FOOTNOTES:
[23] I take this opportunity of thanking M. and Mme. Thiébaud for the friendly welcome I found at the French Legation.
[24] If to Argentine diplomacy the rigidity of our famous chapel on the Quai d'Orsay be unknown, they have none the less given us first-class men—such, for instance as the present Minister for Foreign Affairs, M. Ernesto Bosch, who is much esteemed in the French political world, and his worthy successor in Paris, M. Enrique Rodriguez Larreta.
[25] It pleases me to note the triumph of pride over vanity shown in the fact that the Argentinos have deliberately renounced the childish folly of orders.
[26] Thanks to the difference in the clocks, the Buenos Ayres newspapers are able to publish in their morning editions news appearing at the same time in London and Paris.
[27] The Nacion publishes a Library of translations of the best works in French (fifty per cent. of the whole), English, Russian, German, Italian, to say nothing of Spanish and Argentine works in the original.
[28] I regret to say that Brazil is backward in this respect. Let us hope she will not let Russia get ahead of her!
[CHAPTER VIII]
PAMPAS LIFE
Every capital is a world in itself—a world in which national and foreign elements blend; but to understand the life of a nation one must go out into the country. A vast territory, ten times the size of France, extending from Patagonia to Paraguay and Bolivia, will naturally offer the greatest diversity of soil and climate, representing differing conditions of labour as well as of customs and sometimes of morals. Our ancient Europe can in the same way show ethnical groups with sufficiently marked features (such as in our French provinces) which a long history has not been able to destroy or even to modify.
It is quite another matter when, on a continent with no history at all, you get men of every origin spread over it, brought thither by a community of interest and in the hope of cultivating the soil by their labour. I have already said what racial characteristics subsist. The colonist will, of course, at first do all he can to remain what the land of his birth has made him; the first evidence of this is his tendency to fall into groups and form national colonies. But the land of his adoption will in time surely force upon him the inevitable conditions of a new mode of life, the very necessity of adapting himself to changed conditions making of him a new creature, to be later definitely moulded by success.
The Pampas are not the Argentine. They form, however, so predominant a part that they have shaped the man and the race by imposing on them their organisation of agricultural labour and the development of their natural resources. Whilst manufactures are still in a rudimentary state and are likely to remain so for a long time to come owing to the lack of coal, the Pampas from the Andes to the ocean offer an immense plain of the same alluvial soil from end to end, ready to respond in the same degree to the same effort of stock-raising or agriculture. An identical stretch of unbroken ground, with identical surface, identical pools of subterranean water, no special features to call for other than the unchanging life of the Campo.
Naturally, the first experiments were made in the most rudimentary fashion on the half-wild herds of cattle that could not be improved unless the European market were thrown open. As soon as this outlet was assured the whole effort of skill and money was directed towards the improvement of stock, and the progress made in a few years of work far exceeded the brightest hopes of those early days. And as at the same time a powerful impetus was given to wheat-growing, the Pampas from one end to the other of their vast extent immediately took on a dual aspect: cattle farms (herds grazing on natural or artificial pastures), and acres of grain (wheat, oats, maize, and flax)—this is the only picture that the Pampas offer or ever can offer to the traveller. The system of cattle-breeding, primitive in the extreme at a distance from railroads, improves in proportion as the line draws nearer; wherever the iron road passes there is an immediate development of land under cultivation.
All this goes to make up a man of the Campo—the estanciero, colonist, peon, gaucho, or whatever other name he may be called. Certain conditions of living and working are forced upon him from which there is no escape. Whether landed proprietor, farmer, servant, or agricultural labourer, the vastness of the plain which opens in front of him, the distance between inhabited dwellings, the roughness of the roads, leave him no other means of communication but the horse, which abounds everywhere and can be unceremoniously borrowed on occasion. The man of the Campo is a horseman. He is certainly not an elegant horseman, whose riding would be appreciated at the Saumur Cavalry School. No curb; only a plain bit is used, whose first effect is to bring down the animal's head and throw him out of balance, whilst his rider, to remedy this defect, raises his hands as high as his head. To the unsightliness of this picture is added an unstable seat. As very often happens in similar circumstances, instinct and determination more or less making up for all mistakes, the rider manages approximately to keep on his beast's back, thanks partly to the fact that the horse is rarely required to go at more than a moderate pace over level ground. The hoof never by any chance can strike on a stone, though it may be caught in a hole; the active little creole horse excels in avoiding this danger. One can ask no more of him. (I shall have something to say later of the way wild horses are broken in.)
On his enormous saddle of sheepskin, the peon or gaucho, his hat pulled well down over his eyes, his shoulders draped in the folds of the poncho,—a blanket with a hole in it for the head to pass through,—is encumbered with a whip whose handle serves on occasion as a mallet, and a lasso, with or without metal balls, coiled behind his saddle. He makes a picturesque enough figure in the monotonous expanse of earth and sky, where rancho or tree, beast or man, stand out in high relief against a background of glaring light. Without sign or syllable, his eyes fixed on the empty horizon, the man passes through the silence of infinite solitude, rising like a ghost from the nothingness of the horizon at one point to sink again into nothingness at another. When riding in a troop, they talk together in low tones. There are none of those outbursts of fun that you might expect in a land of sunshine. It is the gravity natural to men brought face to face with Nature in the pitiless light of sky and earth where no fold or break in the surface arrests the glance or fixes the attention.
