THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
JOHN FOSTER FRASER
[Illustration]
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
[Illustration: THE MAYO AVENUE, BUENOS AIRES.]
THE AMAZING
ARGENTINE
A NEW LAND OF ENTERPRISE
BY
JOHN FOSTER FRASER
WITH FORTY-EIGHT PLATES
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
NEW YORK
FUNK AND WAGNALLS COMPANY
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
1. THE INVADERS 1
2. SOME ASPECTS OF BUENOS AIRES 21
3. ROUND AND ABOUT THE CAPITAL 31
4. RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT IN THE REPUBLIC 43
5. SETTLEMENT ON THE LAND 52
6. ARGENTINA'S PART IN FEEDING THE WORLD 63
7. THE CONSTITUTION AND GOVERNMENT 72
8. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTRY 89
9. "CABBAGES AND KINGS" 101
10. LIVE STOCK IN THE REPUBLIC 116
11. THE STORY OF THE RAILWAYS 134
12. ROSARIO 154
13. CORDOBA AND ITS ATTRACTIONS 158
14. BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND 176
15. THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE 186
16. MENDOZA 199
17. A TRIP INTO THE ANDES 212
18. THE CAMP 223
19. A MIXED GRILL 235
20. TUCUMAN AND THE SUGAR INDUSTRY 248
21. THE INDUSTRIAL SIDE OF THE REPUBLIC 257
22. THE NORTH-EAST COUNTRY 265
23. PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS 270
INDEX 281
LIST OF PLATES
The Mayo Avenue, Buenos Aires _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Plaza Del Congreso, Buenos Aires 20
The Plaza Hotel, Buenos Aires 22
The Tigre, Buenos Aires Rowing Club 26
Lola Mora Fountain, Buenos Aires 32
La Recoleta 36
The Government Building, La Plata 38
The Southern Station at La Plata 40
In the Great Square at La Plata 40
Statue presented to Argentina by the French Community on
the occasion of the Centenary of Independence 42
Central Argentine Railway Company's Grain Elevators at
Buenos Aires 46
Latest Type of Passenger Locomotive 50
Latest Type of Dining Car 50
View of Grazing Lands 54
A Drinking Place on an _Estancia_ 54
Branding Calves on an _Estancia_ 60
A Group of Gauchos 64
The Chamber of Deputies 74
The Kindergarten at Mendoza 78
Ox-Carts in the Argentine 90
A Typical Argentine Public Park 100
A Regatta near Buenos Aires 110
A Fine Argentine Bridge 114
Breaking-in Horses in the Argentine 120
Interior of Dining Car, Central Argentine Railway 134
The Statue of Christ on the Argentina-Chili Frontier 148
Plaza Constitution Station at Buenos Aires 150
The Rosario Express, Central Argentine Railway 156
On the Way to Market in Cordoba 162
The Ninth Green at Alta Gracia 166
In the Courtyard of the Monastery at Alta Gracia 166
The Hotel at Alta Gracia 170
A Typical House in Cordoba Province 174
A Street in Bahia Blanca 176
The Elevators at Ingeniero White 180
Plaza Riverdavia, Bahia Blanca 182
A Bahia Blanca Bank 184
The Town Hall at Bahia Blanca 184
Conveying Alfalfa to a Railway Station 194
The Entrance to the Park at Mendoza 200
The Promenade in Mendoza Park 202
The Grape Harvest in the Suburbs of Mendoza 204
In a Mendoza Bodega 208
"Chico" in Charge 212
A Corner of the English Club at Mendoza 212
The Hotel at Inca 218
The Inca Bridge in the Andes 220
General View of an _Estancia_ 224
A Gaucho and his Family 226
La Rambla, Mar Del Plata 234
The Esplanade, Mar Del Plata 238
A Historic Building: "Casa Independencia," at Tucuman 250
The Statue of San Martin at Tucuman 256
The Longest Girder Bridge in the Republic, near Santa Fé 266
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
CHAPTER I
THE INVADERS
It was on a boat which was laden with bananas and running from Colon, on
the Isthmus of Panama, to New York.
