patches the bushy little trees cover the hills and valleys in long,
parallel rows, from six to eight feet high, for they are kept pruned to
a certain height to facilitate cultivation. The leaves are dark green
and glossy, somewhat resembling myrtle, only not so dry and thick; the
flowers are white and grow in clusters from the axils of the branches;
the fruit, when ripe, is about the size of and resembles a dark red
cherry, and grows in clusters, like the flowers, and the air is fragrant
with perfume. No more beautiful sight could be imagined than one of
these plantations in full bloom. Each of the red berries contains two
coffee beans, embedded in a yellowish, sweetish pulp. The bean, in its
natural shape, is convex on one side and flat on the other. As sold on
the market, with the shell, pulp and skin removed by a mechanical
process that requires an expensive outfit of machinery, the product is
the result of a development in agricultural methods that is not
surpassed in the wheat industry of Argentina or our own country, and
which is very far ahead of that of the rubber industry in the north. It
is said that no new trees have been planted since 1903 because the
production has been so great that the government has thought best to
restrict it until the demand shall once more have equaled the supply.
The reverse of this condition has existed for several years.
The neighbors of the Paulistas in the State of Rio Grande do Sul are
principally engaged (with Paraguay) in supplying the twenty or more
millions of consumers in South America and growing numbers elsewhere,
with the leaves from which the beverage is made that is known as _yerba
maté_, or Paraguay tea, which those who drink it contend has all the
stimulating and nourishing qualities of the tea we use, but none of its
injurious effects. Next to coffee and rubber, this is the greatest of
Brazil’s sources of revenue. These southerners also raise cattle and
sheep on a large scale—though not yet sufficiently large for export—and
do a good deal of canning and manufacturing. Their principal seaport,
Porto Alegre (Smiling Port), has a population of nearly 150,000, and, as
in Pernambuco and Rio, and all the big coast cities in fact, extensive
harbor improvements are under way. This city too is to have a system of
masonry docks and hoisting machinery and new warehouses along the quay.
A few miles north, and connected with Porto Alegre by railroad, is São
Leopoldo, the port of a large German colony that was founded in the
State nearly a hundred years ago.
From Rio it is possible also to go by railroad to Bello Horizonte, the
remarkable capital of Minas Geraes, the most densely populated of all
the Brazilian States. This city is unique in that it did not have its
beginning in the usual way and get itself chosen as the capital; it was
built only a few years ago on a previously unoccupied site _for the very
purpose_, and at a cost, for only the buildings owned by the government,
of more than $30,000,000. It is located in a lovely, wooded, farm-dotted
valley, through the length of which flows a river, interrupted at
intervals by cascades. Near the city, both sides of the stream have been
converted into a delightful park. One of the avenues that run through
the center of the city is named for its founder, Affonso Penna, and is a
hundred and fifty feet wide and shaded by three rows of trees. The
hotels are comfortable, train service good, and the journey through a
country of beautiful scenery and interesting people and towns.
This is the great mining State of Brazil. Of it Marie Robinson Wright
says: “Few countries can boast of such an abundance and variety of
mineral resources as Minas Geraes, which derives its name, signifying
General Mines, from the industry that gave it existence, and which owes
to this principal attraction the preponderance of its population.” Gold
was not discovered during the first two hundred years after settlement
had been begun by the Portuguese, but, when it was at last discovered,
the yield was very great. In 1792 the amount registered in Rio—and this
record, of course, was incomplete—was 360,000 pounds in weight. An
English authority has estimated the total output up to within recent
years at £200,000,000 sterling. “Of all the fabulous tales related of
bonanza princes,” Mrs. Wright goes on to say, “the palm for extravagance
belongs to the history of the early mining days in Brazil, when horses
were shod with gold, when lawyers supported their pleadings before
judges with gifts of what appeared at first sight to be the choicest
oranges and bananas, but proved to be solid gold imitations, when guests
were entertained at dinner by the discovery of gold pebbles in their
soup instead of grains of corn, when nuggets were the most convenient
means of exchange in the money market;” but here, as in some of our own
mining regions, with the gradual exhaustion of the surface deposits and
the impossibility of continuing by primitive methods, mining came to be
more and more neglected. Modern methods and machinery are once more
bringing the industry into prominence, and a considerable amount of gold
is even now being taken out by the few companies that have already
installed up-to-date plants.
