The climate and soil are equally favorable for the growth of grapes, apples, peaches, and in short every species of fruit belonging to the temperate zone, but these are known here only as rarities. That inestimable root, the potatoe, would thrive abundantly, if once introduced; but, though much has been said in recommendation of it, the people remain totally averse to this or any other proposal for improving their means of subsistence, and seem to wish for nothing beyond the bare necessaries of life. Indeed the state of society among them weakens those ties which naturally attach men to the soil on which they are accustomed to subsist. The Peons, brought from Paraguay in their infancy, grow up to the age of manhood in a state of servitude, uncheered by domestic comfort; at that period they generally wander, in search of employment, toward the coast, where money is in greater plenty. There is no specie in circulation in the interior; their wages are paid monthly in notes on Monte Video. The men, for the most part, are an honest and harmless race, though quite as liable, from the circumstances of their condition, to acquire habits of gambling[6], as the higher classes of the people, numbers of whom fall victims to that seductive vice. The various evils hence resulting are multiplied by the lax administration of the laws; even in case of murder the criminal has little to fear if he can escape to a distance of twenty or thirty leagues; he there lives in obscurity, probably for the remainder of his life, without ever being brought to justice. I know not whether this want of vigilance in the magistracy be not a temptation for the numerous refugees who seek shelter here, such as European Spaniards, who have deserted from the service or have been banished for their crimes. These wretches, loaded with guilt, flee into the interior, where they seldom fail to find some one or other of their countrymen who is willing to give them employment, though frequently at the peril of his life. By the corrupt example of these refugees, the innocent Creole is soon initiated in vice, and becomes a prey to all those violent passions which are engendered and fostered by habitual idleness.