pressed and saddened to learn from an Austrian commercial agent on 

 board, of the dread which America's growing economic strength was 

 beginning to arouse in Europe. 



After a day at Montevideo, we came up the river by night and landed 

 on the morning of July 14 at Ensenada, the port of La Plata. Like 

 Byron, I awoke and found myself a celebrity, for Moreno had been bet- 

 ter than his word and had not only sent me a thick bundle of letters 

 of introduction, but kept cabling to the Argentine newspapers about 

 me and my visit to the La Plata Museum, making it out to be an event 

 of th^ first importance. The Buenos Aires papers heralded my arrival 

 in huge headUnes and, from time to time during my stay, laudatory 

 paragraphs would appear. I must confess to a liking for appreciation 

 that is sincere and spontaneous, but that sort of thing was so evidently 

 manufactured, that it merely annoyed me. At last, there appeared a 

 paragraph which I knew could only have come from Lehmann- 

 Nietsche, anthropologist of the La Plata Museum, for it was a Spanish 

 translation of the account which I had given him of Mr. Morgan's 

 financing of the Patagonian Reports. 



When I taxed him with the authorship, he admitted it without hesi- 

 tation, whereupon I expressed my dislike of that sort of thing and my 

 hope that it might stop. His reply explained not only his own, but also 

 Moreno's propagandist activity and was to this effect: "Of course, if 

 it really annoys you, we will do no more of it, but we hope that you 

 will not forbid it, for it is important to us." In great astonishment I 

 said: "Of what possible importance can it be to any of you?" "It is very 

 advantageous to the Museum, which is dependent upon the favour of 

 an ignorant Provincial Legislature and it's a great feather in our cap 

 to have a distinguished foreign palaeontologist come ten thousand miles 

 to study our collections. The bigger man we can make you out, the 

 better the impression on the powers that be." This disarmed me; I 

 owed so much to the Museum and to the courtesy and friendliness of all 

 the staff, that I was glad to make any return in my power. 



Shortly after arriving in Buenos Aires, I went down to the extraor- 

 dinary city of La Plata which, at the time of my visit, was like a city 

 of the dead. The failure of the Barings, in London, had been a terrible 

 blow to Argentina and had halted work on the public buildings of 

 La Plata, the new provincial capital; most of these were empty, roofless 

 shells. Some thirty thousand people had settled in this artificial town 

 but I never could comprehend how they lived, for they seemed to have 

 nothing to do. In places, walls had fallen, covering the sidewalks with 



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