Argentina from a British Point of View Part 8

The Day of Rest, so essential to one's well-being, seems to come round with such surprising rapidity that we may say truly it proves that estancia life, with its long hours of hard work, so far from being monotonous or wearisome, is a happy life. Where time flies past quickly it means it pa.s.ses happily, and amongst the most pleasant of the days we spend in this land of sunshine we must count the Sundays in camp.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "A Day of Real Enjoyment."]

THE SERVANT PROBLEM IN ARGENTINA.

THE SERVANT PROBLEM IN ARGENTINA.

We often hear complaints from friends at home about the trouble they experience over obtaining and keeping good servants, and there is no doubt that the servant problem is a serious one in England, and is getting worse every year; but it pales into insignificance when compared with the trials and tribulations of those who live in the Argentine and have to keep house.

From all one hears, those living in Buenos Aires and the larger towns have a terrible time of it with their servants, especially if they are not overburdened with the good things of this world in the shape of hard cash; but my experiences have been confined to the camp, so that of the town side of the question I cannot speak.

I have been three years in the province of Cordoba, and all the servants I have met with except one were Argentines from the foothills of the Cordoba Sierras.

They were without exception quite untrained as far as the English idea goes, and the first thing to do with them was usually to teach them the primitive ideas of cleanliness. The first servant I had was an ancient female named Andrea, about forty years old, and it proved quite impossible to get her to see the necessity of keeping anything in the kitchen clean, as she seemed imbued with the idea that it was great waste of time washing saucepans and frying-pans, as they would only get dirty again when next used, and the most she could be persuaded to do was to rub them round inside with a bit of old newspaper or a handful of gra.s.s. Needless to say, after a time I got tired of these methods, and so we parted.

My next servant, Angelina, was one of the best I had, as she was clean, which was a great consideration, and also she was quick to learn and soon picked up the rudiments of cooking according to our ideas; her great failing, however, was that she was anything but honest, and could not refrain from petty pilfering; and another drawback to her was her objection to wearing shoes or stockings in the hot weather; in spite of being constantly told that she must not appear without them, she would insist in doing so, and this was a continual cause of trouble.

After getting rid of No. 2 our real troubles began, and we had eight changes in ten months. At the time we were living in wooden huts about two miles from a village which was a summer resort for rich people from Buenos Aires, and this caused a dearth of servants during the summer months, as the place was full from the beginning of December to the end of March, and people who came up for the summer and rented houses usually were willing to pay anything to get servants, with the result that we outside would get none, or only the cast-off ones. Nos. 3 and 4 stayed but a short time. My fifth attempt was a terrible girl, too dirty for words; and though apparently willing to learn, too utterly lacking in intelligence to ever learn anything. She used to get herself into the most awful grimy condition, and one incident during her time with me is worth mentioning. I had with great difficulty one day got her to understand that a wood floor could not be properly cleaned with a gra.s.s broom dipped in cold water and just swished about over it, and, by going down on my knees with a scrubbing brush and hot water and soap, and giving a practical demonstration of how a floor should be washed, had started her away to clean it, and judged that I might safely leave her, to attend to the other household duties in the kitchen. I must tell you that the day previously I had given her a practical lesson in black-leading a stove by doing it myself while she looked on. Well, after an hour in the kitchen I returned to see how she was getting on, when I found to my great pleasure that not content with scrubbing the floor, she had also attacked the stove with hot water, soap, and scrubbing brush, with the result that my hard work of the previous day was all undone and the whole room well sprinkled with black specks and the stove a ma.s.s of rust. Two weeks of similar experiences finished our acquaintance, and she gave place to No. 6. After I had spent three weeks teaching No. 6 cooking, she quietly informed me that she was leaving at the end of the week to take up a place as cook in Rosario, as she now knew enough cooking for the position; so I had not only wasted all my time in teaching her, but had paid her into the bargain for learning enough to leave me.

