THE RANCHLAND OF ARGENTINA AND SOUTHERN BRAZIL
In the fall of 1913 I enjoyed a glimpse of the ranch country of southern
Brazil and of Argentina. It was only a glimpse; for I was bent on going
northward into the vast wilderness of tropical South America. I had no
time to halt in the grazing country of temperate South America, which is
no longer a wilderness, but a land already feeling the sweep of the
modern movement. It is a civilized land, already fairly well settled,
which by leaps and bounds is becoming thickly settled; a region which at
the present day is in essentials far more closely kin to the plains
country, which in temperate North America stretches from Hudson Bay to
the Gulf, than either land is kin to what each was even half a century
ago. The main difference is that the great cow country, the plains
country, of North America was peopled only by savages when the white
pioneers entered it in the nineteenth century; whereas throughout
temperate South America there were here and there oases of thin
settlement, including even small, stagnant cities, already two or three
centuries old. In these oases people wholly or partly of European blood
had gradually developed a peculiar and backward, but real,
semicivilization of their own. This quaint, distinctive social culture
has been, or is now being, engulfed by the rising tide of intensely
modern internationalized material development.
Among the many pleasant memories of my visit to Argentina, one of the
most pleasant is that of a dinner at the house of the governor of the
old provincial capital of Mendoza. Our distinguished host came of an old
country family which for many centuries led the life of the great
cattle-breeding ranch-owners, although his people were more and more
turning their attention to agriculture, he himself being a successful
farmer, as well as an invaluable public servant of advanced views. His
father was at the dinner. He had retired as a general after forty-nine
years' service in the Argentine army. The fine old fellow represented
what was best in the Argentine type before the days of modern
industrialism. A very vigorous and manly best it was, too. He wore the
old Argentine uniform, which for his rank was the same as the uniform
once worn by Napoleon's officers. He had served in the bloody Paraguayan
War, when Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay joined to overthrow the
inconceivably murderous dictatorship of Lopez, and when the Paraguayans
rallied with savage valor under the banner of the dictator, who
tyrannized over them, but who nevertheless represented in their eyes the
nation. This old general had served in many Indian wars, both in
Patagonia and in the Grand Chaco, and had seen desperate fighting in the
civil wars. He wore medals commemorating his services in the Paraguayan
and Indian campaigns, but he would not wear any medals commemorating his
services in the civil wars. Yet the only time he was wounded was in one
of the battles in one of these civil wars. He was then shot twice and
received a bayonet thrust, and was also stabbed with a lance. If he had
not possessed a constitution of iron he would never have survived. Our
people in the United States often speak of these South American wars
with the same ignorant lack of appreciation that used to be shown by
European military men in speaking of our own Civil War and other
contests. This attitude is as foolish on our part in the one case as it
was foolish on the part of the Europeans in question in the other case.
The South American Indian fighting was of the same hazardous character,
and the Indian campaigns were fraught with the same wearing fatigue, and
marked by the same risk and wild adventure, as in the case of our own
Indian campaigns. In the Argentine civil wars, and in the Paraguayan
War, as in the wars which the Chileans have waged, the fighting was, on
the whole, rather more desperate than in any contest between the
civilized nations of Europe from the close of the Napoleonic struggles
to the opening of the present gigantic contest. There is no more
formidable fighting material in the world than is afforded by certain
elements in the populations of some of these Latin-American countries.
The general of whom I am speaking was himself a most interesting example
of a vanishing type. Lovers of good literature should read the sketches
of old-time Argentine life in Hudson's "El Ombu." When they have done
so, they will understand the strength and the ruthlessness which
produced leaders of the stamp of the scarred and war-hardened veteran
who in full general's uniform met us at dinner at the house of his son,
the governor of Mendoza.
The old-time conditions of gaucho civilization that produced these wild
and formidable fighting men, who fought as they lived, on the backs of
their horses, have vanished as utterly as our own Far West of the days
of Kit Carson. The Argentine country life has changed as completely as
the Argentine city life. They are gone, those long years during which
the gaucho rode over unfenced plains after gaunt cattle, and warred
against the scarcely wilder Indians with whom he vied in horsemanship
and plainscraft and hardihood and from whom he borrowed that strange
weapon, the bolas. Even the southern Andes of what was once Patagonia
are unexplored only in the sense that the Rockies of Alberta are not yet
completely explored. Much of the former ranch country is now wheatland,
where the workmen of foreign, especially Italian, origin far outnumber
the men of old Hispano-Indian stock. Great cattle-ranches remain; but
they are handled substantially like great modern ranches in our own
Southwest, and the blooded horses and high-grade cattle are kept in
large, fenced pastures. In most places the gaucho has changed as our own
cowboy has changed. He is as bold and good a horseman as ever; but it is
only in out-of-the-way places that he retains all his old-time wild and
individual picturesqueness. Elsewhere he is now merely an unusually
capable ranch-hand. His employer has changed even more. The big
handsome ranch-houses are fitted with every modern comfort and luxury,
and the owners belong in all ways to the internationalized upper class
of the world of to-day. The interest attaching to a visit to one of
these civilized ranches is that which attaches to a visit to a fine
modern stock-farm anywhere, whether in Hungary or Kentucky or Victoria.
