During the time I was at large, I had leisure to acquire some knowledge of Monte Video. It is a tolerably well-built town, standing on a gentle elevation at the extremity of a small peninsula, and is walled entirely round. Its population amounts to between 15,000 and 20,000 souls. The harbour, though shoal, and quite open to the _pamperos_, or south-west gales, is the best in the Rio de la Plata; it has a very soft bottom of deep mud. When the wind continues for some time at north-east, ships drawing twelve feet water are frequently a-ground for several days, so that the harbour cannot be called a good one for vessels above three hundred or four hundred tons.
There are but few capital buildings; the town in general consists of houses of one story, paved with bricks, and provided with very poor convenience. In the square is a cathedral, very handsome, but awkwardly situated; opposite to it, is an edifice divided into a town-house, or _cabildo_, and a prison. The streets, having no pavement, are always either clouded with dust or loaded with mud, as the weather happens to be dry or wet. In seasons of drought the want of conduits for water is a serious inconvenience, the well, which principally supplies the town, being two miles distant.
Provisions here are cheap and in great abundance. Beef in particular is very plentiful, and, though rarely fat or fine, makes excellent soup. The best parts of the meat may, indeed, be called tolerable, but they are by no means tender. The pork is not eatable. Such is the profusion of flesh-meat, that the vicinity for two miles round, and even the purlieus of the town itself, present filthy spectacles of bones and raw flesh at every step, which feed immense flocks of sea-gulls, and in summer breed myriads of flies, to the great annoyance of the inhabitants, who are obliged at table to have a servant or two continually employed in fanning the dishes with feathers, to drive away those troublesome intruders.
Of the character of the inhabitants of Monte Video, I am perhaps not qualified to speak impartially, having been treated with unmerited harshness, deprived of my property, and repeatedly persecuted on the most groundless suspicion. These abuses, however, are solely chargeable on the governor and on the persons immediately under his influence; and I am bound in fairness to avow, that I did not perceive any disposition in the generality of the people to injure or oppress me. From individuals in the town I received all the assistance which disinterested benevolence could afford to a person in my critical situation; and were I, from the impulse of gratitude, to judge of the whole by a part, I should say, that the inhabitants of Monte Video, particularly the Creolians, are humane and well-disposed, when not actuated by political or religious prejudices. Their habits of life are much the same with those of their brethren in Old Spain, and seem to proceed from the same remarkable union of two opposite but not incompatible qualities, indolence and temperance. The ladies are generally affable and polite, extremely fond of dress, and very neat and cleanly in their persons. They adopt the English costume at home, but go abroad usually in black, and always covered with a large veil or mantle. At mass they invariably appear in black silk, bordered with deep fringes. They delight in conversation, for which their vivacity eminently qualifies them, and they are very courteous to strangers.