mall craft. The tall and airy
passenger boats, at intervals, came by in brilliance. When there was a
pause in this coming and going, and nothing more happening on the water
than the snapping of the small yellow catfish at bread floating below the
ship, I still felt a quiet and languid gratitude for the novelty of being
where I was.

That gratitude was to be tempered soon. The plague of the mosquitoes of
the docks had been painted dark enough for me during the days of approach;
and when I got to bed, the threatened invasion had begun. Determining
not to consider the question at all, I read deep in my pocket copy of
Young's _Night Thoughts on Life, Death and Immortality_, as in worse
quarters many a time, and duly went to sleep like a philosopher.

XV

Could this be Saint Valentine's Day? Here in a dreary looking dock with a
surplus of sun but a seeming lack of oxygen, and only a sort of amphibious
race as company? Newspapers were at any rate valentine enough. They
were read with real care, football results being perhaps the consolation
most sought.

Hosea showed me the way into the town. We turned out over the docks, out
at last from a kingdom of coal-dust, over a swing bridge; took a tram,
and were soon at the shipping agents' offices. He spent some time in
earnest conference here, and the visit ended with a visit to other agents'
offices, and that again with an adjournment with a serene member of the
staff to a bar. In this excellent place, my ignorance of a kind of
drink, saffron in colour and with a piece of pineapple submerged, was
soon dispelled. The collection of olives, biscuits, monkey-nuts and
flakes of fried potato which the waiter brought with the drinks was to
me unexpected. We went, with our good-natured guide, to lunch in a huge
hotel. Gaining the top of the building by the lift, we sat at a table
near the windows of a luxurious room filled with luxurious people, and
had the pleasure of looking as we ate over the less celestial roofs of
the town to the calm flood of the River Plate beyond. Distance lent
enchantment to this view also. The conditions were good for eating, our
friend's romantic tales apart.

We departed from this commendable place, and, there being still
engagements for Hosea with the shipping agents, we went there. Emerging,
he had to go to the British Consulate. We hired a taxi. The traffic of
Buenos Aires, or practice and precept differ, was free from irksome
restrictions of