London--twenty-three in all. Two of the dailies are published in the
English language, one in French, one in German, and one in Italian; the
rest are in Spanish. There are two illustrated weeklies, one of them
comic, and three monthly literary magazines. The leading daily, _La
Nacion_, is a great blanket-sheet larger than the New York _Evening
Post_, and has a circulation of thirty thousand copies. The expression
of opinion in the newspapers is as free as with us, and the editors are
not under such restrictions as in other of the South American republics.
There is a peculiar law of libel, and editors charged with this offence
are tried by what is called a jury of honor, a sort of arbitrating
committee, who decide upon the justice of the facts stated. Sometimes
they compel the publisher to apologize, but more often console the
complainant with advice “to grin and bear it.” The telephone and
electric light are used extensively as in the United States, there being
two telephone companies, and the manager of one told me that the number
of instruments engaged is larger in proportion to population than any
city in the world.
There are nine prominent theatres in Buenos Ayres, giving performances
every night in the week, including Sunday, a permanent Italian opera,
and a permanent French opera bouffe. One of the theatres is English,
with all the plays given in that language, another is French, and a
third is Italian; the rest are Spanish. There is a curious innovation
in theatre and opera management in Buenos Ayres, which might be imitated
by managers in the United States. The first gallery, or what we call the
“dress circle,” is reserved exclusively for ladies, and no gentlemen are
admitted. There is a separate box-office and entrance, and ladies who
desire to attend but have no escorts are thus given an opportunity
without being subjected to the annoyances suffered if they go in the
usual way. They can ride to the private entrance in street-car or cab,
and be as safe from the impertinence of loafers as if they had a dozen
brothers or husbands around them. These galleries are almost always
filled, which is the best evidence of their popularity and the success
of the system.
Buenos Ayres has its parks, boulevards, and race-courses, like other
modern cities; in fact, there is nothing in the line of civilized
amusements that it is without. Everybody keeps a carriage and nearly
everybody rides. Nowhere in the world are horses so cheap, and the stock
as well as the equipages are very fine. A good pair of carriage-horses,
the very best, can be had for one hundred and fifty dollars, and
saddle-horses that are equal to any in the world can be purchased for
thirty or forty dollars. The Argentine horseman invests his money in
silver-mounted saddles and bridles, and a riding-gear with solid-silver
stirrups, heavily mounted saddle, etc., is worth between four and five
hundred dollars. All the swells have them, and the ladies who ride are
similarly mounted, having a beautiful stirrup in the form of a slipper,
often of solid silver. The parks and boulevards are crowded with haughty
dons and ravishing señoritas during driving hours, and present a very
brilliant and attractive scene.
The two Argentine Universities, under the patronage of the Government,
are among the best in America, and rank with Yale or Harvard in
curriculum and standard of education. They have large and able
faculties, many of them Germans, with four branches, namely, law,
medicine, engineering, and scientific, and the ordinary classical
course. The library has about sixty thousand volumes, representing the
literature of all languages, and the museum is quite extensive. The
public-school system is also under the patronage of the Government,
under a compulsory education law, and includes all grades from the
kindergarten to the normal school. The distinguished ex-President of the
Republic, Dr. Sarmiento, who was formerly Minister to the United States,
is the especial patron of education, and it is his ambition to make the
school system of the Argentine Republic the finest in the world. He
studied the educational systems of all our States, and finally adopted
that of Michigan for his own country.
Ex-President Sarmiento is the leading advocate of the higher education
of women in South America, having gained his advanced ideas while
Minister to the United States. He was an intimate friend and regular
correspondent of Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, and other prominent women in the United States, and
imbibed from them the theories of the equality of the sex which their
lives have been spent in demonstrating. Through his instrumentality some
forty American girls, graduates of Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and
Western institutions, have been employed under liberal contracts by the
Argentine Government in the normal schools and female seminaries of the
country, and their success has been phenomenal. These teachers receive
salaries varying from one hundred to one hundred and sixty dollars per
month, and are placed in positions, social as well as professional,
which they could not hope to acquire at home. In every instance they
have conducted themselves with the most commendable dignity; and
although some of the economists in Congress and in the newspapers are
grumbling over the large salaries they receive, they are treated with
the greatest distinction, and are entertained by the Government in a
manner that our own educational authorities might well imitate.