But there is one vital point--_the_ vital point--in which the men and
women of these ranch-houses, like those of the South America that I
visited generally, are striking examples to us of the English-speaking
countries both of North America and Australia. The families are large.
The women, charming and attractive, are good and fertile mothers in all
classes of society. There are no symptoms of that artificially
self-produced dwindling of population which is by far the most
threatening symptom in the social life of the United States, Canada, and
the Australian commonwealths. The nineteenth century saw a prodigious
growth of the English-speaking, relative to the Spanish-speaking,
population of the new worlds west of the Atlantic and in the Southern
Pacific. The end of the twentieth century will see this completely
reversed unless the present ominous tendencies as regards the
birth-rate are reversed. A race is worthless and contemptible if its men
cease to be willing and able to work hard and, at need, to fight hard,
and if its women cease to breed freely. I am not speaking of pauper
families with excessive numbers of ill-nourished and badly brought up
children; I am well aware that, like most wise and good principles, this
which I advocate can be carried to a mischievous excess; but it
nevertheless remains true that voluntary sterility among married men and
women of good life is, even more than military or physical cowardice in
the ordinary man, the capital sin of civilization, whether in France or
Scandinavia, New England or New Zealand. If the best classes do not
reproduce themselves the nation will of course go down; for the real
question is encouraging the fit, and discouraging the unfit, to survive.
When the ordinary decent man does not understand that to marry the woman
he loves, as early as he can, is the most desirable of all goals, the
most successful of all forms of life entitled to be called really
successful; when the ordinary woman does not understand that all other
forms of life are but makeshift and starveling substitutes for the life
of the happy wife, the mother of a fair-sized family of healthy
children; then the state is rotten at heart. The loss of a healthy,
vigorous, natural sexual instinct is fatal; and just as much so if the
loss is by disuse and atrophy as if it is by abuse and perversion.
Whether the man, in the exercise of one form of selfishness, leads a
life of easy self-indulgence and celibate profligacy; or whether in the
exercise of a colder but no less repulsive selfishness, he sacrifices
what is highest to some form of mere material achievement in accord with
the base proverb that "he travels farthest who travels alone"; or
whether the sacrifice is made in the name of the warped and diseased
conscience of asceticism; the result is equally evil. So, likewise, with
the woman. In many modern novels there is portrayed a type of cold,
selfish, sexless woman who plumes herself on being "respectable," but
who is really a rather less desirable member of society than a
prostitute. Unfortunately the portrayal is true to life. The woman who
shrinks from motherhood is as low a creature as a man of the
professional pacificist, or poltroon, type, who shirks his duty as a
soldier. The only full life for man or woman is led by those men and
women who together, with hearts both gentle and valiant, face lives of
love and duty, who see their children rise up to call them blessed and
who leave behind them their seed to inherit the earth. Dealing with
averages, it is the bare truth to say that no celibate life approaches
such a life in point of usefulness, no matter what the motive for the
celibacy--religious, philanthropic, political, or professional. The
mother comes ahead of the nun--and also of the settlement or hospital
worker; and if either man or woman must treat a profession as a
substitute for, instead of as an addition to or basis for, marriage,
then by all means the profession or other "career" should be abandoned.
It is of course not possible to lay down universal rules. There must be
exceptions. But the rule must be as above given. In a community which is
at peace there may be a few women or a few men who for good reasons do
not marry, and who do excellent work nevertheless; just as in a
community which is at war, there may be a few men who for good reasons
do not go out as soldiers. But if the average woman does not marry and
become the mother of enough healthy children to permit the increase of
the race; and if the average man does not, above all other things, wish
to marry in time of peace, and to do his full duty in war if the need
arises, then the race is decadent, and should be swept aside to make
room for one that is better. Only that nation has a future whose sons
and daughters recognize and obey the primary laws of their racial being.
