these going out a quarter of a mile in the shallow water to meet them.
Then there were the water-carts going and coming in scores and
hundreds, for at that period there was no water supply to the houses,
and every house-holder had to buy muddy water by the bucket at his own
door from the watermen.

One of the most attractive spots to me was the congregating place of
the _lavanderas_, south of my street. Here on the broad beach under
the cliff one saw a whiteness like a white cloud, covering the ground
for a space of about a third of a mile; and the cloud, as one drew
near, resolved itself into innumerable garments, sheets and quilts,
and other linen pieces, fluttering from long lines, and covering the
low rocks washed clean by the tide and the stretches of green turf
between. It was the spot where the washerwomen were allowed to wash
all the dirty linen of Buenos Ayres in public. All over the ground the
women, mostly negresses, were seen on their knees, beside the pools
among the rocks, furiously scrubbing and pounding away at their work,
and like all negresses they were exceedingly vociferous, and their
loud gabble, mingled with yells and shrieks of laughter, reminded me
of the hubbub made by a great concourse of gulls, ibises, godwits,
geese, and other noisy water-fowl on some marshy lake. It was a
wonderfully animated scene, and drew me to it again and again: I
found, however, that it was necessary to go warily among these women,
as they looked with suspicion at idling boys, and sometimes, when I
picked my way among the spread garments, I was sharply ordered off.
Then, too, they often quarrelled over their right to certain places
and spaces among themselves; then very suddenly their hilarious gabble
would change to wild cries of anger and torrents of abuse. By and by I
discovered that their greatest rages and worst language were when
certain young gentlemen of the upper classes visited the spot to amuse