I

No nation of the southern continent is better qualified than Argentina to rebuke the stupid jest that refers to the Latin-American countries as opera bouffe republics. It has a domain one-third the size of the United States, or as large as the territory lying east of the Mississippi, with Texas added, stretching from tropic heat to antarctic cold, and possessing a frontage on the Atlantic as extensive as our own coast line from Portland, Maine, to Key West, Florida. It has over 500,000,000 acres of its 1,135,840 square miles of area available for the cultivation of life-sustaining products and distributed over vast, treeless, well-watered plains, every one of which is easily accessible to the seaboard with the simplest of railway construction. These plains have no such natural obstructions to transportation as our Alleghanies or Rockies, and have for their produce a much shorter haul to the European world of consumers.

Argentina has the further advantage of over 18,000 miles of up-to-date railways radiating from its port cities, and five river systems, one of which, La Plata, the outlet for the waters of the ParanÁ and Uruguay, is second only to the Amazon among the world’s great rivers. It is 180 miles wide at its mouth, and pours into the Atlantic a flood greater by eighty per cent. than that cast by the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico.

The timber regions of the country are rich in structural and cabinet woods. It has a grazing industry that ranks second only to Australia in sheep, second only to the United States in cattle, and second only to the United States and Russia in horses. In 1910 it exported to Europe 190,430 live animals and $130,000,000 worth of frozen beef, mutton, pork, hides, and other animal products. Its total foreign commerce amounted to $702,664,810 in value. It has an agricultural output that places it in the first rank of exporters of maize and linseed, second to Russia in the export of wheat, and among the leaders in corn, a soil that can grow still greater quantities of sugar, tobacco, rice, alfalfa, grapes, fruits, yerba matÉ (Paraguay tea), olives, corn, barley, and oats, besides medicinal, textile, and tinctorial plants, enabling her to export more foodstuffs, including meats and grains, than any other nation on the globe—a productiveness so great that farms are measured in some sections by the square league, instead of by the paltry acre, as with us, and grains are sold by the metric ton of 2205 pounds, instead of by the bushel. Its mountains contain profitably workable deposits of gold, silver, and copper, and oil has been found in paying quantities.

It has a metropolis and seaport (its capital, Buenos Aires) reckoned as the second Latin city in the world, possessing a population of over a million and a quarter, and adorned with buildings, parks, surface improvements, and evidences of wealth and culture that stamp it as one of the finest cities of the Western Hemisphere.

It has a stable and enlightened government, constituted on the same general plan as our own, and advancing rapidly to a near approximation to our own in efficiency. It has a history rich, in its later years, in traditions of statesmanship and patriotism, bearing on its roll of honor the names of such statesmen, soldiers, educators, and executives as Belgrano, San MartÍn, Alvear, PuyrredÓn, Rivadavia, MitrÉ, and Sarmiento, names worthy of special reverence among a people familiar with the standards set by Washington and Lincoln. In a word, with all this material greatness, and such a record of energetic and enlightened adaptation to world progress, Argentina may, in the not distant future, turn the jest against its northern perpetrators; for a country with a population of seven millions, which could feed two hundred million people and give lodging to half that number, is a competitor to be reckoned with seriously in the struggle for commercial supremacy.

Such, then, is the country of superlatives that opens up before the visitor who enters at its gateway, Buenos Aires, and breathes in the wholesome, equable breezes from the pampas—the vast green plains that stretch away for hundreds of miles in three directions; he agrees at once that the City of Good Airs was well named by Pedro de Mendoza when he planted his ill-fated settlement on its site in 1535.

It is to be regretted that this wide-awake, rapidly growing community buys so much more largely in the European markets than ours. In 1910, of the total amount they paid for imports ($351,770,056), our share was only $48,418,892. But then, as they point out, they are our competitors in the markets of Europe. Their cereals and beef and hides and wool have no place in the United States, a country that produces and exports the same things, and they manufacture no articles that we want; so it is only fair that they should deal with those who buy of them. When it came to a question of who should build their last two big battleships, however, they did favor our shipyards with the contracts. Both of these are of the super-dreadnought type and have already been launched.

