Rosario is the second port of the confederation. It stands a short distance away from the river on a barranca or cliff. Passengers on landing are conveyed in horse-cars to the town, which is laid out in handsome streets and built up with charming and comfortable houses. The barn-like church, of the "horrible Jesuit style," as M. Forgues calls it (the heavy style of architecture common to nearly all the church edifices of South America), is very ugly, and as to the "faithful _elegantes_" who worshiped in it, our traveler did not deem them as handsome as their sisters of Buenos Ayres. Much of Rosario's increasing prosperity is owing to the railroad which connects it with the interior town of Cordova to the west. This road also extends down the Parana to a point about half-way to Buenos Ayres. When completed to the latter city and to its western terminus, which will be at no distant day, Buenos Ayres, on the Atlantic, will be connected with Valparaiso, in Chili, on the Pacific. There is also a line of English steamers which ply directly between Rosario and the English ports. At Rosario the Republica takes on passengers, coal and freight, and resumes her voyage. Above the city, the cliffs, increasing in height, attain an altitude of nearly one hundred and fifty feet. They are composed entirely of a hard brown earth having the appearance of pulverized chocolate; and the river, rushing between them, assumes a dirty, brownish hue for many miles. In their shadow, as the steamer passes, lie a Brazilian gunboat and two monitors of the same nationality: one of the latter is deeply dented in places where she was struck by Paraguayan cannon-balls. [Illustration: PUBLIC SQUARE IN PARANA.]