Further, an Argentine when he orders anything wants it at once. Quick delivery is an essential. Finally, all catalogues should be in Spanish, and all prices in Argentine currency. No man who goes out to "chase up business" in securing orders should be without a knowledge of Spanish. Talking through an interpreter is no good. The personal touch is lost. Spanish is a language much neglected in England. I can think of no more profitable investment for a young fellow of parts, wanting to enter commercial life, and without means to go into business as a principal, than thoroughly to master Spanish. CHAPTER VIII CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY It is well to get a bold, broad idea of the country. It covers 2,000,000 square miles. England is just about one-tenth that size. It is double the size of Mexico. In the far north you are in the torrid tropics. In the far south you need a heavy coat, even in high summer-time. Its conditions may, therefore, be described as variable. No other country can give you such change. The 20,000 miles of railway run through most of the flat fertile areas, and the ordinary traveller comes away with the idea it is one of the most level, featureless countries he has ever been in. The old settlers had the same idea, for their description _pampa_ applied to a boundless stretch. You can journey for hundreds of miles and never see a tree. But up in the north, under the shadow of Brazil, are great forests which will be made useful to the world one of these days. Then you get the backbone of the continent in the west, the Andes with Aconcagua rising to 23,000 feet above sea level. In the middle land is the fruitful Argentine Mesapotamia. In the far south is the last word of desolation, the Patagonian wilderness. Argentina has several navigable rivers, and two, the Plate and the Parana, up which it is possible, for light draft steamers, at any rate, to go hundreds of miles. If one pretends there is no Amazon in existence the Plate discharges more water into the ocean than any river from Hudson's Bay to the Magellan Straits. A learned book informs me that the volume of water rolled into the ocean is 2,150,000 cubic feet per second, which seems "prodigious." At Monte Video the width of the river is sixty-two miles; so it is no trifling creek. The Plate is the muddiest stream I have ever come across. This is not to be wondered at, considering that it and its tributaries scour many thousands of miles. As a matter of fact, the estuary is being filled up. Within knowledge, the depth opposite Monte Video has lessened by fifteen feet, and though dredgers are constantly at work, big liners moving up to Buenos Aires have sometimes to force a way through two feet of mud. It is quite likely that in the fullness of time Buenos Aires will not be a port, but an inland town.