We will therefore perform the strange feat of making a break in the trip ere it is begun. In any case it is necessary to leave the quay over whose broad, paved surface of reclaimed land the cabs are rattling, and where the policeman and porters stand, and where, moreover, a strong group of Salvationists are singing lustily, surrounded by a motley but attentive group such as the precincts of a port attract. But the graceful _Triton_ shall churn her way out into the open without us, since we will cling so far as possible to the Uruguayan shore, forging upwards through the yellowing waters, to halt at Sauce with its willow-covered lands and Colonia with its rocky beach, until Carmelo is passed, and at Nueva Palmira the River Uruguay has been fairly entered. Even then, however, it is necessary to accept the fact more or less on trust, and to confide in the accuracy of the map rather than in that of the eyesight. For the faint line that has recently appeared on the horizon to the left might as well stand for a distant streak upon the waters as for the low-lying Argentine shore that it actually represents.
To the right, the Uruguayan bank is well defined. Here the undulations of the land swell boldly out from the edge of the river, while in many places rocks and boulders strew the sloping foreshore as though to accentuate the frontier between stream and land that is so faintly defined upon the opposite coast. Here and there the verdure of the hills is broken by the darker green bands of the eucalyptus plantations, through which from time to time gleam the white walls of an estancia-house. At intervals the chimneys of a saladero prick upwards from the nearer neighbourhood of the bank. About these centres of their doom the speck-like figures of the cattle dot the surrounding pastures, grazing in fortunate ignorance of their end.
The traffic upon the river itself is by no means inconsiderable. Native topsail schooners laden with jerked beef, fruit, and timber come gliding serenely down the stream beneath their spread of sail. One of these craft is especially indicative of the main industry of the land. The vessel is laden as high as the booms will permit with horns of cattle, the bleaching mounds of which must represent the sacrifice of many thousands of animals. There are smart Government tugs, too, that hold the official guardians of the mighty stream, and great dredgers of queer and monstrous shape that steam slowly along to find an anchorage where the bottom is shallow, and there remorselessly to bite out mouthfuls from the unduly lofty bed.