seventy-five yards broad, in which are ornamental islets and on which
regattas are held. For these festal occasions there is a huge stone
grand stand at one end of the water. The Park has many magnificent
electric-lighted avenues lined with trees of majestic proportions, and
all over it are gardens of subtropical shrubs and plants. Within its
great bronze gates are also a zoological and a, specifically, botanical
garden.
[Illustration: A BIT OF THE TRANSANDINE RAILWAY, ARGENTINA]
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE SUMMIT TUNNEL THROUGH THE ANDES (CHILEAN
SIDE)]
With all this, if Mendoza has drawn somewhat on the future to foot the
bill of its many embellishments, it has done no more than many other
cities of the still new South American countries, and with more immediate
prospect of justification for its expenditure than have several others.
What Mendoza has got to do now is to create an export trade for its
wines, on the condition precedent that it manufacture wines that will
keep and will improve with keeping. Otherwise with increased irrigation
it may run the risk of over-production, since the home consumption is
as yet a limited one. The increase of the population of the River Plate
countries is, as we have seen, still slow, and outside the towns very
little wine is drunk by the majority of the people except on special and
rare occasions; mate sufficing for their habits and needs.
Mendoza sends large quantities of table-grapes and other fruit to Buenos
Aires, and hopes one day to send them overseas. This latter consideration
depends greatly on the adoption of improved methods of picking and
packing, matters to which the management of the Buenos Aires Pacific
Railway has given much practical attention. Care in such details is,
however, but little in the Argentine nature generally, and even in a
less degree in that of the strong mixture of Indian blood which marks
the working classes of Mendoza, as it does in all except the littoral
Provinces. Very good canned peaches come from the Mendoza factories and
are in large demand throughout the Republic.
Coal and petroleum have both been found in the Province, but further
working tests are needed before their probable commercial value can be
ascertained.
From the City of Mendoza the Buenos Aires Pacific Railway (familiarly
B.A.P.) strikes upward to where it passes through the Transandine tunnel;
on the Mendoza side of which is the famous Puente del Inca (the Inca’s
bridge), a vast block of stone which, lying across a ravine, makes a
natural bridge, recalling the giant-built palace of the old Norse Gods.
Here are also some hot mineral springs celebrated for treatment of
rheumatism; to which treatment the dry, rarefied mountain air perhaps
contributes its less recognized quota.
SAN JUAN
This Province is bounded on the North and East by the Province of La
Rioja, on the West by Chile, and on the South and South-East by the
Provinces of Mendoza and San Luis respectively.
Of all the Argentine Provinces San Juan has shown itself, until very
recent times indeed, probably the most recalcitrant towards financial
orderliness. A repeated _non possumus_ was the only answer its inertness
returned to the many periodical fulminations and menaces of the National
Government in respect of its treasury bonds or depreciated Provincial
paper money. So depreciated, in fact, that it was worth nothing at all
outside the Province itself, and was by no means welcome, although legal,
tender within its boundaries.
San Juan pleaded that it could not call this paper in since it had
nothing with which to replace it—all the little National money it got for
its wines and other produce went immediately back to Buenos Aires again
for necessary purchases.
The National Government insisted that San Juan _must_ remove the disgrace
from its financial escutcheon or all sorts of things would happen. San
Juan regretted deeply and asked for time. In the meanwhile it contrived
to raise another of those loans, without much more than a shadow of
adequate security or provision, which long have been the nightmare of the
National Government, and it still kept on using its depreciated notes.
So, and in many other ways for long, very long, did San Juan wrestle,
successfully according to its lights, with the spirit of progress until
irrigation, fostered by the National Government, came to the aid of the
latter in a way there was no denying.
[Illustration: PUENTE DEL INCA; MENDOZA, ARGENTINA]
San Juan _had_ to become more prosperous and to begin to pay its way
in respectable fashion. It evidently did not in the least want to do
so, but it could not any longer see any way by which it could avoid
recognition of its just liabilities. Thus are the good old times of this
Province vanishing; the good old times which made sufficient provision
for an aristocratic oligarchy and in which vassals had no opportunity of
acquiring luxurious tastes.
First the railway, slow in this case, however, in its usually tonic
effects and then irrigation, which poured water on to a naturally very
fertile soil, brought it about that one day San Juan woke up to find
itself faced with financial responsibility.
People from the littoral and even from overseas came and bought land
and paid good prices in hard cash for it and then planted vines of new,
productive kinds; trimmed them in new, productive ways; and made better
wine out of them than San Juan had ever deemed at all necessary. Other
people planted wheat and alfalfa, and even troubled to grow more maize
than there had been before. In fact, if ever a Province had greatness
thrust upon it in a bewilderingly short space of time it was San Juan.
People are even prospecting and actually exploiting its long-latent
mineral wealth, looking for and finding deposits of gold, silver, copper,
iron, zinc, lead, sulphur, alum, mica, rock salt, lignite and marble.
The exploitation of many of these has not yet attained any very great
commercial importance,[29] but that of others has already done so, and
all the companies concerned have brought money into the Province and pay
wages to many native workers. All this troublesomeness tends to curtail
the daily siesta, but a consequent bundle of full-value national dollars
operates as a consolation to even the most conscientious observer of
traditional custom. The next generation of San Juan inhabitants will
doubtless be as wide awake as their neighbours, and strikes may take the
place of old-time rebellion to the orders of patriarchal overlords; while
the latter will be put to it to work their ancestral lands intelligently
in order to maintain the due measure of their proper dignity.
Not only has the National Government fostered large systems of irrigation
in and given irrigation to this Province, but it has also run a railway
connecting the City of San Juan with the Federal Capital; thus providing
another outlet for its grapes, wines and other produce.
An instance of the former commercial apathy of San Juan, and of its
neighbour Mendoza for that matter, was, not long ago, to be found in the
manner in which the growers of table-grapes allowed themselves to be
continually and methodically jockeyed by the fruit ring of Buenos Aires.
The worthies composing this ring were low-class, ignorant men, who
could only grasp the possibilities of monopoly and market rigging on a
very small scale. Their simple method was to put only a certain limited
quantity of fruit each week on the retail markets of the Federal Capital
and to charge exorbitant prices therefor. To the poor, three-quarter
Indian, ignorant people of the islands of the Paraná they said that
Buenos Aires did not care much for peaches, and so they only went there
once a week or so to fetch a few, at miserable prices, for market. The
rest of huge crops were left to rot on the trees. San Juan (and Mendoza)
were evidently given to understand that a similar situation existed in
regard to grapes.
How this could have been so is hard to understand, except on the ground
of extreme apathy on the part of the Provinces concerned, for lots of
vineyard owners live at least half the year in Buenos Aires, and could
have told of the scarcity and high price of fruit in that city.
However this may have been, the fact remained that so many kilos of
table-grapes, and no more, went down to Buenos Aires in specially
constructed trucks placed on the B.A.P. trains three days per week. Until
the General Manager, Mr. J. A. Goudge, decided to act in the better
interests of the Provinces concerned and, incidentally, also in those of
his company, by running grape trains six days a week.
