The Amazing Argentine Part 9

Though Rosario prides itself that it keeps its nose to the grindstone in the matter of money-making, it is not quite neglectful of other sides of life. There is a fine system of electric tramways. There are huge blocks of munic.i.p.al buildings, and imposing banks and theatres; but the law courts, whilst having a fine exterior, suggested a certain shabbiness to me because of the weeds that were growing in the courtyards. There is the usual race-course, and close by there is the Parque Independencia.

And, of course, there is a Plaza San Martin, whilst in other parts of the town is the Plaza San Lopez, and the Plaza Jewell, presented by an Englishman who made his fortune in the city. Some distance outside Rosario is the English suburb of Fisherton, and I noticed that the Englishmen had fallen into the Argentine practice of calling their houses after their wives--the Villa Elsie, the Villa Florence, the Villa Ethel, and so on. As might be expected, there is a golf course. In the city itself there is a Strangers' Club, of which most of the members are Englishmen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ROSARIO EXPRESS, CENTRAL ARGENTINE RAILWAY.]

An evidence of the prosperity of Rosario is the way in which land has increased in value. Plots which in 1885 could have been bought for 2s.

6d. a yard now fetch 200 a yard. On the outskirts of the town, where a few years back a bit of land on which to build a residence--say twenty yards by sixty yards--could have been obtained for 5, it cannot be obtained to-day for less than 150. I saw one stretch on the river front which was bought twenty years ago for 2,000 and sold last year for 40,000. Twenty miles from Rosario camp land which a dozen years ago could have been obtained for 10,000 the square league is not allowed to change hands to-day for less than 100,000 the square league.

With nightfall the Rosario people give themselves up to pleasure.

Attached to the big hotel there is a huge saloon, and whilst men play dominoes and cards, music is provided by a band composed of Austrian girls. There is a great _cafe chantant_, and every night hundreds of people, men and their wives, sit at the little tables having meals, or partaking of beverages, whilst a band plays and comic singers perform, or a kinematograph entertainment is provided. I saw nothing at all in Rosario to suggest it was a place of culture. But it is a town throbbing with commercial activity, and when business is over the people seek nothing more than the lightest of entertainment.

CHAPTER XIII

CORDOBA AND ITS ATTRACTIONS

An old-time languorous atmosphere seems to hang round Cordoba. It is a city with eighty churches, and as it has a population of 80,000, I pride myself on my arithmetic that works it out to one church for every thousand inhabitants. It is named after Cordova, in Spain, was founded in 1504, and is the Oxford of the Argentine. Its university dates from 1666, and has a high reputation for learning in law and medicine.

Those old Spaniards who came pioneering down this way from Peru in their early days of conquest had a neat eye for the picturesque. Speaking generally, I would not place Argentina high as a land of beauty. But in the middle land there is a fine rib of mountains, the Sierra de Cordoba; and on a rise, so that it may be seen from afar, when the heat dances hazily there is something immaterial about Cordoba as though it were the city of a waking dream. See it, however, in the early morning, when the air is fresh and the gleam of the sun catches it sideways and the buildings are silhouetted against shadows, and you witness a picture which would enthral an artist.

By northern European standard it is not an ancient city. But as living beneath the sun brings early old age to men and women, so cities which have had a few centuries of constant sun glare get a drowsy mediaevalism which sister cities in more temperate climes must have long ages to acquire. The aroma of the Church and of scholasticism permeates Cordoba.

In many respects it is quite modern, with its big new hotel, where the band plays in the restaurant whilst you are dining, and its streets lit with electricity and electric tramcars jangling their way through the squares and plenty of taxi-cabs on the ranks.

But the tendency is to forget these, and in recollection of the place you think chiefly of the quiet in the quadrangle of the university, the calm of the great library, the weatherworn walls of the old churches and the dim lights of their interiors doing much to soften the tawdriness of the decorations. There is a good deal in the a.s.sertion occasionally made that the towns of recently developed countries lack individuality, distinction; that, with all their progress, they are more or less duplicates of each other. It is easy enough in Argentina to find evidence of this modern spirit in town planning. Yet I know of none of the newer countries where the towns have such a separate character as in Argentina.

