Picturesque illustrations of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video, consisting of twenty-four views: accompanied with descriptions of the scenery, and of the costumes, manners, &c., of the inhabitants of those cities and their environs

Preface

The important events of which the Spanish colonies in South America have of late years been the theatre, and the successful struggle for independence which they are still maintaining against the mother country, have powerfully attracted the attention of the whole civilized world. The political consequence of Buenos Ayres as the capital and centre of one of the newly established republics, and its importance in a commercial point of view, would render it an object of peculiar interest to the first mercantile nation in the world, even without its attempted reduction during the late war by the British arms.

Leaving, however, those more abstruse topics to the professed historian and political economist, the author of this work contented himself with sketching, originally without any view to publication, some of the characteristic features presented by the cities of Buenos Ayres and Monte Video, and such peculiarities in the habits, manners, and customs of the people as appeared to him most striking during a residence of three years in the country. These delineations will, he presumes, prove the more acceptable

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PREFACE.

to the curious, inasmuch as, to his knowledge, no graphic illustration of those places has hitherto been submitted to the public.

The descriptive part, unwarped by political bias, is the simple result of personal observation, with the addition of a few data derived from writers of acknowledged authority. For the benefit of the reader not conversant with the history of the colonies, a brief introductory sketch states such particulars of their settlement and subsequent fortunes as could not be conveniently introduced in any other shape.