You always
had one or two to half-a-dozen scarlet wrigglers, the larvae of
mosquitoes, in a tumblerful, and you drank your water, quite calmly,
wrigglers and all!
All this will serve to give an idea of the condition of the city of
that time from the sanitary point of view, and this state of things
lasted down to the 'seventies of the last century, when Buenos Ayres
came to be the chief pestilential city of the globe and was obliged to
call in engineers from England to do something to save the inhabitants
from extinction.
When I was in my fifteenth year, before any changes had taken place
and the great outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever were yet to come,
I spent four or five weeks in the city, greatly enjoying the novel
scenes and new life. After about ten or twelve days I began to feel
tired and languid, and this feeling grew on me day by day until it
became almost painful to exert myself to visit even my most favoured
haunts - the great South Market, where cage-birds were to be seen in
hundreds, green paroquets, cardinals, and bishop-birds predominating;
or to the river front, where I spent much time fishing for little
silvery king-fishes from the rocks; or further away to the quintas and
gardens on the cliff, where I first feasted my eyes on the sight of
orange groves laden with golden fruit amidst the vivid green polished
foliage, and old olive trees with black egg-shaped fruit showing among
the grey leaves.
And through it all the feeling of lassitude continued, and was, I
thought, due to the fact that I was on foot instead of on horseback,
and walking on a stony pavement instead of on a green turf. It never
occurred to me that there might be another cause, that I was breathing
in a pestilential atmosphere and that the poison was working in me.
Leaving town I travelled by some conveyance to spend a night at a
friend's house, and next morning set out for home on horseback. I had
about twenty-seven miles across country to ride and never touched a
road, and I was no sooner on my way than my spirits revived; I was
well and unspeakably happy again, on horseback on the wide green
plain, drinking in the pure air like a draught of eternal life. It was
autumn, and the plain as far as one could see on every side a moist
brilliant green, with a crystal blue sky above, over which floated
shining white clouds. The healthy glad feeling lasted through my ride
and for a day or two after, during which I revisited my favourite
haunts in the grounds, rejoicing to be with my beloved birds and trees
once more.
Then the hateful town feeling of lassitude returned on me and all my
vigour was gone, all pleasure in life ended.
