Protestant community is pretty well supplied with religious advantages.
There are a Church of England society, a Scotch Presbyterian, an
American Presbyterian, a German Evangelical, three Methodist churches,
and a Jewish synagogue--the only one in all Spanish America. Jews are
not allowed to live in some of the countries; but in the Argentine
Republic, where religious as well as civil liberty is protected, they
are numerous, and worship every Saturday. In 1884 the Methodists
celebrated the twenty-fifth anniversary of their missionary work in the
country, and it was emphasized by an incident which attracted a great
deal of comment, and was significant as showing the religious toleration
that exists. Formal invitations were sent as a mark of courtesy to the
President and all the prominent officials, but there was no expectation
that they would attend, as the great majority of the people are
Catholics and the public men are naturally politic. Just as the services
were about to commence, however, the managers of the affair were
astonished to see the President, followed by his Cabinet, walk into the
church. Conspicuous seats were given them, and they seemed to take great
interest in the exercises. After the Rev. Dr. Wood, the Superintendent
of Missions, had concluded his address, in which he reviewed the history
of Protestantism in the Argentine Republic, he invited President Roca to
speak. The latter promptly responded; and as every one knew he had been
born and reared in the Catholic Church, the audience were amazed at the
eulogy he pronounced upon the Protestant missionaries, and the
enthusiasm with which he complimented the work they had done. To their
influence he attributed much of the progress of the republic, and urged
them to enlarge their fields and increase their zeal. The President’s
speech was commented upon in the newspapers the next day with a great
deal of vigor, the Liberal press approving it, but the Conservative
editors censuring what they considered an attack upon the prevailing
religion of the people.
There is a peculiar order of monks in the Argentine Republic which is
not found elsewhere. Its members are known as “Lazarists” (from
Lazarus), and they live, as he is said to have done, on the crumbs that
fall from the rich man’s table. They travel about the country like
tramps, having no apparent aim or purpose, barefooted and bareheaded,
eat what they beg from door to door, and sleep wherever night overtakes
them. They are supposed to be members of the other orders of friars, who
have sinned and are doing penance as Lazarists.
There is a place called Washington and another called Lincoln in the
Argentine Republic, but the newest thing in the way of towns is La
Plata, the capital of the province of Buenos Ayres. Until within a few
years that province, having more than half the population of the entire
country, has considered itself entitled to rule the rest, as far as the
Government was concerned, and the outlying provinces have had nothing to
say about it, being regarded as insignificant dependencies of the city
and State of Buenos Ayres. They tried to secede, but were whipped into
the Union; but as immigration has come into the country the population
of other provinces outnumbers Buenos Ayres, and often in Presidential
campaigns the contest depends upon a geographical issue. Roca, the
recent President, is an outside man, and the Buenos Ayrians determined
to prevent his inauguration or overthrow his government; but to mollify
them he announced a great scheme of building a new capital at Government
expense. There was no time to lay out a town site and let it grow up in
the ordinary way, so the President sent to the United States and had
five hundred houses manufactured to order and shipped down here, like a
box of toys, all ready to put up. A location was selected on the pampas,
all the revolutionary leaders were let into the speculation, war was
averted, and a brand-new city sprang up on the prairie, like a bed of
mushrooms, almost in a single night. Two or three millions of dollars
were spent by the Government, but the President considered that the cost
of the town was much less than would have been the cost of the war that
was averted; plenty of money was put into circulation, all the laboring
men in the country got lucrative employment, and, as in the
old-fashioned storybooks, everything came out happily in the end. These
houses were made in Brooklyn and Chicago: a New York firm got the
contract. There was so much haste and carelessness in their construction
that they do not wear very well, and are no credit to their builders.
[Illustration: THE GAUCHO.]
The gaucho (_gowcho_) of South America is the most interesting character
on the continent, and if the writers of tales of adventure could get at
him, he would afford them as much material as the Crusader of the Middle
Ages or the North American savage. The Spanish colonies have produced no
Fenimore Cooper or Mayne Reid, and such a writer as Ned Buntline is
unknown to South American literature. Buffalo Bill and Texas Jack would
die of mortification if their horsemanship and endurance were placed in
comparison with that of the genuine gaucho of the pampas, and even the
centaur of mythology would blush with envy.
