PORTO MARTINHO 53 



we caught dim glimpses of the half-clad inmates of the 

 poorer houses ; women and young girls sat outside their 

 thresholds in the moonlight. All whom we met were 

 most friendly: the Captain of the little Brazilian garrison; 

 the intendente, a local trader ; another trader and ranch- 

 man, a Uruguayan, who had just received his newspaper 

 containing my speech in Montevideo, and who, as I 

 gathered from what I understood of his rather voluble 

 Spanish, was much impressed by my views on democracy, 

 honesty, liberty, and order (rather well-worn topics) ; and 

 a Catalan who spoke French, and who was accompanied 

 by his pretty daughter, a dear little girl of eight or ten, 

 who said with much pride that she spoke three languages 

 — Brazilian, Spanish, and Catalan ! Her father expressed 

 strongly his desire for a church and for a school in the 

 little city. 



When at last the wood was aboard we resumed our 

 journey. The river was like glass. In the white moon- 

 light the palms on the edge of the banks stood mirrored 

 in the still water. We sat forward, and as we rounded 

 the curves the long silver reaches of the great stream 

 stretched ahead of us, and the ghostly outlines of hills 

 rose in the distance. Here and there prairie fires burned, 

 and the red glow warred with the moon's radiance. 



Next morning was overcast. Occasionally we passed 

 a wood-yard, or factory, or cabin, now on the eastern, 

 the Brazilian, now on the western, the Paraguayan, bank. 

 The Paraguay was known to men of European birth, 

 bore soldiers and priests and merchants as they sailed 

 and rowed up and down the current of its stream, and 

 beheld httle towns and forts rise on its banks, long 

 before the Mississippi had become the white man's 

 highway. Now, along its upper course, the settlements 

 are much like those on the Mississippi at the end of the 