The steward called me at dawn. He thought I was mad because I stood in
pyjamas without apparent heed of the mirky drizzle. Beyond the sad
waters there was little to see but a low-lying and dreary island with a
melancholy lighthouse. No vegetation brightened the scene. There was no
gorgeous sunrise. There was nothing but a lump of barrenness heaving out
of the sea. But this was the island of San Salvador, the western land
which Columbus first touched when he sailed to find the Indies.
There are now near one hundred and fifty millions of people of European
descent in the Americas. And a little glow came into my imagination that
rain-swept morning when I felt I was the only traveller on the boat who
had crawled forth to gaze at San Salvador. I tried to picture what
thoughts must have crowded the mind of Columbus when he sighted this
shore. He never knew what he had discovered for Spain. He could never
have dreamt he was the first in the greatest invasion the world has ever
witnessed.
A year later I was on an Atlantic liner. The fo'c'sle was thronged with
poor Spaniards from Vigo and poor Portuguese from Lisbon. In the voyage
across the Atlantic I had watched them in the steerage--tawny-visaged,
easygoing men, and broad-set, figureless women, sprawling, gossiping,
drowsing. To the accompaniment of an accordion they lifted their voices
in song on the balmy, starlit evenings whilst the ship churned through
the tropical seas.
Another misty morning and I climbed on deck. Saloon passengers were
tucked in their bunks. But all the steerage had turned out and were
crowding the foredecks, and were gazing at a dim strip of land and
watching a blinking light. The land was the coast of Brazil, and the
light was the harbour of Pernambuco, which means "the Door of Hell."
The immigrants raised a long-drawn shout of joy. They hailed Latin
America. There was the country of which they had heard so much. They had
broken with the Old World. Four hundred years ago their ancestors came
across these seas with eyes greedy for gold. Now they came, not to
snatch gold from temples or to terrorise the natives into showing where
the metal could be found, but to work on sugar plantations, to nurture
the coffee plant, to rear bananas, to do the humble work in the building
of towns and the construction of railways, to toil in the jungles, to
sit in the saddle and round up cattle on the prairies. They had come to
the New World to get gold by industry.
How much we talk and write about the enterprise and colonising power of
the Teutonic races, and how prone we are to dismiss the Latin races as
effete and played out! But our generalisations will not bear
examination. The spirit of adventure cannot have left Italy and Spain
and Portugal. Every year hundreds of thousands of people sail from those
countries across the Atlantic.
We speak of North America as Teutonic--made prosperous by the stock of
northern Europe--and South America as Spanish. Latin America, however,
does not all lie south of the Panama Canal. We must begin to reckon it
from the territory line which separates the United States from Mexico.
Southwards from the banks of the Rio Grande the Latin tongue is spoken,
chiefly Spanish, but with much Portuguese in Brazil, and Italian in
places right down, through the Torrid Zone, the heavy tropics, reeking
with luxuriant vegetation, to the bleak and rocky, inhospitable Tierra
del Fuego.
There are millions of Latins. They have set up half a score of
Republican governments. The wealthy world slowly and then impetuously
realised the possibilities of this strangely diversified region. Untold
gold has been poured forth to develop it and get quick return.
It is not stories of treasure which bring a glint into the eye of
modern men. It is enterprise and development which appeal. There are
cattle to be reared on the ranches of Mexico; there is rubber in Peru;
there are nitrates and fabulous mineral wealth in Chili and the
neighbouring lands; there are cotton and sugar and coffee in the mighty
sweep of Brazil; there are the illimitable wheat areas of Argentina, and
cattle rearing and the giant possibilities in supplying Europe with
frozen meat; there is the opening up of immense areas by networks of
railroads.
"The stuff is there; it has only to be got," says the man who knows and
talks with the fire of enthusiasm.
South America is not the land of the future. It is the land of to-day.
Nowhere in the world is the speculator, the investor, more busy than in
Latin America. The tales told by the first Spaniards are baby talk to
the stories told to-day by those who have been and seen and are
fascinated. Of course it is overdone. Of course there is exaggeration.
