g of all sorts and conditions,
old junk, discarded masts, boilers eaten through with rust, anchors
imbedded in the ground, even a torpedo-boat gone to ruin, nameless;
saw an incredibly old man with his beard done in a knot, whittling away
at a piece of wood in the sun, tribes of mongrel dogs, and the casual
population of the tin town which rambled here drowsy and malodorous,
down to the water's edge. The purple trumpet-like flowers that climbed the
ragged woodwork seemed not more gay, nevertheless, than the young men
and women who crowded to and from the transporter between this shipping
parish and Buenos Aires.

From Buenos Aires itself, what but the hastiest impression could I take
away with me? Melancholy it was to me to find so little apparent survival
of the town as it must have been in its first centuries. My last walk
did not altogether revise my picture of bar-tobacconist-bar-tobacconist;
of powdered Venuses, over-dressed Adonises; of shops without display,
receding obscurely; of cinematograph theatres crudely decorated with
notices of rank buckjumping "dramas"; of innumerable tramways, here, there
and everywhere; of green sunny courtyards at the end of passages
between dismal shuttered facades; of trees with drooping foliage before
flat roofs with flimsy chimneys--mere drain-pipes--at the top of high
white dead walls; of bonneted policemen with their hands on their
swords; of boys teasing horses; of whizzing taxis, and dray-horses
fighting for a start on the inimical cobbles; of pavements suitable for
tight-rope walkers; of the power of money; of living for the present,
or the day after to-morrow; of a straw-hat existence. But I must
admit that my scantiest notions of a town refer in temper to the
quality of its second-hand bookshops.

So then, the ship being under orders to leave at four, soon after five
the port authorities held a sort of roll-call amidships, and the pilots
and the tugs arrived. The port authorities consisted of a young officer
who looked likely to trip himself up with his beautiful sword, a lanky
humorist, with sergeant's chevrons, at his heels, and one or two other
attendants. Soon after these vigilants had gone down the ladder again,
the _Bonadventure_ began to move, and the bags of guano were a tyranny
that is overpast. That channel into which I had been pleased to see
the _Bonadventure_ come I now watched her leave without remorse. The
dredgers fall behind our course, the fishing-boats,