The town of Pando itself is remarkable for little in the way of commercial or industrial development beyond forming the centre of a very flourishing agricultural district. The place possesses a quaint red-brick church, the walls of which are adorned with a curious number of balconies. With this exception the buildings are unpretentious; but almost every one is lent its own particular charm by the wealth of gardens and shade-trees with which the spot is endowed. Pando, indeed, is one of those very pleasant minor urban centres with which Uruguay is so plentifully besprinkled, with its delightful surroundings of orchards, vineyards, and cultivated land planted here and there with eucalyptus forests and with groves of other trees. In the near neighbourhood of the town runs a typical Uruguayan stream, its banks thickly lined with verdure, more especially with the weeping willows whose branches droop downwards in a thick green curtain over the water's edge. [Illustration: EUCALYPTUS FOREST: PIRIAPOLIS.] [Illustration: THE CASTILLO: PIRIAPOLIS. To face p. 198] It is at this placid rural centre that the macadamised road ends. There is no mistaking the terminus of the metalled highway. One turn of the wheels of the car has left the smooth, hard surface behind--and then begins quite another order of going. The progress of an automobile over a representative local road of the country partakes of many elements, amongst others of those of steeplechasing, toboganning, and of the switchback railways common to those centres less well provided with natural forms of excitement. The mounds and valleys of the way provide an unbroken succession of surprises to which the car responds by lurching and dipping wildly, although the dexterity of the driver keeps it staggering upon its four wheels. Nevertheless, a very little of this goes a long--or an incredibly short--way. So after a while the nose of the car is turned--a manoeuvre that demands as much caution as putting a small boat about in a gale--and the vehicle bumps its way back again through the smiling outskirts of Pando to come to rest, as it were, upon the hard, grey road again.