CORDOBA AND ITS ATTRACTIONS
An old-time languorous atmosphere seems to hang round Cordoba. It is a
city with eighty churches, and as it has a population of 80,000, I pride
myself on my arithmetic that works it out to one church for every
thousand inhabitants. It is named after Cordova, in Spain, was founded
in 1504, and is the Oxford of the Argentine. Its university dates from
1666, and has a high reputation for learning in law and medicine.
Those old Spaniards who came pioneering down this way from Peru in their
early days of conquest had a neat eye for the picturesque. Speaking
generally, I would not place Argentina high as a land of beauty. But in
the middle land there is a fine rib of mountains, the Sierra de Cordoba;
and on a rise, so that it may be seen from afar, when the heat dances
hazily there is something immaterial about Cordoba as though it were the
city of a waking dream. See it, however, in the early morning, when the
air is fresh and the gleam of the sun catches it sideways and the
buildings are silhouetted against shadows, and you witness a picture
which would enthral an artist.
By northern European standard it is not an ancient city. But as living
beneath the sun brings early old age to men and women, so cities which
have had a few centuries of constant sun glare get a drowsy mediævalism
which sister cities in more temperate climes must have long ages to
acquire. The aroma of the Church and of scholasticism permeates Cordoba.
In many respects it is quite modern, with its big new hotel, where the
band plays in the restaurant whilst you are dining, and its streets lit
with electricity and electric tramcars jangling their way through the
squares and plenty of taxi-cabs on the ranks.
But the tendency is to forget these, and in recollection of the place
you think chiefly of the quiet in the quadrangle of the university, the
calm of the great library, the weatherworn walls of the old churches and
the dim lights of their interiors doing much to soften the tawdriness of
the decorations. There is a good deal in the assertion occasionally made
that the towns of recently developed countries lack individuality,
distinction; that, with all their progress, they are more or less
duplicates of each other. It is easy enough in Argentina to find
evidence of this modern spirit in town planning. Yet I know of none of
the newer countries where the towns have such a separate character as in
Argentina.
Of course, there are raw townships of yesterday which have nothing to
show but two wretched rows of badly built houses on each side of the
railway track, just as you will find in the western parts of the United
States and Canada. As Argentine towns grow they do not grow uniformly,
as though they were designed by the same architect or were imitating one
another. They show individuality. If you like, it may be just a desire
to show off. Many municipalities are loaded with debt. But they will
have their cities beautiful. When they have made a broad grass-plotted,
tree-girt avenue right through the town to the railway station, and the
station buildings are low and ugly and out of keeping with the rest of
the town, and the railway authorities at Buenos Aires turn a deaf ear to
the deputations which may wait upon them, you can safely bet that one of
these nights the railway buildings will be consumed by fire, so that the
company is compelled to erect a new station.
Because it is the oldest city in Argentina and has inhabitants with
pedigrees, and because of the society attracted to it, Cordoba regards
itself as the aristocratic centre of the Republic. In the neighbouring
hills are sanatoria, like Jesu Maria, much favoured by the people of the
plains who need a change.
Cordoba, like other places, is quite certain it has the best-dressed
ladies. In a sedate sort of way there is a good deal of gaiety. On hot
summer evenings a band plays in the square, where there is a statue of
San Martin. There may be a town in Argentina which has not an equestrian
statue of the Liberator from Spain. If so, I must have missed it. The
statues are all facsimiles of the original, and there must be dozens of
them. It is the one point on which all the towns agree; they must have
a statue of San Martin on a prancing steed, and eternally pointing in
the direction of the Andes. Once I unfortunately made an Argentine
angry, for, being anxious to show me the beauties of his town, he sought
my wishes as to what I desired to see, and I replied, "Anything you
like, so long as you do not take me to see the statue of San
Martin--I've seen him so often during the last month." The feathers were
up at once. I smoothed them down by assuring him that we have very few
statues of Wellington in England.
The Cordobians are fond of music and racing and gambling, and sitting in
the cafés throwing the dice-box. There is a delightful theatre, the
Rivera Indarte, built by the provincial Government. Opera companies
which go to Buenos Aires are invited to come to Cordoba, and the
authorities give a guarantee against loss. The proper thing is to buy a
box, holding six persons, for the little season of ten performances. The
cost of such a box is £150. The charge is a dollar for the _entrada_
(entrance), which provides nothing except permission to enter the
building. This _entrada_ charge is like the charge for "attendance" in
old-fashioned hotels in England, which is an excuse for sticking another
eighteenpence a day on your bill so that you may be deceived into
thinking you are paying six shillings for your room when you are really
paying seven and sixpence. So at the opera in Cordoba, usually Italian,
the lowest ticket is two dollars to be permitted to stand up, but you
have already parted with one dollar to go in. Cordoba province, like the
other provinces, thinks no small beer of itself. It rather resents
receiving orders from the Federal Government sitting in Buenos Aires.
