When we got down into Argentine waters I began to feel cold, and
donned an overcoat. Thinking it strange that I should feel thus in
the latitude which had in former times been so agreeable, I
investigated, and found the thermometer 85 degrees Fah. in the shade.
After Corumba that was cold.
PART V.
URUGUAY
[Illustration]
THE LONE TRAIL.
And sometimes it leads to the desert and the tongue swells
out of the mouth,
And you stagger blind to the mirage, to die in the mocking
drouth.
And sometimes it leads to the mountain, to the light of the
lone camp-fire,
And you gnaw your belt in the anguish of the hunger-goaded
desire.
- Robert W. Service.
The Republic of Uruguay has 72,210 square miles of territory, and is
the smallest of the ten countries of South America. Its population is
only 1,103,000, but the Liebig Company, "which manufactures beef tea
for the world, owns nearly a million acres of land in Uruguay. On its
enormous ranches over 6,000,000 head of cattle have passed through
its hands in the fifty years of its existence." [Footnote: Clark.
"Continent of Opportunity."]
The republic seems well governed, but, as in all Spanish-American
countries, the ideas of right and wrong are strange.
