The interest which Argentina arouses is entirely unlike that which appeals to the traveller's eye and mind in Peru or Bolivia or Chile. In each of these three countries there is scenery grand in scale and different in type from what any other part of the world has to shew. In Peru and Bolivia there are also the remains of a primitive civilization, scanty, no doubt, but all the more attractive because they stimulate rather than satisfy our curiosity. They speak of antiquity, and indeed all three countries have a flavour of antiquity, though Chile has scarcely any relics coming down from it. But in the River Plate regions there is (except along the Andes and in the far north) little natural beauty, and nothing that recalls the past. All is modern and new; all belongs to the prosperous present and betokens a still more prosperous future. Argentina is like western North America. The swift and steady increase in its agricultural production, with an increase correspondingly large in means of internal transportation, is what gives its importance to the country and shews that it will have a great part to play in the world. It is the United States of the Southern Hemisphere. Not even the approach by sea to Alexandria or to the mouth of the Hooghly below Calcutta, is duller than Buenos Aires deserves its name, for its air is clear as well as keen, there being no large manufacturing works to pollute it with coal smoke. The streets are well kept; everything is fresh and bright. The most striking buildings besides those of the new Legislative Buenos Aires is something between Paris and New York. It has the business rush and the luxury of the one, the gaiety and pleasure-loving aspect of the other. Everybody seems to have money, and to like spending it, and to like letting everybody else know that it is being spent. Betting on horses is the favourite amusement, and the races the greatest occasion for social display. An immense concourse gathers at the racing enclosure and fills the grand-stand. The highest officials of state and city are there, as well as the world of wealth and fashion. The ladies are decked out with all the Parisian finery and jewels that money can buy; and although nature has given to many of them good features and to most of them fine eyes, custom seems to prescribe that nature shall not be left to herself. On fine afternoons, there is a wonderful turnout of carriages drawn by handsome horses, and still more of costly motor cars, in the principal avenues of the Park; they press so thick that vehicles are often jammed together for fifteen or twenty minutes, unable to move on. Nowhere in the world does one get a stronger impression of exuberant wealth and extravagance. The Park itself, called Palermo, lies on the edge of the city towards the river, and is approached by a well-designed and well-planted avenue. It suffers from the absolute flatness of the ground in which there is no As the Opera-house and the races and the Park shew one side of the activities of this sanguine community, so the docks and port shew another. Twenty years ago sea-going vessels had to lie two or three miles off Buenos Aires, discharging their cargo by lighters and their passengers partly by small launches and partly by high-wheeled carts which carried people from the launches ashore through the shallow water. Now a long, deep channel has been dug, and is kept open by dredging, up which large steamers find their way to the very edge of the city. Docks many miles in length have been constructed to receive the shipping, and large stretches of land reclaimed, and huge warehouses erected and railway lines laid down alongside the wharves. Not Glasgow when she deepened her river to admit the largest ships, nor Manchester when she made her ship canal, hardly even Chicago when she planned a new park and lagoons in the lake that washes her front, shewed greater enterprise and bolder conceptions than did the men of Buenos Aires when on this exposed and shallow coast they made If the best parts of Buenos Aires are as tasteful as those of Paris, there is plenty of ugliness in the worst suburbs. On its land side, the city dies out into a waste of scattered shanties, or "shacks" (as they are called in the United States), dirty and squalid, with corrugated iron roofs, their wooden boards gaping like rents in tattered clothes. These are inhabited by the newest and poorest of the immigrants from southern Italy and southern Spain, a large and not very desirable element among whom anarchism is rife. This district which, if it can hardly be called city, can still less be called country, stretches far out over the Pampa. Thus, although the central parts are built closely, these suburbs are built so sparsely that the town as a whole covers an immense space of ground. Further out and after passing for some miles between market gardens and fields divided by wire fences, with never a hedge, one reaches real country, an outer zone in which some of the wealthy landowners have laid out their estates and erected pleasant country houses. We were invited to one such, and admired the art with which the ground had been planted, various kinds of trees having been selected with so much taste that even on this unpromising level picturesqueness