That the merest elementary acquaintance with South American geography and politics may be conspicuously absent even in educated English circles, may be gathered from the following circumstances within my own experience:--On my return to England in 1868, I happened to be present on the annual speech-day at Harrow. At luncheon there I sat next to a gentleman whose remarks on the unusual heat of the weather led to his learning that I had recently come from _Rio de Janeiro_. His interest being excited, he asked me to tell him, one by one, the several stages by which one arrived there from England, viz.--Southampton, Lisbon, _St. Vincent_, _Pernambuco_, _Bahia_, and _Rio_. When I had named the last point he repeated the inquiry, “and then?” to which I replied that _then_ one was at one’s destination.--“But,” he asked, “I thought _Rio_ was up a river?” I suggested that he was perhaps misled by the name “_Rio de Janeiro_,” the River of January, but said that the town was situated on an arm of the sea, which the first European explorers had mistaken for a stream, naming it after the month of the year on which it was discovered. But this explanation did not satisfy him. He was thinking of some other river: would I name one or two? I suggested “_The Amazons_,” which he said was the stream he meant, until I informed him that it lay about two thousand miles to the _north_ of _Rio de Janeiro_! On this he remarked that there was surely another great stream in that quarter, and that he must have mistaken the name. I suggested the river _Plate_, to which he answered “Yes, yes, of course;” but his speculations collapsed when I informed him that the river _Plate_ was about a thousand and fifty miles to the _south_ of the Brazilian capital. About the same time I met at a dinner-party a well-known Member of Parliament, who, on learning the quarter of the world from which I had recently arrived, professed himself as being most anxious to hear something about the _Paraguayan_ War, then much talked of, and the progress of which he said he had followed with close attention. I began with a statement of the contending parties--namely, _Paraguay_ on the one hand, and _Brazil_, the _Argentine Republic_, and the Republic of _Uruguay_ on the other. “But stop,” he said “You have omitted to mention _Corrientes_.” I answered that to quote _Corrientes_ as being one of the parties to the war would be the same as to mention Yorkshire as having been one of the principals of the Crimean War--since _Corrientes_ was merely a province of the _Argentine Republic_. This was a new light to him; the name had so taken hold of his memory that he was at first inclined to argue with me as to the correctness of my statement.