One of them had a misunderstanding with the Papal Nuncio not long ago,
which caused an immense amount of excitement. He attempted to interfere
with the management of her school, on the ground that she was
proselyting the children to Protestantism. She gave the envoy of his
Holiness the Pope to understand that she was running that institution,
and when he brought the case to the attention of the Government she
defended herself with such success that the President of the Argentine
Republic sent him his passport and advised him to take the next steamer
for Rome. The archbishop interfered, and he was summarily banished also.
Since then the Pope has been without an ambassador in the republic, but
the Yankee school-ma’am is solid with the Government and the people, and
goes on teaching heresy.
A Brazilian who went to Cornell University for an education married an
Ithaca girl, and took her back to Brazil, where he is engaged as a civil
engineer. There are a good many young Spanish-Americans with English
wives. More of the men go to England than to the United States for
collegiate training, for the reason that the English universities
advertise down there, while the American colleges do not. There is no
necessity for the Argentinians to send their sons away for learning, as
their educational system is as good as our own, and the most expensive
in the world, with the exception of Australia. The amount expended by
the Government for educational purposes is $10.20 per pupil annually,
while in the United States it averages only $8.70, in Germany $6.00, and
in England $9.10. There are thirty colleges and normal schools for the
higher education of men and women in the republic, with 430 teachers and
6710 students, and 2726 public schools with 6214 teachers and 201,329
pupils, in a total population of less than 4,000,000.
The Government of Chili, which attempts a close competition with the
Argentine Republic in matters of education as well as other modern
improvements, has contracted with fifty young ladies from Germany to
manage its female seminaries and normal schools at much lower salaries
than the Yankee school-ma’ams receive.
The Argentinians have made as rapid advancement in the way of charity
and philanthropy as in education, and one finds throughout the country
as many benevolent institutions as in New York or other cities of the
United States in proportion to the population. There are hospitals,
dispensaries, homes for the indigent aged, orphan asylums, blind, and
deaf and dumb asylums, insane asylums, public libraries, free art
schools, and all sorts of institutions founded by benevolence and
liberally endowed. There is a Board of Health enforcing strict sanitary
regulations, the streets are swept every night, the police are admirably
organized, the public buildings and parks are lighted by electricity,
and all the features of modern civilization have been introduced into
the political and domestic economy. The plantation owners mostly reside
in Buenos Ayres, and have telephonic wires between their offices and
estancias. Instead of yelling “ Hello!” into a telephone, they say
“Oyez, oyez!” as our bailiffs do when they open court.
The post-office of Buenos Ayres handled 20,000,000 packages in 1885,
which is pretty good for a city of 434,000 inhabitants, and its progress
is no better illustrated than by the increase of mails. In 1865 only
1,000,000 pieces were handled by this office, and in 1875 only
7,000,000, while during the first six months of 1887 over 16,000,000
pieces passed through the office. There is a mail leaving and arriving
for and from Europe nearly every day, but all mail for the United States
goes and comes by way of Great Britain, because of the lack of direct
steamship communication.
There are three gas companies with 240 miles of pipe, lighting 26,000
houses or stores, with 3300 street-lamps. There are 32 miles of paved
streets, 40 miles of sewers, some of which are large enough for a
railway-train to pass through. There are 1100 licensed hacks, and 2715
licensed express-wagons; five street-railway companies, with 93 miles of
track, carrying 1,850,000 passengers monthly. Between tramways and
public carriages the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres spent an average of
$8.00 per capita for city locomotion in 1885.