Still, there are those gigantic herds of horned cattle or horses which fill an appreciable portion of the melancholy plain—"green in winter, yellow in summer." I say nothing of the great flocks of sheep because there were none in the districts which I visited. When you talk of a herd of ten thousand cows, you make some impression on even a big farmer of the Charolais. Well, I can assure you that out in the Pampas ten thousand head of cattle is a small affair. You see a dark shadow that rises on the horizon that might be either a village or a group of haycocks, until the vague shifting of the mass suggests to your mind the idea of some form of life. The lines show clearer, groups break off and stand out, pointed horns appear, and at last you find you are watching the tranquil passage of a monstrous herd, whose outlines are stencilled in black upon the whiteness of the sky-line like the Chinese shadow pictures I saw on one occasion at the Chat Noir (in Montmartre) when the flocks of the patriarchs were flung upon the sheet. So distinct are the shapes here that you lose the sense of distance and are astonished at the harmony of nonchalant impulse, as irresistible as slow, which can thus set in movement this huge living mass and make it pass before us like a vision of Fate. The dream fantasy is the more striking because it changes so rapidly. Withdraw your eyes a moment from the picture, and it is entirely altered. The heavy mass of migrating cattle seems now to have taken root at the opposite extremity of the horizon, whilst in the depths of the luminous distance shadowy patches of haze more or less distinct betoken further living bodies, some stationary, some in motion. These are mirages of the Pampas of which none takes any heed; but upon me they made a powerful impression, for I saw in them the whole tragedy of this land, from the tuft of grass on which the eyes of the beast first saw the light down to the last step of that fateful journey which ends at the slide of the slaughter-house.
The rapid travelling of the motor-car multiplies one's point of view. The vast estates on the Pampas, which run from two to a hundred square miles in extent, are further divided into large sections bounded by wire fencing to limit the wandering of the herds. The roads are marked out by a double row of wire. What dust and what mud may be found thereon, according to weather conditions, may be imagined, since there is not the smallest pebble to be found there. Yet vehicles do, it appears venture along these paths, and even arrive at their destination. You may also meet flocks of sheep and oxen on them, and families of pigs engaged in breakfasting on a sheep that has been relieved of its skin. In less than an hour its bones, picked clean, are scattered along the way, where in process of time they will contribute precious phosphates to the soil. Naturally, on such a "road," the automobile does not yearn to travel; rather does it prefer the green smoothness of the immense prairie. Here there are no police regulations to annoy the motorist. No other law but your own fancy and a certain thought for the savoury lunch that is awaiting you at the next estancia. When you reach it you will discover that the monstrous herds on the horizon were merely these gentle creatures, placid in their happy ignorance of the fell designs that are the hidden causes of man's kindness to them. Do we astonish them? Or are they wholly indifferent? Their eyes are fixed on our panting machines as ours are on the grazing beasts, and not a spark is struck by the meeting of the two intelligences, the one so calmly definite and the other too soon checked in its effort to understand. Obedient to the rebenque (whip) of the peon, the herd, which in motion looks so threatening, allows itself to be stopped or led by the cries and rapid movements of the horsemen going at a hand-gallop. The sight of any object that waves in the wind (whether coat or poncho) is equally effectual.
If one expects the cows, which are penned for milking (three quarts a day as an average), the only apparent relations between man and beast consist in the easy use of this instrument of terror. Nothing is done for the flock except to provide the mill which automatically feeds the water-troughs, and to see to the safe arrival of the bulls intended to improve the breed, and to select those from the herd destined for the freezing machines; for all their other needs Providence is expected to provide—quite a different régime from that prevailing in our French stock-farms. Of shelter against wind or sun there is none. The grass is there when the drought has not burnt it up, also an ugly thistle which no one troubles to pull up and which sometimes overruns the pasture. Of Nature's scourges, the drought is the most to be feared, for it falls with fearful suddenness on great stretches of the Campo. In the absence of rain, neither turf nor forage nor harvest can be looked for; for the cattle, death is certain. Winter in any case is a hard season for them. Their coats lose their gloss, their flanks fall in, and their pointed bones witness to their sufferings, which the icy breath of the pampero does nothing to assuage. With the spring comes the hope of rain. But if this hope is betrayed, nothing can save innumerable herds from starvation and death. Forage is always stored for the more precious of the stock, but to feed the herd is out of the question. The Pampas then become one vast cemetery where hundreds of thousands of dead cattle are lying in heaps beyond all possibility of burial. It is the custom to leave the body of the beast that dies by the way to the tender mercies of the wind and the sun, the rain and the earth, into whose wide-open pores the remains are little by little absorbed. The birds of prey and dogs are valuable assistants but wholly insufficient. One of my friends told me that it was by no means uncommon for the dogs to return to the farm from the Campo bearing a horrible smell about them. For my part, if I was often revolted by the spectacle of putrefying carcasses lying about the Pampas and seen either on my walks or from the railway-train—some even lying festering in pools close to dwelling-houses—I cannot say that my olfactory nerves were ever troubled. I occasionally spoke of the danger of poisonous fly-bites, but I got only vague replies.