The gauchos are the descendants of the aristocratic Spanish dons and
Indian women; for the grandees and hidalgos who once ruled these
colonies did not hesitate to seek the society of the Pocahontases of the
Guarani race. They are at once the most indolent and the most active of
human beings; for when they are not in the saddle, devouring space on
the back of a tireless broncho, they are sleeping in apathetic indolence
among their mistresses or gambling with their chums. Half savage and
half courtier, the gaucho is as polite as he is cruel, and will make a
bow like a dancing-master or thrum an air on the native mandolin with
the same ease and nonchalance as he will murder a fellow-being or
slaughter a steer. He recognizes no law but his own will and the
unwritten code of the cattle-range, and all violations of this code are
punished by banishment or death. Whoever offends him must fight or fly,
and his vengeance is as enduring as it is vigilant. The statute of
limitations is not recognized by him, and he will kill an enemy he has
not seen for a quarter of a century. He never shoots or strikes with his
fist, and his only weapons are the short knife, which is never absent
from his hand or his belt and is used at short range, and the lasso,
which is not only an implement of his trade but an instrument offensive
and defensive.
A fight between gauchos always means murder, and it is the duty of him
who kills to see that his victim is decently buried and the widow and
orphans cared for. The widow, if she pleases him, becomes his wife or
his mistress, and the orphans grow up to be gauchos under his tutelage.
He is as superstitious as a Hindoo, and an inveterate gambler. When he
is not asleep or in the saddle he is always engaged at quaint games of
chance that are his own invention, and are known to no other race in the
world. He is peaceable when sober, but a reckless dare-devil, regardless
of God and man. When he is drunk he is a fiend incarnate, for a howling
savage is like a prattling child when compared to a drunken gaucho. As
brave as a lion, as active as a panther, with an endurance equal to any
test, faithful to his friends, as implacable as fate to any one who
offends him, he has exercised a powerful influence upon the destiny of
the Argentine Republic, and kept that nation back in civilization until
his influence was overcome by an increased immigration of foreigners.
The gaucho has never taken any part in politics except as a soldier, and
as such, under a leader that he will obey, he is without an equal in
either civilized or savage fighting.
The Argentinians once had a gaucho President, Don Manuel Rosas, who
ruled the country with a despotism of iron and blood for twenty-two
years (from 1830 to 1852), and even now is seldom referred to without a
shudder, for the marks of his cruel hand are still visible, and the
ancient aristocracy still feel the sting of blows he inflicted upon
them. He was the son of a wealthy Spaniard of the same name, who
exercised a patriarchal sway over the peons that looked after his flocks
and herds; and as the young Rosas grew up, the old man gradually yielded
to the stronger will of the son, until the latter became a sort of
gaucho leader, and commanded a regiment of them in the war of 1829
against the Indians. So powerful did he become that it was an easy step
from the chieftainship of the gauchos to the Presidency of the
Republic--a self-appointed Dictator, the head of an absolute despotism
which existed for nearly a quarter of a century, in defiance of the
constitution and the laws.
Rosas was a compound of the arrogance and stubborn superstition of the
Spanish race and the cruelty and craft of the Guarani Indians, whose
blood he inherited through his mother. He maintained his power by the
loyalty of the gauchos, of whom the people of the towns lived in terror.
With an inflexible will, with the cunning of a fox and the courage of a
lion, with egregious vanity and arrogance, and a perpetual distrust of
every living being except his daughter Mannileta--the only person to
whose influence he ever
[Illustration: GENERAL ROSAS.]
submitted or for whom he ever showed any affection--he ruled like a
savage chieftain over the entire southern half of the continent, from
Paraguay to the Strait of Magellan, relying solely upon the terror which
his own cruelty and that of his gaucho lieutenants had inspired among
the people. Blood flowed by his command as freely as water, and the
extermination of those who opposed him was the policy under which he
perpetuated his power. No citizen of the Argentine Republic or Uruguay
felt himself safe. No man went to bed at night with any confidence that
he would be alive in the morning; for neither friendship, relationship,
nor even obscurity, was a shield from assassination. Rosas only ceased
to murder when the great fear he had inspired paralyzed the people and
rendered them absolutely prostrate to his will. He spared neither age
nor sex. Even his oldest friend, a man who had been more than a father
to him, and was supposed to be his confidential adviser, was murdered in
cold blood by the _masorqueros_, the secret assassins or Danites on whom
he relied to execute his atrocious designs. The official history of
Buenos Ayres gives the following estimate of the numbers who died
through the caprice or vengeance of the tyrant Rosas: poisoned, 4;
executed by the sword, 3765; shot, 1393; assassinated, 722; total, 5884.
