Rensselaer Republican, Volume 23, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 May 1891 — Rural Uruguay. [ARTICLE]

Rural Uruguay.

Harper's Magazine. Excursions across the territory of Uruguay reveal nothing of very great interest to the tourist. The landscape in parts is pretty; some finely situated estancias are to be seen ajong the banks of the Uruguay; the vicinity of the Rio Negro, too, is especially interesting and characteristic of the fertile parts of the territory, which present a similar combination of water, wood, and rolling prairie. But, after ail, one soon

i wearies of looking at the fame kkid ot View hoar after hour, league after league, and province after province. The fences of posts and wire are varied sometimes by fences of aloes and cactus; the eucalyptus, the poplar, and other trees are also planted to form fences as in Chili; the roads where one sees long teams of oxen toiling along with huge wagons, are as terrible as those of the Argentine; the prairies are dotted with innumerable herds of cattle and horses; occasionally you see two or three peasants wearing brown ponchos riding and driving animals before them; at long intervals you see one or two ranchos, or huts, where the peasants live. In the Argentine the ranchos appeared miserable enough, but ip Uruguay I saw many even more primitive, mere huts of black mud, with a roof of maize straw, a floor ot beaten earth, a doorway, but not always a window. The cabins of the Irish peasantry give some idea ol the Uruguayan rancho. It is a comfortless, unhealthy, rheumatic dwelling, less civilized than that of the Esquimaux, and more carelessly built than the most ordinary bird’s nest.