Henry Stephens

“ With the exception of the business section, Santiago is an extremely reserved, conservative, and quiet old place. It can also be called serious. After nine o'clock at night, even on the Ahumada, all is quiet, a pleasant contrast to the din and racket of Buenos Aires, which murders the darkness, making sleep impossible. There is but little gayety about the Chilean metropolis; the aristocracy of the city, which can boast of the purest white blood of any American capital, form a society into which a foreigner, no matter how prominent his antecedents are, is seldom admitted. ”

“ The part they see is the desert coast line with its dirty, poverty-stricken towns, the bleak barren peaks that fringe the Pacific littoral, here and there a spot of verdure at the mouth of a river, and Lima, the capital. A few others, mostly mining men and engineers, take a trip to the summit of nearby mountains on the Oroya railroad, sojourn in the mining towns, suffer from cold and lonesomeness, and swear that Peru is the damnedest country on the face of the globe, and are heartily glad when the time [471] comes for them to leave, vowing never to return again. ”

“ A poor figure is unknown among them. If a man prefers a different type than the average he can go to southern Chile and have the choice of a dark red-cheeked Araucanian maiden or a native girl of German extraction, whose eyes are like the still deep water of a pool, and whose cheeks have that rosy tinge of a ripening apple. In the railway eating-house in Rancagua, I met a man from Thomasville, Georgia, who said that on account of the looks of the Chilean women, he would lose his religion if he remained much longer in the country. ”

“ Most Argentinos do not care much for North Americans although they are invariably polite to them. It appears that there is a chord of jealousy somewhere against our nation. Some of this gentry have the gall to think that Argentina is the greatest nation on earth and these ideas are taught them in school. I have known inhabitants of Buenos Aires who believe that Argentina could whip the United States in a war, although most of them have an unwholesome fear of Chile. ”

“ In order to compare the architecture of Buenos Aires to that of another city, let us choose Paris or Vienna because the Argentine capital is a city that is fundamentally European. Although more beautiful in buildings than either Paris or Vienna, it can hold no comparison to them in the massiveness and solidity of the edifices in either of them. Nearly all the buildings in Argentina are built of the poorest imaginable brick, loosely fitted together, but little mortar having been used. ”

“ It is so far from the Federal capital of Brazil that it might be anywhere else in the world as far as the inhabitants having any fear from that quarter of punishments for their misdeeds. Matto Grosso is run very much as if it were an independent country, and on account of the low caliber of the native potentates and politicians, lawlessness is rampant. Nearly every man in the city carries a long thin razor-edged knife and many of the population give testimony of a one-time fight with this kind of weapon by the scars to be seen on their visages. ”

“ Cattle grazed the endless pampa; here and there buttes and mountains rose from the plains, their sides covered with coarse grass and sagebrush. At the wayside stations were halfbreeds in ponchos, strong, good-looking fellows. Presently the mountains came down to the railroad track and we were in a sort of an oasis watered by the Chorillo River.
San Luis, the capital of the thinly settled province of the same name, is 493 miles west of Buenos Aires. It is a poor, unpretentious, and uninteresting town of fifteen thousand inhabitants with nothing to attract the ordinary tourist. ”

“ From Rancagua the train ride of an hour and a half first crosses the Plain where fat cattle graze in knee high clover, and then skirts along the ledge of the mountains overlooking the broad terraces or selvas of the Cachapoal River, winding around promontories on a roadbed no wider than the coaches; any mishap would be sufficient to send the train rolling down the mountainside killing all the occupants of the cars. ”

“ The Uruguayans love to style their land "The Greenland of South America," and even the Paraguayans call their mountains the "Himalaya Mbaracayu." The only similarity of Tucumán to the tropics is the excessive heat in summer, and the prevalence of fevers, the most noteworthy being a form of malaria, named chuchu which is also in Santiago del Estero, Jujuy, and Salta. A more fever-free country is hard to imagine from the lay of the land, yet I am sorry to say that the Argentine Board of Health statistics belie it. Malaria is one of the foremost death-causing ailments in northwestern Argentina. ”

“ Meals, hotel rooms, beverages, lingerie, photographic material, drugs, theater admissions, and in fact nearly everything under the sun is sky high. The entertainments for a stranger to indulge in are but few and mediocre. It is every day the same routine after the first week of novelty of sight-seeing has worn off. Unless in Buenos Aires on business, the stranger absolutely kills time unprofitably by getting into a rut from which he does not extricate himself until it is time for him to sail for home. ”

