Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/202



LETTEE YI.

A GLANCE AT BUENOS AIRES.

Buenos Aires, August 17, 1868, My dear Z -,

Buenos Aires, I have said, is pre-eminently the city of the future, and the mind^s eye sees her seated en reine upon her subject flood, with a tiara of towers and a fair broad skirt of noble buildings, docks, and promenades where mud shallows and the tosca eruptions now sadden the sight. At present, however, our business is with actualities. And the first thing is to lodge ourselves.

A host of hotels offer themselves, the great new com- fortless Argentine ; the ministerial La Paix, and its succursale the San Martin; the expensive and so-called ^'^ fashionable â– '^ Louvreâ€” what a misnomer! â€” the cheap and second-rate Globo, and the rascally Provence, where the French ruffian that owns it never attempts to be commonly civil. All are abominably bad, and dear in proportion. They show discomfort at its acme, and service, food, and care of rooms are inferior to third-rate inns in a second-rate European city. Surely in a place where gold ounces are so very cheap, it would be possible to set up a good new American hotel, like the Grand in the Boulevart des Italiens. Perhaps the least abominable is the Hotel Universal, in the Calle San Martin ; it enters, like the Ancla Dourada, into the category of '^ cazas ameubladas,^^ allowing you to dine at the Cafe de Paris, at your club, or at your friend^s house â€” and in this most hospitable of cities you will be asked to dine at some three places every evening. The Universal has the