The Parisian is pleased to say, “Paris is France”; with even greater significance may the Buenos Airean say that Buenos Aires is Argentina. Out of his pride in his great city, the PorteÑo will tell one that Argentina really has but two parts, as a matter of fact: the one, Buenos Aires; the other—all the rest of the country—called El Campo (the Camp), regardless that he includes in this sweeping assertion such other railroad centers and ports as Rosario, La Plata, ParanÁ, TucumÁn, CÓrdoba, or Bahia Blanca—all of them cities exceeding fifty thousand in population and one of them, Rosario, exceeding one hundred thousand. And, indeed, the Bonarenses may well be proud of their metropolis. One-fifth of the country’s inhabitants is absorbed into its teeming life of industry and luxury; it is the crystallization of all that this modernized young giant stands for in the world of commerce; it is the greatest Spanish-speaking city in the world.

Its dominant position was not achieved, however, without years of contention with other centers of industry in the country. During the three hundred years of Spain’s stifling economic policies in this, once the agricultural unit of her golden empire, Argentina made small progress. The settlements founded in Santiago (1553), in TucumÁn (1565), and in CÓrdoba and Santa FÉ (1573), by the immigration of Spaniards from Peru, Chile, and the early settlement of Buenos Aires, all led an isolated and neglected existence during the colonial period up to the year 1776, when Spain, awakened from her dream of endless mineral riches in South America to a realization of the importance of the fertile country of La Plata, and erected it into a separate viceroyalty, independent of the Viceroyalty of Peru. The viceroys, freed from the poisoning influence of Andean gold lust, did much to develop a sense of nationalism among the scattered agricultural centers. With the growth of this nationalism, the protests against Spain’s repression increased until 1810, when the people asserted their right to an unrestricted, independent national life. May twenty-fifth of that year is their Fourth of July, and is perpetuated to-day in the name of the superb Avenida de Mayo in their capital city.

During the formative period that followed, Argentine politics revolved chiefly about the question of Unitarianism or Federalism—whether the rich and progressive province at the gateway of the nation (Buenos Aires) should form a separate unit of government, or remain part of a confederation and be accorded the leading rÔle in national affairs that its importance merited. In 1862 federalism prevailed and the integrity of the Argentine Republic was assured, under the presidency of General MitrÉ. The capital was later removed from Santa FÉ to Buenos Aires and the latter city erected into a federal district (of some seventy square miles) somewhat similar to our own District of Columbia. The capital of the Province of Buenos Aires, however, is La Plata, a few miles distant from the national capital, on the shores of the great river.

This period marks the beginning of the real history of the Argentine nation. Under the enlightened statesmanship of BartolomÉ MitrÉ and Sarmiento, the two chief figures in Argentina’s rapid development from this point, the great influx of British and German capital began. Immigration was encouraged for the working of the fields; a solid foundation was given to educational development; railroads were constructed, and the machinery of government made adequate to the vigorous strides of the solidified nation. In the short space of time that has passed since 1881, over two billions of dollars of British and German gold have been invested; some eighteen thousand miles of well-equipped railways have been constructed, almost wholly by English capital; immigration has doubled the population of the country so that now half its present inhabitants are foreign-born—during the last ten years alone two millions have come in—and a thorough system of education has been perfected, embracing, among all sorts of primary, military, and industrial institutions, three great universities, one of which, at Buenos Aires, graduated over five thousand young men last year and, with the University of CÓrdoba (founded in 1613), ranks with Harvard and Yale. In 1910 they celebrated the centennial anniversary of their independence with a superb industrial exposition that was a revelation even to themselves, and festivities that are said to have cost $20,000,000.

The city of Buenos Aires has not the picturesque environment that adds so much to the natural beauty of the cities of Rio de Janeiro and Mexico, nor the harbor capacity of New York; nor are its culture and civic personality, perhaps, as deep-rooted as in Boston; it makes little pretension to the aristocracy of blood boasted by the still essentially Spanish Lima; nor has it yet attained such distinction as a national center of art, literature, and music as has the Brazilian capital. It may be best compared with Chicago, for it is conspicuously modern, its present development having been begun and achieved within the last quarter of a century, although the city itself is nearly four hundred years old, and is the industrial complement of an agricultural and pastoral activity even greater than that of our Middle West. Indeed, its banks and clearing houses are said to transact quite as much business as those of Chicago.

The docks of Buenos Aires, like those of our great lake city, are most impressive; they represent an outlay of $50,000,000. Only fifteen years ago the visitor was bundled ashore in a rowboat and deposited on a marshy beach. Now his vessel enters one of the numerous basins of the vast dock system and confronts row upon row of massive masonry and cement wharves, behind which spreads a network of railway lines. In the background are public gardens with flowering bushes and statuary to beautify the approach to the city. For mile after mile, flanked by a seemingly endless procession of great trans-Atlantic ships and up-river produce boats, these docks stretch their length, not in a series of slips, as along the congested waterfront in New York, but so arranged that the vessels can moor broadside to them and have their cargoes loaded or unloaded by enormous traveling cranes; and, without, lying at anchor in the river awaiting their turn for a berth, are many more—for this giant enterprise, with towering grain elevators and a veritable forest of powerful cranes, already fails entirely to satisfy present needs. They are not only to be extended but so enlarged that they will accommodate vessels of the heaviest draft.

Not even the New York wharves with their vast commerce give such a picture of vivid bustle. The big German “Cap” boats—Cap Ortegal, Cap Frio, and the rest; French, Spanish, and Italian liners with champagne, aperitives, opera companies, automobiles and immigrants—always immigrants; Newcastle freighters unloading bolted sections of steel bridges; up-river boats laden with yerba matÉ or fragrant oranges from Paraguay, and the aristocrats of these seas, the Royal Mails from England—all contribute to the pell-mell, reminding one of the blurred babel of tongues that whispers across the decks of the world’s ships in the drowsy passage through the Suez Canal.

And, parenthetically, a most telling commentary on our indifference to Argentine possibilities lies in the fact that of the many thousand vessels that transferred cargoes at these docks in 1910, only four bore the stars and stripes; whereas, prior to our Civil War (which, of course, absorbed our merchant marine)—in 1852—there were in the harbor of Buenos Aires six hundred vessels flying our flag, or more than double the number from all other nations combined. In those days the influence of our people over the commerce of the southern half of South America was predominant. A Pennsylvanian, William Wheelright, was looked upon as its father.

On leaving the docks and driving up into the city, the visitor is at once impressed with the fact that Buenos Aires is not so wholly wrapped up in the purely material as is our commercial center on Lake Michigan. It has broadened along more Æsthetic lines and is cultivating the graces, not alone the sordid features, of cosmopolitanism. In the newer parts, particularly in the fashionable suburb of Belgrano, the buildings and shaded boulevards and beautifully landscaped parks resemble rather those of Paris; although it is not behind our own big cities in public utilities. Even in the business district there are no skyscrapers or elevated railroads to disturb the harmony of the architectural scheme; not even the usual promiscuous, blatant advertising posters are permitted to be displayed until they have been censored by the proper official, and when approved they are affixed to ornamentally tinted and paneled billboards, erected for the purpose. So keen, indeed, are the Bonarenses to enhance the beauty of their city that a prize is offered each year for the handsomest structure to be erected. And yet there is much that is possessed of the charm of antiquity. The occasional glimpses of blossoms and foliage one gets through doorways opening into the courtyards, or patios, of the old Spanish houses is most refreshing in the midst of so much that is modern.

It is from Paris, too, that they have acquired their culture, and their taste in dress and amusements and in literature and art. They buy their clothes in Paris and sip their French liqueurs in the cafÉs in true Parisian style, and they are entertained by opera and comedy companies from the best Parisian theaters. They have absorbed into their city life an Italian colony that exceeds in numbers the population of Genoa, and more Spaniards than could be crowded into Toledo, besides a multitude of British and Germans and a goodly sprinkling from the rest of Europe, and even Asia. Having taken so much from France and Italy, and being Spanish in descent and in speech, the overtone of the city is distinctly Latin, while their industrial and governmental institutions bear the mark of the Anglo-Saxon. Next to the Italian and Spanish, the British colony is the largest. Then follow the German and the French. The North Americans are small in number; less than three hundred responded to a recent effort to organize a North American Society.

The Bonarenses, however, like the denizens of the Camp, are intensely patriotic and passionately insist upon a recognition of their own distinct personalities. They are the PorteÑos of the great Argentine nation. Nor do they and their compatriots throughout the country welcome the inference that they are Spanish; they are Argentine. One asks a child of the streets whether he speaks Spanish or Italian. He answers haughtily (in the former language): “At home we all talk Argentine.” Strangely enough, their jingoism is not offensive; it is displayed with an amiable candor that is quite disarming. Not satisfied with being Argentine from top to toe, they seek to Argentinize even the transient guest. The rabid Argentinism of the PorteÑo, and his success in amalgamating the kaleidoscopic horde of Europeans and Asiatics living in his city, is illustrated by the answer of another youthful immigrant who, unable to deny that he was born in Genoa, murmured apologetically, “I was so little.”