The diamond mines in the neighborhood of the old town of Diamantina
(also easily accessible by rail) have been famous since the first
discoveries were made in 1727. In these parts several of the most
valuable gems in the world are said to have been found—for instance, the
Braganza, the richest of the Crown jewels of Portugal, the Regent, named
in honor of Dom João VI, the _Estrella do Sul_ (Star of the South), that
weighed a hundred and twenty-five carats after lapidation and was
purchased by the Rajah of Baroda, it is said, for $15,000,000, and the
Dresden, which weighed sixty-five carats after lapidation and was also
bought by an Indian prince. For many years, until the South African
mines came into competition, this was the chief source of the world’s
supply. The country is also rich in amethysts, tourmalines, topazes and
aquamarines. The State of Bahia is still the principal source of the
black diamond, known as the _carbonado_. The largest _carbonado_ known
was found there in 1835. It weighed 3150 carats.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
III
ARGENTINA
I
No nation of the southern continent is better qualified than Argentina
to rebuke the stupid jest that refers to the Latin-American countries as
opera bouffe republics. It has a domain one-third the size of the United
States, or as large as the territory lying east of the Mississippi, with
Texas added, stretching from tropic heat to antarctic cold, and
possessing a frontage on the Atlantic as extensive as our own coast line
from Portland, Maine, to Key West, Florida. It has over 500,000,000
acres of its 1,135,840 square miles of area available for the
cultivation of life-sustaining products and distributed over vast,
treeless, well-watered plains, every one of which is easily accessible
to the seaboard with the simplest of railway construction. These plains
have no such natural obstructions to transportation as our Alleghanies
or Rockies, and have for their produce a much shorter haul to the
European world of consumers.
Argentina has the further advantage of over 18,000 miles of up-to-date
railways radiating from its port cities, and five river systems, one of
which, La Plata, the outlet for the waters of the Paraná and Uruguay, is
second only to the Amazon among the world’s great rivers. It is 180
miles wide at its mouth, and pours into the Atlantic a flood greater by
eighty per cent. than that cast by the Mississippi into the Gulf of
Mexico.
The timber regions of the country are rich in structural and cabinet
woods. It has a grazing industry that ranks second only to Australia in
sheep, second only to the United States in cattle, and second only to
the United States and Russia in horses. In 1910 it exported to Europe
190,430 live animals and $130,000,000 worth of frozen beef, mutton,
pork, hides, and other animal products. Its total foreign commerce
amounted to $702,664,810 in value. It has an agricultural output that
places it in the first rank of exporters of maize and linseed, second to
Russia in the export of wheat, and among the leaders in corn, a soil
that can grow still greater quantities of sugar, tobacco, rice, alfalfa,
grapes, fruits, _yerba maté_ (Paraguay tea), olives, corn, barley, and
oats, besides medicinal, textile, and tinctorial plants, enabling her to
export more foodstuffs, including meats and grains, than any other
nation on the globe—a productiveness so great that farms are measured in
some sections by the square league, instead of by the paltry acre, as
with us, and grains are sold by the metric ton of 2205 pounds, instead
of by the bushel. Its mountains contain profitably workable deposits of
gold, silver, and copper, and oil has been found in paying quantities.
It has a metropolis and seaport (its capital, Buenos Aires) reckoned as
the second Latin city in the world, possessing a population of over a
million and a quarter, and adorned with buildings, parks, surface
improvements, and evidences of wealth and culture that stamp it as one
of the finest cities of the Western Hemisphere.
It has a stable and enlightened government, constituted on the same
general plan as our own, and advancing rapidly to a near approximation
to our own in efficiency. It has a history rich, in its later years, in
traditions of statesmanship and patriotism, bearing on its roll of honor
the names of such statesmen, soldiers, educators, and executives as
Belgrano, San Martín, Alvear, Puyrredón, Rivadavia, Mitré, and
Sarmiento, names worthy of special reverence among a people familiar
with the standards set by Washington and Lincoln. In a word, with all
this material greatness, and such a record of energetic and enlightened
adaptation to world progress, Argentina may, in the not distant future,
turn the jest against its northern perpetrators; for a country with a
population of seven millions, which could feed two hundred million
people and give lodging to half that number, is a competitor to be
reckoned with seriously in the struggle for commercial supremacy.
