LETTEE I.
FEOM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDi^O.
Monte Video, August 11, 1868.
My dear Z J
You directed me, remember, to proceed
straight to the seat of war, in the " seld seen land,^^
Paraguay, and there to constitute myself your Military
Correspondent/^ You were weary of reading for more
than three years a succession of reliable details published
by one newspaper and directly contradicted by another. You pitied the public when I was asked for articles upon that interesting if not important subject by a certain Editor who, knowing me to be at Santos, Sao Paulo, inferred that places and persons distant a thousand miles or so, were therefore necessarily familiar to me. You asked with P. Pilate " What is truth ? You were " dying to know something about that unspoiled Arcadia which deaf Mr. Mansfield, after a ten-months^ sojourn on the soil, pronounced to be the most interesting, loveliest, plea- santest country in the world -/' about the " Nestor of the war,^^ Marshal Caxias; about Madame Lynch; about the battles and the massacres, and the rumours of massacres, and remembering the ladies of Sienna in the Livre de Montluc, about the Amazonian army whose " uniform was white, with white-fringed caps ; their arms a lance with pennant, and their grades eflfeminized into Commandanta, Capi- tana, Alfereza, Sargenta."
To hear was to obey. I at once girded up my loins for
the task. With a stoicism not less rare than commendable.
FROM RIO BE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO. SI
and au epicurean zest to leave those old familiar scenes and
faces, whose many charms had begun to pall upon the
traveller's palate, I descended for the last time the tre-
mendous inclined planes of the Santos and Jundiahy railway, and still shuddering, bade farewell to a three years' home. We embarked for the last of so many times at Santos, that Weston-super-mud of the Far West, peculiarly fatal to the genus European, species Consul, and with ses triplex about the cardiac region, we affronted the risks of fire and water on board a Brazilian steamer, northward bound to the capital.
After a rapid fortnight amongst the hospitalities of Rio
de Janeiro, which our countrymen will call '^ Rye -oh, you
delivered me (August 6, 1868), duly labelled, Monte
Video — this side up — fragile — with care,^' on board the
R.M.S.S. Arno, Captain Bruce. You preferred for me
the " Slow-coach line, as it was called by a testy editor
who, holding himself aggrieved, planted his little sting in the
tenderest part — when will English take example from Anglo-
American Companies, and learn how much may be made, or how much may not be lost, by a little timely expenditure of " dead-heading ? " The choice of steamers had for object, personal comfort and a zoological study of the pas- sengers ; upon which I cumulated observation of the mani- fold and manifest antediluvianisms of the Great Company. Why should the outward-bound public be delayed four or five days at Rio, awaiting the arrival of the inter-colonial" Arno ? Why treat the River " to an " inter- colonial " at all, when the big steamer should make it her terminus? Why retain the Arno of 757 tons register, which daily con- sumes from /thirty to thirty-two tons of coal, when the improved engines of the new Pacific steamer Magellan make twenty-five do the work of 3500 tons ? Again, why should the Buenos Aires mails, and the homeward- bounds
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82 FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO.