THE REAL ARGENTINE
_WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR_
Stevensoniana.
In the Track of “R. L. S.” and elsewhere in Old France.
George Meredith in Anecdote and Criticism.
J. M. Barrie and his Books.
Our Highland Tour.
The Call of the Town.
The Actor’s Art.
Humorists of the Pencil.
English Humorists of To-day.
_Editor of_
Harmsworth History of the World.
The World’s Great Books.
The Charles Dickens Library.
The Fine Art Scott.
“Punch” Library of Humor.
etc., etc., etc.
[Illustration: A VANISHING FIGURE
A “Gaucho” in full costume, wearing the “chiripá,” or loose
over-trousers, and carrying the “bolas” around his waist.
_Frontispiece._]
THE REAL ARGENTINE
Notes and Impressions of a Year
in the Argentine and Uruguay
By
J. A. HAMMERTON
_With Numerous Illustrations_
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1915
COPYRIGHT, 1915
BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER I
FROM LONDON TO LISBON 1
CHAPTER II
OUR VOYAGE TO THE RIVER PLATE 7
CHAPTER III
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF BUENOS AYRES 28
CHAPTER IV
PICTURES OF STREET LIFE IN BUENOS AYRES 38
CHAPTER V
MORE SCENES FROM THE STREETS OF BUENOS AYRES 56
CHAPTER VI
WHAT WE THOUGHT OF THE WEATHER AND THE MOSQUITOES 73
CHAPTER VII
A SPLENDID CITY OF SHAM 83
CHAPTER VIII
SOME “PASEOS” IN BUENOS AYRES 102
CHAPTER IX
MORE “PASEOS” IN BUENOS AYRES 116
CHAPTER X
HOW THE MONEY GOES 129
CHAPTER XI
SOME PHASES OF SOCIAL LIFE 154
CHAPTER XII
BUSINESS LIFE IN BUENOS AYRES 195
CHAPTER XIII
THE ARGENTINE AT HOME 236
CHAPTER XIV
“THE BRITISH COLONY” AND ITS WAYS 260
CHAPTER XV
THE EMIGRANT IN LIGHT AND SHADE 289
CHAPTER XVI
LIFE IN THE “CAMP” AND THE PROVINCIAL TOWNS 315
CHAPTER XVII
THE SPIRIT OF THE COUNTRY 340
CHAPTER XVIII
A LAND OF PAIN 348
CHAPTER XIX
TO-DAY AND TO-MORROW IN THE ARGENTINE 361
CHAPTER XX
OUR SUMMER IN MONTEVIDEO 379
CHAPTER XXI
URUGUAY: NOTES AND IMPRESSIONS 411
CHAPTER XXII
FROM THE RIVER PLATE TO THE ANDES 438
ILLUSTRATIONS
A Vanishing Figure—“Gaucho” in full costume _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
One of the Crowded Docks in the Port of Buenos Ayres 4
Friends of Emigrants Awaiting Arrival of a Ship 4
Paseo Colón, with Government House on the Right 12
The Narrow Streets of Buenos Ayres—Florida and San Martín 22
The Changing Heart of Buenos Ayres—Plaza de Mayo 34
Exterior and Interior of the “Casa Rosada” 44
Statue of San Martín in Buenos Ayres 52
The Colón Theatre, Buenos Ayres 60
Exterior of the Jockey Club, Buenos Ayres 68
The New Courts of Justice 76
The Palatial Home of _La Prensa_, Buenos Ayres 88
A Princely Sanctum Room of the _Prensa’s_ Chief Editor 96
A Corner of the Medical Consulting Room of the _Prensa_ 96
Bedroom of Distinguished Visitors’ Suite in _Prensa_ Office 106
The Gorgeously Decorated Salon in the _Prensa_ Office 106
A Contrast in Public Buildings—Art Gallery and Waterworks Office 112
English “Pro-Cathedral” in Buenos Ayres 118
Roman Catholic Cathedral, Buenos Ayres 118
“La Merced,” a Typical Buenos Ayres Church 124
“Teatro de la Opera,” Exterior View 124
The Luxurious Domestic Architecture of Buenos Ayres 136
Terminus of the Southern Railway at Plaza Constitucion, Buenos
Ayres 148
Marble Fountain in the Gardens of the Paseo Colón, Buenos Ayres 158
Plaza Francia, in the Avenida Alvear, Buenos Ayres 158
Prize Bulls at Buenos Ayres Agricultural Show 166
Summer Scenes on the Tigre 174
Views of Mar del Plata 182
Suburban and Rural Roads in the Argentine 190
An Argentine “Gaucho” in his Hours of Ease 198
Italian “Colonos” and their “Rancho” in the Argentine 206
A Village Wheelwright in the Argentine “Camp” 206
Preparing the Picnic Meal—“Un Asada” in the Argentine 214
Fields of Maize 222
Bags of Wheat Awaiting Shipment 230
Three Huge Piles of “Jerked Beef” at a “Saladero” 230
A Scene in the “Camp”—Peones Outside a “Pulperia,” or Country
Grocery and Liquor Store 240
A “Ramada,” or Shaded Resting-Place for Men and Horses 254
An “Estancia” Homestead of the Old Clay-Built Type 266
A Modern “Estancia” Homestead Built of Concrete 282
A “Rodeo,” or Round-Up of Cattle in the Argentine Pampa 294
Familiar Scenes on an “Estancia” 310
Teams of Oxen Ploughing in the Argentine Pampa 318
Montevideo from the South, Showing the Cerro with Its Fort 332
Shipping in the Roadstead at Montevideo 332
General View of Montevideo and the River Plate 344
Plaza Independencia, Montevideo 350
Plaza Libertad, or Cagancha, Montevideo 350
Cathedral and Plaza Matriz, Montevideo 356
Plaza Independencia and Avenida 18 de Julio, Montevideo 356
The “Rambla” at Pocitos, Montevideo 364
Bathing Place at Ramírez, Montevideo 364
Main Buildings of Montevideo University 372
The Solis Theatre, Montevideo 372
Scene in the Parque Urbano of Montevideo 382
A Rural Glimpse in the Prado, Montevideo 382
Cattle Assembled on “La Tablada,” Near Montevideo 390
Types of the Fantastic Domestic Architecture of Montevideo 408
Typical Country Road in Uruguay 418
Hides Drying at a Curing Factory Near Montevideo 418
The Calle San Martín, Mendoza 432
A Glimpse of the River Mendoza 432
The Natural Bridge of Puente del Inca 440
The Inca’s Lake in the Andes 446
The Christ of the Andes 446
INTRODUCTION
So many books have been written on South American countries within recent
years that the addition of one more to the already formidable list calls
for a word of explanation, if not apology.
So far as American writers on the Latin-American Republics are concerned,
many of their works are based upon the statistical returns of the
respective Governments, or on topographical and historical data, easily
obtainable at the public libraries. Others, more popular, but perhaps
less valuable, are the hasty records of fleeting visits. These latter are
so apt to be informed by a spirit of indiscriminate admiration that they
present misleading and untrue notions of the countries described.
The present writer may be stating what is already known to the reader,
when he mentions that among both of these classes of books a considerable
percentage—perhaps the greater number of those published in the United
States and in England—have been subsidised by the governments of the
respective republics of which they treat. Many are but glorified
advertising pamphlets, put forth in the guise of serious books the
better to fulfil their office of propaganda. To look to them for any
dispassionate and well-studied view of the countries illustrated in their
pages, would be as natural as to expect the advertisement writer of
Somebody’s Soap to publish an entirely impartial opinion of the article
he had been employed to advertise.
Several French and German authors have written admirable works on the
Argentine, entirely free from bias, depicting the country as it is,
alive to its merits and its demerits alike; free both from the charge of
“log-rolling” and from that of hasty observation. But American or English
writers of similar works are not many. Nay, due to the difficulties
of ensuring the conditions essential to the impartial and open-minded
study of the country, even writers of such international distinction as
Viscount Bryce and Mr. Theodore Roosevelt, with the best will in the
world, are liable to give false impressions. Often have I seen the system
at work, whereby “distinguished visitors” to South American capitals
are so entirely taken in hand by Government, entertained royally, and
shown only such things as Government particularly wish them to see,
that it would be expecting too much of human nature to look to them
for an unbiased opinion of the country. I have not read Lord Bryce’s
book on South America, nor anything that Mr. Roosevelt may have written
concerning his tour there, but both these eminent men so suffer from
the disability of their eminence, and from the official hospitality
showered upon them during their brief sojourns in South America, that,
try they never so valiantly to speak nothing but the truth,—and I esteem
them, different as they are in many ways, two of the frankest and most
honourable of modern statesmen,—their impressions will be coloured by
the peculiar conditions under which they were obtained; conditions
of official tutelage; and tempered furthermore by reason of the warm
hospitality extended to them by the respective Governments. As for the
things they see in their rounds of inspection, it is notorious that they
are shown only what official discretion would have them see. All this,
mark you, in no depreciation of the brilliant work which these, and many
less distinguished visitors to South America, are capable of doing,
but merely to remind the reader that the conditions in which a work
descriptive of any particular country has been evolved ought to be borne
in mind in the reading of it.