Add to this the number slain in the constant struggle to overthrow his
despotism, 16,520, and we have an aggregate of 22,404 victims to the
ambition of a gaucho chief.
An idea of the arrogance and conceit of the man can be formed from the
fact that the money coined during his administration was stamped with
his portrait and the inscription “Eternal Rosas.” But he was not
eternal, and was overthrown in 1852 by General Urquiza, escaping from
the country with his daughter at night, both in the disguise of English
sailors, and finding refuge on board the _Centaur_, an English
man-of-war.
But the day of the gaucho is passing. Immigration and civilization have
driven him to the extreme frontier, where nowadays he can only be found
in his full glory. Like the North American Indian, he decays when
domesticated, and a tame gaucho is always a drunkard, a loafer, and a
thief. Civilization saps his vitality, quenches his spirit, and lowers
his standard of morals. In his native element he will not steal nor do a
mean act, but when he becomes a resident of a town he will rob a dog,
and there is no end to his maliciousness. Few of the race have ever
acquired land, and even at the present day he despises the _estanciaro_,
who will not depend upon the public domain for pasturage. So the gaucho
has to keep moving, faster and faster, to get out of the way of barbed
wire fences and the restraints of civilization. A few years hence he
will disappear or assume more of the character of the North American
cow-boy. Even now, in the more settled portions of the country, the word
gaucho has become a word of reproach, and is applied to worthless
characters who live by cattle-stealing, and correspond to the rustlers
of the United States.
[Illustration: PALACE OF DON MANUEL ROSAS.]
The language of the genuine gaucho is a mixture of Spanish and the
Guarani Indian tongue, and his food is beef and _yerba mate_. At every
_rodeo_, or “round up,” there is a great feast, at which many good
things are set forth; but the ordinary diet of the race consists of ribs
of beef roasted on a spit before the fire, and eaten without salt or
bread, while the ordinary drink is the Paraguayan tea, which is sucked
through a tube. The gaucho lives like the Indian--gorges himself when he
has plenty of food, or goes for days without eating; but he always has
his mate cup with him, and the yerba contains a great amount of
nutrition. He usually has a habitation in a hut at the headquarters of
the estancia upon which he is employed, and there he keeps his family
and goes on feast-days, for he is enough of a Catholic to keep as close
a reckoning of the ecclesiastical calendar as the archbishop himself. He
has no regard for the Sabbath, but recognizes every religious
anniversary of the Church by leaving his cattle on the range and going
to headquarters, where he spends the day in drinking, dancing,
gambling, confessing his sins to the padre, cock-fighting, and testing
horsemanship with his companions. These feast-days never end without a
murder, and often more than one.
When dressed in his full regalia the gaucho’s appearance is picturesque;
with his swarthy face, long hair, and long mustaches, he would create a
sensation in any guise, for his physique is perfect, and his swagger as
bold as that of a buccaneer or a bandit chief. The gaucho woman is said
to be beautiful when young, but at twenty-five or thirty she is a dirty,
unkempt slattern, with bleared eyes and tangled hair, and wears nothing
but a soiled and faded gown, and perhaps a pair of brass or silver
ear-rings. When she is a maiden the gauchos will kill each other out of
jealousy, but when she becomes a wife or a mistress she is kicked about
the camp, beaten, and abandoned at her master’s will.
All the finery in the family goes on the husband’s back and saddle. In
place of trousers he wears a chiropa and calconcillas. The former is a
square piece of cloth, drawn about the thighs and fastened around the
waist with a belt. It descends as far as the knee, from which the rest
of the leg is covered with the calconcillas--a wide pair of cotton
drawers, handsomely and gaudily embroidered, and ornamented with two or
three wide frills. The feet are incased in a pair of _botas de potro_,
made of the skin of the leg of a colt rubbed until it is as soft as
buckskin. The heels are decorated with a pair of immense iron or silver
spurs weighing a pound or so each.