He thought, perhaps, that the Buenos Aires fruit merchants would call at
his offices with illuminated testimonials. If he did so he was entirely
mistaken. They did call, but it was to curse not bless. He would ruin
them all, they said; they had comfortably arranged for such and such
supplies of grapes, but more would upset their plans and businesses
completely! They left Mr. Goudge unconvinced. So much so, indeed, that
considering the menace of the ring to boycott his new trains, he hit
on the simple but adequate expedient of running three grape trains per
week from San Juan, non-stopping at Mendoza, and three starting from
the latter place. San Juan needed its three trains, so did Mendoza, and
therefore no one could boycott either service. Result, the arrival at
Buenos Aires of six grape trains per week. The ring soon accommodated
itself to the extra supply and went on robbing the busy, light-hearted
Porteños (as people born in Buenos Aires are called) till the continued
efforts of a paternally wise Municipality at last, after a long and
bitter struggle, crushed the power of all the food rings in that formerly
ring-ridden city.
This little piece of economic history is here intended to show the depths
of somnolence and blindness to their own interests in which the grape
growers of San Juan and Mendoza reposed till, so to speak, only the other
day.
San Juan is capable of producing good quality cotton and tobacco. Its
general climate is warm, hot in summer, and in parts very dry; though the
humidity of the soil and atmosphere of the chief vine areas are greater
than in those of Mendoza. Hence the relative general superiority and
freedom from insect pests of the Mendoza vineyards.
The city of San Juan is Colonial in almost all its aspects, and its
public and private gardens, filled with mingled tropical and temperate
zone trees, shrubs and flowers, exhale the lazy atmosphere of days the
memory of which is so constantly recurrent in all distant Argentine
towns. Sleepy hollow; maybe, but its charm! A charm which will not nor
can ever be “reconstructed,” try all those of us who are afflicted with
unhappy artistic temperaments, never so hard. But that charm is still in
San Juan, in Misiones (the one-time “Jesuit Empire”), Salta and Jujuy; in
spite of new Government and Municipal Buildings, electric light and trams.
Later, we will go to the Falls of Iguazú, greater and more magnificent
than Niagara or the Victoria Falls. These wonderful Falls are in the
great up-to-date, go-ahead Argentine Republic. What proportion of our
“Man-in-the-street” has ever heard of them? And how many good intelligent
inhabitants of Buenos Aires have any clear idea of what they are really
like?
NATIONAL TERRITORIES
THE PAMPA CENTRAL
The name of the Pampa is also redolent of romance; of memories of vast
herds of wild cattle and horses, picturesque gauchos and raiding Indians;
but the PAMPA CENTRAL of to-day is a great and ever-growing cereal area,
soon, no doubt, to become in its own right the fifteenth Province of the
Republic. A Province probably destined to outstrip rapidly many of its
older compeers in the race for wealth and very modern in its utilitarian
progressiveness.
Its superficial area is approximately equal to that of Mendoza, and
though as yet it lacks population, that will come to it sooner than to
many other parts of the Republic, since it already grows much more
than double as much wheat as all the rest of the Republic put together,
after exception made of the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé and
Córdoba, and more than double as much linseed after exception made of
the Provinces of Buenos Aires, Santa Fé, Córdoba and Entre Rios. It
also produces more maize than any Province or other Territory with the
exception of the last-mentioned four.
Its development has been the most rapid of any part of quick-moving
Argentina. No just comparison of progress can be made with Uruguay; the
conditions under which the latter country has until so recently struggled
having been adverse to rapidity of material development, whereas the
Pampa Central was freed from its only, though great, disturbing element,
nomadic hordes of native Indians, as long ago as 1884.
This Territory is bounded on the North by the Provinces of Mendoza, San
Luis and Córdoba, on the West by Mendoza and the National Territory of
Neuquen, on the South by the National Territory of Rio Negro, and on the
East by the Province of Buenos Aires.
Some parts of the Pampa Central are hilly and wooded and, as in some
parts of the Province of Buenos Aires, ever-moving sand-hills vary the
monotony of other portions of its surface, but the greater part of it is
the continuation of a vast plain, begun in the Province of Buenos Aires,
the PAMPA of the Indians, from which it takes its name. It is, in fact,
the Central Pampa; the Eastern being in the Province of Buenos Aires and
the Southern extending into Patagonia.
Though the Pampa Central boasts only two great rivers, the Rio Colorado
and the Rio Negro, the latter of which forms its southern boundary, it
has many both fresh-water and saline lakes, and water is seldom to seek
far from its surface.
The chief products of the Pampa Central are wheat, linseed, maize and
oats, but with the growth of its alfalfa fields and the planting of good
grasses in lieu of the native hard pasturage, it has also become a great
centre of the Live Stock fattening industry, especially during the winter
months.
The sandy, salty soil of much of this territory, with water near the
surface, provides, as has been said of similar tracts elsewhere, just the
conditions most favourable to lucerne; while in other parts the soil is
extremely rich in humus.
Three of the great railway systems serve the Pampa Central; viz. the
Buenos Aires Western, the Buenos Aires Pacific, and the Buenos Aires
Great Southern, carrying its produce to the ports of both Buenos Aires
and Bahia Blanca.
Santa Rosa de Toay is the Capital of this Territory; a purely commercial
town which by its rapidly grown importance supplanted the old Capital,
General Acha.
The Pampa Central has also numerous other active centres of the cereal
trade and general commerce.
On the question of its becoming a Province of the Republic there is
considerable local difference of opinion; a good many of its business men
holding that honour dear at the price of having to maintain a Provincial
Congress and various Ministries and the rest of the appanages of
autonomy. In this they are right. Direct National Government is certainly
the cheapest and it is also very far from being the worst.
The Pampa Central now exports large quantities of high-class wool and
hides. It also has some copper mines, the present output of which,
however, is not of great importance.
This territory would already, no doubt, have been much more populous
than it is had it not been the scene of one of the most glaring of the
labour-exploiting scandals referred to elsewhere in these pages.
Here the cases were sufficiently numerous and contemporaneous to render
a menace of serious disturbance possible to and partially effective
by people who had been cajoled into developing virgin land only to be
threatened with expulsion (as soon as that work had been done and before
they had been able to derive any profit from it) by owners who only
revealed their existence at what seemed to them the propitious moment for
their appearance on the scene of other people’s labours. Compromises were
arrived at by which the farmers consented to pay rent for their holdings,
but the scandal undoubtedly kept many others away from the Territory,
and even now an evil result of it continues in the shape of almost every
tenant being obviously only anxious to get the most he can out of the
land while it is his to work. Few tenant farmers in the Pampa spend much
money in buildings or other improvements.
The Pampa Central is a crying case for the adoption and insistence by
the National Government on the real practical working out of a true
colonization policy. A policy by which the small farmer could obtain the
indisputable freehold of land which he develops and on which he lives, be
he Argentine or foreigner.
In all else the foreigner actually enjoys under the Constitution the same
privileges (except eligibility for high Government office, etc.) as a
born Argentine. But land! It must go hard with an Argentine ere he part
with his ultimate rights in that. Yet, I repeat, he must make up his mind
to do so on a large scale or he will find his whole progress arrested as
surely as if the Antarctic zone had suddenly extended its icy influence
over half of his Republic. If he will not give them land the class of
colonist he most needs—the real _settler_—will continue to give the
country a wide berth and its output must remain stationary at the point
at which it fully occupies all available labour.
NEUQUEN
This is one of the least generally known parts of Argentina. Misiones
figures in the history of the Spanish Conquest and that of the Jesuit
Missionaries,[30] from which it takes its present name; the Territory
of the Rio Negro has of late years become prominent by reason of
great schemes of irrigation (these, however, also affect the Eastern
portions of Neuquen); Chubut came into notice in connection with the not
over-successful establishment of a Welsh colony; the Chaco is vaguely
associated in the general mind with Indian Reservations and occasional
real or reported disturbances caused by the aborigines confined therein;
but the Territories of Santa Cruz, Formosa, Los Andes and Neuquen are
still little more than geographical expressions to even the vast majority
of the inhabitants of the rest of the Republic.