In my personal experience, whenever I met something disagreeable on my walks about the Pampas, the carcass was invariably completely mummified, the skin being so thoroughly tanned that the object might have been carefully prepared for a museum of comparative anatomy. But when death was recent, and the summer season had set in, with its attendant flies, I should certainly avoid the neighbourhood.
It will surprise no one to hear that I took the liberty of calling the attention of two or three statesmen to the dangers of this unfortunate custom and the detestable impression it is bound to make on travellers. The reply invariably was that the Argentine was suffering, and would, no doubt, continue to suffer for some time to come, from a lack of hands and that the thousands of animals which under normal conditions perished in the Pampas could never find grave-diggers. When, therefore, a dry season killed off as many as ten thousand sheep on a single ranch, there was no alternative but to bow to the inevitable.
We see that cattle-rearing in the Argentine has its ups and downs. At every turn Nature intervenes with its elements of success or disaster. Man's rôle is to furnish a minimum of labour, and by the force of circumstances, he is compelled to reckon on quantity for his modicum of success; but the fact does not prevent his successful efforts to improve the quality. As I have already said, he will give any prize to secure a fine strain. It is naturally from England that he gets his stock for breeding, since the customers for his meat are chiefly English. On all hands I was told that the results were most satisfactory. As regards their breed of horses, the result is manifest. But as for the cattle, I take the liberty of disagreeing with those who declare that the Argentine can send to our slaughter-houses at La Villette meat as fine as our own at half its price. If, however, I am firmly convinced that our palate would not readily be satisfied with the frozen meat that seems to please the English, I am quite aware that there is a distinction to be drawn between the choice beasts, generally magnificent, that make such a show at exhibitions and the common run of the average flock, amongst which truth compels me to admit there are some very indifferent animals. It will require a long time and a change of system on the cattle-rearing farms for the Argentine ever to equal the fine products of our French breeders. It cannot be otherwise as long as the young animal, bred somewhat at haphazard and born on the open camp between the corpses of some of its relations, is left to grow up as best it can, exposed to every change of temperature. Everywhere I came upon young calves abandoned by their mothers as soon as born, and only sought out when the time for feeding came round; it cannot be said that the stock would bear comparison with the average produce of a Norman or Charolais byre. Not all the quality of its mother's milk will suffice to make up for the ground lost by neglect.
As I have said, the troops of horses seem to have lost the least. I speak less of their appearance than of their action, which often seemed to me remarkable. You cannot imagine the pleasure it is to glide swiftly across the Pampas in a motor-car with a troop of young horses on either side of you, neighing and galloping to keep up with the machine. But do not, pray, call them "wild horses."
Tradition to the contrary notwithstanding, I believe there are no wild horses in the Argentine. There are horses, and there are horsemen who treat them brutally under the pretext of breaking them in. This is a survival of ancient times which not even the universality of the horse in civilised countries can destroy. Any English squire will get more out of a young horse by quiet skill and kindness than can ever be obtained by the useless and cruel lasso, to which I shall return later.
I have shown you the Pampas alive with the swarms of their new civilisation. We are far enough from the romantic descriptions so dear to story-tellers. We all know now that the redskin of North America bears no resemblance to the portraits painted of him by Chateaubriand or Fenimore Cooper. The Pampas, in full process of evolution, are getting more human and losing their distinctive features. They were once as bare, to quote the joke of a poet, now a member of the Académie Française, "as the speech of an academician"; man has undertaken to raise up orchards, groves, and even forests. Once they were the refuge of more or less innocent beasts. The son of Adam, by the mere fact of his presence, treads out all life that cannot be made of use to himself.
I said that the ombu was the only tree that flourished in the Pampas, for the simple reason that the locusts devour every other vegetable product, including clover, crops, and trees of all sorts. The damage caused by these insects, which descend in clouds and destroy in a moment the harvest, is only too well known by our Algerian colonists. Wherever the cloud descends vegetation vanishes. In a few hours every leaf is gone from the tree, and only the kernel, clean and dry, is left on the branch as a mute witness of the irreparable disaster. I did not see the locusts, but I was shown the result of their work, most conscientiously carried out. Men who have put long months of toil into their land see, with impotent rage, all the fruit of their toil swept off in the twinkling of an eye. The Government lays out some millions yearly to assuage in some sort the mischief done. But the only remedy applied up to the present consists in making such a din on the approach of the baneful host as to induce them to go on farther and land at a neighbour's. As altruism, this course is not above reproach. Another way is to dig ditches in which to bury them alive, but this is mere child's play. If you inquire the origin of the scourge you will get the sulky reply that the pest comes from Chaco, and that some men have travelled thither to verify the statement, but the country proving impenetrable, the project has for the moment been abandoned. I hasten to place these insufficient data before the European public.