and beauty had been attained. Everything that does not need much moisture grows luxuriantly. We saw rosebushes forty Though Buenos Aires is often described as a cosmopolitan place, its population has far fewer elements than would be found in any of the great cities of the United States. There are English and German colonies, both composed almost wholly of business and railway men, and each keeping, for social purposes, pretty closely to itself. There is a French colony, its upper section including men of intellectual mark, while the humbler members serve pleasure rather than business. From the United States not many persons have come to settle as merchants or ranch owners, but the great meat companies are already at work. Of the so-called "Latin" element in the inhabitants, half or a little more is Argentine born, less than a quarter Spanish or Basque, more than a quarter Italian, largely from Sicily and Calabria. The growth of a few great cities at a rate more rapid than that of the countries to which they belong is one of the most remarkable facts of recent years and fraught with many consequences. It is especially visible in the newest countries. In New South Wales the population of Sydney is nearly two-fifths that of the whole state, in Victoria that of Melbourne more than two-fifths. In California two great cities, San Francisco and Los Angeles, have one-third of the whole population.77 The same tendency is apparently in South America. Of the whole population of Argentina, with its immense area of 1,135,000 square miles, one-fifth dwell in the city of Buenos Aires.78 It is probable that this ratio may be maintained so that when, The northwestern part of the republic, lying east of northern Chile and south of western Bolivia, is a tableland, sometimes rugged, sometimes undulating, the higher parts of it much like the adjoining plateau of Bolivia. But the rest of the country, nine-tenths of the whole, is an immense plain more than two thousand miles long from Magellan's Straits to the frontiers of eastern Bolivia and Paraguay. It is interrupted in a few points by low ranges, but, speaking generally, is a prairie like that which in North America lies between the hills of southern Oklahoma and the Canadian border, though more level, for it wants the undulating swells and ridges of Kansas and Iowa, and is less seamed by river beds. The climate varies with the latitude. It is severe in the Patagonian south, and almost tropical in the north. But in the region called the Pampas, that is to say, a sort of square, six hundred miles wide from the estuary of the Rio de la Plata to the outlying All this level Pampa, except that subtropical northern section I have referred to, is bare and open prairie, covered, as were the former prairies of North America, with grass and flowers, the grass sometimes six or seven feet high; but with no trees save here and there along the beds of the few and feeble streams. The native fauna, especially in the families to which the larger mammals belong, was poorer than that of western North America and far scantier than that of the southern parts of Africa in the same latitude. There were no buffaloes or elk, and few horned creatures corresponding to the elands and hartebeests and antelopes of South Africa. So remarkable a contrast is doubtless explicable by the different geological histories of the two continents. For three centuries after their arrival the Spaniards did little to explore or settle the western or southern parts of the country. They founded small posts from Buenos Aires northwards along the ParanÁ and Paraguay rivers, and through them kept up communication with Potosi and Lima across the vast Andean plateau. As the government forbade the Argentines to trade with Europe direct, Spanish merchandise had to be brought to them by a long and difficult land route via Panama and the ports of Peru, and thence over the Andes. The inconveniences of this monstrous system, devised in the interests of a group of Spanish traders, were mitigated by the smuggling into Buenos Aires, which was carried on by means of English and Dutch ships. Life was not secure, for the Indian tribes sometimes raided up to the gates of the little towns, such as Cordova and Tucuman, but as the savages had no firearms and no discipline, When the development of the country had received an impetus by the creation in 1776 of a viceroyalty at Buenos Aires, and by the permission given to the Atlantic ports to trade with Europe, the cattle and horses became a source of wealth, men took to ranching, and colonization spread out into the wilderness. Then, in 1810, came the revolution which freed Argentina from Spain, and gave her people the opportunity of making their own prosperity. Unfortunately a period of civil wars followed, and it was not till the fall of the dictator Rosas in 1852 that the era of real progress began. All this time the native Indians had been disappearing, partly by war, partly from the causes which usually break down aborigines in contact with white men. A campaign organized against them in 1879 practically blotted out the last of those who had roved over the central Pampas. The more civilized Indians of the northwestern plateau are quiet and industrious. A