A principal cause of this is that most of the inhabitants of Neuquen are
to be found on the Western and most distant side of it (in which the most
fertile, and almost the only really fertile parts of it, until irrigation
is an accomplished fact, are situated) and because they not only do all
their trading with Chile, but, to all intents and purposes, are Chileans.
It is quicker and easier to get backward and forward through well-known
Andine passes between Neuquen and Chile than to accomplish the journey
between the rail-head at Senillosa, a little to the West of the township
of Neuquen, and the productive and well-watered Andine valleys. The
Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway, which serves this Territory, now,
however, has under construction an extension of the Neuquen line to far
up the Andes; from whence it is intended to connect with the Chilean
Railway system.
Therefore the richest parts of Neuquen are as yet practically Chilean
colonies; from which cattle and agricultural produce find their way, some
paying and much contriving to escape payment of duty to the neighbouring
Republic, which in return sends such manufactured articles as the
colonist’s somewhat humble needs demand.
[Illustration: VIEWS ON LAKE NAHUEL HUAPÍ, ARGENTINE NATIONAL TERRITORY
OF NEUQUEN]
This Territory is bounded on the North by the Province of Mendoza, on
the West by Chile, on the South by the Territory of the Rio Negro, and on
the East by the Territory of the Pampa Central.
Neuquen, though Argentina at large knows little of it, grows more
wheat than any other National Territory, except the Pampa Central, and
more alfalfa than any except the last named and the Territory of the
Rio Negro. It also sends small quantities of potatoes and other table
vegetables to Chile. Its chief exports to that country consist of cattle
and sheep on the hoof.
The whole of the Andine side of Neuquen is extremely picturesque, and
abounds in fertile valleys well watered by mountain streams. These
streams, after their arrival at the foot of the Andine range, form a
network of ultimate tributaries of the great rivers Colorado and Negro;
after having formed a whole system of lakes of which Nahuel Huapí is the
largest. The scenery of this lake, with the great snow-covered volcanic
mountain TRONADOR (the Thunderer) on its Southern end, is Scandinavian
in its tree-clad magnificence. The superficial area of this lake is some
1000 square miles and its depth in some parts is over 700 feet.
On one of its islands, Victoria, the enormously wealthy Argentine family
of Anchorena have founded a colony to work its wealth of virgin timber,
on a 99 years’ lease from the National Government.
A number of small steam and sailing boats ply on this lake, gathering the
wood, hides and other produce of the farms on its borders and bringing to
the farmers their necessary supplies.
Neuquen is credited with alluvial goldfields and has some copper. Its
mineral wealth is as yet, however, really unascertained; the prospecting
and tentative exploitation of it having been up to the present only done
by syndicates or small companies whose resources have been too limited
for the tasks they have set themselves in, from the point of view of
transport, such inaccessible regions.
The Western and South-Western parts of this Territory are rich in timber,
and its Eastern plains should, with irrigation, repeat the prosperous
history of the Pampa Central.
It has many hot and other mineral springs, the medicinal and other
virtues of which are already known in Chile; from which country they
attract many sufferers from rheumatism and stomachic and other ailments.
In dealing with all the yet little known outlying parts of the vast
Argentine Republic one is apt to become wearisomely tautological in
one’s endeavours to give some true idea of their enormous latent natural
wealth. Yet if one set out, ever so modestly, to bring some conception of
them home to the Northern Hemisphere, one must tell the truth even at the
risk of reiteration. And the truth is that for the future wealth of all
these regions there is only one word, INCALCULABLE.
The Territories of Neuquen and the Rio Negro will soon have irrigation on
a vast scale and of most modern design. This work is being carried out
for the National Government by the Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway
Company and is already far advanced.
The virgin soil of the plains of these Territories is almost incredibly
rich in humus and alluvial deposit; and they have a wealthy Railway
Company ready to afford all necessary means of transport to deep-water
ports which nature has already provided on the Atlantic Ocean at,
comparatively, no great distance from any of, and in many instances close
to, what will be their chief centres of agricultural production (in the
widest sense of that term).
RIO NEGRO
[Illustration: HEAD PORTION OF THE RIO NEGRO (ARGENTINA) GREAT IRRIGATION
AND CURRENT CONTROL WORKS]
The most important of the general observations applicable to this
Territory have already been made immediately above; remains in their
connection only to be said that the Northern side of the valley of
the Rio Negro itself contains some of the naturally richest soil to be
found anywhere in the Republic. Anyone armed with a watering-pot can
grow any temperate-zone crop, fruit or plant and be astounded by the
brobdingnagian proportions of its yield, accomplished in a space of time
suggestive of Jack’s Beanstalk.
And this anywhere in the midst of what now is an arid desert, on which
the only vegetation is sparse, stunted, scrubby, useless bush.
The reasons for this are that these eastern regions of the South have
practically no rainfall at all and that all the water running from the
Andes to the Sea has already found its way, farther west, into one or
other of the great Rivers Colorado and Negro.
The huge irrigation scheme now being carried out will utilize an enormous
natural hollow formerly known as the CUENCA VIDAL, now rechristened
Lago Pellegrini (after a once prominent Argentine statesman) as a
natural storage reservoir. The surplus water from the lake and river
system, which makes a network over the whole of the western part of the
territories of Neuquen and the Rio Negro, at the base of the Andes, will
be utilized for the irrigation of their eastern plains. This system is
also destined to serve another necessary purpose: namely, to regulate the
flow of the Rio Negro.
This is very necessary indeed; for this river, swollen by the melting
of Andine snow and ice, which has in some years taken place in an
exceptional degree, comes down suddenly with overpowering violence,
headed by what is like a huge tidal wave, and sweeps everything within
miles of its normal, deep-cut, banks before it.
Several times during the past fifty years have settlers been tempted by
the rich alluvial soil, brought down by centuries of just such floodings,
to establish themselves near enough to the actual river to irrigate by
some one or other rough lift system, and remained there year in year
out, in the false security enjoyed by peasants on the slopes of a
volcano, till one day a thunderous roar has been the only warning of the
immediate approach of a torrential flood. Lucky the man who could catch
and mount his horse in time to gallop away and thus save his life. All
the rest, cattle, house and crops, were swept away in a second by the
great head wave and following floods of the river suddenly swollen by the
simultaneous overflowing of its innumerable tributary lakes.
Now all this will be guarded against, and, incidentally, the Rio Negro
may be rendered really navigable for a very considerable distance by
other engineering works for the removal and control of its bar.
However, and when, this last may be, there can be no doubt about the
magic change that the first partial irrigation of these present desert
plains will quickly create. Trees will soon grow on the irrigated
portions, and these trees and other vegetation will arrest the clouds
which now fly on unheedingly to the superior attractions of the Andes or
the southern hills of the Province of Buenos Aires. The very southernmost
portion of that Province is now in the same sad case as the rest of the
valley of the Rio Negro, of which it forms a part.
As the result, smiling verdure will replace arid desert; in a short
space of time, because of the natural fertility of the soil on which the
transformation will take place.
Already two dotted lines on the railway map, one between Bahia Blanca
and Carmen de Patagones, near the mouth of the Rio Negro, and the other
branching from it to San Blas, show where the Buenos Aires Pacific
Railway intends to run its first two lines through the southernmost strip
of the Province of Buenos Aires which lies between the Rios Colorado
and Negro, and other two dotted lines, one running southwards from the
township of Rio Colorado to the bay of San Antonio, in the San Matias
Gulf, and the other from the centre of the first to a junction, near
Choele Choel, with the main line to Neuquen, show the first intentions
of the Buenos Aires Great Southern line towards that portion of the
valley of the Rio Negro which falls within its agreed sphere of influence.
