192 UP THE URUGUAY RIVER, AND
is attaclied to Buenos Aires. The block of desirable building material is forbidden by treaty to be fortified. Therefore we find the water-line girt round with ruined batteries. To the south-east and behind the point,, we see what may easily be reconverted into a redoubt. The next is a strong post at the point with embrasures for five guns. The third may be called the Flagstaff Battery ; it is on a scarped bank thirty feet above the water, with yellow battlements, accommo- dating nine or ten guns, and space for more. Lastly, below the Commandante^s quarters there is a fourth redoubt without guns. The rest of the scene consists of three flag- stavesj barracks, and white houses^ gardens, fields, and a few patches of shady-looking vegetation, thin grass pricking up amongst the rocks and stones.
We enter the barless mouth of the Rio Uruguay at Las Vacas, an artless name which has been vulgarized to Car- melo : even so Higueritas, ^* Figlets/^ has Howardized itself to " Nueva Palmira^^ — and what a Palmyra! Presently we shall have New Romes, Memphises, Thebeses, and so forth. We halt at Fray Bento^s, a little place on the eastern bank, facing the stream which haughtily calls itself Gualeguaichu. Some philologists render the euphonious term, also written Gualeyuay-chu, ^' Little River,^^ others '^ Little Devil.'-' My learned friend Dr. J. M. Grutierrez translates Gua line, stripe, or blot ; Guai, diminutive of painted, and Chue, a land tortoise. Thus the name would mean " stream of the striped terrapin ." He casts out the second syllable (" le,"') remarking that, according to P. Montoya, the Jesuit author of the best Guarani Dictionary, the language had no " \"
The Fray, after a long hot youth of very dubious pro- priety, has of late years cut his wise teeth, and is now greasy and redolent of the roti, as becomes his cloth. He has taken up "Extractum Carnis," the great invention of the great
