excellent port; it is built on the shore of the Rio de la Plata, about 35 miles from Buenos Aires, and cost about $14,000,000 (gold). The opening of the national port at Buenos Aires has driven most of the commerce from La Plata; but it is capable of being made, with a comparatively small sum of money, deep enough, in its entrance channel (five miles long) and in its port areas, to accommodate vessels of 26 feet draught at low tide; it now has 21 feet.

The remaining port of importance and rapidly growing is outside of the River Plate, in the south, Bahia Blanca; it is the principal shipping port of agricultural products by the great Southern Railway, the largest system in the Republic. This port is in an estuary of the ocean, and is a protected harbor; in fact, the terminal of the railway is about 35 miles from the open ocean. The Railway is building a steel pier, 1,640 feet long, with spacious warehouses and 19 miles of siding; and there will be, when all works are completed, over half a mile of wharf frontage, supplied with electric cranes.

The National Government is building in this estuary at Puerto Militar, or Puerto Belgrano, a system of dry docks and basins on a large scale. The first dry dock, one of the best and largest in the world, is completed and now in use. It was designed and built under the immediate supervision of the well-known Italian engineer, Chev. Luigi Luiggi, who had charge of similar work at Genoa.

This dock, built of first-class materials and upon the most modern methods, can take the largest naval or merchant ships of the world, as it has a useful length of 713 feet and an entrance width of 85 feet, and a depth over the sill of 32% feet at mean high tide, 22 feet at low tide. It has intermediate gates, so that two or three small vessels can be docked at the same time or separately.

The plans, photographs, and possibly a relief model of this dock will be exhibited at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. In October, 1902, the U. S. battleship Iowa, the flagship of the South Atlantic Squadron, was docked at Puerto Militar.

It is gratifying to know that at Buenos Aires there is a large business with New York by means of five steamship lines, and, through New York, with Chicago and other cities, from which are shipped a large amount of agricultural machinery of all classesfrom cultivators and ploughs to great steam threshing machines of the J. I. Case Co., of Racine, Wisconsin. Not only from Chicago but from all manufacturing districts the trade of our country is increasing. You see our machinery everywhere, and it is everywhere considered equal to any Baldwin locomotives, Jackson and Sharp cars, and Harlan and Hollingsworth's. The American

freight car of 25 and 30 tons is replacing the old Belgian, French, and English 7 and 10-ton cars. If the American cars are not all made in the United States they are copied from ours. The most approved bridges are from the United States. Large quantities of Southern and Oregon pines are imported. From the United States comes all the kerosene used. I might go on enumerating many other United States products. I can well say that the prospects of American trade with Argentine are exceedingly good.

The Argentine Government is determined to improve the great rivers of the country by methods which have been found to be best in other countries under similar conditions. The results of our experience upon the Mississippi are being closely watched, studied, and applied. The reports of the Mississippi River Commission are of great value to that country. I may further say that the Argentine engineers and the methods pursued by them are equal to those of any country. Every Government engineer, to take a prominent position, must have a diploma from the Engineering Department of the National University. The graduates of this excellent school are as well equipped for their work as those from any school in the world; this I know by experience, for four of them (young men) have been associated with me as my immediate assistants, and in my position as consulting engineer of the Government I have been brought into close relations with many other engineers and I have the highest opinion of their ability.

The Sarmiento School commemorates one of the most learned and best of Presidents, who, when he was Minister at Washington, engaged a large number of our young lady teachers to go to Argentine as Normal School teachers. Many of them are there yet after nearly twenty years' service-a service that has reflected. honor upon themselves and their country.

In two years of close relations with the country, and especially with the Government officials, I formed a very favorable idea of the character of the people and of the possibilities of business and profitable enterprise for our own people there. The officials of the Government and the leading men of the country desire to have us come to Argentine with business energy, integrity, and ability. to help build up that great country of South America, so like our own in its climate, soil, rivers, coast-line, and other general features.

THE CITY OF ROCKS.