In agreeing to a division between them of the productive and
prospectively productive areas of the southern parts of the Republic,
these two great Railway Companies not only removed from their own paths
the disastrous temptation to cut each other’s throats by tariff war, but
also to a considerable extent precluded profitable competition by outside
enterprise.
The National Government has now a line running from the port of
San Antonio running East and West right across the Territory. The
construction of this line will soon reach Lake Nahuel Huapí.
San Blas deserves special mention as the probable future chief port of
the Rio Negro valley. On a long inlet of the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth
of which is a large projecting island and having deep water right up to
its shores, San Blas has been described by high British authority to be
the finest natural port, after Rio de Janeiro, on the Atlantic coast,
both for commercial and strategic purposes.
It formed part of a concession made many years ago by the National
Government to the late Mr. E. T. Mulhall, the Editor and, with his
brother, Mr. Michael Mulhall, the eminent statistician of his time, joint
founder of _The Buenos Aires Standard_, in recognition of services done
for the development of the Republic; which in those days of its obscurity
and distress was much aided towards a better and truer knowledge of
its possibilities in Europe by the efforts of what now is the oldest
established newspaper in America. _The Standard_ is printed, as it always
has been, in the English language.
The Rio Negro Territory already grows a good deal of wheat and oats and
has the largest area under alfalfa of any National Territory except the
Pampa Central; it also has some vineyards and many European fruit trees
grow in the fertile valleys at the foot of the Andes.
The minerals of this Territory are as yet an almost unknown quantity,
except some copper and salt. Petroleum has also been found at Bariloche,
but its commercial value is not fully ascertained.
The climate of the Rio Negro is temperate and, as has been indicated, for
the most part very dry. One disadvantage to agriculture in the flat parts
of these southern Territories is the furious winds which frequently sweep
over them. The force of these will, it is reasonably hoped, be broken by
trees in the days to come.
This reminds one of the tragi-comic history of the contemplated
exploitation of certain great salt marshes situate not very distant from
San Blas.
The brine from these was to be, and indeed on a great inaugural occasion
was, run through pipes into immense shallow basins, where it was to lie
until its moisture had been evaporated by the sun and wind. Afterwards
the salt was to be shipped at the port of San Blas to Buenos Aires or
elsewhere.
All seemed very well with this plan. The brine was duly accumulated in
the drying basins, the sun shone fiercely on it—and, then, the wind
blew and blew. So hard that it emptied the basins and distributed the
brine they had contained over the rest of the Universe. Thus was a good
scheme brought to naught by the miscalculations of its initiators. These,
however, were wealthy enough to take the matter in good part. Indeed, it
was from one of them that the present writer had the story. Still there
is plenty of good salt in the Territory.
The Rio Negro has as yet only townships of rough-and-ready architecture,
the centres of its nascent commerce. Viedma, its capital, is in a fertile
tract of land at the mouth of the Rio Negro; it was, however, almost
completely destroyed by a great flood in 1899. Its communication with
the Federal Capital is maintained by the steamers which call at Carmen de
Patagones, on the opposite bank of the river, and by ferry thereto and
coach to the head of the above-mentioned new line of the Buenos Aires
Pacific Railway which already reaches half-way between it and Bahia
Blanca. The completion of this line will greatly affect Viedma for the
better, while the regulation of the current of the Rio Negro will protect
it from repeated destruction by flood. This Territory has a fair stock of
sheep, but few cattle.
CHUBUT
Chubut has struck oil, literally. Petroleum was discovered there only a
few years ago (1907), and since the first discovery many more wells have
been sunk in greater or less proximity to the first find in the district
of Comodoro Rivadavia, situate almost on the southern boundary of this
Territory and on the Gulf of San Jorge. On this gulf of the Atlantic
Ocean, the new oil-fields enjoy an admirable commercial situation.
Remains only to prove fully their commercial value; of which the great
Argentine Railway Companies are evidently not yet fully persuaded as far
as fuel for their purposes is concerned, since they still use imported
coal.
A long continuance of this present European war might, however, give
stimulus to experiment with Chubut petroleum, which evidently has some
value, even if it need more preparation for use than the North American
and European kinds.
These oil-fields were, as has often been the case in such matters,
discovered by accident, but the discovery was made by the National
Hydrological Department in the course of a search for an available water
supply for the then new Comodoro Rivadavia port.
On these fields claims have been allotted to Companies and private
individuals and a certain area has been reserved to itself by the
National Government. Most brilliant results of tests of all kinds are
announced, the Government line of railroad from the Rio Negro port of San
Antonio to Lake Nahuel Huapí “uses no other” (fuel); and yet, and yet,
Comodoro Rivadavia petroleum is slow to make history in the markets of
the world.[31]
Still, time must be given for proof, especially in Chubut, the general
appearance of which Territory suggests that it was the last word of
creation, in one sense, after, of course, utterly desolate Tierra del
Fuego. It is only about two decades since the Argentine authorities
themselves seem to have grasped the idea that such a place did exist
in their dominions. It is only so long ago, anyhow, that the National
Government thought fit to send the first resident Government officials to
Chubut to look after whatever might need to be looked after there. Before
that, a small part of it was under the absolute control of a Colony of
Welsh people who first settled there in 1856-66. The rest of it was,
and to a great degree still is, almost exclusively inhabited by native
Patagonians.
The capital of the Territory, Rawson, was founded by the Welsh colonists
at the place of their first landing on the South Atlantic coast. It has
twice been destroyed by the flooding of the Chubut River, at the mouth of
which it stood; but it has now been rebuilt more solidly than before and
on a site rather more out of harm’s way.
The original Welsh colonists seem to have been a strangely puritanical
and narrow-minded set of persons to find themselves in such an
out-of-the-way corner of the earth as Chubut then was. So, however, it
may be observed, were certain other persons who landed in North America
a much longer while ago from a ship called the _Mayflower_. Anyhow, the
Welsh built and their descendants still maintain Protestant churches
and a stern religious spirit in their town of Rawson, a somewhat bigoted
spirit, be it added, since it forbade the inter-marriage of its flock
with anyone not of their own, or at any rate British, nationality; nor
would it, until very recently, permit their acceptance of the most
tempting offer to sell any part of the land within the colonised areas to
a “foreigner,” Argentine or otherwise. And this last restriction does not
seem to have been so much due to foresight of a future increase in land
value as to a simple objection to the admission of any stranger within
the fold.
Time will change this no doubt, and change it as soon as Chubut begins
really to advance, but all that time has as yet done for the Welsh colony
appears to have been to sap the energy of its forefathers; the men who in
the face of discouragement and deaf official ears turned to their just
grievances, struggled on, themselves constructing irrigation canals, and
changed disaster into comparative prosperity. The Chubut “Welshman” of
to-day seems as lazy as his forebears were energetic. A fresh strain of
blood is possibly needed for his case.
The superficial area of Chubut is very large. After the Territory of
Santa Cruz (to which would seem to have been allotted all that was left
over of the Republic except the Argentine half of Tierra del Fuego, after
the Government of the more populated parts had been arranged for) it is
the largest National Territory of Argentina, and much larger than any
Province except that of Buenos Aires.
Its estimated population averages scarcely more than one per ten
square miles, so that there is plenty of elbow room in Chubut. With
a superficial area approximately equal to that of Italy, the total
estimated number of its inhabitants is but 31,000.