One of their leading daily newspapers, La Prensa, which has the handsomest newspaper building in existence, displays its patriotism by devoting a large part of its home to public uses. At its own expense it provides physicians and a consulting room, where the poor can have medical attention free, a law office where those who cannot afford to pay for it can have legal advice, an excellent museum of the manufactures and products of the country, a free technical library for the use of students, a large hall for public meetings, a charming salon des fÊtes, in which literary, scientific, and charitable entertainments are given. This paper has a circulation of more than 150,000. So have La NaciÓn and La Argentina, the two other big morning dailies. There are 225 periodicals published in the capital all together.

In this most cosmopolitan of cities the foreigners foregather in little worlds of their own. Most are represented by newspapers published in their own languages, most have clubhouses, more or less pretentious. On the same evening one season recently “The Merry Widow” was produced in Spanish, French, and Italian in as many different theaters; and there are all sorts of places of amusement where foreigners can enjoy themselves, each after his own fashion—from an immense artificial ice skating rink (a very fashionable resort, by the way) to a tropical coffee house, from a golf or race course to a pool room or bowling alley, from the most attractive and elegantly equipped of modern cafÉs to a little French domino parlor or German beer saloon, from a magnificent opera house to a cheap vaudeville or moving-picture theater. It is said that the foremost European artists are as likely to visit Argentina as the United States, and often do, and that many, of all but the first rank in their own countries and who do not come to North America at all, visit Buenos Aires regularly and present European successes long before they are seen in New York.

Their great opera house, the ColÓn, that cost $10,000,000 and occupies a whole square, is one of the most beautiful in the world. There is none in New York or Chicago, or any of our cities, to compare with it. It is of French design and built of stone, and the interior is finished in white marble, gold-bronze ornamentations and rich red drapery and upholstery. It is not quite as large as the Metropolitan in New York, but, as in the Metropolitan, the two lower tiers of boxes are occupied by the families of the “Four Hundred,” for their grand opera down there is just as much of a social function with them as it is with the smart set in our greatest city; and, as their season is in July and August—winter months with them—not a few of the singers that are heard at the Metropolitan later on are heard there in their season. Above the boxes are two balconies and a gallery where the gods congregate and howl for encores for all the world like our own. It appears that they are not very fond of Wagner and the German music, these Bonarenses, but are keen for the Italian and French; so, aside from the opera, competent French and Italian companies are brought over every year for long engagements at other theaters. Also there are French opera comique, Italian farce, and English musical comedy companies, French cafÉ chantant, English music hall and our own vaudeville entertainers without end, and dramas, even Shakespearean occasionally, and the other classes of performances, following each other at the many theaters continually.

Club life is one of the most attractive features. The Britishers (the heaviest investors of foreign capital), of course, have their inevitable cricket, polo, and races—at Hurlingham, near the city—and have erected a substantial country clubhouse, devoted largely to the ritualistic five o’clock tea. The scene on the broad verandas and well-kept lawns is brilliant in the afternoon, with the white lace gowns of the women and the white flannel and broadside panamas of the men. As the guest looks on at the leisurely game of cricket and tea—for these rites are solemnized together by the comfortable Briton—he can easily imagine himself at Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, or Cape Town, where the same function is taking place at the same hour of the day, on club grounds almost identically the same, and to the accompaniment of the same elaborate conversation: “Well played, old chap.” The Germans, Italians, and Spanish also have luxurious clubhouses, and for the transient visitor the Club de Residentes Estranjeros affords a delightful retreat. There is even a big, handsome building for the Y.M.C.A.

Among the fifty or more social organizations in Buenos Aires, the Jockey Club is the Argentine cercle par excellence. Its home on Calle Florida is of a splendor unsurpassed in clubdom. The guest who is fortunate enough to enjoy its courtesies will be impressed by the perfect taste and sumptuousness of its appointments; the superb marble stairway, the banquet hall, and the famous pictures and sculptures are equaled in but few of the palaces of Europe. Its wealth, derived from an initiation fee of $4000 and annual dues of $1500 for each member, and a “rake-off” of ten per cent. of the amounts wagered at its racetrack, together with gate receipts, accumulate so rapidly that it is a source of genuine embarrassment to the governing board.

