We would go first to Buenos Aires, reserving the restful charm of
Montevideo for after our journeyings. Then down South; where I should
quite disabuse my gentle companion of any ideas he might have that the
owners of square miles of wheat and thousands of cattle live in top boots
and shirt sleeves in one-storied, corrugated-iron verandahed houses
in the foreground of threshing machines. I would get him invited—and
myself as well—to stay a day or two at an English estancia; the large,
well-appointed two or three storied red-brick house of which, surrounded
by lawns and spreading cedar trees, would make him rub his eyes several
times before he were convinced that he had sailed out of England. He
would surely find a house party from Buenos Aires or neighbouring—a wide
term meaning, probably, many leagues away—estancias in possession; all
the members of which would retain their old habits of dressing for dinner
and breakfasting off a choice of several hot dishes and a tempting array
of cold things on the sideboard. An English country house, in fact, with
hall and magazines and illustrated papers complete.
Then we should make plans for the following, and, probably, many other
morrows; plans which would almost inevitably include a neighbourly race
meeting or polo match.
Amid all this he could dree his own weird for as long as might please
him. I should not disturb any of his promised projects.
But one day I should take him North again; and still further North, to
Córdoba, “The Learned City,” show him the Cathedral, the University and
its Library, and let him breathe the monastically mediæval atmosphere of
it all. And, outside the city, the wildness of cactus growth and gaucho
life.
Back eastward to Rosario, merely to change train for Santa Fé, and
across the Uruguay to Paraná. From thence to Concórdia; where at least
one tranquil orange-scented morning must be spent before one crossed the
Province of Entre Rios to where the Argentine North-East Railway should
take us to Misiones.
After San Ignacio, the Iguazú Falls and the trip thereto and therefrom
up and down the Upper Paraná, I should ask him if he ever wanted to go
anywhere else again? Whether he has ever even dreamed of anything so
beautiful? Then by river all the way back to Buenos Aires; and, one
night, across to Montevideo. There we would sit awhile in the evening and
listen to the band in the square where the little coloured lamps swing in
the fresh sea breeze; and bathe next morning and roll ourselves in the
hot dry sand of Pocitos or Ramirez.
Then we would take railway trips in Uruguay. Over billowy pasturage and
through waves of wheat; not flat expanses such as those we shall have
seen on the Pampa, but seas of corn-covered, undulating ground.
Then he could go back to Europe, if he liked. I should stay.
URUGUAY
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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