South America Observations and Impressions

74

The guanaco is the only large wild quadruped of these regions. He belongs to the same genus (Auchenia) as the llama, alpaca, and vicuña, but is bigger than any of them. Pigafetta describes him as having "the head of a mule, the body of a camel, the feet of a stag, and the tail of a horse."

75

The steamers of the Pacific Steam Navigation Company began to run through the Straits about 1840.

76

The enormous herds of fur seals which existed a century ago in the islands of South Georgia, the South Orkneys, and the South Shetlands have vanished. 300,000 are said to have been killed within five years in the South Shetlands alone.

77

I reckon Oakland and Berkeley as, for this purpose, parts of San Francisco.

78

The population of the Republic is about 7,000,000, and that of Buenos Aires 1,300,000.

79

The English, adopting this term, talk of the rural parts of Argentina as "the Camp," an expression which at first puzzles the visitor.

80

There were, in 1911, 30,000,000 cattle, 68,000,000 sheep, and 7,500,000 horses.

81

The total amount of British capital invested in Argentine railroads, tramways, banks, and land was, in 1910, £295,000,000. In writing about a country which attracts the world chiefly by its material development it is impossible to avoid figures, but I wish to give the reader no more than are absolutely needed.

82

There is, however, a small population of mixed Indian and colonial stock in the plateau of the Andean northwest adjoining Bolivia.

83

844,000 were from Italy, 424,000 from Spain.

84

Some remarks upon this obscure question will be found in Chapter XCII of the author's American Commonwealth (edition of 1910). The problem is rather simpler here than in the United States because the recently injected elements are here less various.

85

I was told that many of the street police are Indians from the north of the country.

86

They have a mass of readers near at hand and a revenue from advertisements comparable to those which are found in the United States and Australia, but are not found in Spanish America outside Buenos Aires.

Mr. F. Seebey states that, in 1903, 212 periodicals were published in Buenos Aires in various languages or dialects, including Basque, Catalan, and Genoese.

87

The account of the origin of the red shirt given by Mr. G. M. Trevelyan in his interesting book, Garibaldi and the Defence of Rome, is not quite the same as that which I heard in Uruguay, but not incompatible therewith.

88

Such legal or quasi-legal questions have arisen several times in Central America.

89

This question is involved with that relating to the voyages, real or alleged, of Americus Vespuccius in 1497, and is too intricate to be discussed here.

90

See Chapter XVI, post.

91

Opposite the Montanvert at Chamouni.

92

See page 368.

93

The tops range from 4500 to 7000 feet.

94

Sequoia gigantea of the Mariposa and Calaveras groves.

95

Sequoia sempervirens.

96

John White.

97

Chapter XVI.

98

How many Indians there are nobody knows, but the common (probably exaggerated) estimate puts them at nearly 2,000,000, half of these pagans in the Amazonian forests, while the mixed race is calculated at 1,700,000.

99

Sir H. H. Johnson (The Negro in the New World) conjectures the pure blacks at about 2,720,000 and the mulattoes and quadroons at about 5,600,000. The rest of the population, that which may be described as white because it bears no conspicuous marks of any infusion of color, may approach 8,000,000. The Indians and half-breeds (Indian and white) would make up the rest of the non-European population. Of the pure blacks, from 20,000 to 30,000, living on the northeast coast, are either Mussulmans or heathen fetichists.

100

M. Georges Clémenceau in his South America of To-day.

101

Brazil would make a seventeenth, but it was in 1808 a possession of Portugal. The three island republics, Cuba, Hayti, and Santo Domingo, bring up the total number of independent Latin-American states to twenty.

102

Whether the same can be said of some of the Central American republics may be doubted.

103

See above, Chapter IX.

104

Though, no doubt, there is between the inhabitants of southern Mexico and their neighbours, the men of Guatemala and Honduras, no marked difference, just as there is not much between the men of Northern Peru and their neighbours in Ecuador.

105

However, a North American friend tells me that he can usually tell a Venezuelan from a Colombian.

106

Steps have recently been taken for smoothing down this controversy, and diplomatic relations between Chile and Peru seem likely to be now resumed. (Note to edition of February, 1913.)

107

Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States, Belgium, Holland, and Portugal.

108

The more usual estimates (e. g. that in the Statesman's Year Book for 1912) give 19 per cent of pure Spaniards, 43 per cent mestizos, and 38 per cent Indians, but enquiries made from many well-informed people in Mexico led me to believe that the proportion of Indians is much larger, and probably about that stated in the text.

