ON THE URUGUAY RIVER.
A URUGUAYAN STREAM.
To face p. 230.
In any case the life of these islands is comparatively short, and fresh floods and currents are forming some and destroying others all the while. During these periods of flood many of them would seem possessed of the characteristics of icebergs. Detached by the irresistible force of the currents, great fragments of the vegetation and camelota plant that cling to their sides go swirling down the stream. Though they can boast no polar bears, they are occasionally freighted with other beasts whose neighbourhood is equally undesirable. On such occasions snakes and many four-footed specimens of northern creatures form the unwilling tenants of these frail rafts of vegetation. It is said that many years ago one of unusually large size struck the shore of Montevideo itself, disgorging four jaguars, who entered the town as much to their own terror as to that of the inhabitants.
With Fray Bentos once left in the rear, the river becomes distinctly narrowed, and, where no islands intervene, the features of either bank begin to be clearly distinguished at the same time. The Argentine shore has broken away from its dead level now, and is rising in gentle undulations; the Uruguayan coast, too, as though in a determined endeavour to retain its physical superiority, has taken to heap itself in far loftier and more imposing hills than before.
The next town of importance at which the steamer halts is that of Paysandú, the great centre of ox-tongues. Indeed, were one to adopt the popular figurative methods of certain magazines, amazing results might well be extracted from the commerce of the place. Thus, supposing a year's accumulation of Paysandú ox-tongues were able jointly to give forth the notes that they were wont to render in life, the effect of the combined roar would probably be to deafen the entire populace of the Republic, and to blow every atom of water from the river! The number of men they would feed, and the distance they would cover if extended in a line I do not know; but it may be taken for granted that the export of these preserved instruments of bovine speech is very considerable.
Paysandú ranks as the second commercial city in the Republic. It is true that, so far as size is concerned, it is altogether dwarfed by Montevideo, since the inhabitants of the smaller town number only twenty thousand or so. Yet, the centre of a rich pastoral and agricultural province, the place is of no little commercial importance, and, although its architecture remains largely of the pleasant but old-fashioned Spanish style, not a few new buildings and boulevards have already sprung into existence. Like the majority of towns of its kind, it is well equipped with electric lighting, telephones, and other such modern appliances, although its tramcar traction is still effected by the humbler methods of the horse.