LIFE IN BUENOS AYRES.

Globe, Volume I, Issue 17, 19 June 1874, Page 3

LIFE IN BUENOS AYRES.

What a pleasant place Buenos Ayres must be to reside iu, if the following account which we take from the London daily “ Standard ” be correct: —The capital of the Argentine Republic would appear to be just now one of the least desirable places on earth for those who arc in search of a quiet neighborhood. It is hard to say whether it is worse for a man to bo absolutely inoffensive and neutral, or actively engaged iu the profession of politics, just as it is difficult to pronounce whether the assassins or the police are the most dangerous. The last file df papers from Buenos Ayres coutains such a list of murders, outrages ami acts of violence

as perhaps never was paralleled in the monthly record of any city pretending to be the abode of civilised men. Even Yirgina City, in the flower of its rowdyism, must have been a Paradise in comparison. LH -c* take a few cases from the local journals. : ■ Socorro parish a peasant gets into an ai, meat with two companions, and us s his knife on them with such effect (hat one dies on the spot, ami the other has “a side of his face sliced off.” The murderer, being arrested, shows his dexterity before an admiring crowd by flinging his bloody weapon into the air and catching it by the handle as it falls. Two Italians dining at a fonda in the Calle Chile come, to high words, the discussion terminating in one drawing a dagger and the other a pistol, whereupon the landlord promptly intervenes by firing all the six barrels of his revolver at the man of the dagger, who is carried away to the hospital with three bullets in bis body. A political dispute iu a corner of the street between two partisans of Mitre and Alsina concludes by both drawing their knives and wounding one another, whereupon a policeman appears, who is chased off the ground by the combatants. A young man taking the air in the Plaza Retiro is accosted by a soldier of the line with an invitation to the barracks. On their way thither the soldier draws his bayonet and fells his new acquaintance after relieving him of a hundred and twenty dollars. A peaceable Austrian walking quietly through the street is taken by the head by a “ruffian well known to the police,” who gives him a slash across the throat with a knife, and then buries it up to the hilt in his body, averring when arrested that be was “ only amusing himself.” Another speaks of an “ awful murder” having been apparently committed at the corner of Gallos Florida and Parquo. “We saw the blood running down the gutter, and a horrid mass of it at the coiner.” For some inscrutable reason the vendors of milk are the favorite objects on which the assassins practice their art. “Murdering milkmen,” says the “Buenos Ayres Daily News,” “ is now quite fashionable, and reflects little credit on the police authorities connected with our highways and byways.” A band of ruffians of whom it is not said that they have complained of the article dispensed by their victims, or that they arc influenced by a misguided zeal in the cause of anti-adulteration, are said to make a constant practice of waylaying, robbing, and murdering all milkmen that they can catch unawares, Iu order to protect themselves iu Buenos Ayres than in St. Pancras, the milkmen have formed themselves into “ caravans” in order to save their throats and pockets, “ whenever one or two straggle from the * posse ’ down pounce the cuthroats, and murder follows.” The paper which records these outrages gravely adds, “if this kind of thing is permitted to go on property will fall in value and no one will care to live iu a place infested with ruffians who are constantly robbing and murdering people in broad daylight.” Another paper, averring the number of robberies and outrages to be positively frightful, recommends all decent people not to go out after nightfall, or when they do so to go armed to the teeth.