Having concluded with the Gaucho, it soon becomes evident that the main features of individuality that distinguish the Uruguayan from his neighbours are very nearly finished with as well. The landowner, it is true, still clings in parts to ancient customs and the remnants of national costume rather more closely than elsewhere in the Southern republics. But the distinctions here are less marked, and in the case of the townsmen have disappeared altogether. An important factor in the population is now provided by the large foreign element that has settled itself permanently in the country. By far the most numerous communities of these are those of the Italians and Spaniards; but in addition there is scarcely a European country that is not more or less strongly represented by its emigrants. The negro race, although its presence is more marked than in the republics to the West, is quite insignificant numerically in the South of Uruguay. Towards the north, however, the numbers of the Africans are much increased, and as the Brazilian frontier is closely approached, the black people tend rather to predominate over the white. It is only in these remote districts that the possibility of a racial question could be involved. As a matter of fact, such an eventuality is quite undreamed of, and nowhere in the world is it less likely to occur. In the absence of any drawn distinction the negro appears to exist in more or less complete peace, and only meddles with the affairs of the country during troublous times when instructed by the true lords of the soil, whose actual superiority would seem all the greater for the fact of its being unexpressed. Considering the number of slaves that were imported directly into Uruguay as well as those that filtered southwards through Brazil, it is perhaps somewhat a matter for astonishment that these blacks are not numerically stronger than is the case. The explanation lies largely in the numerous wars by which the country has been harassed in the past, and in the policy that prevailed under the old Spanish regime. Black troops were freely employed then, and it must be admitted that they met with far less consideration than the rest. If a desperate situation arose, they were wont to be sent out in search of a glory that was very remote and of a death that was very near, not necessarily because the Spaniards feared for themselves in the attempt, but rather on account of the science of racial economy, and on the principle of sacrificing the pawns before the more aristocratic chessmen. And it is to these wholesale gaps in the black ranks that the existing scarcity of the negro population in the South is largely due.