Along the road a rider is proceeding leisurely, a large wooden pannier jutting out from either side of his saddle. This bulky gear, that lends such a swollen appearance to the advancing combination of man and horse, denotes a travelling merchant of humble status. What he carries within the pair of boxes there is no outward evidence to tell. Their contents may be anything from vegetables or chickens to scissors, knives, or sweetstuffs. Since, however, he has now drawn rein by the side of one of the white cottages, his wares almost certainly do not comprise the first two, for the market for such lies within Montevideo proper. By the time, however, that the lids of the panniers have been raised and the bargaining has commenced the car has sped far onwards, and has dropped him from sight. Thus the business of the travelling merchant--like that of the majority of passers-by--remains but half understood. But here, at all events, comes a group of riders of another kind, whose purpose is clear. Half a dozen small boys and bareheaded girls, mounted upon disproportionately tall ponies, are jogging along on their way to school. Uruguay prides itself, with no little reason, upon the efficiency of its system of education, and the humblest hut now sends forth its human mites to absorb the three R's and to be instilled with patriotically optimistic versions of their country's past. These rudiments mastered, they need not necessarily halt in their scholastic career, since, according to the laws of the land, a professorship is open eventually to the most lowly student who persists for sufficient time. And Uruguay is undoubtedly a nest of opportunities. An embryo statesman or learned doctor may be represented by each of the urchins who are now plodding onwards with serious intent through the dust! In the meanwhile the car has won its way fairly out into the open country, always green, smiling, and thickly shot with the pink of peach-blossoms. The rails have now drawn well away from the centre of the road, and are separated from the actual highway by a grassy space. Stirred by the importance of possessing a track all to itself, the car is undoubtedly aspiring to the rank of a railway train, and goes rushing at a really formidable pace upon its verdure-embedded lines. Swaying over the shoulders of the land, past plantations, lanes, and hedges, it plunges onwards in grim earnest to the terminus of the line at Colón itself. The actual village of Colón gives little indication of the nature of the district. The railway-station, shops, and houses are all pleasantly situated, it is true, and the restaurants and pleasure-gardens are unusually numerous. The attractions of the place, however, lie well outside the central nucleus of buildings. From this some remarkably imposing eucalyptus avenues lead outwards into the favourite haunts of the Montevidean when on pleasure bent.