Instead of the sombrero and velvet jacket of the Mexican cavalier, the
gaucho wears a hat of pita fibre--such as is commonly known as a Panama
hat, and which may have cost him as much as would a dozen cattle--and a
poncho. But in his saddle lies his wealth, for all his savings and
gambling gains go to decorate that emblem of his trade. Silver ornaments
for bridle and saddle are legal tender in exchange for anything salable
wherever the gaucho goes, and what is his seat by day and his pillow by
night he always uses as a sort of savings-bank. I have seen saddles
worth a thousand dollars, with solid silver stirrups, pommels, and
ornaments weighing as much as a man. A pair of silver spurs are worth
anywhere from fifty to one hundred dollars, according to their size and
the workmanship upon them. Stirrups of solid silver, made in the form of
a heelless slipper, are very common, and the belles of the cities of the
Argentine Republic consider them essential to a riding costume. Stirrups
are often made of brass, and when highly polished add a unique feature
to the accoutrements of an Argentine caballero. His belt is usually
covered with a string of silver dollars, and all his buttons are of
silver.
The Argentine poncho is a great institution, and if some fashionable
swell in New York would set the style by wearing one, it would add
greatly to the comfort of our people, as well as to their convenience.
There never was a garment better adapted for out-of-door use, and
particularly for plainsmen or those who are much in the saddle. It is a
blanket of ordinary size, with a slit in the centre through which the
head goes. It rests upon the shoulders, and its folds hang down as far
as the knee, allowing free use of the arms, but always furnishing them
and the rest of the body with protection. In summer it shields the
wearer from the heat of the sun, while in winter it is as warm as an
ulster, and in rainy days takes the place of an umbrella. The native is
never without it, summer or winter, afoot or on horseback, at home or
abroad. It stays by him like his shadow, and serves him as an overcoat
by day and as a blanket by night.
Ponchos were formerly made of the hair of the vicuña, an animal which is
a sort of cross between the camel and the antelope, and is found in the
Bolivian Andes. Before the Conquest vicuña skin was the royal ermine of
the Incas, and none but persons of princely blood were allowed to wear
it. A vicuña poncho is as soft as velvet, and as durable as steel. You
can find plenty of them in the Argentine Republic and in Chili that have
been, like grandfather’s clock, in the old families for two centuries or
more, and have been handed down with the family jewels as heirlooms.
They never wear out, and, like lace, improve with age. But genuine
vicuña ponchos are hard to get, and very expensive, costing often as
much as a camel’s-hair shawl, as the animal is becoming scarce. The
color is a delicate fawn, and will not change when wet, which is a sure
test of its genuineness. Most of the fine ponchos worn nowadays are made
of lamb’s-wool in Manchester, England, and cannot be distinguished from
vicuña except by experts; but tons after tons of a common sort, made of
cotton and wool, of gaudy colors, are now imported annually, and answer
the purpose of the gaucho just as well, while the bright tints please
his taste better.
The gaucho always carries tobacco, cigarette paper, flint, and steel. He
is an inveterate smoker, but confines himself to cigarettes, which he
rolls at full gallop. He does everything on horseback, when he
chooses--eats and sleeps, catches fish, carries water from the well in a
pitcher or urn on his head, and even attends mass on horseback--at
least, the nearest he ever gets to the altar is to ride up to the door
of a church and sit in the saddle while the service is being celebrated.
A gaucho child is put into the saddle at as early an age as an American
child is put into breeches. When he is eight or ten years old he will
ride anything less than a tornado; and after he reaches his growth, if
he is thrown from a horse he is disgraced forever; nothing he can do
will recover for him the respect of the community. He is an ostracized
and despised creature, as hopelessly lost as a fallen star.
The animals the gauchos ride are splendid native stallions, as swift as
the wind and as enduring as time. Fifty or sixty miles a day is a gentle
jaunt, for a well-bred pampa horse will gallop from sunrise to sunset
without throwing a fleck of foam. During the recent war against the
Patagonian Indians a gaucho courier made six hundred miles in
forty-eight hours with only four changes of horses.