The next servant, No. 7, Alexandrina, was, I think, the worst. She was a Spaniard from Barcelona. She was an awful individual, and would insist on wearing clothes of so light and scanty a nature that she was not decent to have about the house; also, whenever we happened to have a joke of any sort to laugh over at meals, she used immediately to come in from the kitchen to see what was going on, and I had the greatest difficulty to get her to return to the kitchen. I had to get rid of her, because her moral reputation was anything but good, and two days in the week she refused to get out of bed, and told me to do my own dirty work, as she was ill; so at the end of two weeks she had to go. No. 8, Maria, was a girl direct from the sierras, and was very stupid and silly, and did not a single thing. One day I was buying vegetables, and she asked me why I wanted to buy roots, and when I told her they were to eat, she said even poor people could afford to buy meat, and she would not eat them. One day I took this girl out with me to do some shopping, and called on some people who had a piano. It was twilight, and someone was playing the piano, and she rushed in the room and out again, with her face very white, and said someone was beating a big, black animal in the corner of the room, and it was screaming dreadfully with the pain. This girl's mother was a very talkative old lady, and would insist on coming with three children every day and taking up her position in the kitchen, and when once she commenced to talk, one could not get away from her. At the end of the month she came for the girl's pay, and wanted me to pay her more money, which I was not willing to do, as I had been unable to teach her much; so she asked if her daughter might go away for the day and night, as she had to bath. This I was only too willing to agree to, and let her go; but they returned in the middle of the night, and removed all her belongings. After a few days I managed to get No. 9, who was a widow with two children: but she only stayed two weeks. Our tenth and last attempt was made with No. 4 once more, as she was again able to come to us. She stayed two months, when we went away for four weeks'

holiday. A week after our return I paid her in full for the month, though she had never been near the house all that time, and she promptly said she could not stay with us any longer, and left. We nearly got to No. 11, as we engaged a girl to come at $20 a month to start with, and she was to come the next morning at eight o'clock to begin work. She arrived at 10 a.m., and informed me that, as we had paid our last servant $25 the month, she could not come for less. I was so sick and tired of my experiences that this finished me, and I decided to do without any servant. Since then, for the last year, I have done the work myself.

POLICE OF A BYGONE DAY.

POLICE OF A BYGONE DAY.

Yes, times have changed since I went to San Cristobal just twenty years ago. For then the English were pioneers, so to speak; not in a country of savagery, but of semi-savagery, a very different and much worse matter. I wonder is A.J., the Chief of Police, still to the fore? Ye G.o.ds, how that man tried to break my heart, and how nearly he succeeded!

I was a Mayor-domo then, and G. was my boss, standing in the place of the owners to me. The boss had a mortal dread of the police and their powers, seen and unseen. So that when the worthy Chief of Police suddenly decided to add the trade of butchering to his many lucrative businesses, I received orders to sell him cows at twenty-five per cent.

less price than I sold to any of his compet.i.tors. Thus, whereas I was selling them at twenty dollars paper, then worth about one pound per head, I had to sell him at fifteen shillings, with the inevitable result that he almost immediately became master of the situation and the entire local market became his, enabling him to charge what he liked for meat, while I was forbidden to raise the price of the cows sold him.

Insatiable in his greed, he began to ask for cattle twice a week, always taking from ten to twenty animals, until one day, after exceptionally wet weather, I protested that it was not possible to round up the stock in the then state of the camp and destroy so much gra.s.s for a small bunch of cows. Unlucky thought and ill-judged protest! For when he urged that the inhabitants of the town were starving, and that a small point of half-breed heifers would do to go on with, I received orders to let him part out from our best herd. Twenty fine half-bred Herefords did he pick while I almost shed tears of blood, though all the time, of course, I had to show a smiling face.

This sort of thing had been going on for some time, when one of the boundary riders told me that the fence between the town and one of our nearest paddocks had been cut during the night.

"Then mend it up," said I.

"Sir, it is mended already."

Not a week had pa.s.sed before the same man brought me the same report. So I determined to "parar rodeo" (round up the cattle) immediately, and count them. Twenty heifers short in one square league, and in less than a month! This thing had to stop. I told the Capataz to take the boundary rider off that beat, without telling him why, and then the Capataz and I patrolled the fence night after night for a week, during which it was never cut.

We put a new boundary rider on, and three mornings later he came to see me bright and early, saying that not only had the fence been cut, but that there were distinct traces of cattle having pa.s.sed out recently.

