astonishing distance under water. At sunset all these birds in long lines come up out of the sea winging for the roosting-places on the islands. Five days' steaming from Panama brought us to the famous port of Peru, the quiet harbor of Callao, or as our English sea captain called it, "Cal-y-ó". As is the case with the rest of the earth's surface. that interests him, the Englishman in South America has named its useful places to suit himself, and the traveler must learn his geographical names. "Valpor," for example, is Valparaiso. The great plain of Argentina where the cattle range is the "camp"; and when the cattle-raiser goes to the capital for diversion, he goes down to "B. A." I suppose no true Englishman would ever deign to refer to Buenos Aires otherwise. Nevertheless the Englishman has done so much for South America and does it so well that admiration for his methods and achievements is forced on the traveler. The monetary system of Peru, for example, is on a gold basis and the unit of currency is the libra, of exact equivalence in grains of gold to the English pound. Why should this be so, when the other South American countries are afloat in a sea of paper? Some day the inquirer awakes to the fact that the real commercial power beneath the unstable political surface resides in the Peruvian Corporation Ltd. Its accounts can be more easily kept by English bookkeepers in familiar terms. In Argentina the vast system of railways, of five-foot gauge, ramifying in all directions, with their comfortable sleeping and dining cars, the meals in which are so good that the traveler will arrange to eat in them rather than in the ordinary hotel--those railways which carry their message of civilization to the remotest parts of the "camp"--who built them? Who manages them? The answer is at hand, for the traveler sees all the notices to the traveling public, though in Spanish, signed with an English name. Our ship arrived in Callao about 10 o'clock Saturday night. Sunday we spent in Lima, an interesting city, but very disappointing to anybody whose expectations had been much excited by anticipating an American Sevilla. The Santa Ana sailed from Callao promptly at sundown on Sunday night with only half her cargo discharged. Some Peruvian official had granted the demands of the port laborers for quadruple pay after dark. So, rather than pay this price or wait another day, our ship sailed for Iquique, whence the cargo for Lima could be reshipped. The passengers did not lose by this, but gained a whole day in Iquique. That was enough. Whoever has spent one day in barren, sandy Iquique will not desire at longer residence. Like the next port, Antofagasta, Iquique is situated at the edge of the desert and exists for the nitrate trade. But Antofagasta is different, far more picturesquely situated and, beside nitrate, ships copper from the mines of the great Chile Copper Company in Bolivia. Several of our passengers, American mining men and their families, left us here, being taken ashore in grand style in the company's steam launch, while the rest of us who went ashore visiting had to trust our persons to the crazy craft of the Indian fleteros. At all the ports these boatmen furnish much diversion for those who watch them from the ship. Their cry, "A tierra, a tierra." melancholy and shrill, like the cry of a seabird, will long ring in the ears of the traveler who has heard it. Landing at any West Coast port has its difficulties, but that at Valparaiso has especial danger in rough weather and is always perilous to the pocketbook. Valparaiso, in general, is not an agreeable place for the traveler. Its hotels are abominable and the prices. extortionate, perhaps because so many persons are merely in transit. The site of the city, however, is most picturesque, one of the beauty spots of the earth, but the native Chilean is more at home beyond the mountains in Santiago. Consequently Valparaiso is largely a place for doing business with foreigners, who are very numerous among the permanent population. When our afternoon train from Valparaiso had crossed the coastal range and descended into the great plain beyond, the setting sun was tinting the bare Andean rocks with that beautiful rose light which delights the citizens of Santiago day after day. How wonderful to look down a long street and see it apparently terminate in the lofty mountains so blue by day and turning to rose at sunset! In Santiago I made many delightful acquaintances. If I were to name all the acquaintances I made during the trip the list would be long. Of them all one word can be said, that nothing can surpass the kindly courtesy which South Americans show to strangers. It was necessary for me to present myself an absolute stranger to many governmental officials, who without exception took infinite pains to serve me. I doubt very much that a traveler in the United 1 States would be able to make so extended a tour and meet such unfailing courtesy from officials. At the Instituto Pedagójico in Santiago I visited a class of Dr. Gálvez, professor of English, and was afterward entertained by him. This visit has some interest for teachers of Spanish in the United States because Dr. Gálvez has succeeded in putting into effect a scheme of his to make the graduates of the Instituto better teachers of English. He finds places for them in the United States where they can earn their way by teaching Spanish. At the time of my visit he told me that nine of his pupils were so engaged. When the class was dismissed, he requested a group of young men to show me the courtesy of accompanying me for some distance on the Alameda. As we walked along, they raised a most interesting question, which Dr. Gálvez afterward told me was frequently put to him. "In studying English," they asked, "was it not better for Chileans to learn the pronunciation of the language as spoken in England rather than that of the United States?" One young man said that his early training in English had been received from an