109

Brazil is believed to have nearly two millions of aborigines, most of them savages, Argentina perhaps fifty thousand, Chile one hundred twenty thousand (including the Fuegians). For the four northern republics and for the five of Central America no figures exist, but the bulk of their population, which may be roughly taken at nine millions, is Indian, and pure whites constitute a small minority, which is probably largest in Costa Rica, Colombia, and Panama.

110

There are also eight or nine millions of negroes and mulattoes (nearly all in Brazil).

111

Chapters III–V.

112

See Chapter V, p. 180.

113

Noticias Secretas de America, p. 353. This remarkable book, published by David Barry in 1826, quarto (Taylor, London), from a manuscript which he obtained in Madrid, gives a frightful description of the cruelties and oppressions practised on the Indians. It does not, however, seem to have led to any efforts at reform. It is accepted as authentic by good authorities. I owe the reference to the book of Professor Bernard Moses, South America on the Eve of Emancipation, The Southern Colonies.

114

Noticias Secretas, ut supra, p. 343.

115

Half the population of Paraguay perished in the war of the younger Lopez, the third of the line of dictators that ruled the country from 1818 to 1870.

116

Islands of Titicaca and Koati, quoted in Chapter IV.

117

Travels in Peru, p. 305 sqq.

118

Islands of Titicaca and Koati, p. 40 sqq. This learned student of Indian customs thinks that the drinking may have originated in the ceremonial offerings of chicha to the spirits. Its continuance needs no explanation.

119

There has been formed in Lima a society for the protection of the Indians, but I could not learn that it has been able to do much in the parts of Peru that lie far from the capital.

120

The sense of membership in a concrete community (a Visible Church) consisting of persons of whatever race who participate in the same sacraments is stronger in the Roman than in the Protestant churches; and as a member of a lower race who has been ordained a priest is thereby raised to a position which is in a sense above that of any layman, the race itself is raised in his person.

121

An infusion of negro blood, sometimes met with in the coast towns of Peru, is regarded with less favour than a like infusion of Indian blood, for while the first negro ancestor must have been a slave, the Indian ancestor may have been an Inca.

122

A few years ago in northern Mexico a truck carrying a load of dynamite for use at a mine was suddenly discovered to be on fire at a village station. The risk was imminent, so the driver of a locomotive engine picked the truck up and ran it away into the country at all the speed he could put on. He bade the brakeman jump off and save himself, adding, "I go to my death." When he had got a mile away, the dynamite exploded. Every window in the village was broken, and he was blown to atoms, but the inhabitants were saved. He was a pure-blooded Indian.

123

Some of these now come south to work on Argentine farms.

124

Though doubt has lately been thrown upon the letter of Toscanelli and upon the received belief that it was India that Columbus was seeking, he clearly believed on his return to Spain that it was India he had found.

125

The question as to the truth of Amerigo Vespucci's account of his voyages, and especially of the first one (1497) in which he claimed to have discovered a new land 1000 leagues west southwest of the Canary Islands is still the subject of controversy among learned men, but the prevalent opinion seems to be that the account is unworthy of credence. The letters were translated into Latin and ran through several editions.

The name "Americus, Amerigo" is an Italianized form of Amalrich, a name borne by some of the Gothic kings mentioned by Jordanes, and also by two of the Latin kings of Jerusalem in the twelfth century. It is the German Emeric and the French Amaury.

126

Each has, moreover, other currents of somewhat less climatic importance: the Japan current on the Pacific and the Arctic current on the Atlantic coast of North America, as well as the equatorial current on a part of the east coast of South America.

127

Teutonic may appear to be no satisfactory term, considering not only the French-speaking population of eastern Canada, but also the large Celtic, Italic, and Slavonic elements within the United States. Nevertheless, the general social type of that country and of Canada is Teutonic, as are also their institutions and their language.

128

Although one-fifth of the produce was, as a rule, transmitted to the government at home.

129

See as to Peru, which was only the central part of that Empire, the figure of 8,000,000, given for 1575, after the great slaughter of the Spanish Conquest (pp. 162–163).

130

Had the Slave States succeeded in dissociating themselves from the northern and western Free States in the Civil War of 1861–1865, there would have been at least three. It may be suggested that if there had been neither steamships nor railroads, the Pacific slope of North America (California, Oregon, and Washington) might possibly have become the home of yet another independent nation.

131

Chapter XII.

132

There are no titles of nobility in use in Latin America, except in Brazil, where a very few families still have the titles of Viscount and Baron.

133

One question exists which might possibly create friction between Argentina and Brazil, but there is reason to believe that any collision will be avoided.

134

One is told, but I had no means of verifying the statement, that Scotchmen and Irishmen and Germans get on rather better with the Latin Americans.