The chief fault of most writers on the Argentine is the indiscriminate
praise they shower around; their fulsome flattery of the country. Only
two hours ago I received from Canada a newspaper with most of its front
page devoted to an illustrated article entitled “Buenos Ayres—the Paris
of the New World.” An estate agent, describing the attractions of some
property for sale, would have been beggared for superlatives compared
with the writer of this article who lets loose a veritable flood of
uncritical “gush” on Buenos Ayres. He may have spent a week in the town,
or he may never have seen it, but a more untruthful or misleading account
of the city could not have been penned, though it is typical of many that
have come to my notice. I feel that the influence of such writings is
to create in the minds of the public who do not know the scenes nor the
conditions described an impression entirely mischievous.
So thinking, I have set myself in the present work to make “a try at
truth.” I have lived long enough on the River Plate to revise and correct
my impressions. I mastered the language of the country, so that I came
to converse in it as readily as in English. And during the whole of
my stay I wrote not a single paragraph of this book, lest I should
record impressions and ideas which in the end might be misleading. I
deliberately refrained from note-taking, so that when, fully a year
later, I came to the writing, I should be able to secure a truer
perspective, only the things that mattered disengaging themselves from
the multitude of impressions that crowd in on one during a year of active
life in a strange land.
I have eschewed statistics, which bulk so largely in most other works on
the Argentine, and can be made to prove whatever a writer most wishes to
establish. What I have sought for rather, has been the human interest
of these great cities of the River Plate; to present an honest picture
of the life that is being lived in them to-day, and to convey, in as
interesting a manner as I know how, some general notion of the Republics
of Argentine and Uruguay as they really are. I carefully avoid the
official point of view, having studiously refrained from putting myself
at any time under any obligation that might tend to make me echo an
official opinion instead of stating that which I had honestly formed from
personal and independent study.
J. A. H.
THE REAL ARGENTINE
CHAPTER I
FROM LONDON TO LISBON
We set out from London on a raw and rainy day. It had been raining
off and on for many weeks, and as enthusiasts of the car we had been
grumbling, my wife and I, a good deal at the weather. But we were booked
for the land of sunshine! And when we bade good-bye to the chauffeur at
Charing Cross Station, rather nervously watched the old grey car roll
away among the traffic and the drizzling rain, we comforted each other
with simple words about the sunshine that awaited us far off by the River
Plate.
Even Paris was dirty. I am an inveterate lover of Paris, and must have
made some thirty different visits, but seldom out of season, so that I
have rarely seen her draggle-tailed. But in that rainy March she looked
as miserable as London, and next day only the luxurious accommodation
of the Sud Express made the journey through a sodden France agreeable.
Floods everywhere. In the neighbourhood of Orleans, the geography of the
country seemed to have changed, and this land of few lakes was studded
with sheets of water that more than rivalled those of Bouchet, or
Gerardmer.
Entering Spain we suffered a change in railway accommodation which was
to be typical of many things when changed into Spanish—a change for the
worse. The carriages were no longer so princely in their appointments,
they were smaller and not quite so clean; but we were still on the
Sud Express, the _train de luxe_, and were (but guessed it not) more
comfortable than we were to be again for many moons. So in the darkness
through Northern Spain, awakening in the morning as we were nearing the
borders of Portugal.
Thus far the journey had mostly covered ground long familiar to me, but
Portugal was a new land, and romantically beautiful it appeared, with
its stony uplands, its green mountains and leafy valleys, seen in the
clear rain-washed air of that golden day that followed the passing of
the floods. We were due in Lisbon at eleven o’clock at night; but, a
bridge on the route having been washed away, the train had to make a long
détour. We arrived at one o’clock in the morning; yet the town was as
wide awake as if it had been no later than ten. It evidently goes to bed
about three, as we soon found to our cost when we sought to sleep in one
of the luxurious chambers of the Avenida Palace Hotel. And here again we
were unconsciously bidding good-bye to genuine comfort, as we were never
to see in any hotel of South America a room worthy to be slept in by
comparison, though we were to pay three times the price charged at the
Avenida Palace, which, at the time, seemed sufficiently high!
An interesting little incident on arrival at Lisbon threw a gleam of
light on the manners of the degenerate Portuguese nobility, about which
we were to learn much from a friend who had resided there since the
flight of King Manuel. At the Gare d’Orsay in Paris, we noticed that the
next compartment to ours was occupied by a tall and handsome lady and
her little daughter. Elegantly dressed, her natural but waning beauty
aided artificially, her hair of false gold, this painted lady offered a
strong contrast to the group of relatives who had come to see her off.