Perhaps that is the reason the Argentine National Anthem is so seldom
heard.
Students are attracted to Cordoba University from all over the country.
Most of the professors have had experience of European universities,
generally French. The library is extensive and varied. I handled some
fine old Bibles, bound in sheepskin, relics of the early Spaniards. Also
there is a remarkable collection of old maps, showing that the priests
as they travelled this way were first-class geographers. Whatever
literary sentiment there is in Argentina finds expression in Cordoba.
Indeed, it is the natural meeting-place for men inclined to culture for
its own sake. But it is by no means a sleepy hollow. It has several
really good newspapers. There is a great export of lime. Being the
centre of a big wheat area, much milling is done by modern electric
appliance. Light and power are provided by an enterprising English
company. There is a shoe factory, which turns out 2,500 pairs of
footwear a day.
Yet, as I have said, though there is plenty to prove that Cordoba is
awake, the impression left on the memory is that it is an old-fashioned
Spanish university town that has strayed to the central part of South
America. This may be because I spent most of my time in the university
buildings, or roaming through the churches. In the cathedral a
shrivelled but kindly old priest showed me a gallery of bishops of
Cordoba; but I suspect they are much like the Scottish kings which adorn
the walls of Holyrood Palace, many painted by one hand, and from
imagination of what the bishops looked like rather than from any
knowledge of their actual appearance.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
ON THE WAY TO MARKET IN CORDOBA.]
I went to the Jesuit church, where a tonsured, jolly monk showed me the
relics. People who had had rheumatism, and who had been cured by prayer,
gave acknowledgment by sending golden arms or silver legs. There was a
little golden motor car, and this came from a lady who in a terrible
smash prayed her life might be saved; and it was saved, and here was her
gift. Here was the statue of the Virgin, which performs miracles. Those
who are inclined to doubt are shown a stack of crutches of those who
hobbled into the church to seek the aid of the Virgin and walked out
quite cured. The little figure of the Virgin is as fresh as though it
had been carved and painted only last year. Yet the story goes it has
never been touched for nigh four hundred years. In those far-off days it
was sent from Spain. But the ship was wrecked in mid-Atlantic. Those who
had expected the statue were in distress, and prayers were offered on
the coast that the good Mother would send another statue. And whilst
they prayed the case in which was the statue was floated on the shore,
and the statue was quite unharmed. At once miracles were performed, and
miracles have been performed over since. I saw the crutches and I saw
the golden motor-car.
From the rafters hung many flags of foreign countries captured by
Argentina in war. There is a Union Jack, with colours dimmed with years,
which was seized from the British nearly a hundred years ago, when a
British force landed and it was a toss-up whether Argentina would not
become a British Colony. Many British visitors cast a regretful eye upon
that drooping flag in the Jesuit church at Cordoba. They are not
told--but it is a fact all the same--it is not the real flag. I was
shown the real flag folded in a glass case in a room behind the altar.
Some years ago a number of young Englishmen travelling in the country
recovered the real flag, which then hung in the chancel. There was such
a how-d'ye-do that it had to be returned. To avoid a similar mishap it
was put under lock and key in a glass case, and kept in a chamber not
accessible to the public. But the public would still want to see the
British flag. So not to disappoint them an exact copy was made, and it
is the imitation flag upon which most visiting Englishmen cast a
patriotic but regretful eye.
There is an agricultural college, a wonderful drive up a hill to a park
which provides long distance views, an English school and a German
school. I could easily give a dozen places where these developments can
be found, and better. The point is that you find these things at all in
the very heart of South America. Being the heart of the southern
continent, Cordoba has been selected by the Government as its chief
observatory. It is the Argentine Greenwich. The Republic keeps the same
time from east to west, and it keeps Cordoba time. The observatory is
under the control of a staff from the United States.
