BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND
If I were suddenly asked to name the town which has most rapidly sprung
ahead during the last few years, Bahia Blanca would at once jump to my
lips.
It is 350 miles south of the River Plate, and if you searched the coast
line for six hundred miles below Buenos Aires it is only here you would
find a natural harbour capable of receiving the largest of steamers.
With the gradual silting of the River Plate, which, notwithstanding
constant dredging, will be a constant handicap to the shipping of the
capital and Rosario, Bahia Blanca, with advantages which neither of the
other two towns possesses, will undoubtedly become the real Liverpool of
Argentina.
In 1880 the place had a population of less than 2,000. To-day its
population is 70,000, and it is increasing rapidly. Already it has third
place in commercial importance amongst the cities of the country, and
its ambition is to rival Buenos Aires itself.
Old timers--men who have been in the place a dozen years--waxed
enthusiastic to me about the way in which an unpaved village, built on a
flat, dusty, treeless waste, has become a city of broad paved streets
and plazas, with imposing public buildings, public gardens, electric
tramways, electric light, and an excellent water supply.
[Illustration: A STREET IN BAHIA BLANCA]
There was something exhilarating in driving in a motor-car along a busy
thoroughfare, with big shops on either side, and with clanging tramcars
picking up and dropping passengers, and to be reminded that seven years
before the place was quite a wilderness. The way in which some men had
made money quickly made the mouth water when one was shown a plot of
land which had originally been purchased for a few dollars, sold a few
years later for 10,000 dollars, and which had changed hands only a month
or two later for 30,000 dollars.
Though open to the scourge of disagreeable sand-storms--I experienced
one during my visit--the town is well placed, with fine open spaces; and
though the public park is a little "raw," the fact that there is a park
at all, with excellent drives and many trees, is the wonderful thing. I
dined one night at an excellent hotel, and afterwards accompanied some
friends to a wine hall, where men brought their wives and children and
witnessed a pleasant kinematograph entertainment. Of course there is an
Argentine Club, and, though without the sedate restfulness which English
folk like to feel is the characteristic of their clubs, its dimensions
and luxuriance provide a building which would be a credit to any town
three times its size. Bahia Blanca has a model municipality, and, with
all respect to the Spanish-Italian Argentines, I believe the secret is
that the development of the town has been chiefly in the hands of
Englishmen.
With the opening of the country, fresh areas of land placed under
cultivation and with thousands of miles lying at the back capable of
wheat growing and cattle raising, Bahia Blanca is swiftly coming into
its own. The land was practically useless so long as there was no
transport, but now, with the Great Southern Railway, the Buenos Aires
and Pacific Railway and other lines converging upon the town, every year
marks an increase in trade. For instance, in 1901 seventy vessels were
cleared from the port; in 1912 there were four hundred and twenty-two.
In the same two years the shipments in wool jumped from 26,123 tons to
55,552; the number of hides from 394 to 77,401; the tons of hair from 3
to 248; and the tons of cereals from 188,875 to 1,747,702.
Let honour go where honour is due. It was the coming of the railways
which gave Bahia Blanca its leap forward. In 1884 the Great Southern
Railway first pushed its rails so far south. They ran through a country
which, loosely, might be described as desert. The bringing of the
railway was like putting new life into the desert. _Estancias_ dotted
the landscape. In 1885 an insignificant mole was built by the Great
Southern to receive its own materials, but this mole has developed into
the present Port of Engineer White--called after the man who built
it--which deals with over a million tons of public traffic yearly. This
port is a little over four miles from Bahia Blanca, and has berths for
ten vessels of less draught. I climbed through the two grain elevators,
stacked with 26,000 tons of wheat in sacks. By means of electric bands
grain can be conveyed to eight vessels at a time, and in the busy season
ships have been known to take over five thousand tons in a little over
six hours. Being a place of yesterday's growth all the newest appliances
are to be found, including thirty electric cranes, powerful tugs,
floating grain elevators. Indeed, the Southern company admit to an
expenditure on the port of £2,000,000.
But the port made by the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway Company,
Puerto Galvan, occupying a position of fine natural advantage on the
estuary of the bay and lying a mile or two across the flat from Engineer
White, has also to be seen. At high tide there is a mean depth of
twenty-eight feet, and plenty of good anchorage is in the mainway.
Puerto Galvan is five miles from Bahia Blanca, and to a great extent has
been built on reclaimed swampy ground. I see the day when warehouses and
further elevators will cover this piece of reclaimed mudbank, and it
should never be forgotten that Mr. Stevens, the engineer, a man of great
ability and much modesty, has performed a fine piece of work. The port
has accommodation for twelve ocean-going steamers, and the berths, which
have a total length of over 4,000 feet, have been constructed with a
view to the rapid handling of cargo. Here again the appliances,
elevators to handle 8,000 tons a day, thirty-six cranes, traversers,
capstans, are all electrically driven. The total effective power amounts
to 4,265 horse-power. The port and the shunting yards are all lit at
night with electricity, and ships can be illuminated. There are special
facilities for the embarkation of cattle. Large bonded warehouses are in
course of construction. There is a flour mill with a capacity of 100
tons a day. Large storage tanks have been erected for the accumulation
of crude oil, an important provision in a country so deficient in coal.
I looked across the sweep lying between Puerto Galvan and Engineer
White, and visioned the day when it will be occupied with warehouses and
industrial enterprises, for oil fuel and electric power can be quickly
and cheaply supplied.