However, no doubt there are good times coming for Chubut as elsewhere
in Argentina, though, petroleum and its general effects apart, there is
relatively little in Chubut to hasten their coming, except its fertile
Andine valleys. Sheep certainly thrive on its rough, scanty vegetation,
and seem to find just sufficient shelter on its wind-swept plains; but
Chubut has little rainfall and its available fresh waters are few and far
between at any practicable distance beneath the surface. It has only one
great river, the Chubut, from which it takes its name, and this runs very
shallow in the summer, while many of the lakes dry up altogether. In the
West, the Andine region, however, there is ample rainfall, and this is as
yet the only really productive part.
Chubut grows and exports some alfalfa and sends some cattle to Chile,
but its chief product is wool. Its wheat, however, though still small in
quantity, fetches very good prices. A railway is projected to run East
and West across this Territory. It already reaches from Puerto Madryn to
Gainam, on the River Chubut, a little west of Rawson.
SANTA CRUZ
This Territory is bounded on the North by Chubut, on the West and South
by Chile, and on the East by the Atlantic Ocean.
Santa Cruz is not by any means so desolate, on the whole, as Chubut. It
is the land of the sheep, and its large, very large, estancias, either
on the Andine side of it or on the banks of its rivers, mostly belong to
British settlers, who have brought their own architecture, orchards and
gardens with them to this really out-of-the-way spot. Anyone weary of the
crowded world and its busy ways might live and die under the shadow of
the ever-lessening, as one gets south, heights of the Andine range, in
some snug, sheltered valley through which a rippling stream runs close to
where he would sit on a green sward in the shade of his own orchard.
This is no fancy picture. As has been indicated elsewhere in these pages,
nothing is so English, temperature, vegetation, the very breeds of sheep
(Romeny March largely predominating), in America than some favoured spots
in Santa Cruz. Only the climate is different in being drier, the rain
mostly falling in blustering showers.
There is, of course, a contrast when one emerges from among the Andine
valleys, rivers and lakes out on to the dry, wind-swept, desert-looking
plains. Still, even there one comes at times to oases, on the banks of
one or other of the several considerable rivers. Shelter from the furious
winds which seem to blow eternally over Patagonia is the one necessity
for man, beast and crops in Santa Cruz. Transport also is lacking. Even
the railway which the National Government has partly constructed to run
from Puerto Deseado, and for the rest has under advanced consideration,
is apparently to strike almost immediately Northwards up into Chubut;
leaving Santa Cruz, as it is now; almost a world of itself apart, as
far at least as communication with the rest of Argentina is concerned.
Its most fertile parts, like those of all these western and southern
territories, are much more get-at-able from Chile than from their
Atlantic sides.
However, a cold-storage establishment has been built at Gallegos, the
chief port and the capital of this Territory; so that Santa Cruz may
become a centre of the frozen and chilled mutton industry instead of, as
formerly, exporting only wool and slaughtering sheep merely for their fat
and skins. It is a good sheep country in the regions at all suitable for
grazing, since disease is extremely rare in, if not entirely absent from,
flocks reared in its cold dry climate. In respect of cattle and cereals
the outlook is not so promising. Still, one cannot have everything even
in Argentina. And one can grow wheat, oats and alfalfa, besides apples
and pears in Santa Cruz.
TIERRA DEL FUEGO
First of all it may be said that there are no active volcanoes in Tierra
del Fuego nor have been within the memory of man. Mr. Paul Walle, in
his excellent work, already mentioned, _L’Argentine telle qu’elle est_,
suggests that its name may have been given it by early explorers who
observed burning on it grass fires lit by the natives for the purpose of
improving the growth of certain shrubs the leaves of which they use for
food.
Be this as it may, the name “Fire Land,” as my friend the Government
official translator naively has it in the English edition of the
Monographs attached to the latest Argentine agricultural census, is
anything but a warm spot; as certain demagogues who long troubled the
industrial peace of Buenos Aires have shown that they are well aware.
These people were at one time periodically deported for inciting to
commit or committing overt violence in connection with labour strikes.
They were mostly anarchists of the type which tyrannical Governments all
the world over persist in regarding as criminal. These men were put on
board boats bound for their native countries, the police of which were
telegraphically advised of their departure and intended destination.
Needless to say, the anarchists took good care to contrive to leave the
boat before she reached what was for them a danger zone. Usually they got
out at Montevideo and soon were back again at their old work of stirring
up strife in Buenos Aires.
At last the National Government had enough of this procedure and Congress
passed a law whereby any person having been sentenced to deportation
is, on being subsequently found in the Republic, liable to a term of
penal servitude; and the fact that Tierra del Fuego would be the penal
settlement to which recalcitrant anarchists would be sent was duly
and insistently made public. This had a very beneficial effect for
the Government and peaceable citizens at large. Dangerous anarchists
thenceforth ceased to return to Argentina after deportation. They knew,
or at least had read or heard, what the climate of Tierra del Fuego
is; and that for people like them, used to fairly comfortable living,
confinement there most likely meant burial there also.
Not quite half of this charming island, over which the winds blow
straight from the South Pole, belongs to Argentina and forms the
National Territory under discussion. The other half of it belongs to
Chile. Geologically most of this island is a prolongation of the Andes.
On the Atlantic side of its forest-clad hills are sloping plains, the
continuation of the Pampean formation. On these a peculiarly hardy breed
of sheep graze, finding some shelter in valleys and hollows, and give a
wool which fetches a good price in European markets. Grazing of a rough
kind does also maintain cattle and horses on the Northern parts of the
island. Fish and shell-fish of a multitude of kinds and good quality
abound on the coast and afford material for a profitable industry, as
also do the seal and whale fisheries, and penguins are hunted for their
oil. All these fisheries are supposed to be under Government supervision,
regulated by special laws; but, in fact, the practical difficulties of
adequate supervision result in an enormous amount of highly destructive
poaching.
The official estimate of the total cultivated area of Argentine Tierra
del Fuego is 110 hectares, of which 90 are stated to be planted with
potatoes and other table vegetables. The number of sheep is given by the
same authority (Señor Emilio Lahitte, Director of the Department of Rural
Economy and Statistics in the National Ministry of Agriculture) as over
2,500,000 and cattle at about 15,000.
The Roman Catholic Silesian Brothers have a mission, schools and an
estancia on the island; and a Protestant clergyman, the late Mr. Bridges,
during his lifetime did a great deal towards civilizing and bettering the
condition of the native Indians and also kept a self-supporting refuge
home for the victims of the shipwrecks of small craft which are still too
numerous on this wild storm-beaten coast. This good work is now being
carried on by his son, the first child of European parentage born in
Tierra del Fuego.
Ushuaia, the Capital, is chiefly notable for the penal gaol above alluded
to. Formerly convicts were kept, but not often for long before death
overtook them, on an island which forms the very southernmost point of
South America. It is a terribly cold, damp region where rain falls on
an average 280 days in the year. On consideration, perhaps it is the
reputation of this place which has so effectually damped the ardour of
deported anarchists; as the Ushuaia gaol is a modern structure, said
to be furnished with all the latest requirements for the well-being
of prisoners. Still, even it, in Tierra del Fuego, can provide but
uncomfortably cold lodging.
Tierra del Fuego is not lonely for it has many fishing ports and all
navigation must pass it on the way through the Magellan Straits. For all
that, one cannot but wonder why any but prisoners and prison and other
officials go there (except, of course, fishermen and the adventurous
spirits who are ever hunting in every accessible nook and cranny of
it for alluvial gold) when there are so many much pleasanter and more
profitable places, with, between them, all varieties of climates to
choose from in the wide latitudes of the River Plate Republics. _De
gustibus_, etc., one must suppose—and yield obedience to the final words
of the saying.
