J. A. Hammerton

“ There are hundreds of projecting shops-signs, in which changing electric lights are now revealed and now occluded, and the great warehouses are all illuminated as though it were another centenario, news vendors are calling La Razon, El Diario, Caras y Caretas, or Fray Mocho, and the whole has the atmosphere of some brilliant bazaar, rather than of the highway of a great city. It is a feast of light, but not of gaiety, for the Argentines are not given to joyousness and are strangely lacking in humour; everybody is frightfully formal and all are obviously conscious of being well dressed. ”

“ The nation is young and is gradually adjusting its perspective. The boastfulness of the younger generation, so irritating to the visitor who is prepared to admire all that is worthy of admiration in the Republic, is another fault of youth. It too will pass. The young Argentine who to-day talks of his country as a great empire of the future, dominating not only the Western hemisphere, but influencing profoundly the whole civilised world of the future, is still bien jeune. He will grow older, and his vision of the wonders that may be shall grow dimmer. ”

“ Indeed, to a greater degree does one hear people discussing the weather in Buenos Ayres even than in London, and with very good reason. The fortunes of all hinge on the state of the climate. Too much rain and the harvests are spoiled; too much heat and horses, cattle and sheep perish in their tens of thousands. And year after year the Argentine suffers either way. Tell an estanciero that you have seen two or three locusts flying about in the street and his face will blanch, his lip quiver, for already in imagination he sees the dreaded plague of these insects devastating his crops. ”

“ Almost every atrocity is of Italian origin. But there are several mausoleums of black granite, in the style of Germany’s art nouveau, which show how beautifully that may be treated. They are so individual and yet so restrained and dignified that the good taste of the owners is as evident in them as the skill and genius of the designers. Strange to say, few of these really beautiful things bear the makers’ name, yet every ramshackle erection of the jerry-builders in the streets of Buenos Ayres displays in large concrete letters the name of the proud architects who committed it! ”

“ Here we find ourselves in a city that has caught but little of the new spirit of the Argentine and rather prides itself on being the shrine of the ancient spirit. For the first time, too, we can witness something resembling scenery, as the country in the neighbourhood of Córdoba, tired of being flat and uninteresting for so many hundred miles, begins to take on some picturesque inequalities, and at no great distance beyond the antique city, the Hills of Córdoba, wooded and picturesque, come gratefully to the eye. ”

“ The railway station of La Plata is a very tasteful and commodious building, which gives the visitor an agreeable first impression on arrival, while the spacious streets, villainously paved though many of them remain, offer a welcome sense of freedom and airiness to one who has been cooped up for any length of time in the choking byways of Buenos Ayres. There is none of that eddying and surging traffic of the metropolis. The current of life flows with an old-world leisure ”

“ On the other hand, not a few I have met who, having retired to England, to France, or to Germany, as the case may have been, have eventually returned to settle and die in Buenos Ayres. These are the people who say there is “a something” that draws them back. They would even have you believe there is about South America that strange, intangible glamour of the East, which brings most who have lived in the Orient under its spell. This I will not believe; there is no glamour, there is no romantic beauty, there is no sensuous delight in the atmosphere of all South America. ”

“ The scenery is by no means sensational in its beauty, as the train threads its way among the gentler valleys watered by the River Mendoza for some forty or fifty kilometres westward of the city. But as the ascent becomes more precipitous and the clatter of the rack and pinion slackens to the slowest of tunes, while the engine crawls, with much puffing, laboriously upwards, the panorama of the mountain heights grows very beautiful, and unlike most mountain scenery of Europe. ”

“ On the occasion of my first visit, a beautiful calm day of winter sunshine changed in an instant, on the rising of a sharp wind, to the greyness of a London fog, but ten thousand times more abominable in character than any fog could ever be, for the greyness came from dense clouds of finest dust, raised in such abundance from the sand-laden streets that even the great public buildings, one of which I was in the act of photographing, were suddenly blotted from sight, and everybody out of doors was making a desperate dash for shelter. ”

