As there were no taxicabs around, Packer and I were obliged to walk about three-quarters of a mile to the Plaza Matriz to get one to return for Lane, whom we found in the same identical spot with his back still against the wall.
Montevideo ranks according to the tonnage of vessels entering and clearing its harbor as the ninth port in the world, surpassing all South American cities in this respect. Until about fifty years ago, it was the metropolis of the La Plata watershed. About that time Buenos Aires passed it, and to-day the population of the Argentine metropolis is four times larger. Montevideo has a fine harbor; Buenos Aires has none. The Uruguayan back country is richer than the country behind Buenos Aires. Montevideo has a wonderful climate, cool, invigorating, with a fresh breeze always blowing; Buenos Aires has a humid, enervating, somewhat depressing climate. With these natural superiorities, one would think Montevideo would outrank Buenos Aires but not so. Buenos Aires has always had a spirit of progression, which has become contagious and has spread to Rosario, and to Bahia Blanca; Montevideo has always been conservative, entirely wrapped in herself, indifferent to other cities. Uruguay, which is the smallest republic in South America, has an area of only 72,210 square miles, not as large as the province of Buenos Aires alone. Of its population of 1,042,668 inhabitants, one half live within a radius of twenty miles from the center of the city of Montevideo. The difference between Buenos Aires and Montevideo is so great that it is difficult to realize that they are separated only by a night's run of 190 knots.
The topography of the city is a succession of low hills which flank the harbor. They continue to the cerro, seven miles around the semi-circular harbor, and on their sides and summits are built a succession of villages not included in the incorporation limits of Montevideo. On the cerro rise the whitewashed houses of the town of Villa del Cerro, while at its bottom slopes near the La Plata mouth there is a large eucalyptus grove of dark green color, a landmark for many miles at sea.
There was but little building done in Montevideo between the years 1912 and 1916; in fact I could see no change, although I have no doubt but that the population is increasing on a normal scale. The monotony of the appearance of the residential streets is impressing. Each street has the same cobblestone pavement; on each street there are sycamore trees between the pavement and the sidewalk; the houses are mostly the same, one and two stories high, built of the same material and offering absolutely no contrast in architecture, in size, or color to the thousands like them in the Uruguayan metropolis. This same condition must have existed since the Colonial times, because one writer, whose book written about 1830 I recently read, said in his description of Montevideo that on account of the great similarity of the houses and absence of street numbers, drunken men frequently mistook houses of other people for their own and entered them at different times of the day and night causing much embarrassment and confusion.
The residences of the wealthier inhabitants do not have this monotonous uniformity. They are villas, set back from the street in large gardens and lawns, enclosed by low brick walls. In architecture they are light and resemble the houses of the aristocracy of Rio de Janeiro. Compared with the palatial homes of the Buenos Aires millionaires they are inexpensive. The Avenida Agraciada is the main residential street, but the Avenida Brazil in the suburb of Pocitos has many fine homes, some of which are the summer abodes of Argentinos who like to spend the hottest months of the summer by the seashore. The very finest mansion in the city is on the Plaza Zabala, the loafers' park, in the business section on the whaleback, and not far from the docks. It is owned by an Italian who wished to have his residence near to his place of business.
The main shopping streets are Sarandi and Rincon. These are parallel and are but one block apart. The Avenida 18 de Julio, like the Avenida de Mayo in Buenos Aires, is the parade street. It is a beautiful broad avenue about a mile and a half long, and runs eastward from the Plaza Independencia. Seven blocks up it is interrupted in its course by the Plaza Libertad, formerly named Sagancha. It is one of the finest streets in South America. Many of the streets have old Indian names peculiar to the country such as Timbo, Yaro, Tacuarembo, Yaguaron, Yí, Cuareim, Ibicui, Ituzaingo, Guarani, etc. It is pleasant to see this change in street names after a sojourn in Argentina where in each city the nomenclatures of the streets never vary, with the omnipresent San Martin, Tucumán, Córdoba, Corrientes, La Rioja, and many others.
Montevideo and its suburbs on the ocean are the great bathing resorts of South America and are visited annually by more people than Mar del Plata, the latter place being exclusively for the rich. On account of its proximity to Buenos Aires, it is resorted to daily by great numbers of tourists, who make the night trip across the La Plata River. Pocitos is the most popular bathing resort. The poor natives do their swimming from the rocks on the ocean front near the heart of the city. They are invariably garbed à la Adam, and are visible by all the occupants of the electric tramcars that pass along that shore. The most aristocratic beach in Montevideo is the Playa Ramirez but people do not flock to that section as much for bathing as they do for gambling. Everything goes in Montevideo. The exclusive and expensive Parque Hotel at the Playa Ramirez, the show place of costly raiment, and of sparkling gems which embellish the figures of their wearers, has in connection the finest gambling house in America, roulette and baccarat being the attractions. The Parque Hotel, which was formerly under the management of a naturalized United States citizen, Edward Aveglio, is now under the same management as the Palace Hotel in Buenos Aires, and is considered to be one of the best seashore hotels in South America. It is patronized largely by Argentine aristocracy.
The gambling establishment, probably after those of Monte Carlo and San Sebastian the most luxurious edifice of its kind in existence, opens at 5 P.M. and closes at 7.30 P.M. It reopens at 9 P.M. and closes at 2 A.M. A fee of one peso ($1.04) is charged to enter. One peso is the lowest permissible play on any single number at roulette and one hundred pesos is the highest. Unlike the Argentine roulette wheels which have a 0 and a 00, this one has but a single zero which gives the player (or rather the victim) one nineteenth of a better show to win, if successful.
The same class of crowd that graces most European casinos is seen here at its zenith. There is present the nervous individual, who wants the public to think he has a system. To make them believe it, he pretends to study a chart and makes pencil notations. When he loses, he mutters an unintelligible exclamation. There also grace the scene fat dowagers with paste diamond necklaces. Some women who have wasted their allowance on bridge and poker, and are now in the clutches of the moneylender, come here to attempt to retrieve their fortune on one final coup, in most cases their swan song. Bankers, diplomats, millionaires, and cabinet officers from Buenos Aires, a president of one of the Latin republics are to be seen. Young fops are in evidence, not to play, but to ogle the raft of glorious girls always to be found in propinquity to tables of chance.
The casino does a great bar business in champagne cocktails to the tune of forty-one cents a glass. This champagne cocktail, regardless of its high price, seems to be one of the favorite strong drinks there. The soft drink that tickles the palate of the Montevideanos is a nauseating concoction named palta. It is made of orange juice, pineapple juice, sugar, and the yolk of an egg; to it is added siphon water. It is then stirred, and served in a large goblet. I tried some of it as an experiment and am sorry that I did not stick to beer, for the egg that the mixologist used in my palta was rotten. In R. Bibondo's Brazilian coffee house on Suipacha Street in Buenos Aires, I once received a piece of cake in whose making a rotten egg was likewise used.