Throughout South America all the dentists and many of the photographers
are immigrants from the United States, and if there is any one among
them who is not getting rich he has nobody but himself to find fault
with, because the natives give both professions plenty to do. Nowhere in
the world is so large an amount of confectionery consumed in proportion
to the population as in Spanish America, and as a natural consequence
the teeth of the people require a great deal of attention. As a usual
thing Spaniards have good teeth, as they always have beautiful eyes, and
are very particular in keeping them in condition. Hence the dentists are
kept busy, and as they charge twice as much as they do in the United
States, the profits are very large. In these countries it is the custom
to serve sweetmeats at every meal--dulces, as they are called--preserved
fruits of the richest sort, jellies, and confections of every variety
and description. Many of these are made by the nuns in the convents, and
are sold to the public either through the confectionery stores or by
private application. A South American housewife, instead of ordering
jams and preserves and jellies from her grocer, or putting up a supply
in her own kitchen during the fruit season, patronizes the nuns, and
gets a better article at a lower price. The nuns are very ingenious in
this work, and prepare forms of delicacies which are unknown to our
table.
At a dinner-party I attended dessert was brought in in a novel form. A
tray which appeared to be filled with hard-boiled eggs was placed before
the hostess, who gave each guest a couple, and poured over them some
sort of a syrup or dressing. In a strange country the tourist is always
on the lookout for odd things; but this seemed to cap the
climax--hard-boiled eggs for dessert at a swell dinner-party. But it was
soon discovered that the white of this bogus egg was _blanc-mange_, and
the yolk was made of quince jelly, egg-shells being used for moulds.
This was an idea of the nuns, and one of their ingenious fixings.
The atmosphere is so clear as to be admirable for photography. The
Spanish-American belle has her photograph taken every time she gets a
new dress, and that is very often. The Paris styles reach here as soon
as they do the North American cities, and where the national costumes
are not still worn there is a great deal of elaborate dressing. The
Argentine Republic is one of the few countries in which photographs of
ladies are not sold in the shops. Elsewhere there is a craze for
portraits of reigning beauties, and the young men have their rooms
filled with photographs of the girls they admire taken in all sorts of
costumes and attitudes.
There are in South America a great many physicians and surgeons from the
United States, and they usually, if worthy, have a more extensive
practice than the natives. There is an excellent field for female
physicians here, and it is at present unoccupied. In most of the
countries of South America a physician is not permitted to see a lady
patient except in the presence of her husband, and many women die for
lack of attention. The social laws are inflexible in this respect, and
many women will suffer torments rather than expose themselves to
criticism by receiving treatment from male practitioners. No woman,
except she be of the common laboring class, will visit the office of a
physician, and as fees for attendance at their homes are very high, many
suffer and die from neglect based upon motives of modesty and economy.
There is only one lady physician that I know of in South America, and
she is practising with great success in Guatemala. Others might secure
equal advantages in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chili, the Argentine
Republic, Uruguay, and Brazil; but it would be necessary for them to
acquire a thorough knowledge of the Spanish language, and secure
favorable introductions before hanging out their shingles. These
introductions might be obtained through the American consuls and
legations, or from merchants of social and commercial standing. There is
a strong prejudice against the professional employment of native women,
but the American ladies who have come to South America as teachers have
not only been cordially received but in many cases have been lionized.
In many of the aristocratic families American girls are employed as
governesses, and are treated with great deference. Mrs. Barrios, the
widow of the late President of Guatemala, had three New York ladies in
her family--one as a companion for herself, and the other two employed
in the nursery. In Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic, and other
countries French and English governesses are common, and in fact there
are few others employed, as the native girls who would accept such
positions lack the necessary education.
There are two notable Boston men in Buenos Ayres--notable, however, for
different reasons. One is Samuel B. Hale, the most prominent merchant
and capitalist in the country; and the other is D. Warren Lowe, _alias_
Winslow, editor of the _Buenos Ayres Daily Herald_. There is no man in
all South America more respected and beloved, or who possesses the
confidence of the people to a greater degree than Samuel B. Hale. He
came in 1829 from Boston to do a little trading, and has since remained,
amassing an immense fortune, and now, at the age of eighty-two, looks
back upon such a career as few men are permitted to contemplate.