few nomads, now quite harmless, survive in Patagonia, and some fiercer tribes maintain a virtual independence in the forest and swamp country of the Gran Chaco in the far north. Otherwise the aborigines have vanished, leaving no trace, and having poured only a very slight infusion of native blood into the veins of Such was the country and such those who dwelt in it: boundless plains, bare and featureless, but fertile wherever there was rain enough to water them, and not With the comparative peace that followed the fall of Rosas there came the new factors which have enabled the country to advance so quickly: the entrance of European capital, chiefly expended in providing means of transportation, and the arrival of immigrants from Italy and Spain. No country offers greater facilities for the construction of railways. Quickly and cheaply built over a surface everywhere smooth and level, they radiate out from the capital, and have now penetrated every part of the country except the marshy wilderness of the Gran Chaco in the north and the arid wilderness of remote Patagonia in the south. The central part of the republic within three hundred miles of Buenos Aires is as thickly scored with lines of steel as is Westphalia or Ohio. Settlers, mostly following the railroads, have now put under crops or laid out in well-appointed stock farms all this central region and a good deal more of land to the north of it. The rest of the plain is occupied by cattle ranches or sheep-farms, except where the want of water makes stock raising impossible. Out of the 253,000,000 acres which are roughly estimated as being the area An enormous area still remains available for tillage, though nothing but experiment can determine to what extent lands hitherto deemed too arid may be made productive by the new methods of dry farming, now prosecuted so successfully in western North America, and beginning to be tried in South Africa and Australia also. Of this central tract already brought under cultivation, by far the largest part is fertile. There are sandy bits here and there, but the bulk of it is a rich, deep loam, giving large returns in its natural state. Thus the waving plains of grass over which the wandering Indian roamed and the Gaucho careered lassoing the wild cattle are now being rapidly turned into a settled farming country. The history of these regions and the process of their settlement resembles in many points that of the western United States and western Canada, but differs in one point of great significance. In North America the settlement of the new lands has from first to last been conducted by agricultural settlers drawn from the middle or working-class of the older parts of the country or of Europe, and the land has been allotted to them in small properties, seldom exceeding one hundred and sixty acres. Thus over all the This feature has, of course, had important effects on the character of the rural population. It consists, broadly speaking, of two classes, the rich estancieros or landholders, and the labourers. Though a good many Englishmen and other foreigners have bought farms and mean to stay on them, so that they or their Agricultural prosperity, more general here than almost anywhere else in the world, is tempered by two risks, either of which may destroy the profits of the year. One is drought. As the average rainfall is, in most parts of the country, only just sufficient to give moisture to the arable land, together with drink and grass to the animals, a deficient rainfall means scanty crops and the loss of cattle. It is only along the skirts of the Andes that much can be done by irrigation, for the permanent rivers are few and the lagoons, which at one time were frequent, have been drying up. Besides, they are often brackish. The other danger is a plague of locusts. These horrible creatures come in swarms so vast as to be practically irresistible. As aridity is the weak point of the Pampas in their agricultural aspect, so monotony is the defect of their scenery. There is a certain beauty in a vast plain, but this one is so absolutely dead a level that you cannot see its vastness. There would be a charming variety of colour in it, the vivid green of the alfalfa and the light blue profusion of the flax blossoms contrasting with the yellowing wheat and the more sober greyish tints of the maize and the bleached pasture, but all these, as well as the shadows of the passing clouds, are not visible when one is standing on the ground and can see no further than a mile or two. The Pampa country has now been turned from a prairie of grass and flowers into huge fields divided by wire fences and intersected by straight roads, or rather cart tracks, marked by the line of brown dust that a drove of cattle or a vehicle Nevertheless one is glad not to have been born in the Pampas. Perhaps those whose early years have been passed in flat countries do not feel the need for hills in the landscape in the same way as do the natives of Scotland or New England. Could any one of the latter class dwell for twelve months in Argentina without longing to rush One word more on the economic aspects of Argentina before I come to the people. The wealth of the land is in tillage and live stock. Its three great