This harbor was built in 11 years (from 1886 to 1897) and cost $35,000,000 gold. It covers a superficial area of 165 acres and consists of two canals (about 21 feet deep), one from the entrance and the other from the outlet (both provided with luminous buoys), which never theless do not satisfy the demands of traffic; two shipyards, four docks and two dry docks; 24 warehouses with a capacity, roughly esti mated, of 20,000,000 cubic feet, which can hold 24,000,000 tons of merchandise, and which ex tend for miles fronting the wharves, the latter having a length of 6 miles (the same length as the harbor of Antwerp). It has grain elevators whose capacity amounts to 200,000 tons. Within the circumference of the harbor are 3V2 miles of railroad. The wharf for animals on foot has room for 40,000 sheep and more than 1,500 beeves.
The Boca del Riachuelo has a depth of 18 feet and is bordered by wharves for three miles, and has a movement of 1,200,000 tons of merchandise per annum.
Facing these wharves on the right bank is the °Central Fruit Market," the largest ware house in the world; it occupies an area equal to nine square blocks in New York. The cost of its construction was $4,155,000. It is the principal exchange for all business pertaining to the exportation of the fruits of the country, and in it are stored large quantities of the products of cattle industries.
The Southern Railroad has its own dock, on the right bank of the Boca del Riachuelo, 23 feet deep, with PA miles of wharves, for the exportation of agricultural and cattle products from the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires.
Compared with the principal harbors of the world, the harbor of Buenos Aires stands in the Ilth place, and is second after New York in foreign commerce in all America. At the time of its greatest activity, the port harbors as many as 1,400 steamships and sailing vessels moving in and out. The general movement of passengers is about 150, 000 outgoing and 250,000 arriving, annually, making an increase from immigration of 100, 000 persons every year. The harbor of Buenos Aires receives 84 per cent of the importations for the entire country, and sends away 51 per cent of the national exports. About $17,000,000 have recently been spent in enlarging and widening this harbor to enable it to meet the expected development of commerce of the city and of the industries of the country.
Buenos Aires has 79 parks and squares, with an area of 2,320 acres, one of the finest park systems in the world; the Zoo is one of the largest and the best kept on the whole continent; the Botanical Garden is only second to Rio de Janeiro's; squares, with profusion of flowers and handsome trees, are beautified with monuments to heroes of the struggle for rode.
pendence.
Schools, Libraries, As in many other cities, the school buildings do not have the needed space for games and outdoor activities such as school gardening, etc. Already it is thought that the school buildings to be erected in the future should be located in the centre of the parks and public gardens, as in Japan. The school buildings in Buenos Aires, with highly ornamented facades, are quite unfitted for their purpose, not having the proper accommodations in the interior; Italian architects imported the scheme of treating the facade as a mere screen, disregarding modern hygienic exigencies for educational buildings. There are now about 230 public schools in which 200,000 scholars are en rolled. There are over 3,000 teachers (mostly women) in the elementary grades. The number of pupils from 6 to 14 years of age is over 200,000, there now being only 15 per cent illiter ate against 20 per cent in 1895. In the second ary institutions of instruction (except the nor mal) about 3,000 pupils are enrolled. The num ber attending the seven normal schools of the city is 3,000, and a business college counts about 700 pupils. The university has 4,600 to 4,700 students. The public libraries possess 50,000 books.
More than 200 newspapers are pub lished in the city of Buenos Aires,— most of them in Spanish: but some are in Italian, Eng lish, French, Scandinavian, Russian, Hebrew and Arabic. La Nation and La Prensa have a daily circulation of over 100,000 copies and have the most extensive telegraph services in the world. La Prensa is a kind of institutional newspaper. Its building, one of the hand somest in the city, is dedicated to social services, and contains a library, free evening schools for commerce and for music, offices for free medi cal assistance, free legal aid, free chemical lab oratory, etc.
The sanitary system (running water and sewers) is excellent and has cost the city $46,875,180. When in 1875 these works were proposed, there had been Yew years that the city had not suffered through terrible epi demics, cholera morbus in 1865 and 1873, and yellow fever in 1871. Since 1885, thanks to the extension of these works of sanitation, to the efforts of the Board of Health in the inspection of foods, and the struggle against tuberculosis and other contagious diseases, the mortality has been reduced from 44 per 1,000 in 1875 to 22.7 in 1894 and to 15.2 in 1908. There has likewise been a considerable reduction in the death rate of infants under one year of age, which in 1889 was 195 for each 1,000 born, and dropped to 141 in 1894, to 102 in 1899 and to. 83 in 1904. In the same year the pro portion in Christiania was 100, Ill in Paris, 146 in London, 162 in New York, 166 in Hamburg and 202 in Berlin.