Alone victorious over the locusts by the repugnance it inspires, and over man by its glorious uselessness, the ombu here and there spreads its triumphant arms near some ranch; occasionally, on the pasturage of the Campo, it may be seen extending its shelter to some quadruped that shuns the rays of the sun. Around his estancia the farmer plants his orchard and his ornamental thicket, which will flourish or not at the will of the insects. After the passage of the destructive horde it requires at least two years for the country to recover. The eucalyptus, owing to its rapid growth, gives very good results, but the favourite tree in the Pampas is the paraiso—the Tree of Paradise—which is admirable rather for its flower than its form, and withstands to some extent the locust, through sheer force of resistance. Occasionally one comes upon a small wood, in which the ornevo—the cardinal—sings and the dove coos.
For the Campo has a whole population of running or flying creatures, whose principal virtue is that of being satisfied with little in the shape of a shelter. The gardens and parks of the estancias provide a natural asylum for a world of winged songsters, in whom man, softened by isolation, has not yet inspired terror.
But the Pampas in their nudity are not without signs of life. There is the guanaco, smaller than the llama, larger than the stork, which has already retreated far from Buenos Ayres. The grey ostrich, formerly abundant, has been decimated by the lasso of the gaucho, who, at the risk of getting a kick that may rip him open, attacks the beast that struggles wildly in the bonds of the cruel rope, drags out his handsomest feathers, and then lets him go. The really "wild" ostrich has disappeared from the Pampas. Numbers may be seen from the window of the train, but they are all confined in fenced parks, and are really in captivity.
I cannot be expected to give a list of all the creatures that swarm on or under the soil of the Campo. There is nothing to be said about the prairie-dog, which has been systematically destroyed on account of the damage it does. I must mention the tatou, a small creature with a pointed muzzle, something between a lizard and a tortoise, and with the shell of the latter. It burrows into the ground, as certain of our European species do. The gaucho considers its flesh excellent, declaring that it tastes like pork. Perhaps the surest way of getting the taste of pork is to address oneself to the pig himself, here popularly known as the "creole pig," a lovable little black beast that plays with the children in tiny muddy pools in the neighbourhood of the ranches.
Passing by the hare (imported from Europe), the small partridge, and the martinette (tinamou), to which I shall return presently, I may mention the plover (abundant) and the birds of carrion, which settle all disputes for the possession of the ground according to the dictates of a boundless appetite, and the small owl, so tame that it rises every few yards with a cheerful cry to come down again a few yards farther on, following all your movements with a questioning eye. At the mouth of its burrow, or on the stake that marks the boundary of the ranch, its pretty form is a feature in the landscape. Finally, I must not forget the ornevo, to be found near the estancias and in the woods, a charming, tame little bird, that chatters all the time like a good many people, and builds a mud nest in the branches, in the shape of an oven divided into two apartments, whose tiny door opens always to the north, whence comes the warmth. If you lose yourself in the forest you need no compass but this. The gauchos hold the bird in pious respect. Legend has it that he never works on Sundays at his nest. Here is one who wants no legislation for a repos hebdomadaire any more than he does for the regulation of the liquor sale. Oh, the superiority of our "inferior brethren"!
I heard a good deal about the great lakes in which thousands of black-necked swans and rose-pink flamingoes may be seen at play. I was never able to visit these fascinating birds. To make up for this M. Onelli presented me with two handsome black-throated swans, which, however, were not able to stand the climate of Normandy.
Having thus sketched the principal features, it remains to fill in the picture of the ranch and estancia. I have shown you the primitive cabin of the Robinson Crusoe of the Campo. I have drawn a picture of the colonist and the gaucho; it is not necessary to go back to him again. I have shown the diverse elements of his existence. The railway has not changed anything in it except by abolishing the interminable rides of earlier days and the tiresome monotony of convoying freight waggons to the town markets. The railway, moreover, brings within reach of the ranch the conveniences of modern furniture.
In the huts of the half-castes, near Tucuman, the only piece of furniture I saw was a pair of trestles, on which was laid the mat which served as seat, bed, or table—the kitchen being always outside. In the Pampas, dwellings that look modest, and even less than modest, generally boast an easy-chair, a chest of drawers, with a clock, a sewing-machine, and gramophone, which, when fortune comes, is completed by a piano. The gramophone is the theatre of the Pampas. It brings with it orchestra, song, words, and the whole equipment of "art" suited to the æsthetic sense of its hearers. Thus on all sides dreadful nasal sounds twang out, to the great joy of the youth of the colony.
