28 HUNTING EXTINCT ANIMALS 



sider a common business transaction could not be carried 

 out in this country. The National Bank would not recog- 

 nize an identification based on a signature, and only a 

 personal acquaintance would suffice to permit me to cash 

 drafts or draw on my own deposits. Then I understood 

 why there are so many foreign banks in Buenos Aires, and 

 put my money in my pocket and carried it south with me. 



Mr. Bartleman, the consul from the United States, 

 helped us greatly in getting the latest maps and special lit- 

 erature, also by seeing that our collections were promptly 

 forwarded under consular invoice. In the matter of maps 

 we found that the government was most up to date; in 

 fact, ahead of time in many points, for railroads were 

 mapped for many miles as completed, which have not yet 

 been begun. This caused us to alter several plans and to 

 travel by boat where we expected to go by rail. 



Finally the morning of the ninth came, and we went 

 down to the boat the first thing, only to find that we could 

 not go aboard until one o'clock. So we sat down on our 

 baggage, had our tintypes taken, ate the fruits sold on 

 the dock, and kept an eye on the boat. The fruit in Argen- 

 tine was a surprise. We thought that being just below 

 the tropics with Brazil to draw on we should eat some fine 

 fruit in Buenos Aires, but we had to think again, for the 

 oranges and especially the bananas were of the smallest 

 and poorest flavor. This was true in the great city markets 

 and everywhere we went, a fact which I could only account 

 for by the fruit being native, while tariff walls shut out the 

 products of adjacent states. At last the 3,000- ton Presi- 

 dente Quintana was ready and we went on board, soon to 

 creep out of the tangle of shipping in the harbor and drop 

 down the river to Montevideo. 



Here we spent all day loading in oil, lumber, doors, 

 windows, corrugated sheet iron, tracks for a narrow gauge 

 railroad and trucks for its cars, shoes and phonographs 

 from the United States, jams and cloth from England, 



