The fur-bearing animals of South America are numerous, and some of them are very fine. The mountains of the lower half of the continent abound with vicuñas, guanacos, alpacas, and chinchillas, while the archipelago of Chili and Terra del Fuego, with its thousands of islands, fairly swarm with seals. Very many furs are shipped to Europe, but the seals are seldom touched except by the native Indians, who use their flesh for food and their skins for garments. The supply of seals is practically inexhaustible. They are found in large numbers as far north as Guayaquil, on the west coast, and the passengers on the steamships passing up and down are entertained by their antics. The seals have helped the sea-birds to create the supply of guano upon the Peruvian coast, and this valuable fertilizing material is largely composed of decayed seal flesh and bones, as well as the remnants of the fishes they have dined upon for thousands of years.
The skins of the northern seals are worthless, but farther south, as the archipelago is reached, a colder climate exists, the fur is thicker, and the skins have value. If the reader will take the map of South America, and examine the configuration of the continent south of the fortieth parallel, he will see how numerous these islands are, and every one of them is swarming with seals. There have been some attempts at seal-fishing in Terra del Fuego, but the Indians are so fierce as to make it dangerous for small parties to visit the islands, and only a few skins are shipped from Punta Arenas.
The guanaco skins are considered very fine. These are the wearing apparel of the Indians, and with the ostrich rugs constitute the chief results of their chase. In Patagonia ostriches are not bred, as at the Cape of Good Hope, but run wild, and are getting exterminated rapidly. The Indians chase them on horseback, and catch them with bolas—two heavy balls attached to the ends of a rope. Galloping after the ostrich, they grasp one ball in the hand, and whirl the other around their heads like a lasso coil. When near enough to the bird, they let go, and the two balls, still revolving in the air if skilfully directed, will wind around the long legs of the ostrich, and send him turning somersaults upon the sand. The Indians then leap from the saddle, and if scarce of meat they will cut the throat of the bird and carry the carcass to camp. If they have no need of food, they will pull the long plumes from the tail and wings, and let him go again to gather fresh plumage for the coming season.
The bolas are handled very dexterously, and well trained Indians are said to be able to bring down an ostrich at a range of two or three hundred yards. But it is not often necessary to draw at that distance. Horses accustomed to the chase can overtake a bird on an unobstructed plain; but the
birds have the advantage of being “artful dodgers,” and as they carry so much less weight, can turn and reverse quite suddenly. The usual mode of hunting them is for a dozen or so Indians to surround a herd and charge upon it suddenly. In this way several are usually brought down before they can scatter, and those that get away are pursued. As they dodge from one hunter they usually run afoul of another, and before they are aware they are tripped by the entangling bolas. People who are passing through the strait often stop over and await another steamer at Punta Arenas to enjoy an ostrich chase. They can secure trained horses and guides at moderate rates. One who has never thrown the bolas will be amazed, the first time he tries it, to find how difficult it is to do a trick that looks so easy.
The Chillanos claim to be the Yankees of South America, and it is their proudest boast, but the Argentinians are more entitled to that distinction. Chili, commercially and in her political affinities, is to all intents and purposes an English colony. She reckons her transactions in pounds, shillings, and pence, and her statute-books bear the law of entail. There is no democracy outside her constitution, and a peon can never be anything else. The poor may not acquire land, but must be the retainers of the rich and the tenants of the great estates which are tied up forever from them. In the Argentine Republic, on the contrary, the pampas are divided like the prairies of our own great West. Any man may acquire an estancia by location upon the public lands and the payment of a nominal price per acre; so the country is settling up with those who have fled from the conditions that exist in Chili, free thought, free speech, free air, and free land being their inducement. The city of Buenos Ayres is the only one of the South American capitals in which modern ideas and manners of life prevail. The town is of mushroom growth, like Chicago. There were no old prejudices to uproot, no antiquated bigotry to tear down. It looks less like Spain than any of the other capitals, and more like a modern American community.
The first impressions of the traveller are unfavorable, and you wonder what possessed the Spaniards to locate this capital where it stands. But Buenos Ayres is like Topsy—it simply “growed.” The first man who came was Juan Diaz de Solis, in 1515. He discovered the Rio de la Plata, and was murdered by the Indians. Then came the famous Sebastian Cabot, who explored the country as far up the river as Paraguay ten years later, and was followed by Pedro de Mendoza in 1535, who obtained permission from the Spanish Government to equip an expedition to subdue the country, provided—as was always the rule in the Pickwick Club—he did the same at his own expense. Mendoza came with eleven hundred men, went ashore where he first saw land, established a camp as a basis of operations, and from the purity of the atmosphere called it Buenos Ayres, or “good air.” He had no intention of founding a city at this location; his purpose was to rest there a while and keep a base of supplies, until he had found a path to the mythical El Dorado, which was supposed to lie somewhere in the interior of South America.