Of course, there are raw townships of yesterday which have nothing to show but two wretched rows of badly built houses on each side of the railway track, just as you will find in the western parts of the United States and Canada. As Argentine towns grow they do not grow uniformly, as though they were designed by the same architect or were imitating one another. They show individuality. If you like, it may be just a desire to show off. Many munic.i.p.alities are loaded with debt. But they will have their cities beautiful. When they have made a broad gra.s.s-plotted, tree-girt avenue right through the town to the railway station, and the station buildings are low and ugly and out of keeping with the rest of the town, and the railway authorities at Buenos Aires turn a deaf ear to the deputations which may wait upon them, you can safely bet that one of these nights the railway buildings will be consumed by fire, so that the company is compelled to erect a new station.

Because it is the oldest city in Argentina and has inhabitants with pedigrees, and because of the society attracted to it, Cordoba regards itself as the aristocratic centre of the Republic. In the neighbouring hills are sanatoria, like Jesu Maria, much favoured by the people of the plains who need a change.

Cordoba, like other places, is quite certain it has the best-dressed ladies. In a sedate sort of way there is a good deal of gaiety. On hot summer evenings a band plays in the square, where there is a statue of San Martin. There may be a town in Argentina which has not an equestrian statue of the Liberator from Spain. If so, I must have missed it. The statues are all facsimiles of the original, and there must be dozens of them. It is the one point on which all the towns agree; they must have a statue of San Martin on a prancing steed, and eternally pointing in the direction of the Andes. Once I unfortunately made an Argentine angry, for, being anxious to show me the beauties of his town, he sought my wishes as to what I desired to see, and I replied, "Anything you like, so long as you do not take me to see the statue of San Martin--I've seen him so often during the last month." The feathers were up at once. I smoothed them down by a.s.suring him that we have very few statues of Wellington in England.

The Cordobians are fond of music and racing and gambling, and sitting in the cafes throwing the dice-box. There is a delightful theatre, the Rivera Indarte, built by the provincial Government. Opera companies which go to Buenos Aires are invited to come to Cordoba, and the authorities give a guarantee against loss. The proper thing is to buy a box, holding six persons, for the little season of ten performances. The cost of such a box is 150. The charge is a dollar for the _entrada_ (entrance), which provides nothing except permission to enter the building. This _entrada_ charge is like the charge for "attendance" in old-fashioned hotels in England, which is an excuse for sticking another eighteenpence a day on your bill so that you may be deceived into thinking you are paying six shillings for your room when you are really paying seven and sixpence. So at the opera in Cordoba, usually Italian, the lowest ticket is two dollars to be permitted to stand up, but you have already parted with one dollar to go in. Cordoba province, like the other provinces, thinks no small beer of itself. It rather resents receiving orders from the Federal Government sitting in Buenos Aires.

Perhaps that is the reason the Argentine National Anthem is so seldom heard.

Students are attracted to Cordoba University from all over the country.

Most of the professors have had experience of European universities, generally French. The library is extensive and varied. I handled some fine old Bibles, bound in sheepskin, relics of the early Spaniards. Also there is a remarkable collection of old maps, showing that the priests as they travelled this way were first-cla.s.s geographers. Whatever literary sentiment there is in Argentina finds expression in Cordoba.

Indeed, it is the natural meeting-place for men inclined to culture for its own sake. But it is by no means a sleepy hollow. It has several really good newspapers. There is a great export of lime. Being the centre of a big wheat area, much milling is done by modern electric appliance. Light and power are provided by an enterprising English company. There is a shoe factory, which turns out 2,500 pairs of footwear a day.

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._ ON THE WAY TO MARKET IN CORDOBA.]

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 sh.o.r.e, 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 h.o.a.rdings of London you see how a railway company will take you, first cla.s.s, 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 _dejeuner_. 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, a.s.sociated 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 Sat.u.r.day night.

At Alta Gracia these were detached and side tracked. Then we "roughed it" for twenty-four hours. After the c.o.c.ktails, 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."

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE NINTH GREEN AT ALTA GRACIA.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN THE COURTYARD OF THE MONASTERY AT ALTA GRACIA.]

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 pa.s.sable 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!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE HOTEL AT ALTA GRACIA.]

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 gra.s.s. 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 pa.s.sing 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 senors 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 pa.s.sed? 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 senors 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 senor 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 gra.s.s 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 bra.s.sie, and he generally fancied himself with his bra.s.sie 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 n.o.body 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 ill.u.s.trations. 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 compet.i.tors 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 pa.s.sage-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.