135

In a remarkable speech made in New York in 1909, a speech which shewed his comprehension of the good points of Spanish-American character, Mr. Root deplored the fact that the North American press was apt to indulge in criticisms of Spanish Americans displeasing to the latter, the effect of which their authors, accustomed to criticise their own fellow-countrymen freely, did not realize.

136

In some of the colonies the revolt was at first rather on behalf of the Spanish king against the Napoleonic government in Spain, but the movement everywhere soon passed into one for independence.

137

Mr. Hiram Bingham in Across South America, published in 1911. Mr. Bingham adds in the same connection: "The number of 'North Americans' in Buenos Aires is very small. While we have been slowly waking up to the fact that South America is something more than 'a land of revolutions and fevers,' our German cousins have entered the field on all sides. The Germans in southern Brazil are a negligible factor in international affairs, but the well-educated young German who is being sent out to capture South America commercially is a power to be reckoned with. He is going to damage England more truly than dreadnoughts or airships." See also the judicious remarks of Mr. Albert Hale in his book, The South Americans, pp. 303–309.

138

The idea of bringing all American republics together in congresses to discuss matters of common interest, was started by Bolivar with the view of organizing joint resistance to any action by the Holy Alliance against the new republics. At his instance such a gathering met at Panama in 1826. Delegates met again in 1883 at Caracas and Buenos Aires, but accomplished nothing. In 1899 a more largely attended gathering assembled at Washington, the chief result of which was the establishment there of an institution, now called the Pan-American Union, which under its zealous and energetic director collects, publishes, and distributes information, chiefly statistical and commercial, regarding the various republics. Similar congresses have been subsequently held at Mexico, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires, at which friendly sentiments have been interchanged, but no encouragement has been given to suggestions proceeding from the United States for reciprocal "Pan-American" trade preferences.

139

In the days when Louis Napoleon was trying to establish for France a hegemony over the Romance-speaking peoples of Europe, the days when his Life of Julius Cæsar was published and his expedition to Mexico despatched, this term first came into common use. It was the fashion for his literary court to represent the French people as the heirs of ancient Rome, the modern perpetuator of her spirit and her greatness. Yet in reality the character and the conduct of the English government during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bear a closer resemblance than ever did the French, both in their strong and in their weak points, to the government of the Roman republic.

140

Cortes tortured him to compel the disclosure of treasure.

141

Though Francia had been created dictator for life.

142

The wild tribal Indians, Indios bravos, have, of course, no votes.

143

The Magyars of Hungary, the Finns of Finland, and the Basques of the western Pyrenees.

144

Dr. Palacios in his interesting book Raza Chilena.

145

Remembering Switzerland with its three languages, one cannot make the proposition absolute. But in Switzerland the three races are, as respects intelligence and education, practically on a level, whereas in South America the Indians stand far below.

146

This was ceasing, under the rule of Diaz, to be true of Mexico.

147

Though much more ought to have been done towards the solution of land questions and for the promotion of education. [Mexico seems to have now relapsed into a condition as bad as that from which Juarez and Diaz rescued her. Note to edition of 1914.]

148

There would seem to have been more in Europe within the last fifty years than in any preceding period of equal length since the seventeenth century.

149

The small cultivator in Argentina is under this disadvantage that a severe drought or a swarm of locusts may ruin him, whereas the large farmer with more capital can bear the loss of one season's crop.

150

This is Manaos in Brazilian territory. Higher up, in Peruvian, is the smaller town of Iquitos. Ocean-going steamers ply as far as Manaos.

151

See ante, p. 76. The evil is widespread and horrible.

152

I include English, Dutch, and French Guiana.

153

In Victoria the annual rate of increase per cent of population which in 1871 was 3.07 per cent was in 1901 only .48 per cent. In New South Wales it was in 1871, 3.7 per cent, in 1901, 1.8 per cent.

154

The Italians are chiefly in Argentina, Uruguay, and southern Brazil.

155

There are also some East Indian coolies in Guiana, perhaps 100,000.

156

The negroes are almost all in Brazil, but a few exist on the coasts of Peru, Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela.

157

The United States census returns do not attempt to discriminate between mulattoes, quadroons, and octoroons; all are reckoned as coloured; and no doubt a certain number of quadroons and octoroons pass as white.

158

The country which has of late years produced most good poetry is, I believe, Colombia. Argentine writers have distinguished themselves chiefly in the sphere of theoretical jurisprudence and international law.

159

One is told that the European books most popular among the few who approach abstract subjects are those of Mr. Herbert Spencer, whose influence was always greater in the South European countries and in Russia than in England or the United States. Those few are unwilling to believe that he is not deemed in his own country to be a great philosopher.