Such, then, is the country of superlatives that opens up before the
visitor who enters at its gateway, Buenos Aires, and breathes in the
wholesome, equable breezes from the pampas—the vast green plains that
stretch away for hundreds of miles in three directions; he agrees at
once that the City of Good Airs was well named by Pedro de Mendoza when
he planted his ill-fated settlement on its site in 1535.
It is to be regretted that this wide-awake, rapidly growing community
buys so much more largely in the European markets than ours. In 1910, of
the total amount they paid for imports ($351,770,056), our share was
only $48,418,892. But then, as they point out, they are our competitors
in the markets of Europe. Their cereals and beef and hides and wool have
no place in the United States, a country that produces and exports the
same things, and they manufacture no articles that we want; so it is
only fair that they should deal with those who buy of them. When it came
to a question of who should build their last two big battleships,
however, they did favor our shipyards with the contracts. Both of these
are of the super-dreadnought type and have already been launched.
The Parisian is pleased to say, “Paris is France”; with even greater
significance may the Buenos Airean say that Buenos Aires is Argentina.
Out of his pride in his great city, the _Porteño_ will tell one that
Argentina really has but two parts, as a matter of fact: the one, Buenos
Aires; the other—all the rest of the country—called _El Campo_ (the
Camp), regardless that he includes in this sweeping assertion such other
railroad centers and ports as Rosario, La Plata, Paraná, Tucumán,
Córdoba, or Bahia Blanca—all of them cities exceeding fifty thousand in
population and one of them, Rosario, exceeding one hundred thousand.
And, indeed, the Bonarenses may well be proud of their metropolis.
One-fifth of the country’s inhabitants is absorbed into its teeming life
of industry and luxury; it is the crystallization of all that this
modernized young giant stands for in the world of commerce; it is the
greatest Spanish-speaking city in the world.
Its dominant position was not achieved, however, without years of
contention with other centers of industry in the country. During the
three hundred years of Spain’s stifling economic policies in this, once
the agricultural unit of her golden empire, Argentina made small
progress. The settlements founded in Santiago (1553), in Tucumán (1565),
and in Córdoba and Santa Fé (1573), by the immigration of Spaniards from
Peru, Chile, and the early settlement of Buenos Aires, all led an
isolated and neglected existence during the colonial period up to the
year 1776, when Spain, awakened from her dream of endless mineral riches
in South America to a realization of the importance of the fertile
country of La Plata, and erected it into a separate viceroyalty,
independent of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The viceroys, freed from the
poisoning influence of Andean gold lust, did much to develop a sense of
nationalism among the scattered agricultural centers. With the growth of
this nationalism, the protests against Spain’s repression increased
until 1810, when the people asserted their right to an unrestricted,
independent national life. May twenty-fifth of that year is their Fourth
of July, and is perpetuated to-day in the name of the superb Avenida de
Mayo in their capital city.
During the formative period that followed, Argentine politics revolved
chiefly about the question of Unitarianism or Federalism—whether the
rich and progressive province at the gateway of the nation (Buenos
Aires) should form a separate unit of government, or remain part of a
confederation and be accorded the leading rôle in national affairs that
its importance merited. In 1862 federalism prevailed and the integrity
of the Argentine Republic was assured, under the presidency of General
Mitré. The capital was later removed from Santa Fé to Buenos Aires and
the latter city erected into a federal district (of some seventy square
miles) somewhat similar to our own District of Columbia. The capital of
the Province of Buenos Aires, however, is La Plata, a few miles distant
from the national capital, on the shores of the great river.
This period marks the beginning of the real history of the Argentine
nation. Under the enlightened statesmanship of Bartolomé Mitré and
Sarmiento, the two chief figures in Argentina’s rapid development from
this point, the great influx of British and German capital began.