One morning I visited the Victoria Wool Market, long rows of well-built
sheds, where not only wool but cereals and general camp produce are
sold. I doubt if anywhere there is a similar market quite so large, for
it has a floor area of 484,000 square feet and a storage capacity of
50,000 tons. Close by are the deposits to receive the Mendoza wines,
which will have a profitable European sale when once the supply grows
beyond the Argentine demand. Then there are deposits for the storage of
alfalfa. The spread of development was revealed by the remarks which
came in reply to my inquiries. "Oh, that was built last year"; "This was
erected a couple of years ago, but we are going to make extensions";
"Five years ago we thought this place big enough, but we are going to
pull it down and put up something ten times the size." Here was
commercial progress expanding monthly. Here was a town which had been
little more to me than a name on the South American coast before I
visited it--and I consider myself a travelled man--and when I saw its
energy and its growth I wondered how much the great industrial
populations of crowded Europe knew of what was taking place so many
thousands of miles across the sea.
[Illustration: THE ELEVATORS AT INGENIERO WHITE.]
The success of Bahia Blanca lies in the back country known as the pampa.
I journeyed across it in a trip from Mendoza to Bahia Blanca, and, as
the name denotes, it is a vast featureless plain. Most of it is
naturally fertile, but even regions that are sandy will be productive in
the growing of alfalfa, which seems specially suitable, and which will
not only maintain herds of cattle, but is profitable as a feeding stuff
to be exported. As yet the pampa has been little more than scratched.
From the railway cars the idea is obtained that the whole of the country
is converted to the use of man. Ten or twenty miles beyond the line you
reach desert--desert so far as use is concerned, though the illimitable
expanse of waving grass tells the tale of future possibilities. Wherever
the railways stretch their arms there is cultivation, for the ever
spreading population follows quickly on the laying down of the rails.
I have heard people talk about the monotony of the pampa. But this
territory has a special fascination of its own. There is a bigness, an
immensity, an unendingness which lays hold of the imagination. The great
silence, save for the play of the wind amongst the long grass, seizes
the fancy. Sunrise and sunset come and go in a wonderful glory. At the
birth of day all the grass sparkles with dew; the softest colours seem
to brush the world. When the sun is up, and blazes from a sky with all
the blue burnt out of it, a sort of oppressive hot hush rests upon the
world. The long grass seems to drowse beneath the pitiless glare. You
can travel for hundreds of miles and never see a hillock or a tree or a
beast, or hear a bird. But into this land man is slowly but persistently
penetrating. To folk who live at home the life seems deadening. Yet men
come to love it, not passionately but clingingly, so that many a man who
has "made his pile" and returned home to spend it in ease begins to
crave for the pampa, and he is not content until he visits it again.
[Illustration: PLAZA RIVERDAVIA, BAHIA BLANCA.]
Gradually this area is being transformed. _Estancias_, with their
eternal clump of trees and inevitable windmill pump, break the line of
the horizon. Cattle stray over the prairie. The mud hovels of the
colonists are black specks, and when you reach them you find that a big
slice of the land has been given to the plough and is fenced with wire.
Here also are the sheep farms, and, as I have indicated, Bahia Blanca is
the chief market for wool. Yet sheep rearing in the Argentine, extensive
though it is, may be said to be stationary. This is not because the
limits of expansion have been reached, but simply because cattle and
wheat have been found more profitable. The quality of wool, inferior to
that of Australia, may have something to do with the restriction. The
constant tendency is toward hair, and the natural condition of wool is
only maintained by the importation of English sheep. Then the animals
are disposed to be gaunt rather than good meat producers. These are
drawbacks which have had their influence on breeding as a money-making
business. But the Argentines are a practical people, and everything
connected with agriculture they tackle in a scientific manner. That the
consequence of their experiments in cross breeding will be the
production of an acclimatised sheep, valuable for wool or mutton or
both, I have no doubt. Farther south toward Patagonia, where the climate
is more temperate and where there is fodder, I look upon as one of the
great sheep tracks of the world. The European market for chilled mutton
will be a spur to sheep-breeding.
Indeed, there are indications that the country at the back of Bahia
Blanca is being appreciated as the sheep lands. It has been found that
English sheep do better here than elsewhere. The Lincoln, Leicester,
Romney Marsh, and Merino sheep do well. There is a good opening in this
area for the British immigrant with money. Though there are something
approaching one hundred million sheep in the Republic, there is room for
hundreds of millions more. But the indifferent strain, consequent on a
long-woolled Spanish breed having run wild for over two hundred years,
must be eradicated if Argentina is going to secure and hold a foremost
place in the wool markets of the world. I have been told this has been
done during the last half century, but I am by no means convinced. For a
long time the West Riding of Yorkshire had a prejudice against Argentine
wool. This no longer exists. The preference is given to Australian wool
not for any patriotic reasons, but simply because it is better.
Argentina has for some time been attracting breeders from New Zealand,
and they have done much, by the importation of stock from England, to
improve the quality. At present three out of every four sheep stations
are in the hands of men of British name. You can strike a line from a
little north of Bahia Blanca, and then reckon that most of the country
lying south, right down to Patagonia, is suitable for sheep. But it is
not all of equal value. Sheep that are turned out on the alfalfa lands
provide good mutton, but the wool is inferior. The fine grasses of the
near south seem inclined to make coarse wool; yet careful crossing is
doing much to prevent this. Still, I am strongly disposed to agree with
M. Bernandez, that there is no reason why either the coarse or fine
wools now produced should be abandoned. The coarse, long wool will
always have its use not only in rough goods, but also in the warp of
fine cloths, which in the great mechanical looms has to be extremely
strong. He looks to the establishment of woollen manufactories in the
Argentine, and, as a consequence, the development on a colossal scale of
all the breeds.
[Illustration: A BAHIA BLANCA BANK.]
[Illustration: THE TOWN HALL AT BAHIA BLANCA.]