Of course some of the jewels in El Dorado are useless stones. Of course
some of the caves of Aladdin are found empty. But what the modern world
ranks as precious is in abundance.
I like to conjure a contrast between the little barques of a few hundred
tonnage bobbing on unknown seas with the big fifteen-thousand tonners
which make their ports of call according to time-table. The early
invaders went into the unknown, crept along unmapped coasts, battled
with savages, and died like flies before the scourge of fever. The
whole story of the conquest and settlement of the Americas is one of
slow victory through a mist of tragedy. The invaders of other days left
their native lands with little hope to return. The invaders of to-day
set forth waving an au revoir to their friends on the dock side.
The man with the flimsiest imagination can think of the tiny craft,
ill-lit, ill-furnished, with scurvy-providing food, running before the
trade winds, lolling with idle sails in the doldrums, and with
uncertainty as constant companion. To-day the huge vessels scorn the
tides. Aflame with electric light they press through the dusk, and the
ship's orchestra plays ragtime music. You cross the Equator to the tune
of a Gaiety light opera. Sultry afternoons are relieved with
exhilarating deck sports. The warmth of the dinner hour is softened by
the whirl of electric fans. In the evening a space on deck is enclosed
and hung with the flags of all the nations, and dancers in fancy dress
whirl blithely on the powdered floor. These are the circumstances of the
modern invasion. The journey is a holiday with nothing of grim adventure
about it.
What Latin America means to-day is told in the personalities of the
passengers. There are the rich Argentines, after six months in Europe,
returning to Buenos Aires, occupying the cabins de luxe. They offer you
the information how much they are paying, contribute largely to the
sports fund, and their ladies dress with frank display. Whether Spanish
or English they are proud of the name of Argentine, and never weary
telling of the progress of their country. They have open contempt for
their Portuguese neighbours in Brazil. The wealthy Brazilian men,
swarthy and fat and bejewelled, do not join the deck games, but, with
cigar between lips, saunter the decks, leering at every woman with a
passable countenance. The Argentines thank God there is no nigger blood
in their veins. The Brazilians retaliate they could buy the Argentines
up. Care must be taken not to mix the two nationalities at the ship's
tables. Each nation sports its own flag. Sometimes rivalry threatens
tragedy.
There is the Englishman "with interests in Argentina" going out to look
after his property, frequently an _estancia_, or ranch, purchased when
land was cheap, and before the boom came. Now a railway cuts through his
property, and it has increased seventy-fold in value. Sometimes he
mentions drought; occasionally he shudders at the mention of locusts.
But he recalls the state of things when he went out thirty or forty
years ago "with not much more than a bob," and now he has a fortune made
out of meat shipped to Europe, and his only regret seems to be the
iniquitous amount of death duties which will have to be paid by his
heirs.
"Argentina is not what it was," he tells you. That means the winning of
a fortune is going to be increasingly harder to this and subsequent
generations. But he is a fine type of Englishman, for he went forth
before South America had grown beyond its monthly revolution, when the
continent chiefly bred restlessness amongst the Spanish settlers, and
when life and prosperity was a gamble. He has come through the fire.
Foresight, daring, and good luck have swung him, as they have swung
thousands of others, into affluence. He has "retired." He lives at home
in Belgravia, and gives fine dinner parties. But he keeps an eye on
Argentine stock, and when you encounter him in the club he repeats that
"Argentina is not what it was, but still----" and then he makes you wish
you could place your hand on some of the plums that remain.
There is the rich Argentine who shows what he is made of by insisting
upon everybody in the smoking-room drinking champagne at his
expense--and he is uncomplimentary if anybody deliberately refuses his
hospitality. There is the man who hires a band to play to him during the
voyage. There is the delicate lady who has a special cow on board so
that she may be sure of fresh milk. The boat carries a cow so that the
children may have milk. The charge per pint for the milk is high. "Why,"
said one passenger when he heard what the price was, "I think I will
give my children champagne; it will be cheaper."
