The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise

Yet, as I have said, though there is plenty to prove that Cordoba is awake, the impression left on the memory is that it is an old-fashioned Spanish university town that has strayed to the central part of South America. This may be because I spent most of my time in the university buildings, or roaming through the churches. In the cathedral a shrivelled but kindly old priest showed me a gallery of bishops of Cordoba; but I suspect they are much like the Scottish kings which adorn the walls of Holyrood Palace, many painted by one hand, and from imagination of what the bishops looked like rather than from any knowledge of their actual appearance.

I went to the Jesuit church, where a tonsured, jolly monk showed me the relics. People who had had rheumatism, and who had been cured by prayer, gave acknowledgment by sending golden arms or silver legs. There was a little golden motor car, and this came from a lady who in a terrible smash prayed her life might be saved; and it was saved, and here was her gift. Here was the statue of the Virgin, which performs miracles. Those who are inclined to doubt are shown a stack of crutches of those who hobbled into the church to seek the aid of the Virgin and walked out quite cured. The little figure of the Virgin is as fresh as though it had been carved and painted only last year. Yet the story goes it has never been touched for nigh four hundred years. In those far-off days it was sent from Spain. But the ship was wrecked in mid-Atlantic. Those who had expected the statue were in distress, and prayers were offered on the coast that the good Mother would send another statue. And whilst they prayed the case in which was the statue was floated on the shore, and the statue was quite unharmed. At once miracles were performed, and miracles have been performed over since. I saw the crutches and I saw the golden motor-car.

From the rafters hung many flags of foreign countries captured by Argentina in war. There is a Union Jack, with colours dimmed with years, which was seized from the British nearly a hundred years ago, when a British force landed and it was a toss-up whether Argentina would not become a British Colony. Many British visitors cast a regretful eye upon that drooping flag in the Jesuit church at Cordoba. They are not told – but it is a fact all the same – it is not the real flag. I was shown the real flag folded in a glass case in a room behind the altar. Some years ago a number of young Englishmen travelling in the country recovered the real flag, which then hung in the chancel. There was such a how-d'ye-do that it had to be returned. To avoid a similar mishap it was put under lock and key in a glass case, and kept in a chamber not accessible to the public. But the public would still want to see the British flag. So not to disappoint them an exact copy was made, and it is the imitation flag upon which most visiting Englishmen cast a patriotic but regretful eye.

There is an agricultural college, a wonderful drive up a hill to a park which provides long distance views, an English school and a German school. I could easily give a dozen places where these developments can be found, and better. The point is that you find these things at all in the very heart of South America. Being the heart of the southern continent, Cordoba has been selected by the Government as its chief observatory. It is the Argentine Greenwich. The Republic keeps the same time from east to west, and it keeps Cordoba time. The observatory is under the control of a staff from the United States.

The Cordobians are great lovers of pleasure. Sometimes on the grim hoardings of London you see how a railway company will take you, first class, to a popular seaside resort, house and feed you in a well-known hotel, and bring you back at a fixed inclusive sum for the week-end. The Central Argentine Railway does the same thing in regard to Alta Gracia, a pleasant village in the hills, and where there is the best mountain hotel in the world. Alta Gracia is about an hour's run from Cordoba, and on Sundays there is a rush of holiday-makers, reminiscent of the Pullman express out of London down to Brighton on a Sunday morning. The "fixed charge" is popular. Everybody knows exactly how much the outing is going to cost. At ten o'clock a train thronged with holiday-makers sets out for Alta Gracia. By eleven o'clock the place is reached. At noon there is déjeuner. The afternoon can be spent lounging about, listening to the band, playing golf, playing tennis, gambling in the casino, taking walks in the wooded hills. At seven o'clock is dinner. The train returns at nine o'clock, and by ten Cordoba and home is reached.

