352 AMAZONIA AND LA PLATA. 



The Argentines have the ready wit and marvellously receptive intelligence of 

 the Spaniards. They are bold and daring, and, compared with their Brazilian 

 neighbours, have a more resolute character, a more decided will, proceeding more 

 promptly and vigorously to action. They also yield to intense feelings of 

 enthusiasm under the impulse of generous ideas, and few national displays could 

 compare in grandeur and exuberant rejoicings to the demonstration caused by the 

 abolition of slavery in Brazil. All were overjoyed at the disappearance of this 

 foul spot from American histoiy, and they felt themselves brothers of tbose 

 Brazilians whom they were hitherto wont to speak of as "hereditary foes." 



In their ambition to do "big thiugs" they have, in prosperous times, really 

 developed their material resources with a fiery energy which has dazzled the 

 IN^orth Americans themselves. Towns sprang up in the wilderness, and the 

 camping-grounds, one day occupied by savages, were the next importing steam 

 engines, starting telephones and newspapers. 



But the evil days have returned. The great undertakings floated with foreign 

 capital with no thought of the future have not all succeeded, while those that 

 have yielded returns have chiefly benefited the speculators and large landowners. 

 The rapid enrichment of a few, and the ruin of others, resulted in general demoral- 

 isation, and while capitalists were gambling with the public funds the politicians 

 were scrambling for oflice. 



Then came the sudden crrish, when nearly all serious undertakings were 

 arrested b}" failures, more or less disguised by financial jugglery. Once again 

 it was seen how unstable is the equilibrium of a land in which the common weal 

 does not rest on the labour of a free peasantry, and where industrial progress is 

 due, not to local enterprise, but to foreign speculation. 



Nevertheless the natural resources of the country are so great that financial 

 crises, however long and disastrous they may be, may retard, but cannot perma- 

 nently arrest the progress of Argentina. In spite of everything the population 

 continues to increase, the tide of immigration has again set in this direction, the 

 area of land brought into use is daily extended, and enterprise has begun to 

 penetrate into the two sections of the Republic which hold the greatest treasures in 

 reserve. These are in the north-west the territory of the Missions, and in the 

 west the Andean uplands about the sources of the Colorado and Rio Negro, 

 There is room for millions of settlers in these regions, favoured as they are by a 

 fertile soil, pure air, and a delightful climate, entirely suitable for the constitution 

 of immigrants from Europe. 



Physical Fkatures. 



Viewed as a whole, the surface of the land is found to have a slight general 

 incline from the Andes to the Atlantic. But this uniformity is broken at various 

 points by rising grounds and rugosities, and in Patagonia even by some isolated 

 mountain masses rising at some distance from the Andes. 



The Andean system, which occupies .such abroad stretch of territory in Bolivia 



