Excerpt from The Great South Land, the River Plate and Southern Brazil of to-Day Everyone is familiar with the story Of the ugly duckling which turned out a swan. One is tempted to use the Simile with regard to the Republics of the Rio de la Plata. But it would not apply entirely. The cygnet made an unbroken progress towards its full swan beauty. The River Plate Republics have attained to their present condition by a far more mottled growth. Sometimes just when their political and commercial feathers seemed about to shine in a brilliant zenith the countries that bore them have taken to a fit of moulting, and have brooded, bald and bare, for a period of seeming hopelessness. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.