“ At night when the white moon rising above San Cristobal hill plays on the ripples of the Rimac, and reflects on them the myriads of lights from the windows, while in the distance the trees along the river bank cause an inky blackness, is seen a picture beyond the scope of the greatest artists. ”

“ This, the province [102] of Santa Fé, is the true plain of Argentina. From history and from fiction we imagine the great plains to be the central and the southern provinces, consisting of what is geographically the western part of the province of Buenos Aires, the Province of San Luis, and the territory of Pampa. This is not the true fact. In all these geographical divisions are rolling hills, and streams in deep-lying canyons. Here in Santa Fé, I doubt if there is a single hill. A broad landscape, dry and dusty but by no means rainless, and yet fruitful, meets the eye of the traveler. ”

“ Many of the women of Buenos Aires are beautiful. Nowhere have I seen such fine-looking women, excepting in Santiago, Chile, and in Budapest. They carry themselves well and also know how to dress. Their figures and taste are such that they can make the poorest material look well on them. Their average stature is that of our North American women; most of the young Porteñas are neither fat nor slim, but medium. They have wonderful black eyes and well developed busts. It is rare to see a poor figure. It really is a treat to sit in front of a café on the Avenida and watch them walk by. ”

“ Early that morning a certain Carlos Michaelis from Punta Arenas had left the Termas on foot for the summit of the volcano, so after we had gazed with astonishment upon the awe inspiring works of Nature just described, we turned our attention to the higher slopes of Chillán to see if we could see him, for up to now we had seen no sign of him. We finally saw a black spot high up on a snow-field which with binoculars proved to be a man. He was plodding upward through the thick snow laboriously, and at every few steps he would stop. ”

“ Man also has done his share well but much improvement can be made, all of which requires capital. The natural lay out of the place is a paradise. It is something like the Cserna Valley in southeastern Hungary, but wilder and grander with also a soft touch of nature. The hills covered with live oak, laurel, and mesquite resemble those of California, yet are more fertile. A shaded walk leads from the hotel to an artificial lake bordered by fifty-five of the largest eucalyptus trees that I have ever seen. In its center rising from the water stand two willows. ”

“ Long-robed priests wander back and forth, occasionally placing a bet where their holy inclination tells them to; vermouth glass in hand, they are seen in the barroom to walk up to the products of Mills and of Caille and to the tune of a twenty-centavo piece watch for their luck. [95] In the way of scenery and other attractions besides the bath there is nothing at Cacheuta to divert one's time. It is a society place for gambling and a place for rest for the tired business man. It is wonderful, however, to see what man has done in a place not favored by nature. ”

“ It is nine blocks wide with an average of ten blocks long, has narrow streets paved with sharp stones on which face tumbledown adobe hovels. Its inhabitants are drunken, and many possess loathsome sores on their faces. The odors rising from the decaying matter thrown from the house doors, the swarms of flies, and the full-bellied whippets basking in the sun-baked offal make a person ask, "Can such things be possible?" In those parts of the town where such pleasantries are in the minimum, the air is redolent with the fragrant odor of rats. ”

“ The Chilean capital is a rat warren; rodents abound everywhere. Most of the buildings being adobe, these animals have bored holes all through the walls and have perforated the foundations. I do not believe that New Orleans in its rattiest days ever had anywhere near such a large population of the family Muridæ as Santiago at the present time possesses. Lying in bed nights one is kept awake by the patter of their little feet as they run across the corrugated iron roofs mingled with their sharp squeals. ”

“ The beggars, street fakirs, and peddlers on the Avenida de Mayo are terrible. No city in the world has so many. Neither Naples nor Las Palmas can compare with Buenos Aires in proportion in this respect. A man seated at a table in front of a café is never free a minute from annoyance from this rabble. ”

“ The city is a long-strung-out place of frame unpainted buildings presenting a most unattractive appearance; only in the center of the town one gets away from these eyesores for there brick and cement structures abound, especially in the neighborhood of the Plaza Anibal Pinto. The principal streets, Jeneral Bulnes, Arturo Prat, and several others are well paved with cobblestones over which horse cars rattle in the long ride to the railroad station. Driving from this station to the town the hotel omnibuses race each other much to the fright of the uninitiated stranger. ”

“ On the plaza which is bordered by Lombardy poplars is a bandstand where twice a week a six-piece band plays. Beneath these trees is a fringe of alfalfa where the village cows graze. Like in Tacna the houses have the same sawed-off gables, and like in that city they are painted tones of salmon and blue. The town hall is the only two-story building in the place and with the exception of the church belfry it is the tallest. The church is a cream-colored affair with a domed steeple rising from the center of its façade. ”