11 
just across from the hotel. The rest of the ^ornric v as ^completely 
waste r l } p f Till load loeen un&Zble to get in t oucu with hr. mare a. .'-i 
rt La Plata, and. although ve had all planned to spend the day there, 
it was el even o * c 1 o c h he fore we c Quid t i nd. out u uat ne Vrts * o t 
r o i ns to he there, out wanted us to come tomorrow * 
After lunching sumptuously on Houles a la Provencales, ve 
cot caught uo on correspondence and notes. At tnis Monent x sm 
typing away in our dark, ‘chilly little room, and wishing I were out 
in the sunshine seeing something of the city. 
May 1 - Buenos Aires 
Today is Labor Lay in Argentina. Our first indication of it 
■was when we attempted to get a taxi on leaving the hotel in the 
morning. The doorman looked blank, then said, "Ah , you are very 
lucky.’ ” as a bootleg cab drew up. We went to the Retiro Station, 
where we met Lr. andMrs. Henry, Tom Lavis and Dorothy Browne, and 
caught a train for 31 Tigre. The train ride, of about 45 minutes, 
takes one along parallel to the shore, and past endless recreation 
grounds - golf, tennis and bathing. SI Tigre is a little town 
with the same name as one branch of the river. Here is the famous 
delta made by the Parana flowing into the Plate, a tremendous net- 
work of river and islands, each branch with its own name. 
Literally thousands of launches, skiffs, rowboats and yachts 
were tied up in the stream, most of them covered with tarpaulin, 
as the height of the season is now over. We walked along in the 
bright sunshine , sat on a bench for a while and watched industrious 
rowers, and soberly-clad sight-seers going past in "Collectives . 
In town a collective is one of the objectionable little buses 
that pursue pedestrians at every crossing; here on El mgre it is 
a taxi-launch, each one marked with the name of the river it 
ascends. One can take a launch for an hour or a day, stopping 
at one of the numerous little refreshment stands for lunch if one 
desires. Many people have summer homes along the water s edge, 
and most of them have lovely gardens with green turf that comes 
right down to the water’s edge, for of course this is sweet water 
We lunched at 31 Tigre Club, eating delicious beefsteak 
on the Club verandah, and then hired a little open launch and rode 
for about an hour up the river. Autumn coloring has turned the 
tamarififc trees russet and strippedthe Lombardy poplars, but with 
palms and evergreens and bamboo all in vivid green the landscape 
was like nothing I had ever seen before - a strange mixture or 
tropics and the temperate zone. 
We stopped at a little landing marked El Canario to call 
on Major andMrs. Duffy. It seems the Duffys wearied of life m 
town, with its endless round of cocktail parties, and bought them- 
selves a place up here. They remodeled a chicken house to live m, 
and although it was nothing but a corrugated tin shack, they had 
fixed it up very comfortably, with two floors, electricity and 
running water. They have, in a little over a ye*r» art* 
twenty acres and set out orange trees, lemons, olives, and all sorts 