The approach to Buenos Ayres, which stands about one hundred miles above the mouth of the Rio Plata—or “the river Plate,” as it is more commonly called by English writers—is perplexing to navigators, as the mouth of the river is beset with mud-banks and sand-bars—accumulations that come down from the interior of the continent upon the swift waters, and, like the shoals in the Mississippi, are constantly shifting. The voyage from the Strait of Magellan to the place is not a comfortable one, and the captain is always glum and anxious. When it is calm weather he is nervous, and keeps his eye on the barometer for fear of a gale; and when the gale comes, as it does about three or four days in a week, the jokes of the passengers do not appear to entertain him. These gales are called pamperos, and sweep across the pampas of Patagonia with the violence of a tornado. Many a brave ship has gone down a victim of their fierceness, and the sailors are as much afraid of them as of the tempests which haunt Cape Horn.
Our captain was unusually anxious, because we had a priest on board. Ever since the days of Jonah there has been a superstition among sailors that clergymen always bring bad luck, particularly a Catholic priest. In trying to discover why the forebodings over a priest should be greater than those over a Protestant parson, the conclusion is reached that it is because the priest wears the sign of his office in his apparel, and is thus more conspicuous. Many captains of sailing-vessels will not take clergymen as passengers under any circumstances, always protesting, of course, that they do not share the common superstition, but basing their objections upon the ground that it would demoralize the sailors. A missionary to one of the South American countries waited in New York for over three months to get passage by a sailing-vessel, and although several started in the mean time for the port he wanted to reach, he was finally obliged to go on a steamer by way of England. The steamer was lost in a storm off the coast of British Guiana. He and other of the passengers were saved in the life-boats, but the chief mate and several of the seamen were drowned. This superstition prevails among sailors of all races, but the Spaniards are the most sensitive to it, as they are to omens of all kinds. The Spanish seamen believe that if the decks are wet by the sea the first day out, they will have fine weather for the rest of the voyage, and for this reason they often leave their moorings in a storm when skippers of other countries would wait for fair weather. There is scarcely a tar in the Spanish service who cannot find some significance in every incident.
Through the Strait of Magellan and up the east coast of
South America vessels are followed by myriads of sea-birds—albatrosses, Mother Carey’s chickens, and a beautiful species of the gull variety not found elsewhere, known as the “cape pigeon.” Their plumage is beautiful, of the purest white, mixed with the most intense black, and nature has clothed them so warmly for the severe climate in which they live that their skin is as thick as fur, and is used for the manufacture of robes and rugs. More than a hundred breasts of these birds are needed for an ordinary sized robe, however, so that they are a luxury few can afford. I saw in Montevideo a mass of tiny feathers, black and white, as fine and soft as eider-down, that was lined with scarlet silk, and cost two hundred and fifty dollars. Nothing more beautiful could be imagined. Robes made of the breasts of ostriches are lovely enough, but one of cape-pigeons’ breasts is passing lovely.
The sailors catch them by throwing overboard a long piece of coarse twine and trailing it in the wake of the ship. As hundreds of the birds are constantly sailing along the surface of the water, they get tangled in the cord and are drawn in, but it requires as much dexterity to get them aboard as to land a lively trout. Sometimes brass or tin tags are tied to their necks, with names and dates scratched upon them, when they are released. The officers of our ship reported that upon a previous voyage they got a bird with one of these tags on, bearing inscriptions showing that it had been caught twice before. They gave the little stranger another indorsement and let him go. The albatrosses of the southern hemisphere are very large, sometimes measuring ten and twelve feet from wing to wing; but they are worthless, and are stupid, awkward birds, that often dash themselves against the side of a ship from pure stupidity.
There is no port of importance between Punta Arenas, in the Strait, and the river Plate except Bahia Blanca (White Bay), near where the United States astronomical expedition made its observations at the last transit of Venus. The entire coast for fifteen hundred miles is barren of civilization, except the cabin of some hardy frontiersman, who has set up a ranch and is waiting for the country to grow down to him.
Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, lies a few miles below Buenos Ayres, on the other side of the river, and vessels usually touch there, for it is a place of great commercial importance, more accessible to shipping and more favorably located in every respect than the latter city, which lies stretched along a low sandy bank seven or eight miles beyond the anchorage of ships. There is no harbor at Buenos Ayres—not even an excuse for one—and it is beyond the power of human genius to give vessels direct access to the city. The water is so shallow that they anchor seven, eight, and ten miles out, and are loaded and unloaded by means of flat-bottomed lighters, which are towed back and forth. Two or three times a week during the winter, when a pampero is blowing, the water is carried out to sea by force of the wind, and these lighters are left high and dry upon a beach over which they were floating a few hours before. Then they have to be unloaded by means of carts on wheels eight to ten feet in diameter, which are driven into the water until nothing can be seen of the mules that draw them but their indignant noses and nodding ears. It is amusing to see the heads of these mules sticking out of the water at an elevation which must be very uncomfortable, but one they are used to. Passengers who arrive on these occasions are transferred from the ship to a lighter, then to a mule-cart, and sometimes are carried ashore on the back of a stormy Italian, who never fails to swear by all the saints and the Virgin that the man on his back is the heaviest he has ever carried, and demands more than the regular fee for extra baggage, so to speak. Lacking confidence in the sincerity of the cargador, the passenger will promise him heaven and earth and the sea if he will not drop him into the water, and then fights it out when he gets safely ashore.
Notwithstanding the commercial disadvantages of Buenos Ayres, it is the most enterprising, prosperous, and wealthy city in South America—a regular Chicago—the only place on the whole continent where people seem to be in a hurry, and where everybody you meet appears to be trying to overtake the man ahead of him. It is all bustle and life night and day, and is so different from the rest of South America that the traveller is more impressed than he would be if he came direct from the United States. Elsewhere people always put off till to-morrow what they are absolutely not compelled to do to-day. In the other countries mañana (manyana) is king, and mañana means to-morrow, but in Buenos Ayres the idea seems to be that the liveliest turkey gets the most grasshoppers, and everybody is trying to get as many as he can. Merchants do not shut up shop to go to dinner, as is the rule elsewhere in Spanish-America, and morning newspapers are not printed on the afternoon of the previous day. To do as much as possible this week, and a good deal more, is the motto, and that accounts for the progress of the republic.
And it is a republic, not only in name but in fact. There is no bossism there, as in other Spanish-American countries. Every man is a sovereign, and he will not permit the soldiers to count the votes. There is always a good deal of a rumpus during election times, and the defeated party often raises a revolution, but since the tyrant Rosas was overthrown, no man has attempted to bully or oppress the Argentine people.
Our knowledge of the Argentine Republic amounts to little more than we know of the Congo State, and the man who goes there from the United States is kept in a state of astonishment until he leaves. Then, as he sits on shipboard and reflects over what he has seen, he cannot find an exclamation point big enough to do justice to his description of the country. The Argentinians think it is wicked indifference on our part to know so little about them, for the surprise of the few American visitors wounds their self-esteem. They are a proud people, like all the rest of the Spanish race, and, unlike some nations, have many things to be proud of. They know all about us. There are many men in the Argentine Republic who can tell you the percentage of increase in population, industry, and progress in the United States, as shown by the latest statistics, but how many people in the United States are aware that that country is growing twice as fast as ours? How many members of the Senate or the House of Representatives at Washington, how many members of the Cabinet or Justices of the Supreme Court, know that the increase of population in the Argentine Republic during the last twenty-five years has been one hundred and fifty-four per cent., while in the United States it has been only seventy-nine per cent., and that Buenos Ayres is growing as fast as Denver or Minneapolis?
The people are right when they assert that their country is the United States of South America, and there is nothing else that they are so proud of. They study and imitate our institutions and our methods, and in some cases improve upon them. You can buy the New York dailies and illustrated papers at any of the news-stands in Buenos Ayres, although they are six weeks old, and the people purchase and read them. They understand the significance of the cartoons in Puck, and read Harper’s Magazine and the Century. Blaine’s book and Grant’s Memoirs are on sale, and the issues of our Presidential campaigns are as well understood as their own local squabbles.
The greatest benefit to be derived by a traveller in the countries of South America is to make him think well of his own; but, nevertheless, his vanity receives a severe shock when he comes to the Argentine Republic, and discovers how little he knows of what is going on in the world.