agricultural products are wheat, maize, and linseed, in each of which it is now in the front rank of exporting countries. Sugar and cotton are grown in the north, and may increase largely there as that region gets settled, and wine is made at Mendoza for home consumption. Cereals will, however, remain the most important crops. Vast as has been the increase of live stock, the limits of the ranching area have not yet been reached.80 The export of meat received a great stimulus from the introduction of systems of cold storage and transport, and now an enormous amount of European and North American as well as Argentine capital is embarked in this trade. There is, so far as known, hardly any coal in the country, and the sources of water-power are only along the Southern Andes, so that manufacturing industries have not been established on any large scale. The slopes of the Cordilleras furnish mines of gold, silver, copper, and lead, but the production of these minerals is small compared to that of Peru and Bolivia. The people have not taken to the sea either as mercantile mariners or as fishermen, and the demand for agricultural labour has been so large that there was no occasion for any one to seek his living in those employments. The best evidence or illustration of the swift progress of the republic and of the confidence which European investors feel in its resources is to be found in the development of its railway system. The first railway line was opened in 1857 and was twelve miles long. In 1911 there were nearly 20,000 miles in operation, and the receipts in 1910 amounted to £20,000,000. Most of these railways, many of which are of a gauge broader than those of the United States or Great Britain, have been built and are worked by British companies, a few by the government.81 In this immense fertile and temperate country with hardly six people to a square mile, what limit can we set to the growth of wealth and population? Already the nation is larger than the Dutch or Portuguese or Swedish. Within thirty years it may equal Italy. Within fifty years it may approach France or England, even if the present rate of its increase be reduced. It may one day be the most numerous among all the peoples that speak a tongue of Latin origin, as the United States is already the most numerous of all that speak a Teutonic one. Many things may happen to change its present character, First a few words about the race. No other Spanish-American state, except Uruguay, has a people of a stock so predominantly European. The aboriginal Indian element is too small to be worth regarding. It is now practically confined to the Gran Chaco in the extreme north, but elsewhere the influence of Indian blood is undiscernible among the people to-day.82 The aborigines of the central Pampas have disappeared,—nearly all were killed off,—and those of Patagonia have been dying out. We have, therefore, a nation practically of pure South European blood, whose differences from the parent stock are due, not to the infusion of native elements, but to local and historical causes. Till thirty or forty years ago this population was almost entirely of Spanish stock. Then the rapid development of the Pampas for tillage began to create a demand for labour, which, while it increased immigration from Spain, brought in a new and larger flow from Italy. The Spaniards who came were largely from the northern provinces and among them there were many Basques, a race as honest and energetic as any in Europe. So far back as 1875 one used to see in the French Basque country between Biarritz and the pass of Roncesvalles plenty of neat and comfortable houses erected by men who had bought back their savings from the River Here, as in the United States, the birth-rate is higher among immigrants than among natives. In the case of Italians it is twice, in that of Spaniards one and a half times, as great. What effect upon the type and tendencies of the future nation this Italian infusion will have it is hard to predict, because no one knows how far national character In considering the probable result of the commingling, and as a fact explaining the readiness with which Italian immigrants allow themselves to be Argentinized, one must remember that these come from the humblest and least educated strata of Italian society. They are, like all Italians, naturally intelligent, but they have not reached that grade of knowledge which attaches men to the literature and the historical traditions of their own country. Thus, the scantiness of their education prevents them from making either to the intellectual life or to the art of their adopted country those contributions which one might expect from a people which has always held a place in the front rank of European letters, art, and science. It may be expected, however, that in the course of a generation or two inborn Italian capacity will assert itself in the descendants of the immigrants. The other foreigners, French, English (business men and landowning farmers), and German (chiefly business men in the cities) are hardly numerous enough to affect the Argentine type, and the two latter have hitherto remained The social structure of the nation is the result of the economic conditions already described. In the rural