Argentina will one day export timber and ornamental woods instead of importing them as she has done hitherto; and perhaps the present difficulties of maritime transport will help to turn the eyes of both Republics to the wealth of building and other timber and fine woods they have at hand. A visit to the coach-making works of those of the River Plate Railway Companies which manufacture their own luxurious saloon and sleeping cars, would alone suffice to astonish many people by the beauty and value of the native woods there used, both in the cabinet-maker’s art and in the most solid portions of construction destined to resist exceptional strain. Señor Mauduit has already been quoted on the subject of the need of shade for cattle. A need which estancieros now pretty fully appreciate. CHAPTER XIV LITERATURE AND ART As in most young countries, the Muses have in Argentina and Uruguay had to be content chiefly with the imported offerings of foreign writers, artists and composers; while native science has principally been confined to medicine and surgery and various branches of rural productiveness. Still the River Plate Territories have always had their historians and poets, and recent generations have produced some painters, sculptors and composers. The Histories of Mitre and Araújo are admirable literary monuments to the glory of the River Plate Territories and the memory of their authors. The poetry of the lately deceased Guido y Spano and of the still living Zorrilla de San Martin occupies a deservedly high place in modern literature; while the names of Juan Cruz Varela, José Mármol and José Hernandez (the author of the Lyrics of Gaucho life published under the title of “Martin Fierro”) will ever remain household words on the River Plate. Godofredo Daireaux and Leopoldo Lugones are typical and delightful writers whose sketches are faithful vignettes of the manners and customs, landscapes and sentiment of a century and half a century ago, of times of heroic battles and early peaceful progress. For the rest, one must, with the Muses, wait with such patience as one may for the appearance of National types of literature and art; types probably only to be formed when the National types of men and women have reached their fully distinct development out of existing cosmopolitan chaos. At present Argentine and Uruguayan Art and Literature[47] are chiefly imitative; music, painting and novels being mostly exaggerations of, often not the best, ephemeral European taste and fashions, while architecture usually alternates fidelity to stucco with trivially fantastic French “Villa” and “Château” styles.