Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/226



196 UP THE URUGUAY RIVER, AND

independence, robbery, and murder bas somewhat depressed the spirit of the capital. Concepcion del Uruguay bas a eburcb of normal size and shape, visited every Sunday by the Laird^ the Laird^s lady, and the Laird^s family, but it cannot be described as finished. There is the usual square, with the inevitable obelisk, surrounded by stunted '^ Paradise trees,^' and furnished with brick walks, somewhat rare in these country places. A kind of Pompey^s Pillar in stucco composite is set in a field of the rankest weeds and grasses. The streets, where not overgrown with poisonous cicuta and other wild vegetation, are lines of black mud_, like those that span the amene suburbs of ^' young Athens /' and they are ever deadly-lively as the thoroughfares of New York on a hot "Sabbath" afternoon. The distances are truly magnificent â€” the mile may average three tenements, and the connexion is by rough posts and wires or bands, like those that secure cotton-bales. Amongst a few good houses are lumpy detached boxes of the worst bricks, which are piled up without breaking the joint, whilst the surface is rarely whitewashed. The cottages are mere bandboxes, a long stifi" rush (Junco) being used for the walls and a short soft grass for thatch. Such is Concepcion. Throw in a building where big balls have been given, a Hotel du Commerce, kept by a civil Frenchwoman, who has spent twenty-four years in this lively corner of the world, and a Cafe de Paris, whose charges are half those of exorbitant Buenos Aires, whilst the reception is at least thrice as civil â€” et vHd, as exclaims the gar9on bringing in the breakfast carte.

The staple solid here is a blanket piece of beef-rib, written Asado and pronounced Asa^o. Not having had my teeth case-hardened and steel-tipped before visiting Argentine- land, I have found it pleasant to masticate as indiarubber might be. Perhaps its very toughness and the meaty flavour