The morals of the Campo are what the conditions of life there have made them. Men who are crowded together in large cities are exposed to many temptations. When too far removed from the restraint of public opinion, the danger is no less great. In all circumstances a witness acts as a curb. In the Pampas as it used to be, the witness, nine times out of ten, became an accomplice. Between the menace of a distant and vague police force and the ever-present fear of the Indian, the gaucho became a soldier of fortune, prepared for any bold stroke. With his dagger in his belt, his gun on his shoulder, and the lasso on his saddle-bow, he rode over the eternal prairie in search of adventures, and ready at any moment for the drama that might be awaiting him. To his other qualities must be added a generous hospitality, that dispensed to all comers his more or less well-gotten goods; he had in him the material for an admirable leader in revolutionary times. I saw no revolutions, and I hope the Argentine has finished with them for ever; but the periodic explosions that have taken place there are not so ancient but that an echo of them reached my ear. I shall leave out of the question, of course, all more remote circumstances that might serve at hazard to put a body of adventurers in motion. You were on the side of General X or General Z, according to the hopes of the party; but, in reality, that had little to do with it. When the signal was once given a military force had to be organised, and the means adopted were admirably simple. Any weapon that could be of use in battle was picked up, and a band would present themselves at the door of an estancia.
"We are for General X. All the peons here must follow us. To arms! To horse!"
And the order would be obeyed; otherwise, the estancia and its herds would suffer. With such a system of recruiting, troops were quickly collected, and a few such visits would suffice to bring together a very respectable force of men. My friend Biessy, the artist, with whom I had the pleasure of making the journey, witnessed just such a scene one day at an estancia which he was visiting. He was chatting with the overseer when the man, hearing a suspicious sound, flung himself down and put his ear to the ground. A moment later he rose, looking anxious.
"There are horsemen galloping this way. What can have happened?" And sure enough, a minute later, there appeared a band of men so oddly equipped that at first they were taken for masqueraders. It was carnival time. The leader, however, came forward and called on the overseer to place all his peons at the service of the revolutionaries. Biessy himself only escaped by claiming the rights of a French citizen. And do not imagine that all this was a comedy. The dominant sentiment in their camp was by no means a respect for human life. On both sides these brave peons fought furiously, asking no questions about the party in whose cause they happened to be enrolled. The overseer of a neighbouring estancia, who was talking with M. Biessy when called to parley with the revolutionaries, was shot dead a few hours later for having offered resistance to them.
If men are thus unceremoniously enrolled—I use the present tense because one never knows what may happen—it may be imagined the horses are borrowed still more freely. A curious thing is that when the war is over, and these creatures are again at liberty, they find their way back quite easily to their own pastures.
The overseer of one estancia told me that the last revolution had cost him 600 horses, of which 400, that had been taken to a distance of from 200 to 300 kilometres, returned of their own accord. How they contrive to steer their course over the Pampas, with their inextricable tangle of wire fencing, I do not undertake to explain. When I inquired of the overseer whether it were not possible to steal one of his horses without being discovered, he replied, "Oh, it is like picking an apple in Normandy! It often happens that a traveller on a tired horse lassoes another to continue his journey. But on reaching his destination he sets the animal at liberty, and he invariably makes his way back to the herd."
I have already spoken of the time when the gaucho would fell an ox to obtain a steak for lunch. In some of the more remote districts it is possible that the custom still subsists. But it is none the less true that a growing civilisation and the railway, which is its most effectual and rapid instrument, are changing the gaucho, together with his surroundings and his sphere of action. The gaucho on foot is very like any other man. His flowing necktie of brilliant colour, once the party signal, has been toned down. His poncho, admirably adapted to the climatic conditions of camp life in the Campo, is now used by the townsmen, who throw it over their arm or shoulder according to the variations in the temperature. The sombrero, like the slashed breeches or high boots, is no longer distinctive. There remains only the heavy stirrup of romantic design, more or less artistically ornamented, but now often replaced by a simple ring of rope or iron. The days of roystering glamour are passed. The heavy roller of civilisation levels all the elements of modern existence to make way for the utilitarian but inæsthetic triumph of uniformity. Yet a little longer and the life of the Campo will be nothing but a memory, for with his picturesque dress the type itself is disappearing.
The modern gaucho has preserved from his ancestors the slowness in speech, the reserved manner, and scrutinising eye of the man who lives on the defensive. But to-day he is thoroughly civilised, and can stroll down Florida Street, in Buenos Ayres, without attracting any attention. It is in vain that the theatre seeks to reproduce the life of the Campo, as I saw it attempted at the Apollo. What can it show us beyond the eternal comedy of love, or the absurdities of the wife of the gaucho who has too suddenly acquired a fortune? Both subjects belong to all times and all countries, in the same way as every dance and every song are common to any assembly of young humanity. Long before the gramophone was invented the guitar was the joy of Spanish ears to the farthest confines of the Pampas. Between two outbreaks of civil war, when men were rushing madly to meet death, joyous songs and plaintive refrains alternated beneath the branches of the ombu, where the youth of the district met, and the sudden dramas of the ranch made them the more eager to drink deep of the pleasure they knew to be fleeting. They danced the Pericou and the Tango, as they still do to-day; but the audacious gestures in which amorous Spain gave expression to the ardour of its feelings have now passed into the domain of history. The "Creole balls," where may be seen graceful young girls in soft white draperies, dancing in a chain that resembles our Pastourelle, have been reproduced on postcards and are familiar to all. There are, there will ever be in the Pampas—at least, I fondly hope so—graceful young girls dressed in white and destined to rouse the love instinct which never seems to sleep in an Italian or Spanish breast. But the trouble we take to reconstruct on the stage, for the edification of travellers from Europe, the real Tango, in all the antique effrontery of its ingeniousness, proves that the heroic age, made up of the naïf and the barbarous, is fast losing its last vestiges of character in the wilderness of civilised monotony. The Tango is disappearing rapidly. On the other hand, at Rio de Janeiro, in the flower of my seventieth year, I actually figured in the official quadrille of the President of the Republic, to the shame of French choregraphy. Alas! alas!
