San José, the next town of importance to be reached, is remarkable as being the terminus of a splendid macadamised road that runs a distance of ninety-six kilometres from Montevideo to this point. This excellent highway is constructed in a really imposing fashion, and is engineered with a lordly disregard of all obstacles. Just before reaching San José, for instance, it crosses the river in the neighbourhood of the town by a magnificent bridge no less than 360 metres in length. This work was commenced by an Uruguayan engineer in 1906, and was completed in 1909, at a cost of nearly two hundred thousand gold dollars. The Uruguayans take a vast amount of very just pride in this structure, which is probably one of the finest road bridges in existence. It forms a fitting conclusion, moreover, to the best road in lower South America.
The town of San José itself is fairly important from the point of view of population, since it numbers thirteen thousand inhabitants—a fact that places it in the first rank of the country towns of the Republic. Its chief church dominates all the remaining buildings, and affords a notable landmark for many miles around. With the exception of this, San José contains little of interest. It is, in fact, merely a typical "camp" town that serves the surrounding agricultural area. A most up-to-date mill that turns out daily twenty-one tons of flour is, however, worthy of remark, since from the moment that the wheat is dumped into the granary to that when it emerges as fine flour and is mechanically poured into sacks, the whole process is effected by machinery.
Beyond San José the line climbs gradually to the summit of a small sierra, whence a spreading panorama of the surrounding country is obtained. On leaving Mal Abrigo, the next station, the character of the landscape alters. The rich, black, vegetable soil has given way to a rocky surface. Huge boulders of all shapes are strewn everywhere as though flung by some giant upheaval into their tremendous confusion. In the intervals of these great rocks grow thorny trees and shrubs. Indeed, this Sierra de Mal Abrigo differs from anything that has gone before. Hares abound in the neighbourhood, and at the approach of the train great numbers of the animals speed away behind the sheltering boulders. The armadillo, too, is especially plentiful in this region, which seems to favour the partridge and martineta almost equally well.
Bizcocho is the last point of call before reaching Mercedes, from which it is distant some twenty kilometres. From here the ground—once again an open, treeless plain—slopes continuously as it descends towards the valley at the Rio Negro. At the near approach to Mercedes itself the country assumes the smiling aspect that seems the inevitable attribute of the environs of the Uruguayan towns. Gardens, orchards, streams, plantations, vineyards—all these flit past in rapid sequence, until the train pulls up at Mercedes station, the terminus of the line.
This terminus of the line is well defined in more senses than one. The station is situated on a bluff that hangs immediately over the Rio Negro. It is merely necessary to proceed to the end of the rails, just beyond the platform, in order to look sheer down upon the water of the river some hundred feet below. A thoughtful act on the part of the railway company to halt on the very brink, and thus to supply a panorama in the place where the rails can no longer travel!
MERCEDES: FROM ACROSS THE RIO NEGRO.
To face p. 208.