an empty stomach in that herring-pool, | a full complement of passengers, mostly when a man should be turning his attention to mutton chops and ham and eggs. Nothing could be more welcome, then, than the sight of the Clansman, steaming southward on the way to Oban. She answered the signals of distress, and bore down to the assistance of the wreck. The embarkation was a matter of time, and of some little inconvenience as well; but the reef acted as a kind of breakwater against the freshening gale, and the castaways were hospitably welcomed into snug quarters, where they had an opportunity of changing their damp garments. "I seem to have known you from your boyhood," said Winstanley very warmly to his young acquaintance. "You have stood by me in a way I shall never forget; and as you were ready to do me one inestimable service in the way of risking your life, I mean to ask you to do me another. It's the way of the world, you know, so you need not be surprised." "Very willingly," answered Jack, with graceful readiness not the less readily, no doubt, that he felt instinctively that the favor to be asked was to pave the way to some return for his generous devotion. "Well, I fancy I may take it for granted that your time is at your disposal, other wise you would hardly have shipped for a cruise in that miserable old tub. I mean to land at Oban, where I fear I may have to lay up and take medical advice. If you could bestow a day or two on a fretful invalid, I should feel, if possible, more grateful than I do at present." And he threw as much significance into his words as was compatible with consideration for a gentleman's feelings. And as we know something of Mr. Venables's views and nature and as he made it a golden rule never to miss a chance we need hardly add that he jumped at the invitation with a cordiality which greatly flattered his senior. From Macmillan's Magazine. FROM MONTEVIDEO TO PARAGUAY. I. IT was a clear, mild spring evening in the latter part of the month designated in almanacs as October, but in nature's annuary the April of this inverted antarctic world, when the Brazilian mail steamer Rio Apa was making her way cautiously up against the shallow and turbid waters of the River Plate, bound with cargo and Brazilians, some Argentines or Uruguay. ans, a few Germans where are not Germans to be met now? — and myself as a solitary specimen of the British sub-variety, from Montevideo to Asuncion, capital of Paraguay, and, indeed, further north yet, to the Brazilian capital of MataGrosso; but with that ultimate destination the present narrative has no concern. Viewed from anywhere the prospect of Montevideo is a lovely one, but most so from the sea. However ill-advised the old Spaniards may generally have shown themselves in their selection of sites for towns or seaports in South America, they, or their great captain, Don Bruno Mauricio de Zabala, chose well, could not, indeed, have chosen better, when, in 1726, they laid, after two centuries of inexplicable neglect, the first foundations of Montevideo. As a town it is perfect; as a harbor nearly so. With the lofty conical hill and the adjoining high lands of the cerro on the west, and the bold jutting promontory itself a ridge of no inconsiderable elevation on which the bulk of the town is built, to the east, the noble semicircular bay, deeply recessed in the rising grounds on the north, is well sheltered from every wind and sea, the south and the south-west- this last, unluckily, the worst "of a' the airts," being none other than the dreaded pampero, or pampas wind of these regions-excepted; at least until the long-projected breakwater, which is to keep out this enemy also, be constructed. But pamperos, like most other ills of this best of all possible worlds, are exceptions, and for most days of the year few harbors afford a safer or a more commodious anchorage than Montevideo; while landward a prettier sight than that presented by the white houses of the smokeless town, covering the entire eastern promontory down to the water's edge on either side, intermixed with large warehouses, public buildings, and theatres, and crowned by the conspicuous dome and towers of the massive and, pace Captain Burton, fairly well-proportioned cathedral, would be hard to find anywhere else. Beyond, and all round the curve of the bay, countless villas of Hispano-Italian construction, one-storied the majority, and recalling in general form and arrangement the Baian or Pompeian pleasure residences of the Augustan age, but not unfrequently distinguished by lofty miradores, or look-outs, gleam many-colored from between thickly planted orchards and gardens, in which the orange-tree, the lemon, the acacia, the peach, the fig, the coasts. But Montevideo and the Banda Oriental, to give the vigorous little republic of which it is the capital its prædelict name, must not detain us now. Already the intervening mass of the cerro has hid them from our view, and we are far out on the monotonous waters of the sealike Plate estuary. Night sets in calm and clear; and I look for the fourfold stars, first visioned to the Florentine seer, when Goder pareva 'l ciel di lor fiamelle. O settentrional vedovo sito, of Don Juan de Garay - the residence for more than two centuries of Spanish viceroyalty, and now the political and, to a great extent, commercial capital of that southern reflex of the northern Union, the vast Argentine Confederation, the city of Buenos Ayres. I remember how an Irish mate, when questioned on board a Chinabound steamer, on