Types of the Fantastic Domestic Architecture of Montevideo.
Types of the Fantastic Domestic Architecture of Montevideo.
While we suffered from no lack of noise, as the reader will have discovered, during our stay, I do not remember ever to have heard the whistle of a railway train. Trains come and go at the station of the Central Railway, which is some considerable distance from the older part of the city, but although our wanderings took us several times to that model of a railway station, we never even heard the hiss of steam, nor saw any sign of life therein. It possesses an excellent restaurant, and its exterior is decorated with large stucco statues of George Stephenson and James Watt and two foreign celebrities whose names have escaped my memory, but as railways are still in their infancy in Uruguay, and trains go only every second day to the principal provincial cities, and not always so frequently as that, it will be understood why the Montevideo station is more often as quiet as a museum than animated as a railway terminus. It is quicker, for instance, to reach Paysandu, the important commercial city of the northwestern Uruguayan province of that name, by taking the boat to Buenos Ayres and thence by train and boat, than by travelling all the way on Uruguayan railways.
This lack of speedy train service prevented me from becoming acquainted with the provinces of Uruguay, as none of my plains could accommodate themselves to the leisurely methods of travel, and so my excursions were confined to the immediate surroundings of the city. My favourite outing was a trip across the bay in a little steam launch, which in less than twentyminutes landed me on the rickety old wooden pier near the Villa de Cerro and thence a long exhilarating ramble uphill took me to the old Spanish fortress on the top of the Cerro, still used as a fortification by the Uruguayans. From the walls of this, splendid prospects seaward and landward may be had, while the fortress itself—with its rather slatternly garrison, the officer on duty looking heroically seaward while he sips hismate, and the horses cropping the grass on the slopes below—is by no means uninteresting. What pleased me most was to look landward over the rolling plains, grassy and undulating, as far as eye could reach, and at no great distance from the fort, alive with herds of cattle on the part known asla Tablada, so important to the life and prosperity of Montevideo. For in these herds, brought here chiefly to be converted into extract of meat for a great English firm, is the principal wealth of the country, and its history that is not concerned with wars and revolutions is bound up with the herding of cattle. Such as we see the country from the Cerro, it is, I am told, throughout its length and breadth—a land of ideal pasturage, full of gentle valleys, and with no hill that rises more than 2,000 feet above sea level. A pleasant land, with endless possibilities for the agriculturist. Yes, all my memories of Montevideo seem to be agreeable, for even its cemetery, beautifully situated on high ground by the sea, was in keeping with the general impression and had an air of peacefulness and rest which Recoleta so much lacked.