A short time ago the club voted to devote its surplus to the purchase of a dozen blocks in the heart of the city, the idea being to transform the tract into a beautiful boulevard. It would have cost nearly $14,000,000 in our money. The project was abandoned, not because of the cost, but on the ground of impracticability. During the racing season, held under the auspices of the Club at Palermo Park, the PorteÑo is seen at his best. Paris gowns and picture hats are displayed in profusion in the grandstand, lawns, and luxurious victorias and automobiles that line the course, and with the correct dress and animation of the men, and the prodigality everywhere in evidence (last season $25,000,000 was placed on the horses), the scene takes on an aspect truly Parisian.

As might be expected in such a vigorously modern city, the severest of the restrictions on social intercourse familiar in Latin capitals are here impatiently thrust aside. In the five o’clock parade of the fashionables that wends its way toward the beautiful Palermo Park on Sundays, there are no closed carriages or dark mantillas to conceal the allurements of the seÑoritas, although many may still huddle demurely at the sides of their dueÑas while they distribute the most decorous of smiles among their eager acquaintances of the opposite sex. Here palm-bordered Sarmiento Avenue is crowded with carriages and motor cars six, often eight, rows deep, two stationary in the center and two moving on either side, in which ride as smartly gowned women as may be seen anywhere in America. In the same throng glimpses may be caught of reigning music-hall favorites, at whose sides are usually to be found care-free horsemen just in from the Camp, mounted on superb stallions heavy with silver trappings, and generally with an air of somewhat less sophisticated enjoyment of the event.

There is a prodigality about the PorteÑo in his pleasures that staggers the visitor from the North. Backed by an almost limitless wealth from cattle ranch or plantation, he scatters his pesos with a princely hand. And, of course, there is the obverse of the picture. There is the under world here, peopled largely by immigration from the centers of European unrest, in which there is to be found an extreme of destitution. This is the breeding place of anarchistic ideas, that frequently find expression in violence and that are surely becoming one of the city’s most serious problems.

The zest for amusement among all classes finds many outlets. Strolling along the Calle Florida, or the Calles Cangallo, Esmeralda, Cuyo, MaipÓ, and other well-paved, brilliantly illuminated streets of the theater district, after the fever of the business day has subsided, one drops in at the “English Bar,” the “Bierhalle,” “Confiteria,” or “CafÉ Parisien,” and is sure to find a compatriot to join him in the refreshment of his predilection. Or, for the more solid enjoyment of dinner, the visitor, whether French, North American, Briton, or Turk, can find his favorite national dishes excellently served—at the Restaurant Charpentier, where an orchestra, really good, will for the moment take the homesick Parisian back to his native boulevards; or at the “Sportsman,” where the North American is beguiled from his nostalgia by Sousa’s marches, perhaps, or by biograph pictures of steeple-chasers and Oriental dancers; or at Monsch’s Restaurant, which specializes in the Briton’s needs—where, with a look of acute understanding, the head waiter will permit the guest to select his own English mutton chop or steak from the glass-doored ice chest.

The outdoor cafÉ life is not as well known, so narrow are the streets; even Calle Florida, which is the essentially fashionable shopping street of the central town, is lamentably narrow. With the exception of the Avenida de Mayo, which runs from the plaza containing the Cathedral and President’s palace to the new chambers of Congress, and divides the city into its northern and southern sections, and the Avenida Alvear, which leads from the main part of the city to Palermo Park, flanked with costly homes and interspersed with gardens and plazas that lend a wealth of verdure and flowers to the broad avenue, the streets are so narrow that in the business section vehicles are required by city ordinances to move in the same direction, down one street and up the next. But in this splendid, stately Avenida de Mayo of hers, which, except in appearance, has the characteristics of the business part of New York’s Fifth Avenue from Madison Square to the Park, Buenos Aires has a thoroughfare that rivals Rio’s Avenida Central in beauty, and, with its finer hotels and cafÉs and French architecture, possesses even more of the attractions of a Parisian boulevard.