The succession of surprises that greet one on either hand keep him reminded of his own ignorance. It is perfectly natural, however, because we have no communication with the Argentine Republic, and have not had since the day when steam was substituted for canvas as a motive power on the sea. There was a time when we almost monopolized the commerce of that country, but during our civil war the ships were withdrawn, and the sailors went into the navy. Then when peace came all hands were called to the development of our own resources, and we were so busily engaged in building railroads, opening up farms, establishing ranches, working mines, and erecting new towns and cities in the great West, that we forgot that there was anybody to be looked after in South America. Twenty-five years ago our knowledge of the continent was pretty good, but we have learned nothing since. Our geographies read as they did then, our histories have not been rewritten, and our maps remain unaltered. But in the mean time mighty changes have been taking place among our neighbors that have escaped our attention. They have been growing as we have grown, and instead of a few half-civilized, ill-governed people upon the pampas of the Argentine Republic, a great nation has sprung up, as enterprising, progressive, and intelligent as ours, with “all the modern improvements,” as house agents say, and an ambition to stand beside the United States in the front rank of modern civilization. While we have been occupied with our own internal development, the European nations have gone in and taken the commerce to which we by the logic of political and geographical considerations are entitled.
Twenty-three lines of steamships connect the Argentine Republic with the markets of Europe, and from forty to sixty vessels are sailing back and forth each month. In the harbor of Buenos Ayres, or in what they call the harbor, are dozens of steamships and scores of sailing-vessels, showing every flag but that of the United States; for an American steamer never goes there, and only occasionally a bark or brigantine, chartered at New York or Philadelphia, with a cargo of lumber or railway supplies. Nearly all the goods these people buy of us are sent by way of Europe, as mails and passengers usually go, and very little is bought in the United States that can be purchased elsewhere. The reason for this is very plain—we have no transportation facilities, while those afforded for trade in Europe are as regular and convenient as exist between Liverpool and New York.
And this trade is worth having. The Argentine Republic imports nearly one hundred million dollars’ worth of manufactured merchandise every year, of which about one-third is from England, one-fifth from France, one-fifth from Germany, while the United States comes in at the tail-end of the list, along with Sweden, Denmark, and Chili. While England sent $35,375,628 worth there in 1885, we sent $7,000,000 worth, mostly lumber, railway locomotives and cars, and agricultural implements. While she sent $7,000,000 worth of cotton goods, we sent $600,000 worth; while she sent nearly $7,000,000 worth of hardware and other manufactures of iron and steel, we sent about $500,000 worth; and so on, down through the list of manufactured articles in which we, with equal transportation facilities, can compete with any nation on the globe. Our goods are more popular there, as everywhere in South America, so popular that the manufacturers at Manchester and Birmingham imitate our trade-marks, and send cargoes of merchandise which appears to have been produced in the United States, but never got nearer to Yankeeland than Liverpool.
There is not a country in all the world so deserving of attention as this, and particularly of our attention, for the time is drawing near when we must confront the results of its enterprise in the markets of the world. In its resources as well as in the character of its people it resembles the United States. Here are found pampas like our prairies, rich and fertile in the lowlands, and covered with fine ranges as they rise in mighty terraces from the Atlantic to the Andes; while in the foot-hills of the mountains are deposits of gold and silver similar to those of Colorado, whose wealth is yet untold. In the north is a soil that will produce cotton, rice, and sugar, like Louisiana and Texas; then come tobacco lands, like those of Virginia and Tennessee; then, as the temperature grows colder towards the south, are wheat and corn fields, as yet a tithe of them untilled, but suggesting Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. This vast area, as vast as that which lies between Indiana and the Rocky Mountains, is furnished with natural highways even more tempting to navigation than the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri rivers, and which find their sources in forests as extensive as those that shelter our great lakes.
Already the pampas produce wheat enough for domestic consumption and 9,000,000 bushels for export, and the production is increasing with the greatest rapidity. Nearly 100,000,000 sheep—more than are owned in any country of the world—are grazing on the ranges, and producing 200,000,000 pounds of wool for export; already beef and mutton are sent to England in refrigerator ships at prices cheaper than we can compete with, and few of our people know it.
A mistaken notion prevails everywhere among the American people about the social and political condition of the Argentine Republic, as well as about its commerce. There are banks at Buenos Ayres with capital greater than any in the United States, and occupying buildings finer than any banking-house in New York, palaces of marble and glass and iron. The Provincial Bank has a capital of $33,000,000, and $67,000,000 of deposits. It does more business than any one of our banks, and more than the Imperial Bank of Germany, being exceeded by but two banks in the world. The National Bank has a capital of $40,000,000, another has $8,000,000, another has $7,000,000, and several have $5,000,000. If we compare the banking capital and deposits of the Argentine Republic with those of the United States we find that they amount to $64 per capita of population there, and only $49 per capita with us. They have a Board of Trade and a Stock Exchange, where business is conducted upon the same plan as in New York or Chicago, and with as great an amount of excitement.