One of the pleasantest week-ends in my life I spent at Alta Gracia. There is a little group of Englishmen, associated with the Central Argentine Railway, living at Cordoba, and, as officials have special cars, we had a couple of cars attached to the train on Saturday night. At Alta Gracia these were detached and side tracked. Then we "roughed it" for twenty-four hours. After the cocktails, and whilst dinner was being prepared, we sat out on the plain. On one side rose the village, revealed by points of light in the blackness, and on the summit of the hill was a glow of light just like a great and well-illumined liner appears as she ploughs the sea. That was the mountain hotel. On the other side was the prairie, just a streak of dark below the deep blue of the sky. The stars seemed bigger and nearer and more numerous than they do in northern climes. There was the usual searching for the Southern Cross, and when found we all agreed it was the most overrated constellation in the heavens. A caressing warmth was in the air. It was good to sit there, smoking our pipes and "listening to the silence."

Away on the plains of central South America – that sounds like "roughing it." But you have got to go much farther afield to rough it. The car which my friend and I had would have attracted much notice in England. There was a pleasant sitting-room, with big easy chairs and a real English open fireplace. There were three bedrooms, not the "cribb'd, cabin'd, confin'd" cabins we have in our "sleepers" at home, and there was the luxury of a bathroom. There was a kitchen, a chef, and a sprightly waiter. The whole car was lit by electricity. So we sat down to dinner – half a dozen courses as excellent as can be served at a London restaurant which looks after its reputation. We filled the coach with our tobacco smoke; we told our best stories; we exchanged yarns about things which had befallen us in distant parts of the world – in Siberia and Australia, Peru and Havana, the Soudan and California – for here the corners of the earth were met in a side-tracked private car in the lee of a pretty holiday village in the middle of Argentina. The Spaniards have done much to this land; but bands of young Englishmen have played and are playing their part.

In the delicious freshness of the dawn we sauntered about in our pyjamas, drank tea and smoked cigarettes. The day came with a rush of glory. It was Sunday morning, and the bell in the monastic church on the hill was clanging for the faithful to go and pray. The mystery which hung over Alta Gracia had gone, and in the truthful light of the morning it was just a straggling Spanish village, with many trees about, and the red hills in the distance making a jagged background. It was a torrid Sunday morning, and when we had had our tubs, and had shaven and put on our flannels, we set out to "make a day of it."

The bell of the old church was clang-clanging. Peasants in their Sunday clothes – the women squat and short-skirted and with highly coloured kerchiefs over their heads, the men in baggy velvet trousers and slouch hats, their faces polished with soap and their hair reeking with scented oil – were slowly climbing to worship. The walls of the church, and the buildings where the monks formerly lived, suggested a fortress prepared to resist attack rather than a haven of peace. There were long slits in the stonework through which the nose of a musket could be stuck. For in the old days the monks had to fight as well as pray. Alta Gracia was very lonely centuries ago, and always liable to attack. But now all that is far in the background. The church was crowded. The priest at the candled altar was chanting. The air was pungent with incense. There was not room for all the worshippers to sit so many stood, and when they knelt they spread their handkerchiefs on the floor. There was nothing which could be described as distinctively Argentine. Better-to-do folk were dressed just like better-to-do folk are dressed in Europe. It was just the usual Sunday morning scene you can witness in Spain and Italy – countries six thousand miles away.

One blinked on coming from the shadows of the church into the sunshine. The holiday-makers from Cordoba had arrived, and were scattering to find suitable haunts for picnicking. We tramped up the heavy, dusty road, panting and perspiring, but encouraged by the sight of the spreading, low-roofed hotel. Ah! at last we were on the broad balcony, twice as wide as the promenade deck of our greatest liner. A touch of the bell, and we were having our favourite beverages, much iced. Through the shimmering heat the eye could wander over the endless brown plains. Solemn Argentines, inclined to portliness, sat in big basket-chairs, surrounded by their sedate families, doing nothing at all. There were invalids who had come here for the high, dry air. There were noisy English youths, in gorgeous blazers, arranging a tennis match. A party of heavy-shoed golfers were setting out.

Alta Gracia is renowned throughout Argentina as a health resort. In the hot months – and it can be very hot around January – many families come here, for there is always a refreshing breeze. There are hundreds of rooms in the hotel. Bathrooms are innumerable. There are suites and single chambers. The furniture is tasteful but not luxurious. The dining-room is in white. There is a ball-room. There is a resident orchestra. I know most of the big hotels in the mountains of Switzerland, but no one is comparable in conveniences to this.