In these essentials Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil have far more
to teach than to learn from the English-speaking countries which are so
proud of their abounding material prosperity and of their wide-spread,
but superficial, popular education and intelligence. In this same
material prosperity, and in many other matters, Argentina much resembles
our own country. Brazil is travelling a similar path, although much more
slowly; and although its climate is not so good, its natural resources
are vaster and will in the present century undergo an extraordinary
development. Very much of the Brazilian country from São Paulo to the
Uruguayan frontier is essentially like Argentina. The city life and the
ranch life are advancing in much the same fashion; although of course
there are sharp differences in culture and habits of thought and life
between the great Spanish-speaking and great Portuguese-speaking
republics which are such close, and not wholly friendly, neighbors.
One point of similarity is the number of immigrants in each country. In
our journey southward from São Paulo we found both towns and stretches
of ranchland in which Germans, Italians, and Catholic, Orthodox, or
Uniate Slavs, were important, and sometimes preponderant, elements of
the population. There were German Lutheran churches and also
congregations of native Protestants started by American missionaries;
for Brazil, like Argentina and the United States, enjoys genuine
religious liberty.
This rich and beautiful country of southern Brazil is part of the last
great stretch of country--south-temperate America--which remains in
either temperate zone open to white settlement on a large scale; the
last great stretch of scantily peopled land with a good climate and
fertile soil to which white immigration can go in mass.
Of part of tropical Brazil I have written elsewhere, and I allude to it
elsewhere in this book. Here I am speaking not of the tropical but of
the temperate country.
Portions of temperate Brazil are open prairie, portions are forest. The
climate is never very hot, nor is there ever severe cold. The colonists
with whom I conversed had not found the insects specially troublesome;
not much more, and in places rather less, troublesome than in Louisiana
and Texas. There was no more sickness than in the early days in the
West. The general effect in the forest country, while of course the
species of plants are entirely different, reminds the observer of the
Louisiana and Mississippi cane-brake lands and the country along the
Nueces. The activities of the settlers in the open country are
substantially those with which I was familiar thirty years ago in the
cattle country of the West. In the forests one is reminded more of early
days on the Ohio, the Yazoo, and the Red River of the South.
Certainly this is a country with a wonderful future. It offers fine
opportunities for settlers who desire with the labor of their own hands
to make homes for themselves and their children. This does not mean that
all people who go there will prosper, or that success will come save at
the price of labor and effort, of risk and hardship. If any Americans
have forgotten how our own West in the pioneer days appealed to an
observer who was friendly, but who had not the faintest glimmering of
the pioneer spirit, let them read "Martin Chuzzlewit." Dickens
represented the numerous men who foolishly hope to enjoy pioneer
triumphs and yet escape pioneer risks and hardships and the unlovely and
wearing toil which is the essential prerequisite to the triumph; and
every one should remember that in a new country, which opens a chance of
success to the settler, there always goes with this the chance of
heart-breaking failure. Brazil offers remarkable openings for settlers
who have the toughness of the born pioneer, and for certain business men
and engineers who have the mixture of daring enterprise and sound common
sense needed by those who push the industrial development of new
countries. Both classes have great opportunities, and both need to be
perpetually on their guard against the swindlers and the crack-brained
enthusiasts who are always sure to turn up in connection with any
country of large developmental possibilities. On the frontier, more than
anywhere else, a man needs to be able to rely on himself and to remember
that on every frontier there are innumerable failures.
No man can be guaranteed success. Men who are not prepared for labor and
effort and rough living, for persistence and self-denial, are out of
place in a new country; and foolish people who will probably fail
anywhere are more certain to fail badly in a new country than anywhere
else. During the whole period of the marvellous growth of the United
States there has been a constant and uninterrupted stream of failure
going side by side with the larger stream of success. Unless there is
revolutionary disorder and anarchy, the future holds for southern Brazil
much what half a century ago the future held for large portions of our
country lying west of the Mississippi.
In southern Brazil the forest landscape through which we passed was very
beautiful. The most conspicuous tree in the forest was the flat-topped
pine, the shaft of which rose like that of a royal palm. The branches
spread out at the top just where the palm-leaves spread out on the palm,
only instead of drooping they curved upward like the branches of a
candelabra. There were many other trees in the forests which I could not
recognize or place. Some of them looked like our Southern live-oaks.
Then there were palms, and multitudes of big tree-ferns. In places where
these tree-ferns grew thickly among the tall, strange candelabra pines,
with palms scattered here and there, and other queer ancient tropical
plants, the landscape looked as if it had come out of the carboniferous
period--at least as the carboniferous period was represented in the
attractive popular geologies of my youth. There were flowers in the
woods, of brilliant and varied hue, although we saw but few orchids;
and in the glades or spots of open prairie there were immense patches of
lilac and blue blossoms. The flowering trees were wonderful. On some the
blooms were blue, on others yellow. The most beautiful of all flamed
brilliant scarlet. The trees that bore them, when scattered over
hillsides that sloped steeply to the brink of some rushing river, made
splashes of burning red against the wet and vivid green of the
subtropical foliage. As we got farther south I was told that there were
occasional sharp frosts, but that the low temperature never lasted for
more than an hour or so. In answer to a question as to how these rare,
short frosts affected such plants as palms and tree-ferns, it was
explained to me that the frosts prevented coffee being grown, but that
they had no effect on the palms, and, rather curiously, no effect on the
tree-ferns if they were under big forest trees, but that if they were in
the open the fronds were killed, the trees themselves not being injured,
and new fronds taking the place of the old ones.