British gold has flowed like water into South America to make the
dormant region fruitful. British interests are colossal. The United
States has not taken much of a hand in development, partly because the
Latins do not love their northern neighbours, and partly because the
financiers of the States have been sufficiently occupied in their own
country. Three hundred million British pounds sterling has been invested
in Argentine railway and tramway companies, and there are on board men
who manage the lines--tall, stalwart, clear-skinned Englishmen, with
cool nerve and steady eye.
There are the big _estancia_ men, proud and ambitious, who pay enormous
prices for famous race-horses and get the best breeding stock from home
in cattle and sheep, no matter what competition forces the price up to.
There are shrewd men going out on behalf of syndicates to throw their
eyes round the country and scent out possibilities for money-making on
the grand scale. In the free talk of the smoking-room they speak with
vagueness of what their special mission is. There are the men who have
been charged to take control of city development schemes--for all ports,
towns, and cities in South America are crazy for development, and are
piling their backs with debt to achieve their desires. There are the men
who represent English firms who are intent on extending their
connections or in establishing branches. There are engineers, with jobs
in the far interior, proceeding to fill five-year contracts. There are
young bank clerks, flushed with increased salary, exchanging London for
a pampa town and scarcely realising they will find living three times as
expensive as at Bromley. There are the men who laughingly acknowledge
they have no direct mission except that they intend to see what they
can pick up. But they are mostly a good brand of Briton, well set, and
with courage in the veins. And when one remembers the growing Latin
population, and listens to captivating explanations about potentialities
and hears what has been accomplished--more wonderful in the making of
cities than a tale out of the Thousand and One Nights--there is the fact
in the background that all this continent must long have continued to
lie undeveloped if it had not been for the constant and confident inflow
of British money.
Beyond the rails are the second-class passengers, folk of humbler aim,
but going to play their part in the land of adventure. But, above all,
are the third class, the steerage--few British here--travelling to South
America with little but hope and muscle to do the labourer's part. It is
labour the country needs to-day more than capital. In the spring of the
southern hemisphere the Atlantic is trailed with ships packed with
Italians, Spaniards, and Portuguese. The continent swallows them. They
are men of courage, or they would never have gone forth. They take with
them their fiery Latin temperament and fierce political, frequently
anarchist views. The native Indians are mostly too cow-like to be of
much use in industry. The millions of negroes in tropical Brazil are too
lazy to be relied upon. Labour is the need, the ever-pressing need.
Emissaries are busy in southern Europe booming South America and filling
the boats which sail from Lisbon and Vigo and Genoa--chiefly from Genoa,
for the Italian is the ideal immigrant for a warm clime. He is
industrious, sober, frugal.
All the towns along the South American coastline have futures. They talk
about the future, always the future, and are preparing for it. Swung in
a basket from the deck of the liner, I boarded a tug and went ashore at
Pernambuco. The buildings which stood were decrepit, as though erected
by the original Portuguese, like their ramshackle homes on the other
side of the ocean, and they had done nothing to them since except an
occasional smear of pink, blue or yellow colour-wash. Most of the place
was in ruins; whole streets were literally choked with débris,
suggesting there had been a frightful earthquake, or that a
revolutionary episode had perpetrated dire havoc. In fact, Pernambuco
was in the throes of improvement. The first necessity of all these South
American towns is not a system of drainage but an Avenida--a wide main
thoroughfare with bedizened buildings on either side, and cafés and
bands and electric lights and motor-cars and a theatre. They have begun
with a theatre. But the ways of Western civilisation have travelled so
far because, instead of drama and opera being presented, the theatre is
devoted to kinema entertainments.