Immigration was encouraged for the working of the fields; a solid
foundation was given to educational development; railroads were
constructed, and the machinery of government made adequate to the
vigorous strides of the solidified nation. In the short space of time
that has passed since 1881, over two billions of dollars of British and
German gold have been invested; some eighteen thousand miles of
well-equipped railways have been constructed, almost wholly by English
capital; immigration has doubled the population of the country so that
now half its present inhabitants are foreign-born—during the last ten
years alone two millions have come in—and a thorough system of education
has been perfected, embracing, among all sorts of primary, military, and
industrial institutions, three great universities, one of which, at
Buenos Aires, graduated over five thousand young men last year and, with
the University of Córdoba (founded in 1613), ranks with Harvard and
Yale. In 1910 they celebrated the centennial anniversary of their
independence with a superb industrial exposition that was a revelation
even to themselves, and festivities that are said to have cost
$20,000,000.
The city of Buenos Aires has not the picturesque environment that adds
so much to the natural beauty of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and
Mexico, nor the harbor capacity of New York; nor are its culture and
civic personality, perhaps, as deep-rooted as in Boston; it makes little
pretension to the aristocracy of blood boasted by the still essentially
Spanish Lima; nor has it yet attained such distinction as a national
center of art, literature, and music as has the Brazilian capital. It
may be best compared with Chicago, for it is conspicuously modern, its
present development having been begun and achieved within the last
quarter of a century, although the city itself is nearly four hundred
years old, and is the industrial complement of an agricultural and
pastoral activity even greater than that of our Middle West. Indeed, its
banks and clearing houses are said to transact quite as much business as
those of Chicago.
The docks of Buenos Aires, like those of our great lake city, are most
impressive; they represent an outlay of $50,000,000. Only fifteen years
ago the visitor was bundled ashore in a rowboat and deposited on a
marshy beach. Now his vessel enters one of the numerous basins of the
vast dock system and confronts row upon row of massive masonry and
cement wharves, behind which spreads a network of railway lines. In the
background are public gardens with flowering bushes and statuary to
beautify the approach to the city. For mile after mile, flanked by a
seemingly endless procession of great trans-Atlantic ships and up-river
produce boats, these docks stretch their length, not in a series of
slips, as along the congested waterfront in New York, but so arranged
that the vessels can moor broadside to them and have their cargoes
loaded or unloaded by enormous traveling cranes; and, without, lying at
anchor in the river awaiting their turn for a berth, are many more—for
this giant enterprise, with towering grain elevators and a veritable
forest of powerful cranes, already fails entirely to satisfy present
needs. They are not only to be extended but so enlarged that they will
accommodate vessels of the heaviest draft.
Not even the New York wharves with their vast commerce give such a
picture of vivid bustle. The big German “Cap” boats—_Cap Ortegal_, _Cap
Frio_, and the rest; French, Spanish, and Italian liners with champagne,
aperitives, opera companies, automobiles and immigrants—always
immigrants; Newcastle freighters unloading bolted sections of steel
bridges; up-river boats laden with _yerba maté_ or fragrant oranges from
Paraguay, and the aristocrats of these seas, the Royal Mails from
England—all contribute to the pell-mell, reminding one of the blurred
babel of tongues that whispers across the decks of the world’s ships in
the drowsy passage through the Suez Canal.
And, parenthetically, a most telling commentary on our indifference to
Argentine possibilities lies in the fact that of the many thousand
vessels that transferred cargoes at these docks in 1910, only four bore
the stars and stripes; whereas, prior to our Civil War (which, of
course, absorbed our merchant marine)—in 1852—there were in the harbor
of Buenos Aires six hundred vessels flying our flag, or more than double
the number from all other nations combined. In those days the influence
of our people over the commerce of the southern half of South America
was predominant. A Pennsylvanian, William Wheelright, was looked upon as
its father.
On leaving the docks and driving up into the city, the visitor is at
once impressed with the fact that Buenos Aires is not so wholly wrapped
up in the purely material as is our commercial center on Lake Michigan.
