We tramped through the dimly lit village and heard the songs of Spain and Italy streaming from the cafés. We saw the crowd of merry-makers packing into the train to return to Cordoba. And when the train, a streak of light, had snorted into the blackness till in the distance it appeared like a crawling glowworm, we got chairs from out of the private car and sat beneath the stars and smoked our pipes, and wondered what was happening in England. At first there was warmth in the air. But the chill of midnight had come, and the grasshoppers had ceased their song, before we climbed to bed. CHAPTER XIV BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND If I were suddenly asked to name the town which has most rapidly sprung ahead during the last few years, Bahia Blanca would at once jump to my lips. It is 350 miles south of the River Plate, and if you searched the coast line for six hundred miles below Buenos Aires it is only here you would find a natural harbour capable of receiving the largest of steamers. With the gradual silting of the River Plate, which, notwithstanding constant dredging, will be a constant handicap to the shipping of the capital and Rosario, Bahia Blanca, with advantages which neither of the other two towns possesses, will undoubtedly become the real Liverpool of Argentina. In 1880 the place had a population of less than 2,000. To-day its population is 70,000, and it is increasing rapidly. Already it has third place in commercial importance amongst the cities of the country, and its ambition is to rival Buenos Aires itself. Old timers--men who have been in the place a dozen years--waxed enthusiastic to me about the way in which an unpaved village, built on a flat, dusty, treeless waste, has become a city of broad paved streets and plazas, with imposing public buildings, public gardens, electric tramways, electric light, and an excellent water supply. [Illustration: A STREET IN BAHIA BLANCA] There was something exhilarating in driving in a motor-car along a busy thoroughfare, with big shops on either side, and with clanging tramcars picking up and dropping passengers, and to be reminded that seven years before the place was quite a wilderness. The way in which some men had made money quickly made the mouth water when one was shown a plot of land which had originally been purchased for a few dollars, sold a few years later for 10,000 dollars, and which had changed hands only a month or two later for 30,000 dollars.