MISIONES
If one has sufficient Spanish, one should read Leopoldo Lugones’ _Imperio
Jesuitico_, and also the same author’s _Guerras Gauchas_, before going to
Misiones. If not, one should go there all the same.
This territory is bounded on the North-East and South by Brazil, and on
the West by Paraguay and the Province of Corrientes. It is sandwiched in
between the rivers Paraná and Uruguay, but a very much smaller Paraná and
Uruguay than we have seen further south.
Many parts of Argentina have been described as “The Garden of the
Republic,” and many as its most picturesque region, but the latter
description can surely only truthfully apply to Misiones. If not
sufficiently trim and cultivated to be called a garden, its superlative
beauty and its crowning marvel the Iguazú Falls must leave even the most
callous visitor pleasurably astounded; and not a little awestruck with
its ruins and reminiscences of the dawn of South American civilization,
which was heralded in these parts by the Jesuit Fathers. These
Missionaries made most practical Christians of the surrounding tribes;
teaching them the arts of architecture, carpentry, and such-like; not
forgetting humility and obedience.
If one wants proof of all this one need but look on the ruins of
monastery and church now half hidden amid an ever-encroaching luxuriant
vegetation.
The descendants of those same Indians can hardly be got to do as much
work in a lifetime now as they must have done in a week under the mild
but very firm rule of the Jesuit Fathers. Eventually, the power these
Missionaries had attained over the surrounding tribes became such as to
label them dangerous to even Catholic Spain; and an order was given, and
enforced, for their expulsion. They were scattered: and but the ruins of
their solid, sculptured masonry, gardens and orange and olive groves now
mark the places where once white-clad natives kept fast and feast days
with as much solemn orderliness as ever so many timid monastic novices
could do.
Nowadays, one can get from Buenos Aires to Misiones either by rail
(North-East Argentine Railway) or by the Mihanovich company’s boats. Both
ways furnish delightful travelling through interesting and picturesque
country, though for pure scenery the river way is the best. The best of
all, however, is to go up by rail and down again by boat and to see all
there is, and there is a very great deal worth seeing, to be seen.
By either route one can stop at Posadas, the capital, evidently from its
name an ancient resting-place for travellers (Posada being Spanish for an
inn).
But people who are bent on reaching San Ignacio, a small river port, or
rather clearance on the Upper Paraná, near which are the chief of the
ruined Jesuit Missions, and the Iguazú Falls will probably leave Posadas
for closer inspection if need be, on the return journey.
Once again we board a Mihanovich boat and go up a seeming river of
fairyland.
An adequate description of the majestic splendour and beauty of the
Iguazú Falls is far beyond the pen of the present writer. One is
gradually prepared for the great sight by a series of smaller cascades
and cataracts of other converging rivers which one passes on the way to
where the Iguazú hurls its large volume of water in downward jumps or
in one horseshoe-shaped, thundering, frothy mass. Where it falls one is
face to face with the greatest waterfalls in the whole world,[32] as the
following comparative figures will show:
Volume cubic
per minute.[33] Breadth. Height.
Iguazú 28,000 ft. 13,133 ft. 196 to 220 ft.
Victoria (S. Africa) 18,000 ft. 5,580 ft. 350 to 360 ft.
Niagara 18,000 ft. 5,249 ft. 150 to 164 ft.
The only point of advantage of the Victoria Falls is their height.
The present chief source of wealth in Misiones is the various kinds of
timber and valuable cabinet-maker’s woods found in its virgin forests.
One day Misiones will doubtless export its rosewood and other beautiful
and valuable products of its forests, which also produce pine and other
building timber of superior quality to that which Argentina now imports
from Europe. Transport of timber is effected by means of tying it into
huge rafts which go down river as far as Corrientes. The timber supply
of Misiones will long continue rich, since the tendency of the forest is
ever to encroach on the surrounding land.
A growing industry on which great expectations are based is the
cultivation of the Ilex Paraguayensis, or mate shrub. The consumption of
mate or Paraguayan tea, as it is sometimes called in Europe, is enormous
throughout both of the River Plate Republics, which now import very large
quantities annually from Paraguay and Brazil, while no sort of good
reason seems to exist why the northern districts of Argentina should not
grow sufficient to meet the home consumption.
The Jesuits evidently appreciated and cultivated this shrub, but they had
the secret of growing it from seed, a secret the true re-discovery of
which by modern horticulturists is not yet quite proved.[34]
Up till quite recently all Misiones mate yerba has been gathered from
the abundant virgin growth of the shrub. Once Misiones produced larger
quantities of sugar than it does now; and there is no reason why this
industry should not revive from the almost total paralysis which it at
present suffers; nor why one day the wine output of Misiones should not
be improved in both quality and quantity.
Maize naturally grows well (it yields in six months) in Misiones; which
Territory with the general warmth of its climate, sufficient rainfall and
heavy dews, is most favourable to tropical and subtropical vegetation.
Oranges, of course, bananas, pineapples, and guavas grow practically,
if not quite, wild and ground nuts and the castor-oil plant are among
its many valuable products. The whole of Misiones is well watered by a
network of very numerous streams, and if its atmosphere by day is rather
reminiscent of a hothouse, the nights are usually cool and refreshing.
The unevenness of its surface, while precluding much idea of extensive
cultivation, is admirably suited for the shelter and care of the best
natural produce of this exotically picturesque region.
Misiones has quarries of valuable granite at San Ignacio; close to the
river as if they had been placed there for facility of transport.
These quarries furnished the Jesuits with the material for their famous
buildings; though that they persuaded the natives, who before their
coming had little ambition for anything save inter-tribal warfare,
to quarry, transport and build up solid masonry is nothing short of
marvellous. Truly Jesuit “influence” was a very real and concrete thing
in the Misiones of those days.
One must not forget tobacco, or cotton, as other of Misiones’ hitherto
greatly neglected industries.
One cannot insist too much upon the fact that no one who does not himself
visit the River Plate Republics in all their length and breadth can
really grasp even a faint idea of their diversified latent wealth. One is
apt to suppose that because Misiones, for instance, does not produce much
tobacco or sugar,[35] there is some pretty solid obstacle at the bottom
of its relative non-productiveness. People naturally think, “Well, it’s
all very well to chant dithyrambics of the marvellous might be’s of what
evidently are your pet countries, but why does all this wonderful wealth
of them continue latent, why does not one see, or at least hear, a great
deal more about it, if all you say is true?”
The reply for this is, “Give me sufficient capital and sufficient
suitable labour (especially the latter) and I will very speedily prove my
every word.”
The River Plate Republics have not yet (again I say it) sufficient
population to exploit even a part of their possible cereal industry,
the one which naturally gets first attention because it combines the
attractions of rich profit and comparatively little care or labour, under
the almost primitive conditions under which most of it is still carried
on.
When there is a surplus of labour after grain and cattle have been duly
provided for, all sorts of other things will be attended to. But it is
no good expecting ordinary people, without the many more or less occult
advantages of early Jesuit Fathers, to get any constantly careful work,
such as cotton, tobacco and many other valuable crops require, out of
native South American Indians. They can’t or won’t do it, anyway, they
don’t; and it is probably easier to rediscover how to grow mate yerba
from seed than how to rediscipline for practical purposes the race which
built and gardened in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The North Argentine Railway has in project a branch from its Santo
Tomé-Posadas line to run through the centre of Misiones to the North-West
corner where the frontiers of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay join.