[CHAPTER IX]
FARMING AND SPORT
Roman civilisation ended in those latifundia which, amongst other causes, are usually considered to have brought about the ruin of Italy. The immense estates of the Argentine Campo were not built up, however, by the expropriation of small farmers, as was the case in decadent Rome. They are simply the result of wholesale seizure of land at the expense of the savages who were incapable of utilising it. Without discussing the origin of all landed property, or to what extent our legal principles and our practice agree, I simply note the fact that the conquistadores and their descendants set down as res nullius whatever it suited them to appropriate.
The principle once established (this is the commencement of every civilisation), there remained only to fix the approximate extent of land likely to satisfy the appetite of the European newcomer. Do you remember a fine story, by Tolstoy, of a man who was given, by I know not what tribe of the steppe, as much land as he could walk round in a day? Once started, the sole idea of the poor wretch was continually to enlarge the circumference. It was only at the price of a tremendous effort that he completed the circle, falling dead at the moment of accomplishing his journey. The first settlers, who followed the Genoese, took probably less trouble, though their greed was as great. But as the land depends for its value on labour, the result for Tolstoy's hero and for the conquistadores was not so very different. Thus, when the first ploughshare turned the first sod, the estate, whatever its proportions, had to bear some relation to human capacity. The large domains of to-day—measuring from two to a hundred square miles—have proceeded from still larger ones, and gradually, as the much-needed labour comes forward to undertake the task, we shall see the further cutting up of preposterous holdings.
This is inevitable in the near future, and this alone will render possible scientific farming, which is highly necessary for the development of agriculture. A farmer who knows nothing of manure of any sort, who is making his first experiments in irrigation, and who burns his flax straw for want of knowing how to utilise it, will, for a long time to come, continue to swamp the markets of Europe with his grain and his meat, but only on condition that he is satisfied with small profits and gives quantity in place of quality. These are the conditions of life on the Campo, such as I have tried to sketch them.
It remains for me to introduce the chief agent in this huge movement of cattle-rearing and agriculture, who, in his own person and that of his overseers, administers the Pampas; he is the owner of the estancia, the estanciero.
The word estancia—since it represents something non-existent with us—is not easy to translate. Let us put it down as the most sumptuous form of primitive ownership. I might call it the seat of an agricultural feudalism if the peon were a man to accept serfdom—something resembling a democratic principality, if the two words can be coupled together.
When we meet him on the boulevard, the estanciero, who talks of his immeasurable estate and his innumerable herds, seems to us a fabulous creature. It is quite another matter to see him on horseback amidst his peons in the Pampas, which, in default of the customary features of private property, appears in its nakedness to be nobody's land—that is to say, everybody's land.
The contrast between the estanciero's personal refinement and the English comfort of his family abode, and the primitive rusticity of the surrounding country, suggests the inconsistencies of barbarism undergoing the civilising process.
As I have already observed, the results obtained are due to a progression of efforts in which the chief, even if assisted by an overseer, necessarily plays a large part. For although it is easy to dazzle the European with fantastic figures, without sacrificing the truth, it is wise to remember that success is not automatic, and that from the elements alone (to say nothing of locusts) serious difficulties are to be expected. M. Basset, whose competence is beyond question, told me that, having lost money in conducting experiments on a large estate, he decided to sell the place. In the meantime land had gone up in value, and he was able to recover himself on the sale of the unworked plots. "I should have made a lot of money," he concluded, "if I had not farmed any of my land." This shows that in the Argentine, as elsewhere, there are risks to be run. The estanciero takes these risks, but if he were content to wait on chance to enhance the value of his land, he would not contribute as largely as he does to the wealth of the Rue de la Paix.
We are always being told that the word dearest to Creole indolence is mañana ("to-morrow"), but the exigencies of economic success tend to modify customs. The Argentino, like the Yankee, is more and more inclined to do over-night the work that might be put off to the morrow. At all events, absenteeism is unknown on the estancia, for this would spell ruin at short notice. It is true the estanciero has the reputation of mortgaging freely his estates, and, when a good harvest makes it possible, of hastening to purchase more land so as to increase his output. What can I say, unless that every economic error must be paid for sooner or later, and that in spite of whatever may remain of "Creole indolence," all are forced in the end to seek their profits in an improvement of the system of cultivation?