As though cleared with a hundred cannon, there is a way right through
the town; this is where the Avenida is to be. Open matchbox tramcars,
drawn by weedy mules, rumble over uneven metals. The next time, however,
I visit Pernambuco electric cars will whiz along the roads. There are
no cabs or carriages, even of ancient pattern, to be hired; but there
are plenty of motor-cars. There is a breakwater built on a coral reef;
yet huge harbour works are in progress, and before long liners instead
of lying outside will be fastened to the dock side. There are big shops
where you can buy most things, including the inevitable picture post
cards, though you pay twopence each for post cards of a kind which you
can buy for two a penny at home. I paid 1s. 8d. for a drink for which no
hotel at home would have charged me more than 6d. The neighbourhood is
rich in vegetation, but potatoes and fruits are imported from Portugal.
The people are town proud. They are proud of Brazil. The Brazilian flag,
with its yellow ground and star-spangled blue globe in the centre, waves
everywhere.
The next day we were at Bahia, picturesquely reclining on a wooded hill.
It used to be the great port in the slave trade, and most of the
inhabitants are negroes. Indeed, it must not be forgotten that most of
the population are negroes, or negro Indians, or negro Portuguese, or a
mixture of all three. However, it is only the Portuguese, a mere handful
in the total, who exercise political influence in the country. On the
boat came many Bahians. All down the coast, whilst we were losing the
European invaders, we were taking on board and losing Brazilians. Most
of them were podgy, and an inky tinge on their skins indicated there was
mixture in their blood.
The healthy sports which had entertained the English travellers on the
Equator were things of the past. There was a new sport, and it was
played in the smoking-room all day long and far into the night, when
most of us had gone to bed. The rattle of the dice-box never ceased.
Gambling was in the veins, and the English sovereign was constantly
shuffled from hand to hand on the green baize tables. There was
baccarat, first for low stakes and then for high. There were two glib
Yankee-Negro-Spaniards who had such luck that spectators shrugged
shoulders and exchanged glances. In a single game they netted £150, and
one young Englishman was a loser by £80.
From gambling at the tables one turned to talking about gambling in the
country. The enormous liabilities to foreign countries are all incurred
in a great gamble that the hinterlands will yield produce which will pay
for all and leave massive surpluses. The coffee trade of Brazil is
immense. But all merchants do not make their incomes by watching and
nursing the market. That is too slow. Transactions are decided quite as
often by the throw of the dice as by negotiation and bargaining.
Reckless, far removed from business principles, all this is; but it
bespeaks a buoyancy of belief that, notwithstanding the lapse of luck,
there is a bottomless well of prosperity to be dipped into in the
natural productions of the country. It is scarcity which breeds
timidity; it is the confidence of affluence which occasions waste.
Of course there was much talk about Rio de Janeiro, the city with the
most gorgeous setting in the southern hemisphere.
"Rio harbour is the most beautiful in the world," said the Brazilian.
"It cannot be a patch on Sydney harbour," said the Australian, who had
never seen Rio.
"Tut!" said the Brazilian, who had never seen Sydney.
It was in the fall of an exquisite Sunday afternoon that our glasses
caught sight of the hills around Rio. As we approached and ran past
picturesque islands a wonderful panorama was unfolded. The scenery was
unlike any other scenery in the world. The hills, radiant with
equatorial vegetation, rose like strange humps out of the sea. In the
background giant mountains reared their heads in the crimson-grey clouds
of approaching evening. The picture was not like real scenery. It was
like the realisation of a disordered imagination. I would say it was
like an imitation of Turner, were the illustration not so trite. Then I
thought there was something Chinese about the outreness of the
landscape. Then the sun went down in a hurry, and the background was a
weird purple. The ship dropped anchor, and the front part of Rio town, a
tumble of fantastic red and yellow washed houses, was for all the world
like a drop curtain to a stage. I felt we had slipped into another
world--and I am not given to rhapsody.
A thousand lamps began to blink along the esplanade which curves to the
bend of the bay. A thousand lights pricked the hill sides. There were
two big black Brazilian warships, and somebody had to tell the old story
how two battleships were sent out to visit the Brazilian convict island
in the Atlantic, and how one returned with the awful story that the
island had disappeared, for they sailed straight for it and it had gone,
whilst later on it was learnt that the other vessel had certainly found
the island, for it got piled up on the rocks. Gaily illuminated launches
scurried about whilst our liner was slowly being berthed alongside the
quay.
