CHAPTER XXIV.

RETURN TO THE CAPITAL.--INTRUDO SPORTS.--MUSEUM AT RIO.--MONTEVIDEO AND BUENOS AYRES.--THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.--ASCENDING THE RIVER PLATE.

Our friends remained several days among the coffee and sugar planters to whom they had letters of introduction, and then returned to Rio. They found the planters exceedingly hospitable, and it was no easy matter to bring their visit to an end. They were pressed to remain indefinitely, and Frank and Fred were half inclined to accept the invitation, and become growers of Brazilian staples, but when they reflected what a life of isolation they would be compelled to lead they abandoned the idea, and were ready to depart at the appointed time.

"It is no wonder," said Fred, when they left the house of Senor J----, "that he urged us to stay longer. I know we must make allowances for Spanish and Portuguese politeness, but in this case it was not altogether politeness, but a genuine desire for society. Think what it must be to be cooped up in this plantation with no one but your family and the servants for weeks together. If I were he I should hail with delight the arrival of an intelligent visitor, and would shed genuine tears when he announced his intention to move on."

Frank shared the opinion of his cousin, and the youths resolved that they would not entertain the thought of becoming Brazilian planters.

Their return to the capital was timed to correspond very nearly with the departure of a steamer for the south. They had a day to spare, and devoted it to a few farewell calls, and a visit to the museum, to inspect some of its antiquities and other curiosities. They had already seen the collection, but their first visit was unsatisfactory, as it was on a day when the place was altogether too crowded for comfort in sight-seeing.

As they came out of the hotel on their way to the museum several urchins in the street were pelting each other with balls filled with water, one of which accidentally struck against Frank. The youth frowned and then laughed; for the moment he could not understand the situation, but suddenly remembered that it was "Intrudo Day."

The youths retreated to the balcony, and for half an hour watched the performance in the street. They were joined by the Doctor and a gentleman with whom they had become acquainted; the latter explained the Intrudo, which corresponds to the carnival of Italy in some respects, but differs widely from it in others.

"The Intrudo festival begins on the Sunday previous to Ash Wednesday," said their informant, "and lasts three days; the carnival has special reference to abstinence from eating flesh, but the Intrudo has no such significance. In the carnival of Naples and other Italian cities, dust, flowers, confectionery and its counterfeits, are the missiles used in the mimic combats, while the Intrudo is devoted to throwing balls filled with water, emptying small bags of flour and starch, and to playing jokes more or less practical in their nature.

"As you are strangers in the hotel you are exempted from the tricks connected with the Intrudo, but you must expect an occasional attention of the kind you have already experienced. When I rose this morning I found that one leg of my trousers had been sewn up near the bottom, and on placing my foot inside in the effort to dress myself half a dozen Intrudo balls were crushed. Fortunately I had some clothing in a trunk of which I alone held the key, and the trunk was in a locked closet in sole charge of my butler. All clothing that was accessible had been removed; it was probably done while I was busy late the previous evening in despoiling the apartment of a friend.

"Of the two boiled eggs I had for breakfast one was raw and the other hard enough to be used as a bullet; my tea was sweetened with salt; slices of boiled tongue were really pieces of soaked leather; and the cold chicken had evidently been run through a sewing machine, to judge by the number of threads in it. Pranks had been played with everything on the table; while you were laughing at the perplexities of your neighbor you found yourself the victim of a kindred deception.

"Ladies are the greatest lovers of the Intrudo sports, and if you have any lady acquaintances here I warn you not to make any formal calls on them to-day, if you wish to preserve your dignity unruffled. It is a proverb here that 'Intrudo lies are no sin;' and while a lady is inviting a friend to a chair, and promising not to molest him in any way, she is getting ready to crush an Intrudo ball in his neck, or upon his shoulder, or arranging for him to sit down upon a dozen of them."

The gentleman sent a servant for some Intrudo balls and bottles, and gave the youths an opportunity to examine them. They were composed of wax thin enough to be easily broken in the hand or when striking an object a few feet away, and were filled with scented water. "They were formerly," said their informant, "made much larger than at present, and immense quantities were sold and used. At present they are small. The throwing of Intrudo balls in the streets is forbidden by the police, but occasionally the unruly urchins will embrace the opportunity to use them on each other, as you have already discovered. In many houses the balls are filled with flour instead of water, and the sport of the season resembles that of Naples and Venice. Thirty years ago every negro boy on the street was armed with a large 'squirt-gun,' which he used freely upon those of his own color; white people were at liberty to pelt any one of their complexion, and the sport became so riotous that its suppression was a public necessity."