Grand seigneur I called him—a grand seigneur on colonial soil, where his dwelling is a rustic palace that is something between a farmhouse and a mansion. Simple in structure, wood being the principal element, it is built on the ground-floor, colonial fashion. The comforts of English life are reflected in the large rooms, and both furniture and the domestic arrangements are admirable. Large and rich pieces of furniture belong to the days when difficulties of travelling made a provision of the sort indispensable. Large bookcases, filled with heavy volumes, denote a time before the coming of the railway to scatter on the winds leaves from the Tree of Knowledge. Here is every inducement for reflection—paintings, or, rather, pictures; massive plate, goldsmiths' work won as prizes in cattle shows, whose medals fill large frames, to say nothing of photographs of prize beasts. And, better than all the rest, was the hospitality of other times. Now that every one travels without ceasing, the ancient hospitality has lost its savour. There still linger vestiges of it in those countries where civilisation is not advanced enough to protect the traveller from unpleasant contingencies. Let me hasten to add that amongst these one need not count the risk of starvation in an estancia. No doubt the abundance of cattle counts for something. In any case, the estanciero is admirable in this respect. I wish I could give unstinted praise to the upchero, the asado, of which I have already spoken. But I shall not be able to do that until the Argentino has got out of the habit of handing the meat to the cook while it is still warm, for this requires a power of mastication which European debility denies to our jaws.
All kitchen-gardens are alike, and you cannot expect to find the pleasure-gardens of an estancia laid out by a Lenôtre. Even if that miracle had been worked, what good would it be when the locusts had passed over it? In one estancia, near Buenos Ayres, considered the handsomest in the Argentine, which the kindness of its owner throws open to any foreign visitor, I beheld a park of a thousand hectares, where, amid the groves of tall trees, animals wander, giving the illusion of wildness. The grey ostriches that are there imagine, perhaps, that they are free. We admire some handsome bulls which are stalled here. The eucalyptus, planted sometimes singly and sometimes in broad avenues, towered above us at a height no other tree could rival. In this favoured spot the rich vegetation has nothing to fear from the locusts. Every species grows freely, as it will. For this reason, the overseer, anxious we should miss none of the rare species on which he prides himself, led us, with an air of mystery, to the edge of a low hill, where, with an authoritative gesture, he stopped us before an ordinary-looking tree, destitute of leaves, which had to me a familiar air.
"Yes, it is an oak you are looking at. An old European oak in the Argentine. What say you to that?"
I admit with prejudice that it is an oak, though at the same time confessing that I have seen others more favourable. And at the risk of being misunderstood, I acknowledge that it is not European flora that most interests me in the Argentine Republic.
The special feature of this fine park is the quarter reserved for the bulls. The specimens I saw, which were led past us, are magnificent beasts, bearing witness to methodical and prolonged selection. The best English breeds are gloriously represented, not only in the beasts imported from Europe, but also in Argentine-bred animals, which would do honour to any country.
The management and staff of the stables are entirely English. Stallions of world-wide fame are paraded by English stud-grooms that we may admire beauty of line united to beauty of action.
Now we were to see the trainers at work, not upon "wild" horses, since they belong to bygone days, but simply upon young animals that have not yet been ridden. As a matter of fact, the problem here is exactly the same as with us, but I venture to think that our system is vastly superior. The colts are collected in an enclosure called the corral. Pray do not conjure up a picture of Mazeppa's steed, with fiery eye and bristling mane, as depicted in the favourite chromo. There is nothing here but ardour of youth and grace of movement. The object is to accustom the horse to man and his needs. This our Norman boys quickly achieve by a mixture of skill and kindness which does not preclude firmness of hand. The system of the Argentine peon is very different. First he catches the neck of the animal in a noose and leads him out of the enclosure to a piece of rough ground. There, with a few movements of the lasso, the limbs are so tied that the simplest movement must make the unfortunate victim lose his balance and bring him heavily to earth at the risk of breaking his bones. The creature is terrified, naturally. Meantime, five or six men run in upon him—each an expert in his own way; and when he is so bound he can no longer move, the bit is adjusted and a sheepskin saddle adroitly buckled. All that now remains is to set the animal on his feet so that the horseman may mount. The rope is then relaxed as swiftly as it was tightened, and the colt, on his four feet, firmly held by the head, his eyes blindfolded, might perhaps get over his fright if his two forefeet were not still tied together by a last knot to prevent him running away. The peon gives the signal, and as the last loop is removed he leaps into the saddle and urges his mount straight ahead with the air of riding a savage brute and with a lavish use of his riding crop. Two horsemen, called "sponsors," accompany him, rending the air with their cries and beating the creature with pitiless crops. By the time he has travelled two hundred yards in this way the horse is mad with terror, and asks nothing better than to be allowed to stop. Perhaps there are exceptions; I did not happen to see them. On the other hand, I did see poor beasts that offered not the slightest resistance, and whose angelic gentleness should have disarmed the executioner. It appears that when this performance has been gone through five or six times the colt surrenders unconditionally. In the days when horses were wild upon the prairies these practices might have had some excuse. Nowadays we have different ideas.