Buenos Aires is not a city that calls for the usual precautions taken by travelers. All the creature comforts may be had here, although, it must be confessed, at a cost greatly in excess of prices familiar to North Americans. There are good physicians and dentists, and no less than sixteen hospitals—one of which, the British Hospital, is a magnificently equipped institution, and the one patronized by the American colony. There are electric street cars (which carried 125,000,000 passengers last year), splendid trains that carry passengers in thoroughly modern and well-served coaches to almost every part of the settled country, first-class carriages, taxicabs, hotels, department stores, and shops of every description.

II

Leaving the capital for a general tour through Argentina, the visitor will soon come to appreciate the PorteÑo’s division of the republic into the two parts: Buenos Aires and El Campo. For the greater part, the Camp is a vast plain, covering five hundred million acres of flat, fertile soil, with scarcely a natural hillock higher than those thrown up by the ants, and no depression more marked than those which the cartwheels have plowed—stretching from horizon to horizon, north, west, and south—vast, silent, and awe-inspiring in the majesty of its enormous extent and productiveness—the calm, inexhaustible bosom which suckles the prodigious infant on the Plata.

These pampas are the homes of the estancieros, the name given to the masters of the great breeding ranches and plantations. Some possess estancias that are really feudal in extent; one, in Patagonia, is as large as the State of Rhode Island. Their homes and outbuildings are about the only objects that give a human touch to the mile upon mile of cattle ranges, of green maize and golden wheat, of purple alfalfa and vivid blue linseed flower, unless one comes upon the black mud hut of the colono, or small farmer who works the field on shares. An occasional clump of man-planted trees may also be met with, and on the fringe of the pampas are a few widely scattered Indian settlements; but there is little to modify the metaphor of the ocean so universally used to describe these almost limitless plains. Even the seagulls sweep inland for hundreds of miles to add to its effectiveness. When the very heart of the country is reached, the traveler may scan the horizon from every point of the compass and know that in every direction what lies beyond is exactly the same.

The seasons, which are much like our own, although exactly the reverse in their occurrence, bring their appropriate activities. During the busy harvest period the Camp takes on an aspect of bustle which convinces the traveler that this great business republic has cast the word “maÑana” (to-morrow) forever from its “bright lexicon of youth.” Harvesting machines cutting a swath, not four or six, but fourteen feet in width through the wheat fields, threshers with powerful blasts that pile the straw in great stacks, and on the ranches the great armies of horned cattle add the convincing touch to the scene of prosperity.

“A recent census,” says the Bulletin of the Pan American Union (July, 1911), “shows that in Argentina there are over 29,000,000 bovine cattle, 7,500,000 horses, about 500,000 mules and 300,000 asses, over 67,000,000 sheep, almost 4,000,000 goats and 1,403,591 pigs, with a total value of about $700,000,000, gold.... It is an interesting fact that all the animal food so abundantly supplied by this country is the result of stocking this incomparably rich land with animals introduced from European sources. In pre-Columbian times the only domestic animals possessed by the natives were the alpaca and llama. The alpaca was grown for its flesh and its fleece, while the llama was used as a beast of burden. In 1535 the Spaniards brought in horses and asses, and, shortly afterward, bovine cattle were taken to AsunciÓn (Paraguay) by a Portuguese. In 1569 four thousand head were distributed along the regions of the Rio de la Plata. Sheep came later. At one time, when the natives were exceedingly hostile, a few horses and asses were abandoned on the pampas, and from that stock have descended the innumerable herds which to-day cover the almost limitless plains; ... but during recent years Argentina has imported the best animals obtainable and has bred with the direct intention of improving the stock as much as possible.”

With the cattle rides the gaucho, the cowboy of the pampas. Dressed in smart poncho (a sort of cape, with a hole for the head to go through), and bright-hued zombachos, or wide Turkish trousers, tight-fitting boots, and sombrero, and sitting astride his saddle, richly ornamented with silver, he presents a sight worth seeing. To the gaucho the Camp is indebted for its only romance and picturesqueness; he has given to it its songs and tales of adventure, its tragedies and the brightness of its life. Lithe and graceful, he is a consummate horseman and rivals his Texan counterpart in feats of horsemanship and skill with the lasso. He is proud, simple-minded, and faithful in his friendships, but when aroused to anger by a slight or by deceit, he is as elemental in his vengefulness—for there is a strain of the old fierce Tupi-Guarany in the blood of most of them—as the early types of his race who ranged the pampas during the so-called mediÆval period of Argentine history. Needless to say, he has contributed his quota in the wars of the republic and has furnished the inspiration for many a stirring drama in the literature of the country.

