Montevideo and the River Plate 105 



and lighting up the white walls of the surburbs through 

 which we quickly passed. To the east we caught 

 glimpses of the river, now dark purple in the waning 

 light. The sky-line toward the sunset was interrupted 

 by buildings and by dark groves of eucalyptus. There 

 had been a few showers during the day and the country 

 roads along which we passed appeared to be veritable 

 sloughs. From the Atlantic far into the interior there 

 are no stones to be found in Argentina. The level prov- 

 ince of Buenos Aires, when first discovered, was as free 

 from stones as are the rich alluvial prairies of central 

 Illinois. It has been said that from the borders of the k 

 River Plate for two hundred miles inland it would have 

 been in the early days impossible to find a piece of stone 

 as big as a cherry. The making of good country roads 

 under such circumstances has been almost impossible. 

 The streets of Buenos Aires and La Plata, where stone 

 is used for paving purposes, have been paved with 

 Belgian block brought as ballast in ships coming from 

 Norway and Sweden. I was told that the curbstones in 

 the city of La Plata had all been imported from Euro- 

 pean lands. The country roads throughout Argentina 

 are very wide, having been given a breadth of forty 

 meters, or more than one hundred and thirty feet. 

 The motive for making the roads so wide was the fact 

 that in former times, before the introduction of railways, 

 the herders were compelled to drive their cattle and 

 sheep for long distances to the ports, and they were 

 forced to subsist on the way upon the herbage which 

 these broad roadways afforded. They cropped and 

 grazed as they went. The roads were intended to be 

 broad strips of pasturage, as much as lines upon which 

 traffic might be carried on by vehicles. In the rainy 

 season the highways of Argentina outside of the cities 