In the open prairie country of the state of Parana we stopped at
Morungava to visit the ranch of the Brazil Land, Cattle, and Packing
Company. Our host, the head of this company, Murdo Mackenzie, for many
years one of the best-known cattlemen in our own Western cow country,
was an old friend of mine. During my term as President he was, on the
whole, the most influential of the Western cattle-growers. He was a
leader of the far-seeing and enlightened element. He was a most powerful
supporter of the government in the fight for the conservation of our
natural resources, for the utilization without waste of our forests and
pastures, for honest treatment of everybody, and for the shaping of
governmental policy primarily in the interest of the small settler, the
home-maker.
We rode first to Mackenzie's home ranch, about a mile from the railway,
and then to an outlying set of ranch buildings ten miles off. At the
home ranch were the American foreman and his American wife and their
children. The buildings and the food and the whole life were typical of
all that was best in the old-time "Far West," in the days when I knew it
as a cattle country. We were given a most delicious and purely American
lunch, including all the fresh milk we could drink; and the foreman
himself piloted us over the immense stretches of rolling country, and in
every action showed himself the born cattleman, the born and trained
stockman. Half of the employees were men from the Western ranches, from
Montana, Colorado, Texas, or elsewhere; and they and the stock and the
vast, pleasant, open-air country were enough to make any man feel at
home who had ever lived in the West. The children round the ranch-house
were already speaking fluent Portuguese!
There were Indians in the neighborhood; but we saw none, for they are
very shy and dwell in the timber. Although nominally Christian, and
somewhat under the influence of the priests, they are otherwise entirely
outside of governmental control. At first Mackenzie's cattle were
sometimes killed by the wild, furtive creatures; but he stopped this by
a mixture of firmness and fair treatment.
It was a beautiful country, well watered, with good grass and much
timber. I was assured by both the men on the ranch and their wives that
the climate was better than that of our own Western cattle country, for
the heat is not as extreme as during summer in the southern part of our
country, and the winters are mild, with only occasional touches of
frost. Much care has to be shown in dealing with the ticks and certain
other insect plagues, but not materially more than in some of our own
Southern regions. While we were at the outlying ranch we saw the cattle
being dipped in familiar ranch fashion.
Cattle, horses, and hogs all thrive. All the native stock offers
material on which to improve. The company is carefully breeding upward,
following precisely the same course which in Texas, for instance, has
effected a complete substitution of graded beef and dairy cattle for the
old longhorns. The native cattle are very distinctly better than the old
Texan cattle--the native Mexican cattle. The Durham and Hereford bulls
introduced from the States will in a very few years completely change
the character of the herds. Good cows are kept in sufficient numbers to
insure a constant supply of the breeding bulls. In the same way
Berkshire boars are being crossed with the native pigs, and blooded
stallions with the native mares. In short, everything is being done
exactly as on our advanced and successful ranches at home. The country
is still largely vacant, and opportunities for development will be
almost limitless for at least another generation.
Aside from the extreme interest of seeing the ranch itself, the
twenty-mile ride was most enjoyable. The country was like our own plains
near the foothills of the Rockies, except that there was more water and
a greater variety of timber. The most striking trees were the
occasional peculiar flat-top pines, and there were also other and very
beautiful pines through which the wind sang mournfully; and there were
many flowers. In one place we saw a small prairie deer, and in galloping
we had to keep a lookout for armadillo burrows, just as we keep a
lookout for prairie-dog holes in the West. The birds were strange and
interesting, some of them with beautiful voices. Out on the plains were
screamers, noisy birds, as big as African bustards. One sparrow sang
loudly, at midday, round the corrals where we dismounted for lunch. He
was a confiding, pretty little fellow, with head markings somewhat like
those of our white-crowned and white-throated sparrows. He sang better
than the former, and not as well as the latter.
The horses were good, and we thoroughly enjoyed our afternoon canter
back to the home ranch, when the shadows had begun to lengthen. We loped
across the rolling grass-land and by the groves of strange trees,
through the brilliant weather. Under us the horses thrilled with life;
it was a country of vast horizons; we felt the promise of the future of
the land across which we rode.