It has broadened along more æsthetic lines and is cultivating the
graces, not alone the sordid features, of cosmopolitanism. In the newer
parts, particularly in the fashionable suburb of Belgrano, the buildings
and shaded boulevards and beautifully landscaped parks resemble rather
those of Paris; although it is not behind our own big cities in public
utilities. Even in the business district there are no skyscrapers or
elevated railroads to disturb the harmony of the architectural scheme;
not even the usual promiscuous, blatant advertising posters are
permitted to be displayed until they have been censored by the proper
official, and when approved they are affixed to ornamentally tinted and
paneled billboards, erected for the purpose. So keen, indeed, are the
Bonarenses to enhance the beauty of their city that a prize is offered
each year for the handsomest structure to be erected. And yet there is
much that is possessed of the charm of antiquity. The occasional
glimpses of blossoms and foliage one gets through doorways opening into
the courtyards, or _patios_, of the old Spanish houses is most
refreshing in the midst of so much that is modern.
It is from Paris, too, that they have acquired their culture, and their
taste in dress and amusements and in literature and art. They buy their
clothes in Paris and sip their French liqueurs in the cafés in true
Parisian style, and they are entertained by opera and comedy companies
from the best Parisian theaters. They have absorbed into their city life
an Italian colony that exceeds in numbers the population of Genoa, and
more Spaniards than could be crowded into Toledo, besides a multitude of
British and Germans and a goodly sprinkling from the rest of Europe, and
even Asia. Having taken so much from France and Italy, and being Spanish
in descent and in speech, the overtone of the city is distinctly Latin,
while their industrial and governmental institutions bear the mark of
the Anglo-Saxon. Next to the Italian and Spanish, the British colony is
the largest. Then follow the German and the French. The North Americans
are small in number; less than three hundred responded to a recent
effort to organize a North American Society.
The Bonarenses, however, like the denizens of the Camp, are intensely
patriotic and passionately insist upon a recognition of their own
distinct personalities. They are the _Porteños_ of the great Argentine
nation. Nor do they and their compatriots throughout the country welcome
the inference that they are Spanish; they are Argentine. One asks a
child of the streets whether he speaks Spanish or Italian. He answers
haughtily (in the former language): “At home we all talk Argentine.”
Strangely enough, their jingoism is not offensive; it is displayed with
an amiable candor that is quite disarming. Not satisfied with being
Argentine from top to toe, they seek to Argentinize even the transient
guest. The rabid Argentinism of the _Porteño_, and his success in
amalgamating the kaleidoscopic horde of Europeans and Asiatics living in
his city, is illustrated by the answer of another youthful immigrant
who, unable to deny that he was born in Genoa, murmured apologetically,
“I was so little.”
[Illustration: COLÓN THEATER, BUENOS AIRES.]
[Illustration: FEDERAL CAPITOL, BUENOS AIRES.]
One of their leading daily newspapers, _La Prensa_, which has the
handsomest newspaper building in existence, displays its patriotism by
devoting a large part of its home to public uses. At its own expense it
provides physicians and a consulting room, where the poor can have
medical attention free, a law office where those who cannot afford to
pay for it can have legal advice, an excellent museum of the
manufactures and products of the country, a free technical library for
the use of students, a large hall for public meetings, a charming _salon
des fêtes_, in which literary, scientific, and charitable entertainments
are given. This paper has a circulation of more than 150,000. So have
_La Nación_ and _La Argentina_, the two other big morning dailies. There
are 225 periodicals published in the capital all together.
In this most cosmopolitan of cities the foreigners foregather in little
worlds of their own. Most are represented by newspapers published in
their own languages, most have clubhouses, more or less pretentious. On
the same evening one season recently “The Merry Widow” was produced in
Spanish, French, and Italian in as many different theaters; and there
are all sorts of places of amusement where foreigners can enjoy
themselves, each after his own fashion—from an immense artificial ice
skating rink (a very fashionable resort, by the way) to a tropical
coffee house, from a golf or race course to a pool room or bowling
alley, from the most attractive and elegantly equipped of modern cafés
to a little French domino parlor or German beer saloon, from a
magnificent opera house to a cheap vaudeville or moving-picture theater.
It is said that the foremost European artists are as likely to visit
Argentina as the United States, and often do, and that many, of all but
the first rank in their own countries and who do not come to North
America at all, visit Buenos Aires regularly and present European
successes long before they are seen in New York.