ; she is perhaps a poor thing, yet she is his own ; and his song, like his gait or the expression of his countenance, conveys the one idea of proud exultation.

As a soldier, at the head of his National Guard, General Mitre snatched from the Confederates under President Derqui and General Urquiza â€” who called him General de Papel â€” victory at Pavon (Sept. 17, 1861). He has been Provisional Governor, Provisional President, and since 1862 actual President and Commander-in-chief, yet his friends lately subscribed to buy for him a house â€” surely this is high praise, here and elsewhere. He is, moreover^ a statician, a geographer, a linguist, and an orator â€” flowery, but of no mean merit; in sharpness of memory he reminded me of H.I.M. of the Brazil ; as a bibliophile he astonished me by his knowledge of books, not only of the inside but of the outside ; and he has a collection of rare and classical works, especially geographical, perhaps unequalled on this continent ; and all this at the age of forty-seven â€” truly life circulates fast in these young lands. He had heard some- thing of my travels, he received me like an old acquaintance,