Across the gardens, a hundred yards away, is the casino, quite apart from the hotel, but provided for those who want to gamble – and where is the Argentine who does not like to gamble? There are large public rooms; there are small rooms, decorated in a variety of styles, for private gaming parties; there is a refreshment and reading-room, German in appearance; there is a beautiful little theatre. No, I am receiving no fee to advertise Alta Gracia. With the exception of my companion, I am quite sure there was not a soul in the place who knew what my name was, or bothered their heads what was the business of a tourist-looking fellow like myself.

We lunched, we had our coffee, and then we hired one of the hotel motor-cars and went for a forty or fifty mile spin. Roads – there were no roads. There were passable tracks and a considerable amount of bouncing which tested the springs of the car. Like all Latin chauffeurs the driver had a mania for speed. The way serpentined amongst the rocks and through scraggy woods, so we had often to make a sudden duck to avoid getting whipped in the face by a branch. We banged and swerved, but even the awful threat of not giving the driver a tip did not hold him in for more than a hundred yards at a stretch from letting that car tear along at its maddest. He took us to see a gurgling little river, the Bolsa, tripping through a sylvan glade which caused me to exclaim, "Why, it is just like a bit of Dovedale!"

Off again at a furious pace, heaving, diving, skirting hills. "If there is a smash you will be the first killed." But the chauffeur only laughed over his shoulder. We struck up a defile, and the hills rose high on either side. Mountain ponies scampered about; goats hailed us from rocky heights. Gauchos, swarthy and handsome, with their women perched behind, were overtaken on stallions which were restive and inclined to bolt at the approach of the automobile. A bend in the narrow way, and we nearly ran into a funeral procession; the coffin on a cart and covered with a dingy pall, and the friends of the dead man in many and varied vehicles following, in no garb of mourning, but non-chalantly smoking cigarettes. There was backing of the car till it could be run on a piece of grass. The horses hauling the dead man laid their ears well forward and then well back, but were led past the thing they were afraid of without accident. We exchanged the greetings of the day with the friends of the dead man. He was going to be buried twelve miles away, and it would be well into the night before they got back. The motor-car snorted and jumped on its way. It was a beautiful afternoon.

The chauffeur brought us to a chalet which we reached by crossing a brook and passing through a garden. It was a house of refreshment. And what kind of refreshment in an out-of-the-way part of the world? A sad-faced girl gave us a curtsy and waited our orders whilst we stretched our legs beneath an orange tree. Now what had she to offer in the way of refreshment? The señors could have what they wished. I inquired about champagne. Certainly! But who on earth could want champagne on the edge of the world out there? We did not have champagne. We had a bottle of native white wine and aerated water. The chauffeur! Oh, his fancy ran to a bottle of beer; indeed, he had two bottles of beer. And who was the dead man we had passed? we asked the maid. Her brother. Last night he took ill and ere morning he was dead, and now they had taken him away. An old man came to the door and looked up the sunlit valley. The little two-year-old son of the dead man had a stick, and was chasing some ducks toward the brook; he was radiantly happy. We commiserated with the old man. He thanked the señors and hoped the wine was as we wished. He did not know why his son died; the sweet Mother in Heaven knew; anyway, he had gone; could he get the señor another chair, for that he was sitting on could not be comfortable?

Back to Alta Gracia. Some of our friends had been playing golf, and we must go to the club-house. A well-laid-out nine-hole course, but the "greens" are of caked mud; they cannot grow grass out here as we can at home. There is the usual golfers' talk; there was "rotten luck being bunkered just in front of the fourth hole"; "That was a lovely drive from the eighth"; "Hang it all, he was quite off colour with his brassie, and he generally fancied himself with his brassie work"; "Well, of all the fortunate foozlers, a chap like that doing the fifth in three" – and so on. It was just like dear old England.

Somebody remarked there were gaucho races over on the other side of the town. Gaucho races – races amongst the men of the soil, the native cowboys of the Argentine prairies! Tune up that motor-car. I can see lots of golf in other parts of the world, but here was one of the things I had dreamed about coming out to see – a gaucho race-meeting.