"Ah!" cried the Brazilian to me, whilst his eyes glowed brightly, "say
that Rio is the most lovely harbour in the world!"
"There's nothing to shout about," interrupted the Australian, "alongside
Sydney harbour; and you've seen Sydney harbour," he added, turning to
me.
As a sort of amateur Solomon, I was turned to for judgment. My first
comment was to laugh. I had seen the two harbours which are each claimed
by their champions to be the grandest thing Nature has ever
accomplished. It was amusing to witness the fervour of the two men, as
though they had a hand in the making of these famous harbours. They were
both of the stuff which leads men to believe that for any other country
to have pretensions to beauty is just dull-witted boastfulness.
"Well," I remarked, "I think Vigo harbour is charming."
"Oh, Vigo!" they both exclaimed in disgust.
"And there is something to be said for the Golden Gate leading to San
Francisco," I added.
"But the Golden Gate and any other place is not in the same street with
Sydney harbour," blurted the Australian rather angrily, though he had
never seen the Golden Gate. "It cannot be," he said decisively.
"But what do you really think of Rio compared with Sydney?" asked the
Brazilian, who saw I was attempting to be funny at the expense of them
both.
"I'll tell you," I said, actually throwing half a cigar overboard, for I
was called upon to give a verdict on one of the most debatable subjects
in the world. "It is like passing judgment on two lovely women. For
grand, impressive spectacular effect, being hit right between the eyes
with stupendous gorgeousness, seeing Rio harbour at the hour of sunset
is the most wonderful sight in the world."
The Brazilian smiled, and the Australian made a contemptuous noise with
his lips.
"But hold," I added. "You see all the beauty of Rio harbour at one view.
It is like suddenly coming face to face with an imperial lady of
dazzling attractions. When you have seen her you have seen everything.
Sydney harbour does not knock you over with bewilderment of beauty like
Rio does. It is more calm, less turbulent; it impresses you. The more
you know it the more it impresses you. And it has lovely arms,
stretching up between soft woodlands, as peaceful as the best bits of
the Thames. Rio has nothing like that. No, no; I'm not competent to pass
judgment. You two gentlemen can go on fighting over the matter, as I
dare say the people of your two countries will continue to do, till the
crack of doom. I admit the unrivalled grandeur of Rio, but personally I
have more affection for the grace and the delights of Sydney."
The Brazilian bowed politely. The Australian wanted to argue I had ceded
too much to Rio. Happily, just then a group of friends came on board to
rush me off to a dinner party on shore.
Rio will always remind me of Imre Kiralfy, the White City, and Earl's
Court. There are some narrow, old European-like streets that recall
places on the other side of the Atlantic: the houses high and sombre and
with a little mystery behind the shutters. But most of Rio is rampantly
new and garish. The people have driven a magnificent Avenida right
through the heart of the city, and hang the expense! The piles of
buildings, hotels, public offices, great stores along this Avenida are
generally eccentric in architecture--and there comes the feeling that
here these transplanted Latins, with a strain of negro in their veins,
are struggling to express themselves as a new people. The wonderful
thing is that five years ago this Avenida was not.
Nothing that the Riviera has can outvie the esplanade, broad, well made,
with miles of bright gardens and statues--and the motor-cars whiz along
at the maddest, breakneck pace. There is one exquisite avenue lined with
nothing but palm trees. Many of the houses, designed surely by someone
who has built palaces for pantomimes, are half buried behind splashes of
prodigal tropical vegetation. Everything is ornate, showy. From the
standpoint of British comfort the buildings are gaudy palaces, lacking
real ease. But always one has to remember one is in the tropics.