The story of the pampas and the life and habits of their workers and of the denizens nature has sent to share in their richness, has been told by many writers of our day, notably by W. H. Koebel, an Englishman, in his recently published “Modern Argentina.” It is the story of a great country and a great business enterprise that is fast spreading its activity farther and farther north, west, and south—to the north, toward the still savage Chaco country and the mountainous provinces of Jujuy, Salta, and Catamarca; to the west, toward the Andean uplands, and southward to the federal territories in the region that was once referred to on the maps as Patagonia. Gradually the cattle ranch is being pushed farther afield to give way to agriculture, while the ranchmen in their turn are penetrating the field of the timber industry.

There is practically no village life in Argentina; there is no middle class between the lordly estanciero and the laborer. The very necessary element of the small farmer, working his own independent property, is gradually being introduced, as the owners of the great estates are beginning to subdivide their holdings. When this new element shall have been thoroughly absorbed into the commonwealth, and the nation shall have acquired a “volk,” the prosperity of Argentina will be assured for all time. The development of the country is still in its infancy; for years to come there will be room for an increasing influx of capital and men who can take part in the most modern and greatest wealth-producing enterprise on the globe. So far the English and Germans are the chief among the foreign capitalists who have sought out this present-day Eldorado. The better acquaintance with Argentina and the other countries to the south of us, so intelligently and industriously fostered by the Pan American Union at Washington, will, it is to be hoped, induce a North American financial invasion of Argentina, an invasion that will be more than welcomed by the “Yankis” of the South.

The traveler who takes the seven-hundred-mile journey westward through the Camp, luxuriously housed in the coaches of the Great Western Railroad, comes upon a different scene and a different life when he reaches the ancient city of Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes. Here it was that San MartÍn recruited and organized his Army of Liberation, the army with which, emerging suddenly from its isolated hiding place, he startled the world by his crossing of the Andes to fall upon the unsuspecting Spanish. Mendoza is now the center of the wine and fruit industry. It is a thriving, well-supplied little city, with a population of between thirty and forty thousand, comfortable hotels, a theater, and a broad boulevard of its own, overhung with trees and named for the great revolutionary leader, where they have their band concerts and afternoon carriage parade just as they do in Buenos Aires. Only here, in their rather more dusky complexions, lots of the raven-haired, black-eyed occupants of the carriages show traces of Indian descent.

The development of the wine trade is in keeping with the phenomenal progress of the rest of the country. Although the great bulk of the product is not of the highest quality, the presses turn out each year enormous quantities that bear the labels of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle, and Muscatel, produced from the very best imported vines. Other fruits have been found to grow equally well in this section: peaches, pears, and plums reach a high state of culture, while apples, quinces, and cherries do very well. It is the boast of the Argentino that his country is capable of producing every conceivable kind of fruit, and it is not an idle boast.

At this point—Mendoza—a change of car is made to the less comfortable narrow-gauge road that takes the traveler through the fastnesses of the Andes. The route leads first through the peach orchards and vineyards, with the snow peaks easily distinguishable in the background. The Mendoza River, fed by the melting snows on the mountain tops, tumbles along its way and is crossed and re-crossed many times en route. Distant about one hundred miles, one comes to the Puente del Inca, the famous natural bridge spanning a chasm one hundred and fifty feet in width, about which are many native legends of Incarial times, for the bridge formed part of the great system of roads built by the Incas. A little farther on, mounting to a still higher altitude, the station of Las Cuevas is reached, the last stop in Argentine territory, and the entrance to the tunnel through the mountain, half a mile below the Uspallata Pass—an engineering feat deserving of a chapter by itself. The elevation here is in excess of ten thousand feet, and the scene one of impressive grandeur, fascinating in the kaleidoscope of color that floods the gorges and the giant peaks.

