Buenos Aires 161 



whole of this great city, which nearly equals Philadel- 

 phia in the number of its inhabitants, is laid out with 

 magnificent boulevards such as the Avenida de Mayo. 

 By far the greater number of the streets of Buenos 

 Aires are narrow, conformed to its original plan, run- 

 ning at right angles to each other and closely built up 

 with houses of the Spanish type one or two stories in 

 height. Avenues such as the great central thoroughfare 

 leading from the Presidential Mansion to the Capitol, 

 and the splendid Avenida Alvear, on which are gathered 

 the homes of many of the wealthy, are the exception, 

 not the rule. Buenos Aires, as we saw it on our ride 

 from the Zoological Garden to the station of the Ferro 

 Carril du Sud, conveys to the mind an impression of 

 flatness and dull uniformity. Still there were things to 

 arrest attention. We caught the milkman serving his 

 customers rather late in the day. It was not after the 

 manner of New York or Pittsburgh, with an automobile 

 loaded with milk-cans, but after the good old Italian 

 fashion. Two cows accompanied by a calf, the latter 

 with a bag tied over its hungry mouth, so that it might 

 not invade the fluid stores, had been led by the milk- 

 man and his boy through the streets. At the door of a 

 customer they had stopped, and, while the children of 

 the house stood by to watch the operation, the milk- 

 man milked the cows and filled the vessels which the 

 children had brought out. The milk thus furnished is 

 certainly pure, provided the cows have been fed upon 

 pure food and not allowed to drink water infected by 

 the germs of typhoid fever. 



On a number of subsequent occasions we visited 

 Buenos Aires either for business or for pleasure, and for 

 nearly a week before sailing for home I made my resi- 

 dence in the capital and came to feel that I knew some- 