I know no place so dazzling as Rio. Behind all the glitter, however,
there is gold. There is commerce, abounding speculation, the
devil-may-care assurance of the gambler. Broad ways, electric car
services, hundreds of expensive motor-cars, extravagant restaurants,
ladies laden with jewels, the men eager, all tell the opening chapter in
the story of Brazil's future. In the cool Strangers' Club I met men of
the Saxon breed, quiet Englishmen, quiet Americans, representatives of
syndicates with millions of money at their backs, negotiating,
wire-pulling, securing concessions for railroads, for developing
stretches of that great back country of Brazil, as little explored as
Central Africa, but the possibilities of which the world is realising
and will scramble hungrily to turn into profit. What Brazil has
accomplished so far is but the turning of the key in the door.
The morning comes with a gasp, and a flavour of old oil is in the air.
The heavy stillness makes one recite the agony of the Ancient Mariner.
We are leaving the ocean, and the steamer is churning a way up an
ochreish river, banked on one side, but with a stretch of malarious
jungle on the other. We are making for Santos, and an old German who
rests his elbows on the rail tells how he has known this coast for
thirty years, and how, in the old days, it reeked with yellow fever;
how whole ships' crews went down before the scourge, and how no
passenger boats dared lie at Santos for the night, but always slipped
down to the mouth of the river in the evening so that fresh air could be
obtained.
Now drainage has done wonders, and Santos, a great export town for
Brazilian coffee, is improving itself. I get into conversation with the
man who has been engaged to settle in Santos and see that the place is
improved. The river is deep, serviceable, and runs far inland. Casting
my eye over the flat lands, matted with vegetation, and dotted with many
a wretched nigger shanty, I have a vision of the time when docks will be
delved and many of the riches of Brazil will find their outlet to the
world by this gateway. Great wharves are on the river front at Santos.
The town, however, is in a hugger-mugger of change. The Brazilians seem
to lounge round, but they are forging for the future. Men who have been
with us for a fortnight hasten ashore. They have eagerness. They are off
by the quaint hill-climbing railway to San Paulo, high perched, healthy,
throbbing with trade. Others are bent for the interior, away from their
kind, to seek their fortunes.
"And that's the end of my six months' leave," says a red-faced
Englishman with a sorrowful smile. "I lived away back there for three
years, and never saw or talked to another Englishman. I've been home for
my holiday, and now it will be another three years before I come back
from the plantations. Good-bye. I'll hunt you up when I'm in London
again." Off he goes--one of the brave men of the world.
A peep at Monte Video, the neat capital of the miniature Republic of
Uruguay, and then the black-green of the ocean we have been travelling
for three weeks is left behind, and we are forcing a way up the yellow
waters of the River Plate. A river; but for hours there is no land in
sight, so wide is the mouth of this great stream. And shallow, for at
intervals the steamer shivers as she bumps on the bottom.
"That is all right," says the captain, "for we do not mind a couple of
feet of mud."
The journey of the new adventurers is nearing its end. Shipboard
friendships are sworn to be eternal. The ship's sports are long over,
and the prizes have been distributed. The fancy dress ball on deck is a
memory. There is the distribution of largesse amongst those who have
made things pleasant. Cabin passengers are light-hearted. The throng of
Spaniards and Italians in the steerage are silent and strangely
impressed. They were sad when they left the old lands; they were happy
during the voyage; now the mystery of the unknown is laying hold of
them. We pass a crowded emigrant ship from Italy, and cheers are
exchanged.
Out of the haze of the hot day rises the low land, Argentina. We see the
buildings of La Plata, once intended to be the capital of the country.
The ship makes strange zigzags, for it is following a channel known
only to the pilot. There rises a bank of smoke. As we get nearer we run
into shipping. From the background emerge tall buildings, white mostly,
and recalling the skyscrapers of the United States. So slowly,
laboriously, the good ship _Avon_, which has behaved so well, is brought
to rest in front of Buenos Aires. It is night, but the wharves are all
commotion. There is the shrieking of tugs. There is the shout of excited
Argentines, but their garb is south European. Beyond the Custom House
can be seen hastening motor-cars and whizzing electric tramcars. And
here is a newspaper man, wanting an interview. We are entering "the
amazing Argentine."
[Illustration:
_Photograph by H. G. Olds, Buenos Aires._
PLAZA DEL CONGRESO, BUENOS AIRES.]