Englishman, for which reason he had difficulty in understanding Dr. Gálvez or a North American. This is the reverse of the problem which confronts us teachers of Spanish here in the United States. We are pretty generally agreed that the Castilian pronunciation is the proper one to use in our instruction, if for no other reason than that it would be impossible to choose between the different modes of speech of the different Spanish American republics. Not only does the language vary between the different countries but even between different provinces of a large country like Argentina. Nevertheless there ought not to be a prejudice against employing a Chilean to teach Castilian. Dr. Gálvez said that he had frequently met with such a prejudice when trying to place his pupils. As the classes in the Instituto Pedagójico are coeducational, the pupils whom Dr. Gálvez sends to the United States are young men and women over twenty years of age, selected for their ability. The Chilean government pays their passage, in return for which they are expected to teach English at least five years in Chilean schools. Dr. Gálvez pointed out the very considerable advantage which will accrue to the United States when these young people return to their country, because they are going to act as so many centers of culti vation of good feeling toward us. The rather widespread Chilean prejudice against the United States, he thought, is due more to ignorance than to any other cause. The mention of the differences between Castilian and Chilean or Argentine Spanish may arouse a curiosity to know what some of the most striking ones are. First, in the matter of vocabulary one meets many new terms for common things; I'do not refer now to things peculiar to the countries, for such words are to be expected, but to such as the following: arvejas, peas; vereda, sidewalk: estampillas, postage stamps; escritorio, office; durazno, peach; chancho, pig, or pork; papas, potatoes; piso, floor, instead of suclo; acá and allá commonly for here and there. Such a list could be made very long even after omitting such obvious coinages as gasfitero y plomero, which I first saw on a sign in Lima. Striking also is the frequency of certain phrases as ¿cómo no? and no más. In pronunciation a common phenomenon is the reduction of diphthongs to simple vowels, tine for tiene, acite for accite. More subtle still is the tonada of various Argentine provinces, especially the tonada cordobesa of the city of Cordoba, called the docta on account of its ancient university. The peculiar feature of this accent is the lengthening of the vowel in the syllable before the accented one or in the syllable bearing a secondary accent, as caaballo, or in the phrase in which the people of Cordoba deny this peculiarity of speech, -"Noosotros los coordobeses no caantamos." Throughout Argentina exists, of course, the dialect of the country people which appears. in literature as the gaucho dialect. This in many respects appears little more than transplanted Andalusian. From it has come probably the almost universal pronunciation of Il and intervocalic y with the voiced alveolar spirant value of in English azure. The prevalence of this pronunciation may have been helped by the large Italian element of the population in Argentina. In fact the Italian pronunciation of Spanish and the influence of Italians on the language forms a big study in itself. For example, I was told that sentir in the sense of "to hear" had almost entirely supplanted oír. The Argentines themselves 'recognize the hybrid state of their language by having ceased to refer to it as español or castellano. The name adopted probably had its origin in strong nationalistic feelings. However that may be, school programs call for a definite amount of study of idioma nacional. As a concrete case of linguistic conditions in Argentina, read this sign which testifies also to the elements of civilization brought by different nationalities to the city of Rosario, where engraved on a large oval plate of brass, it adorns a prominent street corner. BAR IBÉRICO CHOPERIA Y SANDWICHS "Choperia" does not refer to chops nor steaks, which are known as minutas, but is a derivative from chop, a word imported from Germany and everywhere in use in South America, even in Brazil, to designate a glass of beer drawn from a cask. The mixture of languages in Argentina is indicative of social conditions and the great social changes in progress there. Fortunately for posterity these changes are being reflected in a literary movement which will record them for all time; a movement, however, peculiarly difficult for a foreigner to appraise because its productions are in the form of plays hard to obtain in print, and so realistic in spirit that the critic needs to see the actual stage performance. The dramatic contrast of the plays lies in the conflict between the old ideals and mode of life and the new ideals and customs of the European immigrant. To make this clear it is necessary to have a conception of what the present social organization of Argentina is like. On the banks of the Río de la Plata is situated Buenos Aires, a city European in character, containing about one-fifth of the population of the entire country. This vast city must be supplied with food, with material for its buildings and other essential things drawn from the interior of the country, even though its manufactured articles come across the ocean. The country is composed of vast plains where the chief occupation of its inhabitants was cattle raising. Even today the superabundance of animal life is unpleasantly thrust on the traveler by the numerous carcasses of animals lying where they died and fed on by carrion birds, the caranchos and chimangos. But the herders of cattle were half nomads, not suited to a settled agricultural manner of life. For Europe demanded of the fertile plain more than hides. It demanded wheat and corn. And from Europe came the workers who knew how to raise grain, mainly |