The Cordobians are great lovers of pleasure. Sometimes on the grim
hoardings of London you see how a railway company will take you, first
class, to a popular seaside resort, house and feed you in a well-known
hotel, and bring you back at a fixed inclusive sum for the week-end. The
Central Argentine Railway does the same thing in regard to Alta Gracia,
a pleasant village in the hills, and where there is the best mountain
hotel in the world. Alta Gracia is about an hour's run from Cordoba, and
on Sundays there is a rush of holiday-makers, reminiscent of the Pullman
express out of London down to Brighton on a Sunday morning. The "fixed
charge" is popular. Everybody knows exactly how much the outing is going
to cost. At ten o'clock a train thronged with holiday-makers sets out
for Alta Gracia. By eleven o'clock the place is reached. At noon there
is _déjeuner_. The afternoon can be spent lounging about, listening to
the band, playing golf, playing tennis, gambling in the casino, taking
walks in the wooded hills. At seven o'clock is dinner. The train returns
at nine o'clock, and by ten Cordoba and home is reached.
One of the pleasantest week-ends in my life I spent at Alta Gracia.
There is a little group of Englishmen, associated with the Central
Argentine Railway, living at Cordoba, and, as officials have special
cars, we had a couple of cars attached to the train on Saturday night.
At Alta Gracia these were detached and side tracked. Then we "roughed
it" for twenty-four hours. After the cocktails, and whilst dinner was
being prepared, we sat out on the plain. On one side rose the village,
revealed by points of light in the blackness, and on the summit of the
hill was a glow of light just like a great and well-illumined liner
appears as she ploughs the sea. That was the mountain hotel. On the
other side was the prairie, just a streak of dark below the deep blue of
the sky. The stars seemed bigger and nearer and more numerous than they
do in northern climes. There was the usual searching for the Southern
Cross, and when found we all agreed it was the most overrated
constellation in the heavens. A caressing warmth was in the air. It was
good to sit there, smoking our pipes and "listening to the silence."
[Illustration: THE NINTH GREEN AT ALTA GRACIA.]
[Illustration: IN THE COURTYARD OF THE MONASTERY AT ALTA GRACIA.]
Away on the plains of central South America--that sounds like "roughing
it." But you have got to go much farther afield to rough it. The car
which my friend and I had would have attracted much notice in England.
There was a pleasant sitting-room, with big easy chairs and a real
English open fireplace. There were three bedrooms, not the "cribb'd,
cabin'd, confin'd" cabins we have in our "sleepers" at home, and there
was the luxury of a bathroom. There was a kitchen, a chef, and a
sprightly waiter. The whole car was lit by electricity. So we sat down
to dinner--half a dozen courses as excellent as can be served at a
London restaurant which looks after its reputation. We filled the coach
with our tobacco smoke; we told our best stories; we exchanged yarns
about things which had befallen us in distant parts of the world--in
Siberia and Australia, Peru and Havana, the Soudan and California--for
here the corners of the earth were met in a side-tracked private car in
the lee of a pretty holiday village in the middle of Argentina. The
Spaniards have done much to this land; but bands of young Englishmen
have played and are playing their part.
In the delicious freshness of the dawn we sauntered about in our
pyjamas, drank tea and smoked cigarettes. The day came with a rush of
glory. It was Sunday morning, and the bell in the monastic church on the
hill was clanging for the faithful to go and pray. The mystery which
hung over Alta Gracia had gone, and in the truthful light of the morning
it was just a straggling Spanish village, with many trees about, and the
red hills in the distance making a jagged background. It was a torrid
Sunday morning, and when we had had our tubs, and had shaven and put on
our flannels, we set out to "make a day of it."
The bell of the old church was clang-clanging. Peasants in their Sunday
clothes--the women squat and short-skirted and with highly coloured
kerchiefs over their heads, the men in baggy velvet trousers and slouch
hats, their faces polished with soap and their hair reeking with scented
oil--were slowly climbing to worship. The walls of the church, and the
buildings where the monks formerly lived, suggested a fortress prepared
to resist attack rather than a haven of peace. There were long slits in
the stonework through which the nose of a musket could be stuck. For in
the old days the monks had to fight as well as pray. Alta Gracia was
very lonely centuries ago, and always liable to attack. But now all that
is far in the background. The church was crowded. The priest at the
candled altar was chanting. The air was pungent with incense. There was
not room for all the worshippers to sit so many stood, and when they
knelt they spread their handkerchiefs on the floor. There was nothing
which could be described as distinctively Argentine. Better-to-do folk
were dressed just like better-to-do folk are dressed in Europe. It was
just the usual Sunday morning scene you can witness in Spain and
Italy--countries six thousand miles away.