After a.s.suring myself that there was no doubt about the matter, for I found the hoof marks of what I calculated to be not less than twenty animals, I went post haste to my friend the Chief of Police, never doubting that after all the favours shown him he would prove a friend in need. I was young then.

"You don't say so, Don Ernesto!" said his podgy, putty-faced little Highness. "Where was it? When was------ By heavens, somebody shall suffer for this! Just let me or any of my soldiers catch the thieves, and not one of them shall reach Santa Fe alive. Now, I'll tell you what.

Just leave it to me, and don't you worry nor think any more about the matter, much less mention it to a soul. In less than two days I'll have the thief or thieves here in the stocks."

I told him plainly that that was not my programme, and that, whatever he did, I was not going to leave that fence unpatrolled until I could move the stock out of the paddock.

"Then this is what we'll do, Don Ernesto. You shall be one of us. You come and dine with me at six o'clock this evening, and afterwards we'll go out with the sergeant and five or six men and catch 'em."

It was about the equinox, if I remember rightly--the springtime, when everything is lovely and lovable: the camp flowers all in bloom, the aroma of the trees burdening the air with delicious perfume, the fresh verdure and plenty of gra.s.s, the powerful, stout-hearted bounding of the horse (no longer "poor") beneath one, and, above all, the great issue expected of the business in hand, the most important business to me in the world at the time--all these combined spelled but one word, "Hope!"

Carbine in hand, Colt in holster, I arrived at his residence. There he was, sitting at the door of his corner house, whence he could look down three streets at once. How like a spider, I thought.

His welcome was cordial, but he seemed to smile at my eagerness, and told me that he never dined before eight.

"But let us sit here in the cool of the evening," said he, handing out a chair for me to sit by him on the footpath, "and let us take some refreshment to while away the time. But, tell me, where did you say that the fence was cut? But did you really see signs that cattle had pa.s.sed?

Preposterous! The sons of guns shall suffer for this. Eh well, I'm glad of it in a way--glad to have a little work, and perhaps a little excitement. It doesn't do to have a too orderly district, for the Governor and his satellites in Santa Fe imagine I'm lazy and not looking after my business if they hear of no commotions. That black fellow you sent me the other day, Don Ernesto--the fellow that was molesting a mad woman in the camp--- I've got him seventeen years in the line for that.

I wish you would send me a few more, for hardly a letter comes from Santa Fe in which I am not asked to send in recruits, so hard up are they for Provincial soldiers."

Just then a poor Italian colonist came up, hat in hand. He, too, and all his cla.s.s were pioneers in those days, and G.o.d knows what they suffered.

"Well, what d'ye want?" asked my companion.

"Sir," said the wretched man, stuttering in his nervousness, "one of my bullocks has been stolen, and I know the thief. I have been to the Justice of the Peace, and he told me to bring the thief to him; but, sir, the th-thief refuses to come."

"_Bueno_! Ten dollars, and ten dollars _down_," roared the majesty of law.

"But, sir,----"

"No! But me no buts! Ten dollars at once, or I'll call the sergeant to lock you up until you can get it."

I could see that the poor fellow's heart was breaking as he drew the money from his pocket and handed it over. Smilingly the bully turned to me and said, as his victim walked slowly away, "I'll bet you that that man doesn't come around to molest me again. I'll guarantee to you, Don Ernesto, that there isn't a district in the whole province where so few appeals for justice are made."

At last it was dinner-time, and, being ushered into a dirty room with a brick floor, dim light and grimy tablecloth, I seated myself at the table with my host, his secretary, the doctor, and a clerk. The dinner was in the usual native style of those days: ribs of beef roasted on the gridiron, beef and pumpkin boiled together, to finish up with "caldo," which is simply the water in which the beef and vegetables have been boiled, with a good thick coating of grease.

No sooner had we begun dinner than it was noticed that we had no wine.

"No wine! How's this? What d'ye mean?" as he angrily turned to the sergeant who was waiting.

"If you please, sir, So-and-so and So-and-so," mentioning the name of a local firm of storekeepers, "say that they can supply no more wine until they can get some of their accounts settled."

"How dare you bring me such a message as that! Take the corporal with a couple of men and bring a half-barrel at once--in less than three minutes, or I'll know the reason why."

The barrel was brought, and, with a bit and brace, quickly tapped, and the wine set flowing round the table.