At best, one might have judged these to be ugly people of the artisan
class; at worst, gentry who traded less honourably in the obscurer byways
of Saint Lazarre or Montmartre. The lady showed no physical resemblance
to any of them; she might have been a changeling daughter. Her own child
was a charming little creature, despite her plain features, and it was
clear the mother could command more cash than any of the shabby group of
relatives who had wished them _adieu_ and _bon voyage_.
All the way to Lisbon, the lady kept closely to her compartment, but the
trixy little daughter made free of the car. On arrival at the Portuguese
capital, one began to piece together the scraps of a typical modern
“romance,” as the pair were met by an undersized, flabby and slightly
deformed young gentleman, on whom the child gazed with all the interest
of a first encounter. A great motor car was in waiting and conveyed them
to our hotel, a distance of about two hundred yards! We were fated to see
much of the curious trio on the voyage to Rio de Janeiro. The gentleman,
a Portuguese nobleman, was evidently making for the safety of Brazil, and
had planned to keep bright his memories of Parisian Nights in company of
one of the pleasure-givers.
One meets queer ship-mates on the South American trip. It would be the
height of indiscretion to inquire too closely into the relationship of
many of the couples who sit with you at table. Somehow I always thought
of “the distinguished member of the Jockey Club, with his niece, h’m,
h’m!” in _Tartarin sur les Alpes_, when the Portuguese nobleman, with his
lady, h’m, h’m, sat down at table with the rest of our oddly assorted
company.
There is a brightness and a sense of gaiety about the picturesque and
beautiful capital of Portugal that are most engaging to the fleeting
visitor, but after a short time the foreign resident finds it one of the
dullest of towns, and has a lurking sympathy with the old and fallen
nobility who sought distraction in pursuits that drew only the poison
from the pleasures of London and Paris, and eventually made of them the
most corrupt aristocracy in Europe. From all one heard, the revolution
did not come a day too soon, and seldom have there been a king and
an aristocracy that more openly “asked for it” than Manuel and his
effeminate nobles.
The mingling of the negro blood with the European, which is so marked a
feature of the Portuguese, is doubtless responsible for the low ebb of
morality in Lisbon. The Jewish type is very noticeable among the people
one passes in the streets, and especially in the women. Altogether,
I felt that the breath of the place was somewhat unwholesome, and
Republicanism cannot possibly make matters worse, though national decay
may have gone too far for any sort of government to re-vitalise the
character of the people. Old Portugal’s adventurings abroad, which made
her powerful for a time, brought to her the canker of luxury and the
lowering of her virility, in the admixture of the blood of alien and
vicious peoples, so that to-day in her decadence she is really paying
her final debts of empire.
[Illustration: ONE OF THE CROWDED DOCKS IN THE PORT OF BUENOS AYRES.]
[Illustration: FRIENDS OF EMIGRANTS AWAITING THE ARRIVAL OF A SHIP.]
One sign there was of hope in what we saw—the admirably conducted
orphanage that occupies the splendid buildings of the old monastery
of Belem, hard by the memorial of Vasco da Gama, with its memories of
Portugal’s golden age. Nowhere have I seen a finer institution of its
kind, with better evidence of wise charity and tender care of the young.
It was a good act that cleared out the droning monks and confiscated
their building for its present humane and profitable use. The boys are
taught all kinds of trades, including agriculture, and some of them to
whom we spoke during their play-hour were much ahead of the scholars of
any English orphanage in their knowledge of foreign languages. French
was the favourite, although one of the lads, who had strong evidence of
negro origin, spoke both French and English admirably, and told us he was
studying German.
On the way to the monastery we spent some time examining the
extraordinary collection of old royal carriages and sedan chairs, housed
in a plain modern building. These relics of the gorgeous past are even
more remarkable in their prodigal ostentation than those of the famous
collection at Versailles, and will probably be guarded by the Republic
as evidence that the spendthrift kings who so long oppressed the country
went to sinful extremes in their love of ostentation and luxury, though
all the same I would not swap a sixteen horse power car for the whole
collection, if it were comfort I was after!
The driver of the motor car we had hired would have been kept in
solitary confinement in any peaceful country, for he was a public danger,
yet when we had loaded up with our luggage at the hotel we came near
to missing the ship, as “something went wrong with the works,” and the
reckless driver proved so incompetent a mechanic that we had eventually
to transfer ourselves and our light luggage (the heavy having been
shipped in England) to another taxi, and so reach the quay, where for a
mere trifle of 2,000 reis ($2) two brawny rascals put our bags on board
the tender, with more fuss than an English porter would have made over
shifting a car-load.
In a few minutes more we were aboard the liner that was to carry us
across the sunlit seas to that other America which is so different from
the Northern Continent and of which Americans really know so little.