One blinked on coming from the shadows of the church into the sunshine.
The holiday-makers from Cordoba had arrived, and were scattering to find
suitable haunts for picnicking. We tramped up the heavy, dusty road,
panting and perspiring, but encouraged by the sight of the spreading,
low-roofed hotel. Ah! at last we were on the broad balcony, twice as
wide as the promenade deck of our greatest liner. A touch of the bell,
and we were having our favourite beverages, much iced. Through the
shimmering heat the eye could wander over the endless brown plains.
Solemn Argentines, inclined to portliness, sat in big basket-chairs,
surrounded by their sedate families, doing nothing at all. There were
invalids who had come here for the high, dry air. There were noisy
English youths, in gorgeous blazers, arranging a tennis match. A party
of heavy-shoed golfers were setting out.
Alta Gracia is renowned throughout Argentina as a health resort. In the
hot months--and it can be very hot around January--many families come
here, for there is always a refreshing breeze. There are hundreds of
rooms in the hotel. Bathrooms are innumerable. There are suites and
single chambers. The furniture is tasteful but not luxurious. The
dining-room is in white. There is a ball-room. There is a resident
orchestra. I know most of the big hotels in the mountains of
Switzerland, but no one is comparable in conveniences to this.
Across the gardens, a hundred yards away, is the casino, quite apart
from the hotel, but provided for those who want to gamble--and where is
the Argentine who does not like to gamble? There are large public rooms;
there are small rooms, decorated in a variety of styles, for private
gaming parties; there is a refreshment and reading-room, German in
appearance; there is a beautiful little theatre. No, I am receiving no
fee to advertise Alta Gracia. With the exception of my companion, I am
quite sure there was not a soul in the place who knew what my name was,
or bothered their heads what was the business of a tourist-looking
fellow like myself.
We lunched, we had our coffee, and then we hired one of the hotel
motor-cars and went for a forty or fifty mile spin. Roads--there were no
roads. There were passable tracks and a considerable amount of bouncing
which tested the springs of the car. Like all Latin chauffeurs the
driver had a mania for speed. The way serpentined amongst the rocks and
through scraggy woods, so we had often to make a sudden duck to avoid
getting whipped in the face by a branch. We banged and swerved, but even
the awful threat of not giving the driver a tip did not hold him in for
more than a hundred yards at a stretch from letting that car tear along
at its maddest. He took us to see a gurgling little river, the Bolsa,
tripping through a sylvan glade which caused me to exclaim, "Why, it is
just like a bit of Dovedale!"
[Illustration: THE HOTEL AT ALTA GRACIA.]
Off again at a furious pace, heaving, diving, skirting hills. "If there
is a smash you will be the first killed." But the chauffeur only laughed
over his shoulder. We struck up a defile, and the hills rose high on
either side. Mountain ponies scampered about; goats hailed us from rocky
heights. Gauchos, swarthy and handsome, with their women perched behind,
were overtaken on stallions which were restive and inclined to bolt at
the approach of the automobile. A bend in the narrow way, and we nearly
ran into a funeral procession; the coffin on a cart and covered with a
dingy pall, and the friends of the dead man in many and varied
vehicles following, in no garb of mourning, but non-chalantly smoking
cigarettes. There was backing of the car till it could be run on a piece
of grass. The horses hauling the dead man laid their ears well forward
and then well back, but were led past the thing they were afraid of
without accident. We exchanged the greetings of the day with the friends
of the dead man. He was going to be buried twelve miles away, and it
would be well into the night before they got back. The motor-car snorted
and jumped on its way. It was a beautiful afternoon.
The chauffeur brought us to a chalet which we reached by crossing a
brook and passing through a garden. It was a house of refreshment. And
what kind of refreshment in an out-of-the-way part of the world? A
sad-faced girl gave us a curtsy and waited our orders whilst we
stretched our legs beneath an orange tree. Now what had she to offer in
the way of refreshment? The señors could have what they wished. I
inquired about champagne. Certainly! But who on earth could want
champagne on the edge of the world out there? We did not have champagne.
We had a bottle of native white wine and aerated water. The chauffeur!