districts there are two classes only,—landowners, often with vast domains, and labourers, the native labourers settled, the Italians to some extent migratory. In the cities there exists, between the wealthy and the workingmen, a considerable body of professional men, shopkeepers, and clerks, who are rather less of a defined middle class than they would be in European countries. Society is something like that of North American cities, for the lines between classes are not sharply drawn, and the spirit of social equality has gone further than in France, and, of course, far further than in Germany or Spain. One cannot speak of an aristocracy, even in the qualified sense in which the word could be used in Peru or Chile, for though a few old colonial families have the Spanish pride of lineage, it is, as a rule, wealth and wealth only that gives station and social eminence. Manners, which everywhere in South America have lost something of the courtliness of Castile, are here rather more "modern" than in Mexico or Lima, because The little that I have to say about the political life of the country must be reserved for another and more general chapter, so I will here note only two facts peculiar to Argentina. It is, of all the Spanish-American republics, that in which the church has least to do with politics. Though Roman Catholicism is declared by the constitution to be supported by the state, and the president and vice-president must profess it, that freedom of religious worship which is guaranteed by law is fully carried out in practice, and all denominations may, without let or hindrance, erect churches and preach and teach. The legislature has shewn itself so broad-minded as to grant subventions to a system of Protestant schools founded originally as a missionary enterprise by a Protestant Episcopal clergyman, and many of the Roman Catholic families of Buenos Aires send their children to schools provided by the American Methodist Episcopal Church. In liberality of spirit, Argentina is rather more advanced than either Peru or Chile, not to speak of bigoted Ecuador. Still more noteworthy is it that there seems to be little or no effort on the part of the church to influence public affairs. No political party is allied with the clergy, no clerical influence is felt in elections. The happy detachment of the two spheres which travellers observe The other phenomenon which no one will connect with religious freedom, inasmuch as it has appeared in nearly every country of Europe and of North America, whatever be the religious conditions that prevail, is the emergence here and nowhere else in South America of a vehement anarchist propaganda. Among the immigrants from Italy and from eastern Spain there have been enough persons engaged in this movement to cause great alarm to the government. Not long ago the chief of the police was killed by an explosive thrown by a Russian anarchist, and in the summer of 1910 a bomb was exploded in the great Opera-house during a performance, wounding a number of persons. These occurrences led to the proclamation of a state of siege which was maintained for many weeks. The police is said to be efficient,85 and the Executive did not hesitate to use powers which it would be less easy to obtain or use in the United States or in England. Our age has seen too many strange incidents to be surprised that these acts of violence should be perpetrated in a country where, though no doubt there is an ostentatious display of wealth, work is more abundant and wages are higher than in any other part of the world. Such acts are aimed not at oppression, nor at bad industrial conditions, but at government itself. The world is to-day ruled by physical science and by business, which, in the vast proportions industry and commerce have now attained, is itself the child of It is the only kind of idealism that one finds in the city or the country. Every visitor is struck by the dominance of material interests and a material view of things. Compared with the raking in of money and the spending it in betting or in ostentatious luxury, a passion for the development of the country's resources and the adornment of its capital stand out as aims that widen the vision and elevate the soul. A recent acute and friendly observer has said that patriotism among the Argentines amounts to a mania. Such excess of sentiment is not only natural in a young and growing nation, and innocent too (so long as it is not aggressive), but is helpful in giving men something beyond their own material enjoyments and vanities to think of and to work for. It makes them wish to stand well in the world's eyes, and do in the best way what they see others doing. If there is an excess, time will correct it. Loitering in the great Avenida de Mayo and watching the hurrying crowd and the whirl of motor cars, and the gay shop-windows, and the open-air cafÉs on the sidewalks, and the Parisian glitter of the women's dresses, one feels much nearer to Europe than anywhere else in South America. Bolivia suggests the seventeenth century and Peru the eighteenth, and even in energetic Chile there is an air of the elder time, and a soothing sense of detachment. But here all is twentieth century, with suggestions of the twenty-first. |