We left in the evening, and at daylight next morning were in sight of the southern shore, though nearly twenty miles out of our reckoning, from the force of the stream. The masts of several wrecked and sunken vessels were pointed out to us, standing above the level of the waterssad warnings of the dangers of the passage. It appeared that in the past month no less than three English vessels had been lost in that part of the river, the cargoes of which were valued at nearly £100,000.

Lighthouses have been since erected, the most dangerous parts of the river are buoyed, and licensed pilots ply off its mouth to take vessels either into the harbour of Monte Video or up to Buenos Ayres. With their help, and the excellent charts and sailing directions which have been published, the navigation is made tolerably safe for the vast number of merchant vessels which are continually on their passage up and down the river.*

At daybreak on the second morning from our quitting Monte Video we were off Buenos Ayres. Ships drawing fifteen or sixteen feet must anchor seven or eight miles distant, hardly within sight, from whence, unless the weather is settled, the landing is not unattended with danger, especially in foggy weather, which is very common in the winter time; but our craft being small we ran at once into what are called the inner roads, abreast of the city, from which it is seen in its full extent ranging along the slightly elevated ridge which there bounds the southern shore of the river-the towers of the churches alone breaking an outline almost as level as the opposite horizon of the waters. There is no background to the picture-no mountains, no forests: one vast continuous plain beyond extends for 800 miles unbroken to the Cordillera of the Andes.

Nothing can be more inconvenient than the actual landing. A ship's boat has seldom water enough to run

* See particularly Captain Heywood's "Remarks concerning the Winds, Weather, Tides, &c., in the River Plate," 1813; and "Sailing Directions for South Ame

rica, by Captains King and Fitz-Roy," published by the Hydrographic Office, Admiralty, 1850; also the Charts published by the same office.

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100

PASSENGERS CARTED ON SHORE.

PART II.

fairly on shore, and, on arriving within forty or fifty yards of it, is beset by carts in the water always on the watch for passengers, the whole turn out of which is strikingly characteristic of the country. On the broad, flat axle of a gigantic pair of wheels, seven or eight feet high, a sort of platform is fixed of half a dozen boards, two or three inches apart, letting in the wet at every splash of the water beneath the ends are open; a rude hurdle forms the side, and a short, strong pole from the axle completes the vehicle. To this unwieldy machine the horse is simply attached by a ring at the end of the pole, fastened to the girth or surcingle, round which his driver has the power of turning him as on a pivot, and of either drawing or pushing the machine along like a wheelbarrow, as may be momentarily most convenient. In this manner, for the first time in my life, I saw the cart fairly before the horse; in Europe we laugh at the idea, in South America nothing is more common than the reality.

(Cart for landing Passengers.)

JACKSON.SC

The wild and savage appearance of the tawny drivers of these carts, half naked, shouting and screaming and jostling one another, and flogging their miserable jaded beasts through the water, as if to show the little value attached to the brute creation in these countries, is enough to startle a stranger on his first arrival, and induce him to doubt whether he be really landing in a Christian country. In old times there was a mole which ran some way into the river, and obviated a part of these inconveniences, but it was washed down many years ago, and the people have been too indolent, or too much occupied with other things ever since, to restore it. Nothing is more wanted, or more deserving the primary attention of the authorities, whilst I believe no work they could undertake would more certainly repay its expenses; for the convenience to passengers is a small consideration compared with the value which any commodious landing-place for merchandise at Buenos Ayres would be of to the trade. The loss and damage yearly sustained by the present mode of carrying goods on shore-for goods as well as passengers are so landed in the rude carts I have described is incalculable, and highly detrimental to the port in a commercial point of view.

If my first feelings on being carted ashore at Buenos Ayres in the uncouth manner above mentioned were none of the most agreeable, they soon passed off, and gave way to different impressions.

As I walked through the town I was struck with the regularity of the streets, the appearance of the public buildings and churches, and the cheerful aspect of the white stuccoed houses, but still more with the independent air of the people, a striking contrast to the slavery and squalid misery with which we had been so disgusted at Rio de Janeiro.

Buenos Ayres, like all other cities in Spanish America, is built upon the uniform plan prescribed by the laws of the Indies, consisting of straight streets intersecting each other at right angles every 150 yards, and forming squares ("quadras" as they are called there) very like those of a chessboard.

102

PUBLIC BUILDINGS.

PART II.

With the exception of the churches, which, though unfinished externally, exhibit in their interior all the attractions of the religion to which they belong, and will be lasting memorials of the Jesuits who built the greater part of them, there is nothing remarkable in the style of the public buildings.

JACKS ON

(Calle de la Reconquista and Church of San Francisco.)

The old Government considered money laid out in beautifying the city as so much thrown away upon the colonists, and the new Government has been as yet too poor to do more than has been absolutely necessary; what has been done, however, has been well done, and does credit to the republican authorities, especially the completion of the Cathedral.

In their private dwellings there was a wretched want

of European comforts when I first arrived in the country. With but few exceptions they were limited to a groundfloor, the rooms, all en suite, opening one into another, without intervening passages, and their whole arrangement about as primitive and inconvenient as can be imagined.

The floors were of bricks or tiles, the rafters of the roof seldom hid by a ceiling, and the walls as cold as whitewash could make them; the furniture generally of the most tawdry North American manufacture, and a few highly-coloured French prints serving to mark the extent of the taste for fine arts in South America.

In cold weather these cold-looking rooms were heated by braziers, at the risk of choking the inmates with the fumes of charcoal; chimneys were regarded as certain conductors of wet and cold; and it was not till long after their introduction by the European residents had practically proved their safety and superiority over the old Spanish warming-pans that the natives could be induced to try them. The apprehension that they increased the risk of fire was even without foundation, the floors and roofs being, as I have already said, all of brick, and the few beams which are necessary for supporting them of a wood from Paraguay, as hard as teak and almost as incombustible as the bricks themselves.

I have perhaps rather a sensitive recollection of the prejudices of the natives about chimneys, from finding but one in the rooms which had been engaged for my family as a temporary lodging on my first arrival, and which, just as it was most needed, when it was beginning to get wet and cold, the landlord most effectually rendered useless by bricking up at the top, as the most summary mode of terminating a dispute which he had got into with my servant as to the necessity of sweeping it before the winter set in. No entreaty or remonstrance could shake the obstinate determination of the old Don. He had the advantage of us by living in the apartments above us; and he was determined to make us fully sensible of the de facto superiority of his authority. He required no chimney himself, and he could not be made to under