The intention was to worry me so much in a polite quasi-legitimate fashion that I could have no ostensible cause of complaint; but, at the same time, so that I should incontinently quit the ancient City of Córdoba in disgust. The reason for all this was the fact that, having nothing better to do on the evening of my arrival, I had wandered into the basement of my Hotel and there found a person who looked like, and indeed was, a leading local politician running a roulette to catch the nickels of a crowd of working men. At that time the roulette was the scarcely concealed vice of the town, rife in the back room of every bar. It is an illegal game in Argentina, as elsewhere except Monte Carlo, and shortly after my visit it was the cause of a great outcry and scandal in which several Provincial High Officials were involved. I was a journalist and, therefore, dangerous. So a course of delicate hints to me to get out had been planned and executed. Following the gambling scandal, a leading Opposition politician was shot dead in his carriage on the high road a short way outside the city. When I read this news I was glad that I had not persisted in seeming to pry into cupboards containing Córdoba’s official skeletons, and for similar reasons I am still somewhat shy of Córdobese gentlemen with downcast eyes and soft, measured tread. All that, however, belongs to OLD Córdoba. The parts of the city called New Córdoba and Alta Córdoba are replete with palatial residences as fine and as new as residential palaces need be. The City of Córdoba is not only the traditional seat of learning _par excellence_ of the Republic, it is also, as a consequence of old-time associations no doubt, its chief centre of clerical influence. Córdoba is intensely and, if one may be permitted to say it, intolerantly Catholic. Were it not subject to the democratic laws of a modern and very go-ahead Republic one would hardly be surprised to find disciplinary institutions of an Inquisitorial type still in full swing in this old-world city of South America. As it is, there is no doubt of the predominance of priestly influence in Provincial politics. Much of the best freehold property in the city is owned by Monastic Orders or by the Society of Jesus. Most of the Province consists of a large plain; which, naturally, is the chief productive area. But Córdoba has hills famous for the purity of their air and great resorts for consumptive patients. ALTA GRACIA, with its fine hotel, golf links, etc., has of late years acquired a very favourable reputation as a place in which anyone may spend a very pleasant and healthful week or so. In the North-West of the Province are great salt marshes, in and around which only a very scanty and meagre vegetation flourishes, and in the North-East is the MAR CHIQUITA, a large and, in parts, very deep lake, the waters of which are salty like those of the sea. Hence its name.