Although we of the United States have very little to do with the
Argentine Republic nowadays, the pioneers of that country were
Americans. In 1826 William Wheelwright, of Pennsylvania, was wrecked
upon this coast, and found his way to a small town named Quilmes,
barefooted, hatless, and starving. He remained in the country, and forty
years later built the first railroad in the Argentine Republic--from
Buenos Ayres to Quilmes. But in the mean time he had done still greater
service in establishing the first steamship line between Europe and
South America--the Pacific Steam Navigation Company--which now has a
monopoly of the traffic on the west coast, and sails vessels from Panama
through the Strait of Magellan to Liverpool. In 1839 Mr. Wheelwright
foresaw the immense trade these countries were capable of developing,
and went to New York to present his scheme to Aspinwall, Garrison,
Astor, Vanderbilt, and other capitalists, but they rejected it. He then
went to England, where he secured the necessary capital, established his
line, and turned the whole course of South American commerce from its
natural channel. Every one connected with the company has made a
fortune, and dividends of fourteen and fifteen per cent. are still paid.
In 1852 there were in the harbor of Buenos Ayres six hundred vessels
from the United States--more than double the number from all other
nations combined. Now only two per cent. of the shipping annually
reaching that harbor belongs to the United States. Both Chili and the
Argentine Republic have erected fine monuments to Mr. Wheelwright, the
father of their foreign commerce and their internal improvements, for he
built the first railway in Chili as he did in the Argentine Republic.
Another citizen of the United States, Thomas Lloyd Halsey of New Jersey,
introduced sheep and cattle. The Spaniards had a few domestic animals
before the independence of the republic, but Mr. Halsey established the
first ranch. Now there are over ninety million sheep and thirty million
cattle in the country. Both Wheelwright and Halsey are dead; but Mr.
Hale, who was contemporary with them, and was the pioneer commission
merchant and importer, still lives. His immense business interests are
now in the hands of Mr. Pierson, his son-in-law, also a Boston man, who
went out as a clerk thirty years ago; and the husband of another
daughter represents the London banking-house of Baring Brothers in
Buenos Ayres.
In the old days Mr. Hale bought wool and hides and furs in the Argentine
Republic and in Uruguay, and shipped them to Boston. The vessels
returned loaded with cotton goods and Yankee notions of all sorts, which
were exchanged for the produce; and this system of barter went on until
the War of the Rebellion, when most of the vessels were withdrawn, and
the tariff on wool made it unprofitable to ship the chief product of the
republic to the United States. Then Mr. Hale turned his attention to the
European trade, and did a very large business in exporting and importing
until about 1880, when he sold out to Mr. C. S. Bowers, also a Boston
man, and retired from the market. He still purchases large quantities
[Illustration: AN ARGENTINE RANCHMAN.]
of wool and hides for shipment to Europe, but does not import any
longer, and he devotes most of his attention to loaning money and
dealing in standard securities. In addition to his commercial business,
Mr. Hale owns and manages some of the largest estancias in the Argentine
Republic, having several hundred thousand sheep and sixty thousand
cattle. He is famous for his hospitality and generosity, and many of the
philanthropic institutions of the country have enjoyed with him the
financial results of his successful career. He has also been active in
the promotion of public enterprises and in encouraging steamship lines,
and is not only the oldest and most prominent merchant, but is regarded
as the leading public benefactor.
The social condition of the Argentine Republic is as much advanced as
its commerce, and the old customs are rapidly dying out. The education
of girls has become popular, and the young ladies are no longer
restricted in their association with men, as in other Spanish-American
countries. Formerly, if a young man fell in love with a girl, he told
her father or grandmother about it, which was about as satisfactory as
kissing through a telephone. Under the new regime etiquette gives him
the privilege of telling the old, old story into the girl’s own ear, and
it appears to work just as well for all concerned.