No, I have no need to think out admiring adjectives to describe that course. It was only a bit of a course. The posts were ramshackle, and the wire which had connected them was broken and trailed on the ground, or had gone altogether. There was what I took to be intended for a grand stand, a wheezy erection of unpainted wood, but there was nobody on it.

There were hundreds of gauchos, the real article, with skins like leather, eyes as black as night, and most of them were on ponies and astride Spanish saddles, and they were picturesquely garbed, but not so picturesquely as you see them in coloured illustrations. They were noisy, and prancing their horses about and challenging each other. They had ridden in fifteen and twenty miles, some of them, and their women had driven in the carts with provisions for the day. The women had little encampments in the bushes, and fires burning, and they made coffee and served their lords with chunks of food.

The men are all laughing and arguing the merits of their ponies. Nearly everybody is mounted. One gaucho is jumping from group to group, waving two paper pesos (about 3s. 4d.) and demanding who will lay two pesos against his pony. The jabber is interminable. He gets taken. Excitement runs through the crowd. The competitors each hand the money to an old fellow who stands on a rickety platform which serves as judges' box. Then they amble off toward a tree where they are their own starters. A native policeman frantically yells for the course to be cleared. Some sort of passage-way is made, and then there is the customary confounded dog which will not get out of the way.

Here they come, and in a pelt of dust. They ride well and with a loose rein. The riders swing their arms and yell as though they would frighten their steeds to greater efforts. You can feel the quiver in the crowd. By go the horses, running neck to neck. But one has won by a nose. The winner trots up smiling, and he gets the four pesos held by the judge.

But the clamour has begun again. One man, rather a gaudy buck and with a fine horse, challenges the world. He will race any man for five pesos, and he has the money in his hand to show he means business. Well, he will lay his five pesos to anybody else's four. Everybody is talking about his own horse, or somebody else's horse, or egging two enthusiasts to cease their talking and have the thing settled by a race.

These gauchos belong to a long line of men who have lived on their prairies and had to do with horses ever since the Spaniards first landed. They go to horse-races not for a pleasant holiday, but because the fever of horse-racing is in their veins.

And that night after dinner we sat in the great light of the veranda, and the mighty purple night was beyond, and the air was heavy with the musk which rises from the plains after a hot day and the great locusts which swerved toward us! Some women gave little screams in fear they might get amongst their hair. Men who knew their harmlessness – except when there was a crop of young wheat to be devoured – caught them in their hands.

We tramped through the dimly lit village and heard the songs of Spain and Italy streaming from the cafés. We saw the crowd of merry-makers packing into the train to return to Cordoba. And when the train, a streak of light, had snorted into the blackness till in the distance it appeared like a crawling glowworm, we got chairs from out of the private car and sat beneath the stars and smoked our pipes, and wondered what was happening in England. At first there was warmth in the air. But the chill of midnight had come, and the grasshoppers had ceased their song, before we climbed to bed.

CHAPTER XIV

BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND

If I were suddenly asked to name the town which has most rapidly sprung ahead during the last few years, Bahia Blanca would at once jump to my lips.

It is 350 miles south of the River Plate, and if you searched the coast line for six hundred miles below Buenos Aires it is only here you would find a natural harbour capable of receiving the largest of steamers. With the gradual silting of the River Plate, which, notwithstanding constant dredging, will be a constant handicap to the shipping of the capital and Rosario, Bahia Blanca, with advantages which neither of the other two towns possesses, will undoubtedly become the real Liverpool of Argentina.

In 1880 the place had a population of less than 2,000. To-day its population is 70,000, and it is increasing rapidly. Already it has third place in commercial importance amongst the cities of the country, and its ambition is to rival Buenos Aires itself.

Old timers – men who have been in the place a dozen years – waxed enthusiastic to me about the way in which an unpaved village, built on a flat, dusty, treeless waste, has become a city of broad paved streets and plazas, with imposing public buildings, public gardens, electric tramways, electric light, and an excellent water supply.

