In 1868, the Reverend J. H. Murray undertook a year-long evangelical mission to visit Anglican coreligionists in Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay. After returning home, he wrote a travel memoir which enthusiastically depicted Uruguay’s economic and environmental attraction to potential British immigrants. The published journal, half of which offers advice to sheep raisers, falls beneath the standard set by contemporary British travelers to South America such as Richard F. Burton. Although blatant Protestant-Anglo-Saxon biases reduced his objectivity, Murray’s observances constitute one of the few surviving firsthand accounts by an outside observer and provide useful information about a neglected epoch in Cisplatine history.
The year of sojourning coincided with some catastrophic events in Uruguay including a cholera epidemic, a revolutionary upheaval culminating in the assassinations of both political parties’ leaders, economic depression, and such natural disasters as an earthquake and floods. Still, those calamities did not diminish his enthusiasm for detailing information about golden opportunities in agriculture and stock raising.
Oddly, the peripatetic preacher appeared to be unaware of Uruguay’s involvement in the Paraguayan War. Superabundant anecdotal and extraneous material, along with sectarian preachments, annoys and distracts. Even so, this translation with its well conceived prologue recovers usefid insights into nineteenth-century Uruguay.
