70 To the River Plate and Back 



bring down the White Mountains from New Hampshire 

 and set them up in the New Jersey marshes, put the 

 cliffs and mountains of the Yosemite into the regions 

 of the Bronx, and build a section of the maritime Alps 

 of Italy from the Atlantic Highlands to Newark. After 

 all this had been done there would still be lacking the 

 sun and riant vegetation of the tropics. 



At various points there are small parks exquisitely 

 kept, and numerous monuments commemorating his- 

 toric events and personages. Mons. Georges Clemen- 

 ceau in his recent book entitled South America of To-day 

 criticizes in a good-natured manner the tendency 

 which is so apparent in South America to embellish 

 open places with monuments and groups of statuary 

 commemorating men of less than world-wide fame. 

 For my part I rather like the evident loyalty of the 

 people of these countries to the memory of those who 

 have been their leaders and benefactors. Granting 

 that their names are little known in Europe or the 

 United States, they were the men who laid the foun- 

 dations of the institutions and the laws which to-day 

 bless the nations whom they served, and it is fitting 

 that those who come after them should remember them. 

 There is quite too much haste in these times to bury 

 our dead in forget fulness. Republics are proverbially 

 ungrateful, and I esteem it a hopeful and pleasant sign 

 that here in these southern lands the duty of the present 

 to remember the benefactors of the past is being felt. 



But "God made the country, man made the town.' 

 I prefer the country. The result was that I devoted 

 less of my time to rambling about the streets and market- 

 places of Rio, and more to the woodlands and mountain- 

 tops. Two afternoons were given to pedestrian ex- 

 cursions along the route of an abandoned railway 