which I happened to be a passenger, as to what was the first land we should sight of the Chinese coast, answering - and he could not have an swered more appositely-"Faith! the first land ye will sight is a junk!" Were he now replying to a similar inquiry on board the Rio Apa, he might not less aptly say, "Faith! the first ye will see of Buenos Ayres is that ye will not see it at all!" So low is the coast, so great the distance from shore at which the shallow. ness of the river waters compels us to anchor, that a long, low line of confused buildings, and behind them the summits, no more, of cupolas, turrets, and towers, seen at intervals over the warehouse fronts along the edge, is all Buenos Ayres presents to our eyes on first beholding. The view, or non-view, of Venice herself when approached by rail from Padua is not more unsatisfactory. I long to land, and resolve the illusion in the opposite sense to that by which earth's illusions generally are dispelled, by finding, as I But the Cross, partly veiled, is just skirt-know I shall, the reality of the Argentine And now, after ten hours, or there abouts, of upward course, morning dawns for us on the world-famed New York of South America, the memorial and honor venient landing, moved thereto by the sight of the distinctive flag that notifies the presence of a British official-rank and name, of course, unknown, nor to my readers worth the knowing on board the Rio Apa. It is a courtesy which will be repeated, with scarce even a casual exception, at every Argentine or Paraguayan river station we halt at during the seven days of up-stream voyage yet before us. the right of the stronger; a right too generally admitted for dispute or appeal. The channel on either side of it, deep enough for all mercantile navigation, is sufficiently commanded by the guns and forts of the place to make a hostile passage no easy matter. There exists widely diffused in the Old | guay, it belongs territorially to the ArgenWorld, nor least in England, an opinion, tine Confederation by right of well. the origin of which, correctly estimated or otherwise, is not perhaps far to seek, that a distinct want or even refusal of every. day courtesy, an ostentatious "I am as good as you, and better," bearing, a disregard of the social claims, or what are held to be such, of rank, office, station, age, and the like, are the habitual characteris- As we leave. Martin Garcia behind us, tics of the citizens of non-monarchical a broad, wedge-like streak of darker color, States; that, e.g., a republican boatman is driven far into the muddy waters of the more rudely extortionate, a republican por- Plata, from its left or eastern bank, tells ter more importunately aggressive, a re- where the Uruguay, itself a mighty stream, publican official more neglectful of polite- merges in the great estuary, and marks ness than their counterparts elsewhere; the limit between the Argentine Confedand so on to the end of the chapter. How eration, between whose lands more than far this may really be the case in some eight hundred miles of river navigation lie republics, the United States for instance, before us, and the Banda Oriental, or east I cannot say, never having had the for- shore, of which we now take our definite tune to visit them, nor trusting much to leave. Soon we have entered the Guazu, "Notes" where accounts vary so widely. or great passage, one of the many that Thus much I can say, that, in my own lim. thread, between shoal and island, the Paited experience of men and things, when rana delta, and are by nightfall on the a traveller loudly and habitually complains main river, here often whole miles in of incivility met with on his wanderings, width; though its real breadth can rarely the probability is that the traveller himself be taken in by the eye, partly owing to the has been, at the least, deficient in courtesy general lowness of its reedy banks, partly towards those he has come across. In to the countless islands, which, for its enrepublican South America my own witness tire course, line at brief intervals now one in these regards is, so far as it goes, of shore, now the other. They, and the the most favorable kind. Certainly I had shores too, often disappear for weeks tomuch sooner, if desirous of obliging civ-gether during the yearly floods, and, thus ility, have to do with an Uruguayan or Argentine, not boatman or porter merely, but policeman, official, or any chance acquaintance whatever, low or high, than with his like in many a European land that I could, but will not name. Again we are on our up-stream way, but now obliquely crossing over towards the north side of the mighty estuary, till what seems at first sight a continuous shore-line of swamp and brushwood, but what is in reality an aggregate of island banks, only just raised above the water-level, and covered with scrub, stretches across our path. These islands are, in fact, the secular bar at the mouth of the Parana River, before it broadens into the wider Plate. We shape our course to the right, where, at a little distance from the mainland shore of Uruguay here a continuous succession of undulating downs, grazing-ground the most-the little granite island-rock, known, like Cape Palinurus of Virgilian fame, by the name of a pilot, Martin Garcia, guards the only available entry from Rio de la Plata and the sea, to the allimportant navigation of the Parana and Uruguay rivers. Itself geographically, no less than geologically, a fragment of Uru veiled, add not a little to the difficulties