Favored by nature and by the conditions under which it was founded, the City of Buenos Aires from its earliest days has been endowed with elements which have considerably influenced the vast growth and development that have made it the leading Latin city of the new world. Situated on the banks of the River Plate and at the gateway of the Atlantic, nature has largely contributed towards making it a great commercial centre. At the time of its foundation, it attracted but few of the adventurers, who, in their quest of gold, migrated to other parts of South America, the wealth of the soil and the abundance of the flocks and herds having brought to its shores a less turbulent and more laborious class of immigrants who sought a new home and a new outlet for their activities in the "City of Good Airs." The pure European origin and the commercial spirit of the new inhabitants soon produced changes in pre-existing conditions and in marking out the path for the present Argentine metropolis to become the hub of South America. Founded in 1535 by Pedro de Mendoza, and subsequently destroyed and twice depopulated, the modern rise of the capital of what is now the Argentine Republic may be said to date from 1824, after the formulation of the Monroe Doctrine and the recognition of the independence of the people of Buenos Aires by the United States and Great Britain. At about that time efforts were initiated to provide the means of facilitating the transport of its products to foreign markets and in order to establish the necessary facilities for that purpose, Buenos Aires raised (in England) its first loan of $5,000,000. To that comparatively small financial transaction may be traced the reasons for the enormous investment of foreign capital--chiefly British--which has since enabled the country to serve humanity by the increasing development of its numerous sources of wealth. Following this preliminary introduction of foreign capital, there was established a regular line of sailing packets between Buenos Aires and Montevideo and, later, a line of steamers between Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro, which progressive measures were added to an official bank and, within the next thirty years, a line of railway extending in a westerly direction from the capital.