FORMOSA
This, the northernmost of the Argentine National Territories, does not
merit the superlative of its name; especially it does not do so when
compared with Misiones. Geographically and in its general superficial
characteristics Formosa is a continuation of the Chaco, by which it is
bounded on the South. On the North and East it is bounded by Paraguay
except at its South-Eastern corner, where its boundary is the river
Paraguay, with the Province of Corrientes on the other bank. On the West
it is bounded by the Province of Salta.
Much of Formosa is almost unknown land as far as really scientific
exploration is concerned; and some tribes of its TOBA Indians still
appear to have an inconveniently violent dislike of official explorers,
several having been murdered by natives in recent times.
The real exploration of the interior of Formosa is done by squatters
who, when turned off one holding, move on to a new one further from
the civilisation which, such as it is, is mostly to be found on the
River Paraguay, or near to it on the banks of its chief affluents, the
Pilcolmayo (which forms the Northern boundary between this territory and
Paraguay) and the Bermejo. The clearance of the rocks, sunken logs and
masses of vegetation from the beds of these rivers as a preliminary to
the carrying out of other works for the purpose of making them navigable
is under consideration by the National Government, which also proposes to
build a railway line from Embarcación, in the Province of Salta, across
the centre, almost, of Formosa, in a South-Easterly direction, to its
capital, a town of the same name and, doubtless, the first to bear it. At
present Formosa has no railroad at all.
This Territory has several other considerable rivers and streams all
running nearly parallel to one another and to the Pilcolmayo and Bermejo,
in South-Easterly direction, to the River Paraguay.
Almost the whole of its surface is a vast plain gently inclined; its
South-Eastern part is largely covered with forests and dotted with many
shallow swamp-like lakes—“Esteros,” as they are called.
The forests are very rich in various valuable woods; of which the chief
object of present commerce is the QUEBRACHO, which here, as elsewhere
in the Republic, is found in two varieties, the red and the white. The
former is the richest in tannin. Quebracho extract (for tanning purposes)
will be seen to figure prominently in the tables relating to Argentine
exports.[36] Quebracho logs are in constant demand for railway sleepers.
The wide glades and open spaces in the forest afford excellent pasturage,
and are all eminently suitable for agriculture. Some parts of this
territory are destined to become rich alfalfa fields, and already
relatively considerable areas are under this forage. There is plenty of
salt, sandy soil with water near the surface. Maize also, on account of
climatic conditions and the nature of the soil in parts (where a rich
layer of humus is superimposed on a moist, sandy subsoil), should form a
valuable crop in this Territory.
Formosa, with its Northern situation and therefore almost tropical
climate, has few sheep; but cattle, still of the native breed, thrive
well in many parts.
Also, in Formosa, and in Misiones, a large proportion of traction
bullocks must be reckoned among the numerical value of their cattle.
In Formosa the summer or rainy season lasts for about seven months of
the year; little or no rain falls in the winter or dry season—as in the
tropics. In the wet season many of the rivers overflow their banks and
such, likely, inundations should be taken into account by any would-be
purchaser of land in Formosa.
He should also keep his eyes open for dangers other than floods; for
if scientific exploration cannot yet be said to have obtained any firm
grasp of Formosa, how much less can measurements and boundaries be
hoped to be in order. They are not so in most of this Territory, and a
purchasing settler might eventually find himself with little for his
trouble and money but the costs of a lawsuit forced upon him by some
owner of an historic grant made by a grateful Republic in bygone days to
the grandfather of such owner for distinguished service of one kind or
another.
_Latifundíos_, these low-lying Argentine landowners are called; and it is
not too much to say, as has been indicated elsewhere in these pages, that
their existence is a pest and a menace to proper colonisation.
Every such absentee landlord should be forced by law to declare himself
and his claims, and to furnish measurements and situation of the land,
the subject of the latter to be checked by the Government surveyors and
lawyers; and to do this within a fixed reasonable period from the date of
the passing of such laws. His claim to lapse absolutely _ipso facto_ in
default of his doing so.
Then the National Government should proceed to allot fiscal lands to all
desirable comers, and afford these the aids to starting their farms and
plantations usual in other countries having unoccupied land awaiting
development, as still is by far the greater part of the territory of the
Argentine Republic.
Every educated Argentine is just as well aware of all this as the writer
or you, the reader; but just think what a flutter in aristocratic
dovecotes on the mere suggestion of the putting in practice of such Laws
(they or drafts of them probably exist in the pigeon-holes of Government
House in Buenos Aires)! What a fluttering in those dovecotes there was a
few years ago when the discovery was made, and most imprudently revealed,
that vast tracts of land supposed to belong to the Nation had in fact
got, in one way or another, into the possession of private individuals.
The then President, Dr. Figueroa Alcorta, declared vehemently (and caused
the declaration to be published far and wide) that whomsoever were found
to be responsible for such a scandalous state of things would be dealt
with without mercy, whoever he or they might be.
That was all.
The sentence was like those of the Queen of Hearts in _Alice in
Wonderland_. No one really ever was executed. Nor, as far as the public
ever knew, even called to account. Possibly someone was told not to do it
again; it must be hoped so.
In Formosa, latent absentee landlord and squatter would almost appear to
work on a mutually beneficial, if tacit, understanding. The former does
not in the least mind his land being developed by the latter (there is
no foolish worry about such things as prescriptive rights) and generally
lets him be; until such time as he, the landlord, wants to occupy himself
or sell.
Meanwhile the squatter has accumulated cattle and money by selling stock
(contraband, if possible, or covered by a few duty-paying animals) in
Paraguay, and need only move on a few leagues or so, when told to, with
his herds. His house and furniture are usually negligible quantities.
Formosa does as much trade as the total of its general products (except
timber, which goes South) allows of, because Paraguay is generally too
much overrun by revolutionary, or momentarily constitutional, forces
to have much time or space free for industrial occupations. At the same
time Paraguay does manage to produce large quantities of tobacco and mate
yerba which Argentina takes, although, as has already been observed, her
own lands could perfectly well produce them, given suitable labour.
As has been rather more than hinted at, the official Returns of Imports
and Exports as between Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil and Argentina give
but a faint idea of the actual trade between the last-named and her
northern neighbours; and the present writer would be much surprised to
learn that the upper reaches of the River Uruguay could tell no tales of
systematic smuggling between the two River Plate Republics, or the Andes
none of similar practices between Argentina and Chile.
The fact is that adequate guard of these enormous and sparsely populated
lengths of upcountry frontier would cost more than the results of it
would pay for. And why make a fuss while such prime necessities of life
as mate and cigarettes are comparatively so cheap?
Formosa produces tobacco and sugar; the latter, as in Misiones, being
chiefly used for the production of alcohol.
A great deal of foreign capital is now invested in timber cutting and
exporting companies. Native labour is suitable for this work, but it is
desirable in the interests of the companies concerned that the native
overseers or gangers be controlled by whites conversant with native ways
and also having the gift of forest topography.
This last consideration is suggested by the undoubted fact that many
a pile of logs has been solemnly measured up and the felling paid for
several times over by the white gentleman who has failed—in consequence
of a slight rearrangement of the pile, no doubt—to recognise them on
successive visits to glades and clearings which all look very much alike
except to particularly experienced eyes.
Thus does the untutored Indian or half-caste sometimes laugh at
civilization.
Formosa, although sparsely inhabited, boasts a large proportion of
pure whites of various nationalities among its settlers and the timber
companies’ employees. There are several Franciscan Mission Stations in
the Territory.