BY

U. FRANCIS DUFF.

A remarkable natural curiosity of the Southwest is the "City" of Rocks, near Hudson Hot Springs, in southern New Mexico. Here, rising from a ridge of solid rock, and extending over about two hundred acres, is a great mass of lofty domes, crags, columns, peaks, shafts, spires, and pinnacles, through which run many openings and passageways, corresponding in a certain degree to the avenues, streets, and closes of a town. From the main passageways hundreds of little alleys, many so narrow that one is put to it to squeeze through them, branch in all directions. These are so numerous, intricate, and winding in their confusing mazes that it would require considerable time for one to familiarize himself with. them. All of this is interspersed with little plazas, or open courts; while on the outer edges are several semi-circular and triangular bays, which extend up into it from the surrounding plain.

It is evident that a long ridge of rock extending the length of the place was forced up here at some time in the bygone ages—a past so remote as to be beyond conjecture. This rock was a formation of different degrees of hardness, the portion in contact with the seams, or veins, running lengthwise and across it having been so much less refractory than the rest as to have been worn away in the course of the long cycles of time that have rolled by, or, it may be, because the elements could more easily reach these parts.

It is possible that the glacial period has been a factor in the work; but it is more than likely that the slow but sure disintegrating processes of time-the wind and the rain and the continuous chemical action of the atmosphere-have produced this most remarkable formation, second in grandeur and interest, so far as I know, only to the Garden of the Gods in Colorado. In some respects it is even more striking than the latter, the mass being so much greater.

The domes and towers shoot up in many places to a height of from fifty to sixty feet. Very few of these have sharp points or edges, the material of which they are composed being of such a nature so easily affected by the elements-that the outlines have been worn away and softened down. Nor does this detract from

their picturesqueness and impressiveness. All are more or less. honeycombed, and the wearing-away process still continues. From cells whose cups extended some distance into the rock I took out handfuls of the more friable material which had once filled them.

Sphinx-like and immutable they stand, the sentinels of the centuries, keeping watch and ward as the seasons have come and gone in this dun land of the wide horizon with its ineffable haze. The warm sunlight shimmers down upon them, bathing the lofty cones in its tender radiance; the little winds creep up, whispering across the wastes; but out of the brooding loneliness comes no voice to tell their story.

That the "City" was known to the Indians in prehistoric times is evident by the remains found within its limits. From a mass of

débris covering the bottom of a dark cavern formed by the falling together of three great peaks was exhumed a number of relics and a skeleton in a fairly good state of preservation. Just outside of this cavern mortars have been cut in the main ledge. On a bench, in a great cavity hollowed out of one side of Aztec Rock, a body had been laid away and enclosed with a substantial wall composed of flat stones set in adobe mortar. This had been opened and the remains carried off some years prior to my visit, but a portion of the wall is still standing.

The streets stretch away, in many cases, in almost perfect line, although the view is more frequently interrupted by sharp turns

and windings. These generally trend north and south or east and Some of them are fifteen or twenty feet wide.

west.

The rocks have assumed many curious and fantastic shapes. The Leaning Tower, Balance Rock, the Cardinal's Hat, and another, something like a kneeling camel in appearance, are very striking. Two little pinnacles on the west side, known as Twin Pillars, are also quite interesting. At the northwest corner is a massive dome called Eagle Crag, in a large pocket of which a pair of eagles have nested for several seasons and successfully reared their broods.

To attempt a description of all of the attractive features of the "City" would be a task requiring a perfect familiarity with itsomething that could only be obtained through long and careful investigation.

The visitor will find, at every step, something new to attract his attention; a score of openings, leading in as many different directions, will invite him, until, bewildered, he finally sits down to rest and gather together his scattered wits.

Some idea of the confusing magnitude of the place may be obtained from the fact that the writer spent more than an hour trying to find Aztec Rock, which he had visited the day before, and the general location of which he had quite distinctly in mind. Providing one has a very sure-footed animal, it is possible to ride a horse over most of the "City," although swinging around the edges of great crags and climbing steep inclines are apt to be a little trying on the nerves.