and dangers of the route. At present the water is at its lowest; but even now the stream is rapid and strong; its color is turbid yellow; its surface often specked with masses of tangled weed and floating drift-wood from forests yet far away. For five days more we journey up the Parana; passing, and occasionally stopping for cargo or passengers at many places of South American note each one the outcome of some special activity or enterprise proper to the young and vigorous Confederation, between whose provinces the river flows. And first, Rosario, the city capital, if fact fill up the outlines of forecast, of the Argentine commercial future; and already the principal focus and dividing point of the widestspread railroad system existent south of the Isthmus of Panama. Next we salute the memory of the able but ill-fated Urquiza, deliverer of his country from the tyrant Rosas, to fall himself a victim to treachery base as any imbedded in the ice of Dante's Tolommea; as we sight the city of Parana, conspicuous by the ambi tious dimensions of its public buildings, and the nine-years' memory of its dignity, as Urquiza's choice as capital of the entire or to grant the desirable immunity from Argentine Confederation. Further up the agitations and vicissitudes consequent Bella Vista, or Fair Prospect, shines out on the frequent and abrupt political on us worthy of its name, where its white changes of Buenos Ayres itself - commu. houses crown the high white cliffs that nicated thence like earthquake waves to overlook the mighty river; and many the furthest provinces of the Confederaother are the places of provincial or evention. Still, enough advance on the path national note, till we reach the confluents of law and order has been made to give or Corrientes of the Argentine-Paraguayan reasonable assurance that the days of frontier. But it may, indeed must, be Oribe and Rosas, of gaucho leaders, and here enough for us to note that during partisan plunders are, year by year-as these nine hundred miles of up-stream the settled population of the land increases voyage, south to north, the scenery of steadily in numbers, wealth, and strength either bank, while remaining essentially less, and ever less, likely to recur; the same in its main geographical features while the tale of those who have a vested all the way, is yet gradually modified by interest in the tranquillity of the country the progressive approach to the tropics continues to grow, and with it grows the into ever-increasing beauty and interest. best probability and pledge of that tranThe eastern length of shore, along the quillity itself. Meanwhile, many detail fertile provinces of Entre-Rios and Cor- inventions, some of them undoubted imrientes, gently rising from the river level provements of recent introduction, such into a succession of green uplands, stud- as the increased use of machinery on the ded with tree clumps, and brightened by farms, the network of strong wire fences, white groups of cottages and farmhouses, now spread over the face of the pasture with a tall church tower here and there, land; the extension of railway lines, and passes by degrees from pasture land into whatever other appliances tend to the agriculture, fields of maize, orange-groves, facilitation of orderly communication, to tobacco plantations, and even sugarcane; the safeguarding of property, and to the a landscape which, allowance made for substitution of methodized labor for the brighter color and glossier vegetation, not once over-numerous troops of half-wild without dwarf palms and Japanese-looking horsemen and cattle-drivers-ready allies bamboo clusters here and there, often in the cause of riot and plunder all lead reminded me in its general, and even in up to the same result. It would be diffiits detailed, features of the noble back-cult now for a caudillo or an adventurer grounds painted by Rubens, of which an chief, however popular his name or cause example may be seen in the " "Judgment of Paris" in our own National Gallery. There is something Flemish, almost English, in their fertile repose; but here the scale is grander. In this southern Mesopotamia - as Entre-Rios may be lit erally translated - - nature has bestowed without stint whatever goes to make up those two solid and enduring bases of national prosperity-agriculture and pasture; the third foundation, indicated by our Laureate in his exquisite landscape scene, "Ancient Peace," is waiting here as yet. A few years, indeed, of comparative security and quiet have already done much, as the glimpses of cattle-stocked meadows, and the dark green patches of Indian corn show us, as our steamer rap. idly glides past the gully-indented banks; but the peaceful years that have given these good things are, as yet, of recent date; very different condition of tumult, insecurity, and not infrequent war prevailed here at a very short distance back from the present epoch. These evils are past, yet not so wholly as absolutely to bar the danger of their possible renewal, to gather round his standard the formidable gaucho bands, all ready armed and mounted for march or fray, that were, scarce a quarter of a century ago, the ter ror of farmers and proprietors, of landowners and peasants, nay, even of towns. men and towns, of place-holding profes sionals and city officials through the regions of La Plata and La Banda Oriental. But the surest guarantee of national stability is to be sought and found in the extension of agriculture, and in the yearly encroachment of peasant, or