The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1904-06-30
ulation are foreigners. You will readily
comprehend that the social life of the

freely expended; in short, that society
here is fully up to that of any European
city of equal size. Just outside the
plaza groups of hackney coaches stand
waiting for customers, who seldom
come. We will have none of them, for
in Montevideo it is eminently the fash
ion to ride in tram cars. Street rail
ways gridiron the city, criss-crossing in
every direction, and in their clean
though crowded coaches one can study
Uruguayan life and character to much
better advantage than when shut up by
oneself in a private carriage. There
are upwards of sixty miles of tramway
in Montevideo, and that everybody
patronizes them is proved by the fact
that they carry something over ten mil
lion passengers a year-a high average
for city of only 100000. The tariff is
from to I cents, according to the
length of your trip, and the spick-and-
span new cars, all made in New York,
are certainly safer and pleasanter than
the iolting, bug-infested hacks. There
is bnt one drawback to the tram cars,
viz, that their jolly drivers, one and
all, carry cows horns and toot to one
another continually, executing shrill
prolonged trills with might and main,
and out of pure Righteousness making a
din that is almost deafening.
1t does not take long in our peregri-
nations to discover that Uruguay's
capital is city of stucco and tiles and
gorgeous coloring, of fine shops and
handsome houses, of magnificence,
wealth and luxury, of noise and clat-
tering hoofs-though nobody bustles
and hurries as in the North, of cheer
full faces and good clothes and con-
tented people, who have no acquaint-
ance with the wolf called poverty that
prowls about the doors of many of
their cousins on the Pacific side of the
continent. The town is laid out on the
usual chess board plan, with long, broad
streets that run up one hill and down
another, straight as lines can be drawn,
with clusters of telegraph and tele-
phone wires overhead and double lows
of tramway lines below. Owing to its
situation on granite promontory, al
most surrounded by water, Montevideo
is admirably drained, we'll ventilated
and constantly washed clean by rains
that fall about seventy-five days out of
the 365. The buildings are all fiat
rooted, of two or at most three stories,
the materials that enter into their CON-
position being mostly brick and stucco,
tiles, marble, iron and very little
timber.
The general plan of the private
houses is the Andalusian vestibule,
with floor of marble and dadoes of ala
baster, or blue and white Talevera tiles,
double doors of massive iron or carved
wood, always wide open by day, dis
closing a tall inner gate of open-Work
wrought iron or steel, through which
one can see the fiowery patio, embel-
lished with palms and statuary and fra
grant shrubs growing in boxes; and
often a second, and even a third patio
beyond, making a charming vista. The
frail-looking gate, with its lace-like pat
tern, though it affords no obstruction
to the view, is securely fastened inside,
and to gain admission one must ring a
bell, similar to those on our doors at
home. which summons the servant to
unlock it. The facades of the better
houses are adorned with much marble
and stucco, and before every window
are iron bars, gilded perhaps and highly
ornamented, but nevertheless as secure
as those of the common Jail. In Monte
video it seems that the weather. mar
is the more does his casa run to fanci
full establishment in the way of tiling
! and stucco, the more deliberately lace
| like is his iron work, the thicker the
gliding upon his gate and window bars
the softer the tints of rose and purple
and blue and yellow upon his outer
walls. Many of the tenement houses
have their vestibules and patios paved
with the knuckle bones of sheep, ar
ranged like mosaic work in fantastic
designs; and it is stale old joke to tel
astonished strangers that those are
human bones of people who were killed
in the thirty-yeafs' war. At any rat'
the effect is gruesome in the extreme
and in walking upon the bones ont
feels as if entering charnel house
Continuing our tour along the Gale II
de Julio, which is pronounced by man!
trav elers to be the finest street il
South America, as in the evening it Ii
one of the most animated-twenty-si1
meters wide, lined with shops filled will
rich Partisan goods-we come at length
to the Plaza Independencia, which i
hardly second in interest to that of tn
Constitution. 1t is an imposing paral
telegram, very long and broad, crosses
by paved paths lined with benches, ant
surrounded by lofty colonnadeS in tn
Doric style, such as we have seen il
the Capitals of Peru, Chill and Mexico
On one side is the government buildin
I'D