Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/271



ACTUALITIES OF ROZARIO (SANTA FE). 241

various animals_, especially at a pony and afterwards at a donkey. The latter was ridden by a pink-dressed monkey that at first sat well home in the saddle ; but as assailant after assailant came on, the hapless anthropoid rose higher and higher till the curtness of its coat became distinctly visible. Some of the dogs preferred the rider and received tolerably severe scratches, others flew at the monture, and that maligned animal the ass was in all duels the cleverer by half; skilfully avoiding exposure of the throat, which was protected by a broad leather band, it bit, it trampled, it kicked, it struck out with the forehand, all with the agility of the original zebra. The evening ended at the Cafe de Paris, Calle del Puerto ; it is the best in the place, but bad ventilation gives it the climate of the Gold Coast, and makes the stale tobacco-smoke hang heavy and lurid as a thundercloud.

Literature does not flouiish at Rozario — witness the " Aviso " of M. Vincent Verge, beginning —

" The undersigned (Phlebotomist approved), who lives in Port-street, No. 165, near the market, prevent the public that he hast just received a part of HamburgFs leeches,'^ &c.

Yet even in the balneal Etablissement of civilized Vichy we read —

" Sir Hirschler, Corn- Cutter and Pedicure to Her Ma- jesty the Emperor.^^

There are two local dailies. El Federalist a is politically affiliated to the Nacion Argentina of Buenos Aires in oppo- sition to President Sarmiento, the Editor, Sor Emilio Gomez, being a negroid. The other is La Capital^ whose redactor and editor, Sor Ovideo Lagos, was described to me as an Urqui- zista, and something worse. Rev. Mr. Carter, an American Missionary, emits the South American Monthly, a magazine suited to the most limited capacity, full of goody-goody

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