“ IN AND ABOUT BUENOS AYRES
A paseo signifies no more than a stroll, a walk, a promenade. But the modern Argentine usually goes a-strolling in a coche or a motor-car. He has an ingrain horror of exercising his legs. The British resident soon falls into this modern manner, either out of a frank desire to ruffle it with the best of them or merely because one must eventually follow the line of least resistance. It demands a certain amount of will-power to walk when all the world’s on wheels. ”

“ Certain it is that, although Buenos Ayres cannot really maintain the proud claim to be the most expensive city in the world—for I defy you to beat the record of four dollars paid by an acquaintance of mine in Rio de Janeiro for one cake of Pears’ soap, a small packet of tooth-powder, and four ounces of tobacco, all bought in the same shop!—it is in all conscience one of the most remarkably easy places in the world for getting rid of money quickly. ”

“ If anything is likely to seduce the Argentine away from his oldest and most honoured customs of life, it is the spirit of emulation which pervades the whole social system, though it is present to a much greater degree in those of mixed parentage than in the criollos. By no means peculiar to the Argentine, it attains to almost equal strength in the United States, nor is it at all uncommon in English society. ”

“ One thing that struck me not only in the literature of the country and in the manifestations of its political thinkers, but in all the evidences of its daily life, was how slightly indeed has the tremendous modern development of the Argentine affected Uruguay. Just as the great current of emigration passes its shores and does no more than dash a little spray, in the form of a few stray emigrants, into Uruguay, so the progress of the Argentine has affected hardly at all the life of Uruguay. ”

“ Then towards the end of November the sun begins his yearly revel and till the end of March Buenos Ayres swelters in the most oppressive heat imaginable. Not that the barometer ever attains a greater height than it frequently registers in New York City, but New York rarely experiences such long-sustained periods of heat, and the humidity—due to the mighty volume of the River Plate—makes the life of man and beast a burden. The nights bring no surcease. Horses die in the streets by the score every day, and you will see their carcasses in all parts of the town, awaiting removal. ”

“ It was perfectly planned for the meditative life, and but for the vileness of man and the supineness of the municipal authorities one could have passed some months tolerably there, looking out upon the panorama of Montevidean life and setting one’s thoughts on paper when the mood came. But the men who drive motor cars in this far land are the vilest of the breed. The plaza is filled with gorgeous cars that ply for hire, each handled by a rascal who is no better than a highway-robber by day and a beast of prey by night. ”

“ The most notable Argentine influence to be detected in Montevideo is the passion for highly polished boots! I have often been amused to notice workmen on their way from their tasks carefully dusting their boots with their handkerchiefs to keep themselves “in the movement.” Like all little countries, it is intensely proud of itself, tenacious of its independence, and conscious of a certain superiority to both of its great neighbours in the higher standard of intellectualism which it has developed. ”

“ Laughter and tears mingle a good deal in the landing of these poor people from the Old World. Huddled almost like cattle in the steerage of the steamers, their condition at sea presents what seems an unbridgable abyss between their lives and those of the saloon passengers. Day after day I have watched them sitting aimlessly on deck in their dirty, faded clothes, the effluvia from the mass of them, even tempered by the sea breeze, suggesting conditions of horror when they “turned in” at night, that might recall the Black Hole of Calcutta. ”

“ Of familiar domestic intercourse, such as the social relationships of British and North American home-life make possible, there is absolutely none in the Argentine, or, indeed, throughout the whole of South America—excepting always those families in which Anglo-Saxon influence predominates. The drawing-room of most of the better-class houses is a gorgeously furnished chamber, in which the furniture, on most days of the year, is hidden under dust covers, and where the blinds are seldom raised. ”

“ What served a century ago is to-day a legacy of evil, and these narrow colonial streets have made of central Buenos Ayres an inferno of human strife such as I hope exists nowhere else on our globe. For within these myriad squares of 150 yards there is no entrance or exit for wheeled traffic, and it is a pathetic sight to witness the unloading of goods on the narrow sidewalks in the early morning. ”

“ To keep these lively youngsters from all sorts of monkeyisms, such as licking the dividing spoon, putting their knives into their mouths, and making as much noise over a plate of soup as one does in a bath, left the governess scant time to enjoy her meals, and such manners among children are not altogether exceptional in Argentine homes. Young people are pampered to a dangerous degree, and while still mere children they have more pocket money to dispose of on their own little selfish pleasures than many a well-to-do Englishman spends on himself. ”