There are more daily papers in Buenos Ayres than in New York or London—twenty-three in all. Two of the dailies are published in the English language, one in French, one in German, and one in Italian; the rest are in Spanish. There are two illustrated weeklies, one of them comic, and three monthly literary magazines. The leading daily, La Nacion, is a great blanket-sheet larger than the New York Evening Post, and has a circulation of thirty thousand copies. The expression of opinion in the newspapers is as free as with us, and the editors are not under such restrictions as in other of the South American republics. There is a peculiar law of libel, and editors charged with this offence are tried by what is called a jury of honor, a sort of arbitrating committee, who decide upon the justice of the facts stated. Sometimes they compel the publisher to apologize, but more often console the complainant with advice “to grin and bear it.” The telephone and electric light are used extensively as in the United States, there being two telephone companies, and the manager of one told me that the number of instruments engaged is larger in proportion to population than any city in the world.
There are nine prominent theatres in Buenos Ayres, giving performances every night in the week, including Sunday, a permanent Italian opera, and a permanent French opera bouffe. One of the theatres is English, with all the plays given in that language, another is French, and a third is Italian; the rest are Spanish. There is a curious innovation in theatre and opera management in Buenos Ayres, which might be imitated by managers in the United States. The first gallery, or what we call the “dress circle,” is reserved exclusively for ladies, and no gentlemen are admitted. There is a separate box-office and entrance, and ladies who desire to attend but have no escorts are thus given an opportunity without being subjected to the annoyances suffered if they go in the usual way. They can ride to the private entrance in street-car or cab, and be as safe from the impertinence of loafers as if they had a dozen brothers or husbands around them. These galleries are almost always filled, which is the best evidence of their popularity and the success of the system.
Buenos Ayres has its parks, boulevards, and race-courses, like other modern cities; in fact, there is nothing in the line of civilized amusements that it is without. Everybody keeps a carriage and nearly everybody rides. Nowhere in the world are horses so cheap, and the stock as well as the equipages are very fine. A good pair of carriage-horses, the very best, can be had for one hundred and fifty dollars, and saddle-horses that are equal to any in the world can be purchased for thirty or forty dollars. The Argentine horseman invests his money in silver-mounted saddles and bridles, and a riding-gear with solid-silver stirrups, heavily mounted saddle, etc., is worth between four and five hundred dollars. All the swells have them, and the ladies who ride are similarly mounted, having a beautiful stirrup in the form of a slipper, often of solid silver. The parks and boulevards are crowded with haughty dons and ravishing señoritas during driving hours, and present a very brilliant and attractive scene.
The two Argentine Universities, under the patronage of the Government, are among the best in America, and rank with Yale or Harvard in curriculum and standard of education. They have large and able faculties, many of them Germans, with four branches, namely, law, medicine, engineering, and scientific, and the ordinary classical course. The library has about sixty thousand volumes, representing the literature of all languages, and the museum is quite extensive. The public-school system is also under the patronage of the Government, under a compulsory education law, and includes all grades from the kindergarten to the normal school. The distinguished ex-President of the Republic, Dr. Sarmiento, who was formerly Minister to the United States, is the especial patron of education, and it is his ambition to make the school system of the Argentine Republic the finest in the world. He studied the educational systems of all our States, and finally adopted that of Michigan for his own country.
Ex-President Sarmiento is the leading advocate of the higher education of women in South America, having gained his advanced ideas while Minister to the United States. He was an intimate friend and regular correspondent of Mrs. Horace Mann, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and other prominent women in the United States, and imbibed from them the theories of the equality of the sex which their lives have been spent in demonstrating. Through his instrumentality some forty American girls, graduates of Vassar, Wellesley, Mount Holyoke, and Western institutions, have been employed under liberal contracts by the Argentine Government in the normal schools and female seminaries of the country, and their success has been phenomenal. These teachers receive salaries varying from one hundred to one hundred and sixty dollars per month, and are placed in positions, social as well as professional, which they could not hope to acquire at home. In every instance they have conducted themselves with the most commendable dignity; and although some of the economists in Congress and in the newspapers are grumbling over the large salaries they receive, they are treated with the greatest distinction, and are entertained by the Government in a manner that our own educational authorities might well imitate.