Above, at the Cumbre, as the pass at the top is called, if one forsakes the comforts of the passenger coach for mule-back, he can view the now world-famous “Christ of the Andes,” a bronze figure of the Prince of Peace rising to a height of twenty-six feet above its massive granite pedestal. It was erected to commemorate the peace treaty that brought to an end the long-continued differences between Chile and Argentina. Growing out of the boundary dispute, this controversy had become more and more acute as the long-neglected Patagonian territory increased in promise. The boundary, finally fixed in 1902, by Sir Thomas Holdich’s commission, runs along the summit of the Andean ridge. On the base of the monument a tablet bears the words: “Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than the people of Argentina and Chile break the peace to which they have pledged themselves at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.”

From CarÁcoles, the Chilean terminus of the tunnel, the Transandino-Chileno carries the traveler to the station of Los Andes. From here to the port city of Valparaiso, Chile, the route is over the Chilean State Railroad, which is of standard gauge and passes through some rich and fertile valleys on its way toward the Pacific.

III

To the east of the Cordilleras, and south of the river Negro, stretches the territory long known as Patagonia, first in swelling plateaux and then flattening out into a continuation of the upper level pampas. This is now the scene of Argentina’s advancing sheep industry. For Patagonia, east of the Andean summits, and the east half of Tierra del Fuego were awarded to Argentina by the boundary arbitrator, King Edward VII, following the report of Sir Thomas Holdich’s commission, and is now divided into the Federal Territories of Rio Negro, Chubut, and Santa Cruz. The land of Patagonia, so named by the early explorers from the big feet (pata goas) of the Tehuelche Indians, is now reached by steamer to Punta Arenas in Magellan Strait, the southernmost city on the globe, for the railways of Argentina have not yet penetrated this country to any considerable extent. In climate it ranges from the temperate to extreme cold, like that of northern Michigan in the winter months. From the time of Darwin, who first took the country out of the category of terras incognitas, Patagonia has lost most of its mystery and is now being settled by the diverted immigration from Buenos Aires. The Scots, English, and Germans have taken up large allotments of land, and many New Zealand sheep men have come over to add their skill to the leading industry. There are also colonies of Boers and Jews.

The Fuegian Archipelago, at the southern extremity of South America, covers a territory as large as Nebraska. A tortuous, wind-swept labyrinth of waterways separates the hundreds of islands that constitute this group. The largest is Tierra del Fuego, half as large as Illinois. It is divided longitudinally between Chile and Argentina, by far the larger and more valuable portion having been awarded to the former by the Royal Arbitrator. The name was given to the archipelago by Magellan, when he saw the trails of smoke from the signal fires of the natives who followed his epoch-making course through the strait that now bears his name. Very little of the Fuegian country is under cultivation, although thousands of sheep graze over its rich valleys and verdant plains. The southernmost point, Cape Horn (in Chilean territory), is a monster rock, bleak and forbidding, against which the antarctic storms beat with such terrific force that, in the old days of sailing vessels, it was called the headstone of the mariners’ most populous graveyard.

A vastly different scene awaits the traveler who penetrates into the tropical wilds of the northern territories of Argentina. Going aboard one of the fine steamers of Nicholas Mihanovitch—the kings of the river traffic—at Buenos Aires, the traveler follows the course of the ParanÁ, which is the main water highway of Argentina. The trip will take him through the richest provinces of the Camp, past the busy miniature Buenos Aires, the city of Rosario, which is the port of shipment for the grain of this region, and up into the tropical scenery and mystery of the Chaco and Misiones territories, opening up vistas of prodigious natural growths and riotous beauty, differing in every way from the somber majesty of the Fuegian country. The Chaco and the territory of Formosa, adjoining it on the north, are still almost wholly occupied by uncivilized Indians. Up to the present time this region has been exploited chiefly for the wood of the quebracho (qui-bra-hacha—axe-breaker) tree, which yields the best quality of tannin and timber for railroad ties; it is richer in the former product than any other tree yet discovered.

The picturesqueness of the ParanÁ River scenery along its upper courses has excited enthusiastic descriptions from all the travelers who have penetrated this marvelous country. A thousand miles up the river, in Misiones, near the point where Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil meet, are located the famous IguazÚ Falls. The great cascade, fifty feet higher and with a lateral extent 1250 feet greater than Niagara, lies in the midst of a primeval forest. The enormous volume of water bursts through a series of thickly wooded islands with a roar that is all the more impressive to the spectator because of the solitude that reigns throughout this scantily populated region. The hand of man has done nothing here—no attempt has been made to harness the mighty power; nature has been left alone to revel in utter abandon.