Oh, his fancy ran to a bottle of beer; indeed, he had two bottles of
beer. And who was the dead man we had passed? we asked the maid. Her
brother. Last night he took ill and ere morning he was dead, and now
they had taken him away. An old man came to the door and looked up the
sunlit valley. The little two-year-old son of the dead man had a
stick, and was chasing some ducks toward the brook; he was radiantly
happy. We commiserated with the old man. He thanked the señors and hoped
the wine was as we wished. He did not know why his son died; the sweet
Mother in Heaven knew; anyway, he had gone; could he get the señor
another chair, for that he was sitting on could not be comfortable?
Back to Alta Gracia. Some of our friends had been playing golf, and we
must go to the club-house. A well-laid-out nine-hole course, but the
"greens" are of caked mud; they cannot grow grass out here as we can at
home. There is the usual golfers' talk; there was "rotten luck being
bunkered just in front of the fourth hole"; "That was a lovely drive
from the eighth"; "Hang it all, he was quite off colour with his
brassie, and he generally fancied himself with his brassie work"; "Well,
of all the fortunate foozlers, a chap like that doing the fifth in
three"--and so on. It was just like dear old England.
Somebody remarked there were gaucho races over on the other side of the
town. Gaucho races--races amongst the men of the soil, the native
cowboys of the Argentine prairies! Tune up that motor-car. I can see
lots of golf in other parts of the world, but here was one of the things
I had dreamed about coming out to see--a gaucho race-meeting.
No, I have no need to think out admiring adjectives to describe
that course. It was only a bit of a course. The posts were ramshackle,
and the wire which had connected them was broken and trailed on the
ground, or had gone altogether. There was what I took to be intended for
a grand stand, a wheezy erection of unpainted wood, but there was nobody
on it.
There were hundreds of gauchos, the real article, with skins like
leather, eyes as black as night, and most of them were on ponies and
astride Spanish saddles, and they were picturesquely garbed, but not so
picturesquely as you see them in coloured illustrations. They were
noisy, and prancing their horses about and challenging each other. They
had ridden in fifteen and twenty miles, some of them, and their women
had driven in the carts with provisions for the day. The women had
little encampments in the bushes, and fires burning, and they made
coffee and served their lords with chunks of food.
The men are all laughing and arguing the merits of their ponies. Nearly
everybody is mounted. One gaucho is jumping from group to group, waving
two paper pesos (about 3s. 4d.) and demanding who will lay two pesos
against his pony. The jabber is interminable. He gets taken. Excitement
runs through the crowd. The competitors each hand the money to an old
fellow who stands on a rickety platform which serves as judges' box.
Then they amble off toward a tree where they are their own starters. A
native policeman frantically yells for the course to be cleared. Some
sort of passage-way is made, and then there is the customary confounded
dog which will not get out of the way.
Here they come, and in a pelt of dust. They ride well and with a loose
rein. The riders swing their arms and yell as though they would frighten
their steeds to greater efforts. You can feel the quiver in the crowd.
By go the horses, running neck to neck. But one has won by a nose. The
winner trots up smiling, and he gets the four pesos held by the judge.
But the clamour has begun again. One man, rather a gaudy buck and with a
fine horse, challenges the world. He will race any man for five pesos,
and he has the money in his hand to show he means business. Well, he
will lay his five pesos to anybody else's four. Everybody is talking
about his own horse, or somebody else's horse, or egging two enthusiasts
to cease their talking and have the thing settled by a race.
These gauchos belong to a long line of men who have lived on their
prairies and had to do with horses ever since the Spaniards first
landed. They go to horse-races not for a pleasant holiday, but because
the fever of horse-racing is in their veins.
And that night after dinner we sat in the great light of the veranda,
and the mighty purple night was beyond, and the air was heavy with the
musk which rises from the plains after a hot day and the great locusts
which swerved toward us! Some women gave little screams in fear they
might get amongst their hair. Men who knew their harmlessness--except
when there was a crop of young wheat to be devoured--caught them in
their hands.
[Illustration:
_Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._
A TYPICAL HOUSE IN CORDOBA PROVINCE.]
We tramped through the dimly lit village and heard the songs of Spain
and Italy streaming from the cafés. We saw the crowd of merry-makers
packing into the train to return to Cordoba. And when the train, a
streak of light, had snorted into the blackness till in the distance it
appeared like a crawling glowworm, we got chairs from out of the private
car and sat beneath the stars and smoked our pipes, and wondered what
was happening in England. At first there was warmth in the air. But the
chill of midnight had come, and the grasshoppers had ceased their song,
before we climbed to bed.