small farmer, proprietorship on the scantily peopled pasture grounds and cattle-breeding lands. Thus much for the east bank of the river. But on its western side a very different range of scenery, little modified by man and his works, shows the gradual transition from cool to almost tropical climes. For here stretches back for hundreds of miles from the water's edge, up to the first outlying bulwarks of the great Andes Cordillera, the vast plain, level as the sea, of which it must have been the bed in times almost recent by geological computation, and known for the "Grand Chaco," the "Sahara" or Flat of South | beyond the furthest limits of Paraguay, America, like in relative position and tel- its level surface, seldom modified, howluric formation to its African counterpart, ever slightly, by difference of elevation yet most unlike in the all-important attri- or by the hand of man, presents in its butes of moisture and fertility. For this, changing vegetation a kind of scale by the Chaco, is a land of streams and springs, which to measure, not incorrectly, the of marsh even and swamp, with abundant ever-ascending range of its thermometric growth of grass, plant, and tree, especially temperature. The solitary, oak-like to the north; its total extent is roughly ombu-tree, and the dwarfish willow and estimated as that of the British islands light-leaved poplar of the neighborhood of fourfold. Nominally included, though not Rosario and Santa Fé, gradually assowithout rival claims on the part of Para- ciate themselves further up with more guay and of Bolivia, in the Argentine varied and vigorous South American Confederation, it is practically indepen- growths, and the tall outlines of forest dent of all these, or of any other European- trees, worthy the name, trace themselves founded rule, being still, as of old times, more and more frequently on the low the territory and dwelling-place of native sky-line, till, as we approach about halfIndian tribes, warlike the most part, te- way to Corrientes, palms, at first sparse naciously attached and small blame- and stunted in structure, then loftier and to their own autonomous existence, and grouped in clusters and groves, give eviresistent to the last -a "last" which can dence of a more genial temperature; hardly now be far distant — against every while the bamboo, not, indeed, the feath Argentine attempt at civilizing, that is, ery giant of the Philippines or Siam, but in plain language, subjugating and ulti-liker in size and fashion to the Chinese mately effacing them. Passively strong or Japanese variety, bends over the doubtin their unincumbered activity for escape even more than for attack, and protected by the vastness of the open space over which they wander at will, they bave thus far not only succeeded in baffling the organized military expeditions, successively directed against them by the Buenos Ayres government, but have even baffled all but the narrowest encroachments of settlement and colonial proprietorship on their borders. Known, or rather desig. nated by various names Tobas, Mbay as, Lenguas, Abipones, Payaguas, and the tribes, with a certain general similitude of features and habits, much like that existing, say, between the various subdivisions of Teutonic or Slavonic origins in Europe, yet differ widely in character, dispositions, and language; some are pacific, and not unacquainted with agriculture and settled life; others, more warlike, subsist, it is said, almost wholly on the chase and foray; some are almost exclusively fishermen, others herdsmen or shepherds. Their dialects, equally diversified, for each tribe has its own, can all, it seems, be without exception referred to the two great mother tongues of South America, the Quichna, language of Peru and Bolivia, and the Guarani, spoken in one form or other over the entire eastern half of the continent, and of which more anon. others Such are, summarily taken, the inhabitants of the Chaco. Extending from the populous province of Santa Fé, opposite to that of Entre-Rios northward, up to and ful margin of river and swamp, often tangled with large-leaved water plants and creepers, the shelter and perch of gay kingfishers and flocks of parti-colored aquatic birds, the only visible inhabitants of this lone region, for the Indian tribes, shy, nor unreasonably so, of contact with the white races, keep aloof from the river coast, or, if they visit it, leave no trace of their having been there. now At last, on the sixth noon since we left Montevideo, we are off the shelving banks and scattered houses of Corrientes, a large town, whose importance and future growth are sufficiently assured by its position close to the junction of the two chiefest rivers of central and eastern South America, the Parana and the Paraguay. Of these the former subdividing itself into a network of countless and ever-shifting channels and isl ands, now united in one mighty stream of turbid yellow, here, a few miles north of the town- makes a stately bend, that half surrounds the fertile grazing-lands of Corrientes, and passes upwards to the north-east, where the eye loses sight of it among the dense forests of either bank; while from the north, exactly on the line thus far occupied by the Parana, descend the darker-colored waters of the Paraguay, itself a noble river, here over half a mile in width, with an open, welldefined channel, few islands, and a current strong even now, at the lowest water time of the year. At this junction of the three great streams, a scene surpassing in |