Among the curiosities in the museum they found a fine collection of living and stuffed specimens of the wild animals of Brazil. It included several jaguars and other carnivora from the interior provinces; a large cage filled with monkeys of every sort; another of snakes, among which was an anaconda seventeen feet long--at least, so said the attendant, and they were willing to take his word for it without personally measuring the reptile. There were stuffed humming-birds of many kinds; eagles, and their kindred, the vulture and condor; beautiful specimens of the ibis, which recalled the sacred bird of Egypt; together with many other winged creatures that have no names in our vocabulary. One of the condors had been recently used in a bull-baiting; the attendant narrated, with great animation, how the bird had been chained to the back of a young bull, and then turned into a ring. Bird and beast were maddened by the explosion of fireworks fastened to the animal's head; in his efforts to escape the condor tore great gashes in the flesh of his companion in misfortune. It is pleasant to record that these amusements are every year less and less appreciated in South America, and it is to be hoped the day is not far distant when they will cease altogether.

There was a wooden cannon which was captured from the rebels in one of the northern provinces in the last revolution. It was made of slabs of wood bound together with hoops of iron, and appeared to have been used; it was a type of the earliest known cannon, and carried the thoughts of the spectators back to the days when artillery was first used on the battlefield. Horrible in appearance were embalmed heads from the country of the Tapajos; Dr. Bronson explained that this tribe used to preserve the heads of their enemies, and wear them on their necks as trophies of their valor. A string through the mouth was used for suspending such a prize; the eyes were filled with wax and cement, and the whole face was built out with this material, to make it as lifelike as possible. On the top of the head was a tuft of hair, and the positions of the ears were indicated by rosettes.

Close to these preserved heads was a case containing musical instruments resembling flutes and horns, and said to be of great antiquity; they were from the upper part of the Amazon Valley, and coeval with the incas of Peru. One trumpet attracted the attention of the youths; it was about three feet long, tapering regularly from end to end, and provided at the larger extremity with a fringe of feathers, which modulated the sound when the instrument was used. The attendant asked Frank and Fred to guess what it was made of; they named everything they could think of, but without success, and were finally told it was an alligator's tail!

There were ancient combs, household utensils, and other things in the collection; Frank made a sketch of a comb which consisted of thin strips of a very hard wood set in transverse bars, and firmly bound with fine threads of a fibre resembling silk. One edge of the comb was straight, and the other curved; between the transverse strips that held the teeth in place, the flat space was covered with a closely woven mass of binding material, and a careful inspection showed the tracery of figures so delicate as to require very strong eyesight on the part of the operator.

Among the specimens of pottery was a basin about eighteen inches in diameter, and perfectly preserved. The outside was quite plain, and somewhat blackened by smoke, but the inside was decorated with a great variety of lines that resembled serpents twisted together; the glazing was broken in many places, and did not seem to be well put on, while the shape of the basin indicated that it was made without the assistance of the potter's wheel.

Space will not permit us to name all the objects which occupied the time of the youths in their visit to the museum; we will drop the basin, at the risk of breaking it, and accompany the party on board the steamer which is to carry them southward.

They left the bay of Rio Janeiro as they had entered it, passing near the base of the Sugar-Loaf, and keeping their eyes fixed on its lofty peak until it dwindled to a mere point on the horizon. Southward and a little to the westward they took their course, and six days after leaving Rio were in front of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

They found it a clean and well-built city, consisting largely of flat-roofed houses a single story in height, though there were many modern structures of two or three stories. It is on a point of land extending into a bay which affords shelter from all winds except the southwest; the harbor is well provided with docks and other conveniences for shipping purposes, and the city has half a dozen street railways, is lighted with gas, and has several steam railways into the interior of Uruguay. The business of the place is principally in the exportation of hides, wool, horse-hair, and other products of Uruguay and the surrounding country, and the importation of machinery, lumber, and numerous articles which may be classified as "assorted goods." Frank investigated the statistics, and found that Montevideo has a population of more than one hundred thousand, while Uruguay, of which it is the capital, has half a million inhabitants, and an area of seventy thousand square miles. The party had about five hours on shore at Montevideo, and then returned to the steamer to cross the mouth of the Rio de la Plata to Buenos Ayres, one hundred and thirty miles distant. From the anchorage, about six miles from the city, they were taken ashore in a steam tender which came puffing out to meet them.

They landed with all their baggage, and after a delay in port of some twenty hours the steamer proceeded to the Strait of Magellan and the Pacific Ocean. In a subsequent chapter we will know more about her course. Most of the foreign steamers going southward from Montevideo do not visit Buenos Ayres, but go direct to the strait without stopping.

Twice as large as Montevideo, and with many evidences of wealth and prosperity, Buenos Ayres impressed our young friends as second only to Rio Janeiro among the cities of the South American continent, as far as they had seen them. Its streets are parallel to each other; it contains many fine buildings, both public and private; has ten daily newspapers in Spanish, French, English, German, and Italian, besides several weekly or monthly publications; can boast of banks, theatres, hospitals, churches, convents, public libraries, museums, and the like; has several good hotels; and is, in fact, a comfortable place to be in. So thought our friends as they settled in their hotel and afterwards took a stroll through one of the principal streets.

"If only Montevideo had a country back of it like that which feeds Buenos Ayres it would get the most of the business at the mouth of the River Plate. Montevideo has a good harbor and Buenos Ayres a poor one; the former has safe anchorage and is well sheltered, while the latter is shallow, and open to half the winds that blow. In the easterly gales the estuary at Buenos Ayres is apt to overflow its banks, and when there is a strong wind from the west the water is so blown out that ships of deep draught have to change their moorings. But Montevideo has no important country behind it, while Buenos Ayres sweeps all the way westward to the Andes, south to Patagonia, and north into Paraguay."

So spoke the captain of the steamer as they were crossing the broad estuary of the La Plata. As they looked on the evidences of prosperity in Buenos Ayres, and learned that the city had grown up under many disadvantages, they expressed their admiration for the energy and enterprise of its merchants in no stinted terms.

Only small vessels can come close to the water-front of the city; ships drawing more than eighteen feet must anchor several miles out, and all freight and passengers come to the shore in lighters. Two piers, each fifteen hundred feet long, have been built, for the use of small steamers and other boats of light draught; before these piers were constructed it was necessary to land in flat-bottomed boats, or in carts with wheels ten or twelve feet in diameter, which were pushed out into the water, where they could receive their loads. Even at present the carts must be used occasionally, when an extremely low tide prevents boats from reaching the piers. Frank and Fred were reminded of the harbor of Madras, and their adventures in going ashore there in a masullah boat; on the whole they thought the cart preferable to the masullah boat, but would risk a brief delay rather than intrust themselves to it if a gale happened to be blowing.

Water for drinking purposes was formerly as scarce in the city as that for anchoring ships in front of it. Down to a few years ago the inhabitants depended upon wells within the city limits, and carts which brought water from the river, where it was not affected by the tide from the sea. The well water was brackish and hardly drinkable, while the river water was sold at a high price. Now the city has been provided with waterworks and the old troubles have ceased. The drainage has been improved, and altogether it is a cleanly place, though less so than Montevideo. The latter owes its name to the mountain or hill on which it is partly built, and from which there is a fine view; while the former is named for its "good air." It is certainly a healthy place, according to the reports of residents, though it is liable to sudden changes of temperature. The thermometer rarely exceeds ninety degrees or descends below eighteen degrees; yellow fever comes occasionally, but not often, and there are no other epidemics.

Two days in Buenos Ayres were sufficient to exhaust the characteristic features of the place, and give the youths an insight into the history of the country of which it was the seaport. We will again exercise our privilege of peeping into Fred's note-book for information which will interest our readers.

"Buenos Ayres," the record says, "is the capital of the province of the same name, and also of the Argentine Republic, or Argentine Confederation, of which the province forms a part. The country has been through a series of wars which it is not necessary to describe here; from present indications it has a destiny of peace before it, though a revolution may break out at any moment. The Argentine Confederation includes fourteen provinces; it has a president, who is elected for six years, a cabinet of five ministers, a congress of two houses, a national debt, an army and a navy, together with other paraphernalia of government. It has two thousand miles of railway, and another thousand is in process of building; it has frequent disputes with Chili as to its rights in Patagonia; a population of about two millions; and herds of cattle, sheep, and horses too large for careful enumeration.

"Of late years it has encouraged emigration from Europe, and there are probably half a million people of European birth now living in the country. One fourth of these are Italians, and the rest are Spaniards, Irish, English and Scotch, Germans, Portuguese, and a few other nationalities; in the province of Buenos Ayres there are seventy thousand Italians, forty thousand of whom are in the city of that name. At every step we hear the Italian language spoken, and the signs over the shop doors bear more Italian than Spanish names. The Spaniards were the original settlers of the country, but their identity is rapidly disappearing under the influx of immigration from Europe.