There was something exhilarating in driving in a motor-car along a busy thoroughfare, with big shops on either side, and with clanging tramcars picking up and dropping passengers, and to be reminded that seven years before the place was quite a wilderness. The way in which some men had made money quickly made the mouth water when one was shown a plot of land which had originally been purchased for a few dollars, sold a few years later for 10,000 dollars, and which had changed hands only a month or two later for 30,000 dollars.

Though open to the scourge of disagreeable sand-storms – I experienced one during my visit – the town is well placed, with fine open spaces; and though the public park is a little "raw," the fact that there is a park at all, with excellent drives and many trees, is the wonderful thing. I dined one night at an excellent hotel, and afterwards accompanied some friends to a wine hall, where men brought their wives and children and witnessed a pleasant kinematograph entertainment. Of course there is an Argentine Club, and, though without the sedate restfulness which English folk like to feel is the characteristic of their clubs, its dimensions and luxuriance provide a building which would be a credit to any town three times its size. Bahia Blanca has a model municipality, and, with all respect to the Spanish-Italian Argentines, I believe the secret is that the development of the town has been chiefly in the hands of Englishmen.

With the opening of the country, fresh areas of land placed under cultivation and with thousands of miles lying at the back capable of wheat growing and cattle raising, Bahia Blanca is swiftly coming into its own. The land was practically useless so long as there was no transport, but now, with the Great Southern Railway, the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway and other lines converging upon the town, every year marks an increase in trade. For instance, in 1901 seventy vessels were cleared from the port; in 1912 there were four hundred and twenty-two. In the same two years the shipments in wool jumped from 26,123 tons to 55,552; the number of hides from 394 to 77,401; the tons of hair from 3 to 248; and the tons of cereals from 188,875 to 1,747,702.

Let honour go where honour is due. It was the coming of the railways which gave Bahia Blanca its leap forward. In 1884 the Great Southern Railway first pushed its rails so far south. They ran through a country which, loosely, might be described as desert. The bringing of the railway was like putting new life into the desert. Estancias dotted the landscape. In 1885 an insignificant mole was built by the Great Southern to receive its own materials, but this mole has developed into the present Port of Engineer White – called after the man who built it – which deals with over a million tons of public traffic yearly. This port is a little over four miles from Bahia Blanca, and has berths for ten vessels of less draught. I climbed through the two grain elevators, stacked with 26,000 tons of wheat in sacks. By means of electric bands grain can be conveyed to eight vessels at a time, and in the busy season ships have been known to take over five thousand tons in a little over six hours. Being a place of yesterday's growth all the newest appliances are to be found, including thirty electric cranes, powerful tugs, floating grain elevators. Indeed, the Southern company admit to an expenditure on the port of £2,000,000.

But the port made by the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway Company, Puerto Galvan, occupying a position of fine natural advantage on the estuary of the bay and lying a mile or two across the flat from Engineer White, has also to be seen. At high tide there is a mean depth of twenty-eight feet, and plenty of good anchorage is in the mainway. Puerto Galvan is five miles from Bahia Blanca, and to a great extent has been built on reclaimed swampy ground. I see the day when warehouses and further elevators will cover this piece of reclaimed mudbank, and it should never be forgotten that Mr. Stevens, the engineer, a man of great ability and much modesty, has performed a fine piece of work. The port has accommodation for twelve ocean-going steamers, and the berths, which have a total length of over 4,000 feet, have been constructed with a view to the rapid handling of cargo. Here again the appliances, elevators to handle 8,000 tons a day, thirty-six cranes, traversers, capstans, are all electrically driven. The total effective power amounts to 4,265 horse-power. The port and the shunting yards are all lit at night with electricity, and ships can be illuminated. There are special facilities for the embarkation of cattle. Large bonded warehouses are in course of construction. There is a flour mill with a capacity of 100 tons a day. Large storage tanks have been erected for the accumulation of crude oil, an important provision in a country so deficient in coal. I looked across the sweep lying between Puerto Galvan and Engineer White, and visioned the day when it will be occupied with warehouses and industrial enterprises, for oil fuel and electric power can be quickly and cheaply supplied.