Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/225



VISIT TO GENERAL URQUIZA. 195

will battle over me as Dr. E. Gray and Professor Owen battled over Paul du Chaillu.

At 4 A.M. a puffing steam-tender runs alongside the " Rio Uruguay â€¢/' her object is to carry off the live freight destined for " Concepcion/" capital of Uruguay. We must run down to the south-west ; we must work up to the north-east, and thus we must cover some two leagues of creek. A riverine islet, a swamp and a branch stream thus trouble us, whilst the few houses and the pepper-castor dome of the Matriz towering above the tree avenues of the right bank, are apparently distant about a mile. It is gi'ey-dark, we have amongst us some twenty " colis," and the stewards are sleepy-headed as ourselves â€” even fees fail to rouse them. We shift to the cuddy or cabin of the Baby, whose air (which can be cut) is mainly composed of garlic and onions, tobacco, strong waters, and Basques in equal parts. We take mate scientifically compounded by Mr. Postmaster Willy Gibbings, and with steady nose- melody we join the assembly, jolly as a funeral.

Our destination is a " Puerto" consisting, as in the Brazil, of a clearing in the river-bank, and nothing else. We land upon quartz, rock-crystal, agate, amethyst-gangue, chalce- dony, jasper, and other forms of silex, which Uruguay sweeps down from his highland cradle, and wherewith he bestrews Entre Bios as well as Banda Oriental. You are duly warned not again to sink capital in Oberstein cameos, and pay for them the prices of Italian gems : they are most probably the produce of remote Uruguay.

A cart carries up our belongings and the carter touches his hat to us. We observe generally that the stolid equality of dead-level Buenos Aires is here in abeyance. Scant care is required for our baggage â€” are we not under the protecting wing of H. E. General D. Justo Urquiza, Governor and Laird of Entre Rios ? Perhaps the absence of

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