Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/275



ACTUALITIES OF ROZARIO (sANTA FE). 245

even more divided thau iu Monte Video : the " Camp^' is first ; the City comes in a poor second. Amongst the citizen-foreigners are also two divisions — gentilhommes and bourgeois, nobs and snobs — who dwell wide apart as the original owners of the Burra-Burra mine. You may imagine the effect of such complications in the most limited of circles, especially when further subdivided by separation of saint from sinner, Liberal from Conservative, Creole English and home-bred English. The consequence is, that practically your '^ set^^ is reduced to a quarter dozen at the most. This is much less the case amongst the Germans, Italians, French, and few Basque. A week at Rozario was long enough for me to hear of these troubles, and not long enough to involve me in them. We spent, even in the town, some very pleasant evenings, especially with Mr. Weldon and Mr. George W. Bollaert, a son of the well- known litterateur. I cannot commend too strongly their habit of dining sub divo in the patio backed, by the fragrant garden.

From Mr. Hutchinson^s Quinta we walked over to the terminal station of the Central Argentine Railway, of which Mr. William Wheelwright is contractor. This gentleman was then building for himself another large house, thereby notably stultifying a certain proverb. Now past seventy-one, he began life by trading notions in a little Yankee schooner on the western coast of South America, and whilst he was treated as a mere visionary and speculator, his energy and perseverance enabled him to conquer difficulty after difficulty, and at last victoriously to establish the steam navigation of the Pacific. Since that time his name has been connected, more or less, with every great act of progress effected by the Hispano-American republics. I afterwards made ac- quaintance with Mr. Wheelwright at Buenos Aires, and found him, as he had been described to me, in appearance