Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/272



242 ACTUALITIES OF ROZARIO (SANTA FE).

talk^ victorious polemique^ and a few apocryphal conversions. Finally^ there is a truly civilized Preqo Corriente published fortnightly by Carlos F. Gorsse in English and French, Spanish and Italian. El Cosmopolitano and El Ferro Carril are in abeyance, owing to the absence on a colonizing crusade of the sanguine and enterprising Canadian " D. Guillermo." Mr. Perkins, F.R.G.S., whom I have before mentioned, published at Rozario in 1867, the " Expedicion k El Rey en el Chaco,^^ giving an account of the settlements proposed by him. He has lately been writing in the Field. We will now follow the example of Rozario, which is being rapidly drawn by the railway out of town to the north-west. We skirt the river, turning off at the place where presently will be the new Hotel de la Paix, and where now is a mere ^'^ jumpery.^^ All the characteristic sounds of the American- Spanish town are here — bugles ad libitum, and eternal bells, which good taste should abolish, should banish to the Kingdom of Heaven. As the Brazilian settlement may be known by the Araponga, or bell bird, so the Platine is at once betrayed by the shrill scream of the Gallo calling out all his brother cocks. In places you will hear three grind-organs playing at once, and apparently the more they come the more are wanted. With great theoretical respect for the subject^s liberty, I practically would seize all such sturdy vagabonds and put them to honest labour. The hairless dog, whose parent stock came from the Sandwich Islands, is here common, though still rare further north. They somewhat resemble ugly, clumsy Italian greyhounds, and their leaden-grey skins are bald, except where a few bristles sprout, and the topknot and tail-tuft, which are sometimes white. These " Pelados" look unnatural among the canines, and the albinos are loathsome as white Negros. The people call them " Ee- medios^^ because they cure the rheumatics by sleeping