“ The population is much too small for so fruitful a country, and to discourage the foreigner from becoming a citizen of the Republic, as the policy of the Blancos would tend in their devotion to narrow Nationalist ideals, might retard the clock of progress for generations. The crying need of Uruguay is population, and not even the Colorados as a party display sufficient energy in encouraging immigration, though individual leaders grow eloquent on the subject and talk at great length about what might be done, without being able to move the mass swiftly enough along the path of progress. ”

“ Grass sprouts luxuriously between the cobbles in all the streets a little way from the centre, and the great avenues that cut athwart the town in all directions still lack many finishing touches in the way of pavement, while most of the public squares speak of plans stopped short of completion. The great public park, amply shaded with lofty eucalyptus trees and no lack of shrubbery, though a worthy monument and an adornment to any town, has still that unkempt appearance of a partly finished exhibition ground. ”

“ A walking stick and a half gives you the measure of the pavements. These are the standards for nearly all the thoroughfares in the older part of the town, and were the ample ideals of the Spanish colonisers, who required no more than single-story houses and a track between for their horses or their bullock wagons. Thus, in great measure, Buenos Ayres is an anachronism, and such it will long remain, as the abnormal development of the country and its capital city—the world’s most prodigious mushroom—has made this central part a veritable Eldorado of the landowner. ”

“ Thus, as there is but a single paseo where one can display one’s gorgeous motor-car, or hired carriage, all the world makes for that and stares at everybody else. Palermo! Oh, potent word to local minds! Palermo is the one paseo known to all. In that one word is summed up most of what the citizens of Buenos Ayres know of outdoor enjoyment. There are other paseos that do not call for a coche; where you don’t go merely to look at the crowd and be looked at; consequently these are left to the stray visitor or the Gringo, who knows no better. ”

“ Thus stones innumerable are lying in the cobbled streets, to the danger of all sorts of traffic; in the wood-paved thoroughfares there are ruts several inches deep alongside the tram lines, and the asphalt roads are cracked and broken as though some wandering earthquake had passed through them on its way [44] from Chili. A paseo in a motor-car is an agony—there is no “rule of the road,” it is merely “devil take the hindmost”—a drive in a coach is little better, as the motor-cars make the progress of the horse vehicle a hazard of terrors. ”

“ Even in the Calle Florida, where land values and shop-rents rival the highest known on Fifth Avenue, one finds certain enviable positions occupied by nothing better than salones de lustrar, and in all the central streets such establishments—often employing upwards of a dozen men—abound. Nay, go where you will, even to the outer suburbs, you will never fail to find a druggist’s or a bootblack’s shop.
A real Argentine citizen must have his boots polished several times a day, else these multitudinous slaves of the blacking brush could not be kept so busy. ”

“ When I come to deal with the life of the British community, I shall describe the straits they are put to for social amusement and distraction, and the ingenuity with which they contrive to render their lives a little less unpleasant than circumstances conspire to make them. But in the general social life of the town, the English take little or no part, keeping to themselves with their usual exclusiveness, rendered the greater here by the almost impenetrable barrier which the criollos, or older native families present to all advances from without. ”

“ This certainly is the spirit that informs the policy of Argentine immigration. A hearty welcome is given to people of all races, whose only right of entry into this new land of promise is the possession of brawny muscles and the will to work. Every week they are arriving in ship-loads, and the manner in which these cargoes of humanity are received at the docks in Buenos Ayres and speedily transhipped by rail to different parts of the interior, according to the demand for brazos, is one of the most businesslike things the visitor will have an opportunity of noting in the public administration. ”

“ The sight of Las Palmas, with its grateful greenness of hill and valley, and far southward, cloud-high in a gorgeous flood of sunshine, the mighty mass of Teneriffe, thrusting itself boldly into the sky from the heaving wilderness of water, gave to the beholder one of those rare moments of spiritual exaltation which a first sight of such natural grandeur must always awaken in the thinking mind. ”