One of them had a misunderstanding with the Papal Nuncio not long ago, which caused an immense amount of excitement. He attempted to interfere with the management of her school, on the ground that she was proselyting the children to Protestantism. She gave the envoy of his Holiness the Pope to understand that she was running that institution, and when he brought the case to the attention of the Government she defended herself with such success that the President of the Argentine Republic sent him his passport and advised him to take the next steamer for Rome. The archbishop interfered, and he was summarily banished also. Since then the Pope has been without an ambassador in the republic, but the Yankee school-ma’am is solid with the Government and the people, and goes on teaching heresy.
A Brazilian who went to Cornell University for an education married an Ithaca girl, and took her back to Brazil, where he is engaged as a civil engineer. There are a good many young Spanish-Americans with English wives. More of the men go to England than to the United States for collegiate training, for the reason that the English universities advertise down there, while the American colleges do not. There is no necessity for the Argentinians to send their sons away for learning, as their educational system is as good as our own, and the most expensive in the world, with the exception of Australia. The amount expended by the Government for educational purposes is $10.20 per pupil annually, while in the United States it averages only $8.70, in Germany $6.00, and in England $9.10. There are thirty colleges and normal schools for the higher education of men and women in the republic, with 430 teachers and 6710 students, and 2726 public schools with 6214 teachers and 201,329 pupils, in a total population of less than 4,000,000.
The Government of Chili, which attempts a close competition with the Argentine Republic in matters of education as well as other modern improvements, has contracted with fifty young ladies from Germany to manage its female seminaries and normal schools at much lower salaries than the Yankee school-ma’ams receive.
The Argentinians have made as rapid advancement in the way of charity and philanthropy as in education, and one finds throughout the country as many benevolent institutions as in New York or other cities of the United States in proportion to the population. There are hospitals, dispensaries, homes for the indigent aged, orphan asylums, blind, and deaf and dumb asylums, insane asylums, public libraries, free art schools, and all sorts of institutions founded by benevolence and liberally endowed. There is a Board of Health enforcing strict sanitary regulations, the streets are swept every night, the police are admirably organized, the public buildings and parks are lighted by electricity, and all the features of modern civilization have been introduced into the political and domestic economy. The plantation owners mostly reside in Buenos Ayres, and have telephonic wires between their offices and estancias. Instead of yelling “ Hello!” into a telephone, they say “Oyez, oyez!” as our bailiffs do when they open court.
The post-office of Buenos Ayres handled 20,000,000 packages in 1885, which is pretty good for a city of 434,000 inhabitants, and its progress is no better illustrated than by the increase of mails. In 1865 only 1,000,000 pieces were handled by this office, and in 1875 only 7,000,000, while during the first six months of 1887 over 16,000,000 pieces passed through the office. There is a mail leaving and arriving for and from Europe nearly every day, but all mail for the United States goes and comes by way of Great Britain, because of the lack of direct steamship communication.
There are three gas companies with 240 miles of pipe, lighting 26,000 houses or stores, with 3300 street-lamps. There are 32 miles of paved streets, 40 miles of sewers, some of which are large enough for a railway-train to pass through. There are 1100 licensed hacks, and 2715 licensed express-wagons; five street-railway companies, with 93 miles of track, carrying 1,850,000 passengers monthly. Between tramways and public carriages the inhabitants of Buenos Ayres spent an average of $8.00 per capita for city locomotion in 1885.
Throughout South America all the dentists and many of the photographers are immigrants from the United States, and if there is any one among them who is not getting rich he has nobody but himself to find fault with, because the natives give both professions plenty to do. Nowhere in the world is so large an amount of confectionery consumed in proportion to the population as in Spanish America, and as a natural consequence the teeth of the people require a great deal of attention. As a usual thing Spaniards have good teeth, as they always have beautiful eyes, and are very particular in keeping them in condition. Hence the dentists are kept busy, and as they charge twice as much as they do in the United States, the profits are very large. In these countries it is the custom to serve sweetmeats at every meal—dulces, as they are called—preserved fruits of the richest sort, jellies, and confections of every variety and description. Many of these are made by the nuns in the convents, and are sold to the public either through the confectionery stores or by private application. A South American housewife, instead of ordering jams and preserves and jellies from her grocer, or putting up a supply in her own kitchen during the fruit season, patronizes the nuns, and gets a better article at a lower price. The nuns are very ingenious in this work, and prepare forms of delicacies which are unknown to our table.
At a dinner-party I attended dessert was brought in in a novel form. A tray which appeared to be filled with hard-boiled eggs was placed before the hostess, who gave each guest a couple, and poured over them some sort of a syrup or dressing. In a strange country the tourist is always on the lookout for odd things; but this seemed to cap the climax—hard-boiled eggs for dessert at a swell dinner-party. But it was soon discovered that the white of this bogus egg was blanc-mange, and the yolk was made of quince jelly, egg-shells being used for moulds. This was an idea of the nuns, and one of their ingenious fixings.
