TOPOGEAPHY OF URUGUAY. 335 



learnt the use of spe ir and lasso, like their Pampas neighbours. Towards the 

 middle of the eighteenth century the Charruas had been driven north of the Rio 

 Neo-ro, where they were joined by the Miuuans from the Parana. "The Char- 

 ruas," wrote Azara, " muster only 400 warriors, but they have cost the Spaniards 

 more blood than the numerous armies of the Inca and of Montezuma." They 

 were finally reduced in 1831, when some were sold to an itinerant showman, the 

 last of these dying in a Paris hospital; but there is no doubt a strain of Charrua 

 blood in the veins of the present mixed Uruguayans, who are physically amongst 

 the finest of the Hispano- American populations. 



Topography. 



The right bank of the Uruguay is thinly peopled above the town of Salto, 

 which takes its name from the neighbouring " Falls." Salto, third city of the 

 Republic in population, though dating only from the year 1817, is picturesquely 

 situated on the slopes of several hills at the point where the steam navigation is 

 arrested, except when the river is in flood. It practically forms a single city 

 with Concordia on the opposite (Argentine) side. Southwards opens the valley of 

 the River Dayman, which is named from one of the numerous English proprietors 

 whose plantations line its banks. 



Paysandu — Fray Bentos — Rivera. 



Paysandu, founded in 1772 by the "père" Sandu, occupies a position ana- 

 logous to that of Salto, on a high cliff at the issue of a river valley nearly 

 opposite Colon on the Argentine side. It ranks next to JNIonte Video in population, 

 and since its destruction by a Brazilian fleet in 1864, has taken a large share in 

 the preserA^ed meat business, whose chief centre is at Fray Bentos, officially called 

 Independencia, some distance lower down. In 1868, this place was merely a chapel 

 surrounded by a few huts, when the district was chosen by a far-seeing speculator 

 as a suitable site for the establishment of a factory for the preparation of 

 " Liebig's Extract." The factory, itself a small town, gives employment to about 

 2,000 hands, and during the busy season, the cattle from the Upper Uruguay, the 

 Parana, the Gualeguaychu, and the Rio Negro are here " treated " at the rate of 

 about 1,000 a day. Thanks to this industry. Fray Bentos has become the third, 

 and in some years the second port of the Republic. " The nature of the opera- 

 tions carried on here is clearly enough revealed by the whiffs that come borne to 

 us on the night breeze. Once more, to borrow the vigorous and terrible words 

 used by Vicuna Mackenna in speaking of it under the rule of Rosas, this country 

 is literally a huge slaughter-shed, making the air hot and heavy with the smell 

 of blood, and men callously unconcerned at its sight. A profitable trade and 

 occupation for a nation doubtless, but one that keeps alive in it those inborn human 

 instincts of cruelty and savager}-, which in our older civilisation have long been 

 curbed and softened down. One of the uffliest traits of the uneducated native of 