It is the only country in South America in which girls can go out riding
with their lovers, or receive them at home as they do in the United
States. The supposition that it is unsafe to leave a woman alone with
any man but her husband or father does not exist in the Argentine
Republic, except among some of the families of the ancient Spanish
aristocracy which still adhere to the old tradition.
One finds a good deal of club life in Buenos Ayres, there being as many
as seven fine club-houses, most of which have all the modern
improvements, with reading-rooms attached, in which are found newspapers
from all parts of the world.
Their restaurants and cafés are as good as the average in New York and
London, and the people being epicurean in their tastes, caterers import
delicacies from all parts of the world. Lobsters and Spanish mackerel
are brought in refrigerator ships, and Southdown mutton from England,
with all sorts of delicacies from France. One day I saw a negro going
through the streets with a large tray on his head, containing a leg of
mutton, a haunch of venison, Spanish mackerel, lobsters, shrimps, and
oysters, and a printed placard upon his back announcing that dishes of
this sort were served daily at the Maison de Paris.
The hotels are not good. They are up to the average in South American
cities, but do not correspond with the other evidences of advancement in
Buenos Ayres. They have no regular rates, but charge each guest as much
as his appearance and manners suggest he can afford to pay. When they
get hold of an American, as citizens of the United States are always
called, they bleed him to the last drop. “I thought you Americans never
disputed a hotel-bill,” a Boniface said to me one day, when I had
expressed my indignation at his charges. “We always expect Englishmen
to, but Americans never,” and he shrugged his shoulders as if my conduct
was a disgrace to my country.
The steamers which run from Buenos Ayres to Montevideo and up the river
to Paraguay are, to the surprise of every traveller, as fine and
gorgeous as those on Long Island Sound--great, splendid palaces with no
end of gilt and gingerbreadwork, with stewards and cabin-boys in livery,
wine-rooms, smoking-rooms, bands of music, and all that sort of thing.
There are two lines in active rivalry, and they are trying to see which
can set the finer table. The bill of fare is as good as that of a
first-class hotel in New York, and two kinds of wine, claret and Rhine
wine, are served without extra charge. On each steamer are three or four
swell cabins, called bridal chambers, each being fitted up without
regard to expense, and containing all the flub-dubs that can be crowded
into them, including pianos and sideboards, with well-filled bottles of
wine and brandy in the rack, all included in the price of passage, which
is double that of the ordinary cabin. The swells always take these
cabins when they start off on a bridal tour.
The finest church in Buenos Ayres is called the “Church of the
Recolletta” (remembrance). It is of pure Roman architecture, in Italian
marble, beautifully carved, and cost about $250,000. It is the property
of Señor Don Carlos Guerrero, a wealthy citizen, who erected it as a
memorial to his daughter, who was murdered by a rejected lover about ten
years ago. She is buried under the altar, and the magnificent stained
glass window imported from Florence represents incidents from her life.
The cathedral is a very large and costly building, but it looks more
like a bank or Government palace than a church. Within the walls is the
mausoleum of General Saint-Martin,
[Illustration: THE CATHEDRAL OF BUENOS AYRES.]
the George Washington of the Argentine Republic, who liberated the
country from the Spanish yoke and was then turned out to die in exile
and poverty. In 1880 the remains of the Liberator were brought with
great pomp from France, where he had died in 1850, in banishment, and
were entombed under a costly and imposing sepulchre, which, however,
looks very little like a tomb, and is entirely without sacred emblems.
Four statues in marble guard the grave; not Faith, Hope, and Charity,
but “Agriculture,” “Industry,” “Justice,” and “Liberty.” It looks rather
queer to see the emblem of Industry with hammer and saw over a tomb in a
church, but the Argentines evidently have not noticed the incongruity.