Curiously enough, the least smooth portion of this highway is represented by a mile or so of its length on the outskirts of Montevideo itself. This point once passed, however, the undulations in the surface of the road die away, and the broad grey thoroughfare stretches with remarkable smoothness over hill and dale. The car can snort along at the utmost speed its power will permit, since the grey band opens out ahead with a refreshing openness that is totally devoid of secrecy, and only at the lengthiest intervals is its surface darkened by the form of a rider or of a lumbering country cart. The progress is of the switchback order, with long-drawn-out rises and falls that are effected with alternate exuberance and strainings, while on either hand the fields, verdure, and masses of fruit blossom speed by in very pleasant sequence. For a spring shower has laid the dust, and when the Oriental landscape smiles, its countenance is supremely fascinating. As though to add just the tinge of sombreness that is requisite for the accentuation of the delightful scene, a dark forest of eucalyptus stands out here and there by the way, the massive serried trunks and branches painting the landscape with a heavy splash of gloom. For the first few leagues the aspect of the country--although the great variety of its attributes preserves it entirely from the taint of mere monotony--remains much the same. After a while, however, the skyline to the right becomes lightened in a rather remarkable fashion. The foreground is a medley of green, brown, and purple--rendered respectively by the hills, trees, orchards, and a patch or two of ploughed soil. At the back of these rich colours a range of very lofty snow-white sand-dunes has risen up. The gleaming barrier marks the frontier-line of the land; upon its farther side, invisible, of course, from inland, are the breakers of the South Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, the effect of this spotless range, when viewed from the shoreward side, is doubly curious, since the verdant landscape that leads right up to them gives no other indication of the propinquity of the sea. To the north-east elevations of quite another kind have been slowly rising upwards from the horizon as the car speeds along. As the town of Pando itself is more nearly approached, the distant mountains of Minas have swollen into view to assert themselves in a fashion that is not to be overlooked. Great rounded masses piled in dim purple against the horizon, their aspect presents a sharp contrast to that of the dunes close by. The latter are shadowless things, clear-cut and wanting in depth for all their purity; the inland mountains are deep and secretive, with an outline that confounds itself mysteriously with the sky.