* * * * *
This hasty run over the Argentine Republic has stirred many pleasant
memories in the heart of the writer, and set him hoping that, perchance,
some one reader may be tempted to take passage to the River Plate; at
less cost than, and quite as luxuriously as, if he made his usual sojourn
on the Mediterranean Riviera.
Would I could take him—an intelligently enthusiastic person he, of
course, would be—on a personally conducted tour of my own designing.
We would go first to Buenos Aires, reserving the restful charm of
Montevideo for after our journeyings. Then down South; where I should
quite disabuse my gentle companion of any ideas he might have that the
owners of square miles of wheat and thousands of cattle live in top boots
and shirt sleeves in one-storied, corrugated-iron verandahed houses
in the foreground of threshing machines. I would get him invited—and
myself as well—to stay a day or two at an English estancia; the large,
well-appointed two or three storied red-brick house of which, surrounded
by lawns and spreading cedar trees, would make him rub his eyes several
times before he were convinced that he had sailed out of England. He
would surely find a house party from Buenos Aires or neighbouring—a wide
term meaning, probably, many leagues away—estancias in possession; all
the members of which would retain their old habits of dressing for dinner
and breakfasting off a choice of several hot dishes and a tempting array
of cold things on the sideboard. An English country house, in fact, with
hall and magazines and illustrated papers complete.
Then we should make plans for the following, and, probably, many other
morrows; plans which would almost inevitably include a neighbourly race
meeting or polo match.
Amid all this he could dree his own weird for as long as might please
him. I should not disturb any of his promised projects.
But one day I should take him North again; and still further North, to
Córdoba, “The Learned City,” show him the Cathedral, the University and
its Library, and let him breathe the monastically mediæval atmosphere of
it all. And, outside the city, the wildness of cactus growth and gaucho
life.
Back eastward to Rosario, merely to change train for Santa Fé, and
across the Uruguay to Paraná. From thence to Concórdia; where at least
one tranquil orange-scented morning must be spent before one crossed the
Province of Entre Rios to where the Argentine North-East Railway should
take us to Misiones.
After San Ignacio, the Iguazú Falls and the trip thereto and therefrom
up and down the Upper Paraná, I should ask him if he ever wanted to go
anywhere else again? Whether he has ever even dreamed of anything so
beautiful? Then by river all the way back to Buenos Aires; and, one
night, across to Montevideo. There we would sit awhile in the evening and
listen to the band in the square where the little coloured lamps swing in
the fresh sea breeze; and bathe next morning and roll ourselves in the
hot dry sand of Pocitos or Ramirez.
Then we would take railway trips in Uruguay. Over billowy pasturage and
through waves of wheat; not flat expanses such as those we shall have
seen on the Pampa, but seas of corn-covered, undulating ground.
Then he could go back to Europe, if he liked. I should stay.
URUGUAY
If a detailed sketch of each of the Departments of Uruguay be not given
here it is not because they are altogether uniform in their landscapes;
but rather because, apart from the hilly rockiness of some of the
northern parts, the scenery of Uruguay does repeat itself. While the
climatic differences are relatively slight in a country which barely
extends over, from the point of its extreme northern angle to its most
southerly point, five degrees of latitude; in comparison with those of
Argentina, which extends over thirty-five degrees.
Uruguay, therefore, has no striking variety of climates; and except that
the surface of the Northern Provinces is more broken with jagged mountain
ranges and that in the neighbourhood of the River Uruguay and its
affluents the country is more thickly wooded, there is not much change
to be noted anywhere from its general character of an undulating grassy
plain, with here and there a mount, or clump of low wood and brushwood,
and an abundance of running streams.
Its indigenous flora comprises a rich wealth of rosemary, acacia, myrtle,
laurel, mimosa, and the scarlet-flowered CEIBO; while its natural
pasturage is gay with red and white verbena and other brilliantly
coloured wild flowers. The best natural grasses are to be found in
the Departments of Soriano and Durazno and in parts of Paysandú and
Tacuarembó. That is to say where what is known as the “PAMPA MUD” of the
soil is mingled with calcareous and siliceous matter and contains less
aluminium, which last ingredient imparts cold and damp qualities.
[Illustration: A TYPICAL SMALL “CAMP” TOWN (RIVERA, URUGUAY)]
It should not be assumed from the above short general description that
the scenery of Uruguay is monotonously uninteresting. It is not; on the
contrary, it is often very beautiful indeed, with sudden and delightfully
surprising changes as the train speeds along. But these changes are on a
small scale, if one may so express oneself, compared with those which one
experiences when passing from one distant Argentine Province or National
Territory to another.
Indeed, as a glance at the map will show, geographically, Uruguay and the
Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul can almost be considered as parts of
Argentina; as, politically, they once very nearly were.
The real great division of the nature of the surface of Uruguay is
practically formed by the course of its Rio Negro; on each side of which
are vast rolling plains, the northern of which, however, are, as has been
said, traversed by ranges of indented rocky hills.
The whole of Uruguay is subject to abrupt changes of temperature and
frequent strong winds of which the PAMPERO, from the South-West, is the
most violent.
Generally, the climate is pleasantly mild. For while the summer suns
are hot, especially in the North, sea breezes and winds from the
snow-capped Andes modify the temperature. It is, however, from these
conflicting elements of sun and wind that Uruguay gets her quick changes
of temperature and frequent storms. The whole country is subject to
alternate overflowing of its rivers and drought.
Uruguay is rich in table fruits. Grapes, oranges, lemons, apples, pears,
quinces, melons, passion-flower fruit, peaches, apricots, cherries,
medlars, figs, chestnuts, almonds and, in the North, olives, dates
and bananas, grow in abundance. The list of her flora also includes
sarsaparilla (very abundant), quinine, camomile and many other valuable
medicinal plants. Uruguayans have also given themselves the trouble to
produce relatively much larger quantities, and, generally speaking,
better qualities of ordinary table vegetables than have the, perhaps
busier, inhabitants of the larger Republic across the river; to which,
however, Uruguay daily sends large quantities of such produce.
Uruguay has several large flour mills and exports flour, chiefly to
Brazil.
Most of the soil consists of one composition or another of the Pampa mud
before alluded to. This mud is really ancient alluvial deposit.
Of the latent mineral wealth of Uruguay there can be little doubt. The
Department of MINAS, as its name indicates, is one of the richest in
this respect. Gold, in quartz formation, silver, copper, iron, lead,
some coal, marble of various kinds, slate, rock crystal, agates, jasper,
graphite, alabaster, black limestone and other minerals of commercial
and industrial value are to be found in this Department and in other
parts of the Republic. Fine building limestone is found in the Department
of Maldonado. The Department of Colonia is rich in granite and other
building stone, as well as other minerals. Rocha, Soriano, San José,
Florida and Canelones are other Departments rich in mineral wealth.
This wealth has, however, as yet been little exploited. The old trouble
here, as in Argentina, being that of insufficient labour to attend to
more than the primary industries of Live Stock and Cereal production.
Also the Uruguayan Mining Laws, though steps have recently been taken to
amend them, have hitherto proved but a poor protection for capital.
_Note._—The wealth of the Argentine National Territories of
THE CHACO and LOS ANDES is, as to the former still practically
confined to the valuable forestal products, full mention of
which has been made elsewhere in these pages. The future of
Los Andes can only be concerned with the exploitation of its,
probably rich, mineral deposits; this Mountainous Territory
being so cold and arid as to be almost uninhabitable.