The atmosphere is so clear as to be admirable for photography. The Spanish-American belle has her photograph taken every time she gets a new dress, and that is very often. The Paris styles reach here as soon as they do the North American cities, and where the national costumes are not still worn there is a great deal of elaborate dressing. The Argentine Republic is one of the few countries in which photographs of ladies are not sold in the shops. Elsewhere there is a craze for portraits of reigning beauties, and the young men have their rooms filled with photographs of the girls they admire taken in all sorts of costumes and attitudes.
There are in South America a great many physicians and surgeons from the United States, and they usually, if worthy, have a more extensive practice than the natives. There is an excellent field for female physicians here, and it is at present unoccupied. In most of the countries of South America a physician is not permitted to see a lady patient except in the presence of her husband, and many women die for lack of attention. The social laws are inflexible in this respect, and many women will suffer torments rather than expose themselves to criticism by receiving treatment from male practitioners. No woman, except she be of the common laboring class, will visit the office of a physician, and as fees for attendance at their homes are very high, many suffer and die from neglect based upon motives of modesty and economy. There is only one lady physician that I know of in South America, and she is practising with great success in Guatemala. Others might secure equal advantages in Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic, Uruguay, and Brazil; but it would be necessary for them to acquire a thorough knowledge of the Spanish language, and secure favorable introductions before hanging out their shingles. These introductions might be obtained through the American consuls and legations, or from merchants of social and commercial standing. There is a strong prejudice against the professional employment of native women, but the American ladies who have come to South America as teachers have not only been cordially received but in many cases have been lionized. In many of the aristocratic families American girls are employed as governesses, and are treated with great deference. Mrs. Barrios, the widow of the late President of Guatemala, had three New York ladies in her family—one as a companion for herself, and the other two employed in the nursery. In Peru, Chili, the Argentine Republic, and other countries French and English governesses are common, and in fact there are few others employed, as the native girls who would accept such positions lack the necessary education.
There are two notable Boston men in Buenos Ayres—notable, however, for different reasons. One is Samuel B. Hale, the most prominent merchant and capitalist in the country; and the other is D. Warren Lowe, alias Winslow, editor of the Buenos Ayres Daily Herald. There is no man in all South America more respected and beloved, or who possesses the confidence of the people to a greater degree than Samuel B. Hale. He came in 1829 from Boston to do a little trading, and has since remained, amassing an immense fortune, and now, at the age of eighty-two, looks back upon such a career as few men are permitted to contemplate.
Although we of the United States have very little to do with the Argentine Republic nowadays, the pioneers of that country were Americans. In 1826 William Wheelwright, of Pennsylvania, was wrecked upon this coast, and found his way to a small town named Quilmes, barefooted, hatless, and starving. He remained in the country, and forty years later built the first railroad in the Argentine Republic—from Buenos Ayres to Quilmes. But in the mean time he had done still greater service in establishing the first steamship line between Europe and South America—the Pacific Steam Navigation Company—which now has a monopoly of the traffic on the west coast, and sails vessels from Panama through the Strait of Magellan to Liverpool. In 1839 Mr. Wheelwright foresaw the immense trade these countries were capable of developing, and went to New York to present his scheme to Aspinwall, Garrison, Astor, Vanderbilt, and other capitalists, but they rejected it. He then went to England, where he secured the necessary capital, established his line, and turned the whole course of South American commerce from its natural channel. Every one connected with the company has made a fortune, and dividends of fourteen and fifteen per cent. are still paid. In 1852 there were in the harbor of Buenos Ayres six hundred vessels from the United States—more than double the number from all other nations combined. Now only two per cent. of the shipping annually reaching that harbor belongs to the United States. Both Chili and the Argentine Republic have erected fine monuments to Mr. Wheelwright, the father of their foreign commerce and their internal improvements, for he built the first railway in Chili as he did in the Argentine Republic.
Another citizen of the United States, Thomas Lloyd Halsey of New Jersey, introduced sheep and cattle. The Spaniards had a few domestic animals before the independence of the republic, but Mr. Halsey established the first ranch. Now there are over ninety million sheep and thirty million cattle in the country. Both Wheelwright and Halsey are dead; but Mr. Hale, who was contemporary with them, and was the pioneer commission merchant and importer, still lives. His immense business interests are now in the hands of Mr. Pierson, his son-in-law, also a Boston man, who went out as a clerk thirty years ago; and the husband of another daughter represents the London banking-house of Baring Brothers in Buenos Ayres.