One of the sports of the gauchos is “breaking horses,” cruel and
dangerous, like all their amusements. Two gauchos mount, and taking
positions forty or fifty yards apart, at a given signal start at a full
run and come together breast to breast, like two battering-rams, with a
shock that often kills the animals, and nearly always unseats one or
both of the riders. Another is called “crowding horses.” Two mounted
gauchos place their stallions side by side, and crowd them against each
other to see which will yield. A third game is to place across the
entrance to a corral or other enclosure a bar about as high as a horse’s
head. The gaucho mounts, retires to a distance of forty rods or so,
rushes to the entrance at full gallop, and, without checking the speed
of his horse, leaps out of the saddle when the bar is reached, throws
himself under it, and regains his seat, passing under the bar without
touching the ground.
The skill with which the gaucho handles the lasso is an everlasting
source of wonder. While at full gallop he can throw a coil of raw-hide
with as much accuracy as an expert rifleman can crack a glass ball, and
will catch a running cow or sheep or hog, lassoing the horn or foot or
head at will. Duels with the lasso are often fought, the contestants
throwing nooses at the heads of each other, sparring and dodging like
pugilists, until one or the other is caught and dragged out of the
saddle. If the duel is an earnest one, as often occurs, and the gauchos
are determined, the man who is caught is often dragged, with a noose
around his neck, behind a galloping horse until the life is choked and
pounded out of his body.
The Argentine Republic will some day become a formidable rival of the
United States. It has vast natural resources similar to ours, and is
developing them rapidly. It has a magnificent fluvial system like that
of the Mississippi, fertile plains like those of Illinois and Iowa,
boundless pampas stretching for twelve hundred miles to the mountains,
and affording pasturage for millions of cattle, horses, and sheep, like
the prairies of Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, and New Mexico. Towards the
north, into Paraguay, which, although an
[Illustration: MAP OF THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC.]
independent State, is a tributary to the Argentine Republic, are lands
that will produce sugar, cotton, rice, and other semi-tropical staples
like those of our own sunny South. There is also an almost unlimited
supply of timber, hard and soft woods, easy of access, within reach of
mighty streams; and the forests are greater than man knows, for they
have never been measured. The latitude of the Argentine Republic
corresponds with that of the United States; its climate is similar to
that of our great West, and the people have an activity, an enterprise,
and a patriotism that remind the North American of home.
Where rivers do not run the people are pushing railroads, and in a few
years they will have a railway system second only to that of the United
States. They are offering tempting inducements to settlers, and
immigration is very large. The increase in population during the last
fifteen years was one hundred and fifty-four per cent., while that of
the United States was seventy-nine per cent. From Germany, Norway, and
Switzerland, but especially from Italy, come ship-loads of hardy,
thrifty, industrious men every week, and the passenger mole at Buenos
Ayres resembles Castle Garden. The Government aids and encourages
immigration more than does ours. The immigrant vessel that arrives at
New York is required to pay “head-money” on every passenger it brings.
At Buenos Ayres the vessel receives “head-money” from the Government as
an inducement to bring passengers. The fare from Europe to the river
Plate, or the Rio Plata, that great stream which divides the continent,
is about the same as to the United States; and although I do not believe
that the class of immigrants which arrives there is equal in
intelligence and the other qualities that constitute good citizens to
that which comes to the United States, every family arriving means so
many more acres developed and an increase of population. They do not at
once become citizens, as in this country. This is particularly the case
with the Italians, who seldom take out naturalization papers. Foreigners
are allowed to vote at municipal elections, and therefore the temptation
to citizenship is not so strong; but nevertheless they go to make up the
body politic, and as they are exempt from military service, the country
is always sure of having its fields tilled and its crops gathered,
whether there is a war or not.
In 1882, 51,503 immigrants arrived at Buenos Ayres from Europe; in 1883
the number increased to 63,242; in 1884, to 92,700; in 1887, to
138,000. In 1888 it was estimated that over 600,000 foreigners had
settled in the country during the preceding ten years, and it is known
that the population of the city of Buenos Ayres has doubled since 1872.