Of natural or unschooled talent there is a great deal there. A vivacious imagination is almost universal in the inhabitants; and in the fine language which they possess, they express themselves with a fluency, if not an eloquence, at which we seldom aim, and to which we much seldomer attain. This facility has grown out of their tertulia, or conversazione habits. Among the lawyers, the constant practice of dictating to an amanuensis, the definitions, reasonings, and refutations in the various cases in which they are retained, enable them often to write, and to write with fluency and elegance, upon subjects, the theory and bearing of which they study for the occasion. Of course all such writings are more plausible than profound, more replete with declamation than sound reasoning. The imagination of the South American is constantly at work; and unconsciously, perhaps, he is ever showing forth, among his countrymen, things as they ought to be, not as they are. When we hear him descant, in glowing and eloquent terms on civil liberty, freedom of the press, liberal education, privileges of the constitution, we fancy there must be a tolerably good foundation laid of all these blessings before so much could be said about them.
This naturally leads me to speak of social life in Monte Video, which, as far as I had an opportunity of judging, is frank, cordial, and agreeable, there being a much greater admixture of the citizens with foreigners, and especially with English, than I observed at Lisbon, and than I know exists in Brazil. English society in itself is also much more extensive than I could have well believed, and is of a very superior order—refined, intelligent, and hospitable. There is full freedom for religious worship of every kind; and Mr. Samuel Lafone, of the firm of Lafone Brothers, of Monte Video and Liverpool—a name preëminent in British trade with the Plate—having, at the expense of several thousand pounds, constructed a handsome and commodious church for the use of his Protestant fellow-countrymen, presented it, and the ground on which it stands (convenient to the anchorage for men-of-war), to them in perpetuity, without the slightest reserve or expectancy of remuneration, save the reward conveyed by the consciousness of having done a noble act, for the best of purposes, and with the purest motives. There are also considerable numbers of British mechanics in Monte Video, and agriculturists and shepherds in the Republic, the climate being humid, temperate, and bracing, like our own. The Uruguay adjoins that fine healthy province of Brazil, Rio Grande do Sul, to which some hundreds of Irish emigrants, more especially from the Barony Forth, in the county of Wexford—admirable specimens indeed of ‘the finest peasantry in the world’—have proceeded, within the last few years, from Liverpool, under the auspices of Admiral Grenfell, the Brazilian Consul-General at that port; and all the accounts they have hitherto sent home, whether by themselves, or the pastor who accompanied them, the Rev. R. Walsh, represent their circumstances and situation as prosperous and happy, an admirable loamy land being obtainable, in an unlimited quantity, at a dollar an acre. Some Anglo-South American houses also have a good many Welch on their properties in the same province, and their reports are all to the like effect. At still cheaper rates may yet finer land, and in a still better climate, be obtained in the Uruguay; and from all I have been able to see, hear, or read, I am inclined to believe that there is no more eligible spot in the world for an intending emigrant than the Banda Oriental, whether capitalist or labourer, whether an agriculturist, a grazier, a wool grower, or even a cotton grower, a horse or cattle breeder, or one skilled in the preparation of hides, horns, or tallow for the home market; or whether he be a rural mechanic or farm servant, or small yeoman desirous of bringing up a family in any or every branch of husbandry. On all subjects connected with agricultural pursuits in this region of the world, but more especially as regards the breeding of horses, cattle, and sheep, and their preparation for the several markets they are suited to, the excellent work of Mr. M’Cann (‘Two Thousand Miles’ Ride through the Argentine Provinces’), may with great confidence be recommended, as furnishing on these points a mass of information nowhere else to be found, and valuable especially as being the result of the author’s actual experience. My own observations were naturally confined to the capital and its immediate vicinity; and my opinion, therefore, on such extensive matters as those embraced by Mr M’Cann would be of about the same value as those of a Cockney who should pronounce on the territorial condition of England from a Sunday afternoon’s contemplation of a suburban tea-garden. And, speaking somewhat in the latter sense, I should say that the neighbourhood of Monte Video would be pronounced by the sentimental gentleman in Pickwick to be the very paradise of market gardeners, with or without gazelles, as the case might be.
The mention of gazelles is naturally suggestive of some remarks about certain other and biped proprietors of beaux yeux; but we must reserve such matters for the next chapter, merely premising that the observations therein offered are in every respect perfectly applicable to the fair Monte-Videans, who are, indeed, even fairer, or at least less embrowned, than the Buenos Ayrean belles, being, if possible, more distinctive types of Spanish beauty, or what used to be such; for according to the recent[82] pronunciamento of a most competent and accomplished critic, the syrens of Southern Europe are no such great charmers after all—an assurance that must be consolatory to the British mammas of young Hopefuls quartered at Gibraltar. But, be that as it may, few of the worser half of humanity will question the right of the Transatlantic descendants of Castillian dames to the suzerainty of all beholders, especially when to the Moresque complexion is added that distinctive optic attribute of the Goth which the Celts so much admire, as shown in the familiar Portuguese ditty:—
Olhos pardos e negros
Sao os commues;
Mais os do minha amante
Deos fez azues.
Black eyes and brown
You may every day see;
But blue like my lover’s