"It is interesting to note the occupations of the various nationalities as they settle in this new country. The descendants of the original conquerors are generally known as _Guachos_, or 'countrymen;' they rarely live in the cities, preferring the wild life of the interior, where they dwell in rude huts, subsist on the flesh of cattle or wild game, and have an existence little better than semi-civilized. They are the finest horsemen in the world, if half the stories we hear of them are true, and a group of guachos ought to put to shame the best circus troupe that was ever organized.

"Apropos of this, I am told that a circus company came to Buenos Ayres, years ago, when the place was the resort of the guachos, and gave a performance. Just as the show ended a group of guachos rode into the ring and completely outdid the circus men in every one of their tricks, besides several that were not down in the bills. The circus company sailed away for Valparaiso, but it had no better luck there than at Buenos Ayres. The Chilians are splendid horsemen, and defeated the professional performers at their own game. It was probably the same company we heard about at Lima.

"The Italian emigrants engage in building houses and in raising vegetables in the market-gardens surrounding the principal cities; those from Genoa have almost a monopoly of the boating business on the rivers, and they man the coasting ships and other craft. The Catalonian Spaniards are mostly wine-merchants; the Andalusians are shop-keepers and cigar dealers; and the Galicians are employed as domestics, porters, watchmen, and railway servants of the lower grades. Emigrants from the Basque provinces are the most numerous, next to the Italians, and their employments are similar to those of the Galicians, in addition to bricklaying, sheep-tending, and farm-work in general. The Irish are the sheep-farmers of the country, and it is said there are thirty millions of sheep in the Argentine Republic owned by Irish settlers. The English, Scotch, and Germans are generally occupied with commerce, though some of them have gone into cattle and sheep farming, like the Irish; the French are commercially inclined, some branches of trade being almost monopolized by them, and they assimilate with the native Argentines more readily than do the English and Germans. The aboriginal Araucanians generally retain their independence, leading a nomadic life, and keeping large herds of cattle and horses, which furnish their subsistence.

"There you have a picture of the population, which is as heterogeneous as that of the United States of North America, and has good promise for the future. The country is as diversified as the people; it consists of dense forests and vast pampas or plains, in which the herds of countless cattle and horses, and flocks of equally countless sheep, find a nutritious pasture. The pampas are far more extensive than the forests, and there are places where you may travel miles and miles without seeing a tree, or even a bush. Altogether, the Argentine Republic contains a million square miles of land between latitude 21 deg. and 41 deg. south, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the Andes, which separate it from Chili. The southern part of the territory is a vast desert; it is certainly a foolish quarrel between Chili and the republic, for the possession of this inhospitable region. The whole area in dispute is not worth the lives of the men who have died there while trying to hold on to it."

While Fred was writing the foregoing notes on the country, and Dr. Bronson and Frank were occupied with letters for home, Manuel was sent to engage passage on a steamer bound up the River Plate. Frank will tell us the story of the voyage.

"Navigation on the River Plate is free to all nations," wrote the youth in his journal, "the same as on the Amazon. The river is variously called 'Rio de la Plata,' 'River Plate,' and 'Plate River,' and, strictly speaking, it is an estuary rather than a river. It is formed by the junction of the Parana River with the Uruguay almost within sight of the ocean; the broad estuary is full of shoals and intricate channels which render the navigation difficult. Large steamers can ascend the Parana a thousand miles from the sea; the basin of the River Plate is estimated to contain a million and a quarter square miles of land, and the inland navigation which terminates at Buenos Ayres and Montevideo is said to be not less than ten thousand miles. The Paraguay may be considered the head and principal stream of the Plate system; its sources are only a few miles from those of the Madeira, and the two streams might be easily united by means of a canal.

"We left Buenos Ayres on a boat drawing about ten feet of water, and rigged like an ocean steamer; we wondered what could be the use of the masts in river navigation, but found out before the voyage was over. Mosquitoes were thick and thirsty, but, like mosquitoes in other countries, they did not fly high in the air; when they were too numerous on deck for comfort, we climbed into the rigging and escaped their attentions. We advise all travellers who may follow us to provide themselves with mosquito nettings; and if they have preference in steamers, to choose one that has rigging in which they can find shelter. The cabins are apt to be disagreeably warm, and, besides, one does not like to be shut up there in the evening, when he can find a spot where the night air can be enjoyed without the presence of the winged pests of South America."