In the old days Mr. Hale bought wool and hides and furs in the Argentine Republic and in Uruguay, and shipped them to Boston. The vessels returned loaded with cotton goods and Yankee notions of all sorts, which were exchanged for the produce; and this system of barter went on until the War of the Rebellion, when most of the vessels were withdrawn, and the tariff on wool made it unprofitable to ship the chief product of the republic to the United States. Then Mr. Hale turned his attention to the European trade, and did a very large business in exporting and importing until about 1880, when he sold out to Mr. C. S. Bowers, also a Boston man, and retired from the market. He still purchases large quantities
of wool and hides for shipment to Europe, but does not import any longer, and he devotes most of his attention to loaning money and dealing in standard securities. In addition to his commercial business, Mr. Hale owns and manages some of the largest estancias in the Argentine Republic, having several hundred thousand sheep and sixty thousand cattle. He is famous for his hospitality and generosity, and many of the philanthropic institutions of the country have enjoyed with him the financial results of his successful career. He has also been active in the promotion of public enterprises and in encouraging steamship lines, and is not only the oldest and most prominent merchant, but is regarded as the leading public benefactor.
The social condition of the Argentine Republic is as much advanced as its commerce, and the old customs are rapidly dying out. The education of girls has become popular, and the young ladies are no longer restricted in their association with men, as in other Spanish-American countries. Formerly, if a young man fell in love with a girl, he told her father or grandmother about it, which was about as satisfactory as kissing through a telephone. Under the new regime etiquette gives him the privilege of telling the old, old story into the girl’s own ear, and it appears to work just as well for all concerned.
It is the only country in South America in which girls can go out riding with their lovers, or receive them at home as they do in the United States. The supposition that it is unsafe to leave a woman alone with any man but her husband or father does not exist in the Argentine Republic, except among some of the families of the ancient Spanish aristocracy which still adhere to the old tradition.
One finds a good deal of club life in Buenos Ayres, there being as many as seven fine club-houses, most of which have all the modern improvements, with reading-rooms attached, in which are found newspapers from all parts of the world.
Their restaurants and cafés are as good as the average in New York and London, and the people being epicurean in their tastes, caterers import delicacies from all parts of the world. Lobsters and Spanish mackerel are brought in refrigerator ships, and Southdown mutton from England, with all sorts of delicacies from France. One day I saw a negro going through the streets with a large tray on his head, containing a leg of mutton, a haunch of venison, Spanish mackerel, lobsters, shrimps, and oysters, and a printed placard upon his back announcing that dishes of this sort were served daily at the Maison de Paris.
The hotels are not good. They are up to the average in South American cities, but do not correspond with the other evidences of advancement in Buenos Ayres. They have no regular rates, but charge each guest as much as his appearance and manners suggest he can afford to pay. When they get hold of an American, as citizens of the United States are always called, they bleed him to the last drop. “I thought you Americans never disputed a hotel-bill,” a Boniface said to me one day, when I had expressed my indignation at his charges. “We always expect Englishmen to, but Americans never,” and he shrugged his shoulders as if my conduct was a disgrace to my country.
The steamers which run from Buenos Ayres to Montevideo and up the river to Paraguay are, to the surprise of every traveller, as fine and gorgeous as those on Long Island Sound—great, splendid palaces with no end of gilt and gingerbreadwork, with stewards and cabin-boys in livery, wine-rooms, smoking-rooms, bands of music, and all that sort of thing. There are two lines in active rivalry, and they are trying to see which can set the finer table. The bill of fare is as good as that of a first-class hotel in New York, and two kinds of wine, claret and Rhine wine, are served without extra charge. On each steamer are three or four swell cabins, called bridal chambers, each being fitted up without regard to expense, and containing all the flub-dubs that can be crowded into them, including pianos and sideboards, with well-filled bottles of wine and brandy in the rack, all included in the price of passage, which is double that of the ordinary cabin. The swells always take these cabins when they start off on a bridal tour.
The finest church in Buenos Ayres is called the “Church of the Recolletta” (remembrance). It is of pure Roman architecture, in Italian marble, beautifully carved, and cost about $250,000. It is the property of Señor Don Carlos Guerrero, a wealthy citizen, who erected it as a memorial to his daughter, who was murdered by a rejected lover about ten years ago. She is buried under the altar, and the magnificent stained glass window imported from Florence represents incidents from her life.
The cathedral is a very large and costly building, but it looks more like a bank or Government palace than a church. Within the walls is the mausoleum of General Saint-Martin,