All these branches of work require, as may be supposed, a fairly complete set of buildings. Consequently, around the farmer's house there are outbuildings of every style of architecture which make the estancia a sort of small village, whence radiates the work undertaken on the Pampas. Thus ordered and thus spent, life in the fields is a "solitude" broken every moment by great herds and gauchos ever on the march. It has nothing to daunt even a man who is anxious not to lose touch with his fellow-creatures in these days of extreme civilisation. Therefore it is not surprising that a stay of some months at the estancia forms an agreeable part of the programme which the daily life of the Argentine landholder forces on all his family. The railway is never far off, since it brings colonists and is responsible for the whole agricultural movement. Railway construction proceeds at the normal rate of about five hundred kilometres per annum. The provinces of Buenos Ayres, of Cordoba, of Santa Fé, which alone furnish eighty per cent. of the agricultural exports, are naturally the most favoured; and also, naturally, it is on the Pampas, the immense reservoir of fertilising energy, that is concentrated the maximum of labour for the extension of the means of communication that are so swiftly and richly remunerative.
Thus it is not too difficult to move about in the Campo. Moreover, the motor-car—running now on a road, now on the great green carpet where movable gates provide a passage through the wire fencing—facilitates a pleasant interchange of neighbourly relations. I have said that absenteeism is unknown in the estancia. Often the head of the family, when kept for some reason in the city, confides the management of the estate to one of his sons, who in this way turns to magnificent account the grand energy of youth and manhood in intensely interesting work. What more natural than for the family to gather in the fine summer months beneath the shade of the farms, amid its herds so full of life, to enjoy the beauty of the harvest ripened with the warm kisses of the sun? The rides are unending beneath the pure sky of the long mornings, in the strengthening breeze which sets the blood coursing through the pulses with renewed force. In Brazil I heard people pity the Argentinos because they lacked the resource of the mountains in the great heat of summer. The Andes are, indeed, too far distant even with the railway that now crosses them. (The Transandine line is now working between the Argentine and Chile—forty hours' run from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso or Santiago.) But the costly pleasures of a sojourn at Mar del Plata are quickly exhausted. The estancia offers a beautiful retreat of active and fruitful peace. There are visits to the farmers who, little by little, are coming to reside on the domain of the estancia (purchasing the ground originally taken on lease, and grouping themselves in such-wise that villages are in process of formation), or the continual inspection of the herds (rodeo).
Another occupation is watching over the harvest which spreads across the Pampas. There are daily pretexts for trips that combine pleasure with usefulness. The tall ricks grow in numbers, the grain falls to the snorting measure of smoking engines, the lean native cattle of the Pampas yield their place to monstrous Durhams, to Herefords, with their handsome white heads, to Percherons, to Boulonnais, to Lincoln sheep, with their heavy fleeces. It is by no means certain that the amusements of Trouville or Vichy are superior to those of the estancia. We may be allowed to think that the "gentleman-farmer" has chosen the better part.
I have said nothing of game-shooting. We must admit that in this respect the resources of the Pampas are greater than those of France. Hares and partridges are on the programme, as they are with us. M. Py told me he had tried to acclimatise the quail—in vain. Some thousands of birds were let loose in a selected part of the Pampas and disappeared for good. The history of the hare is very different. About fifty years ago some Germans liberated a few couples at various points of the Pampas, and the same animal which at home produces only one or two young each year began to swarm like the rabbit. Several families every year—and what families! The result, disastrous for farming, is that from eighty to a hundred hares may be reckoned to every hectare, and you cannot walk on the Pampas without perceiving a pair of long ears that spring up out of the grass every moment. The flesh has a poor reputation, perhaps for the reason that here they neglect that elementary operation which follows immediately on the death of the animal in our country. The partridge, smaller than ours, is a solitary creature. Its flesh is white and rather insipid. The martinette (tinamou), a sort of intermediary between the partridge and the pheasant, is the best of the Pampas game. One may hunt it without turning to right or to left—certain always of not returning with empty hands. The favourite amusement is the rabat, or the "rope," and shooting from the motor-car.
For the rabat horsemen are needed. A dozen or two of peons ride off at a gallop in no matter what direction, since the game is everywhere, to meet at a point out of sight and return at the top of their speed to the sportsmen. Then, long before you hear their shouts or see their outlines on the horizon, there suddenly appears along the uncertain line at which earth and sky meet a swarm of creatures which rush and cross each other in every direction. Whether the mass is near or far off it is impossible to say, since there are no objects to measure by. If far, all these black spots on the luminous background may be horns. To our inexperienced eye they give the illusion of a herd of oxen. Then suddenly the truth becomes manifest. You have before you some hundreds of hares, which will quickly be within gunshot. But the animal is sharp to discern the danger, and, in less time than it takes to write it, the troop that was heading in a mass straight for the line of fire melts away until only the foolish ones at the back are left to continue their course with the acquired momentum. In this way the carnage, which promised to be terrible, resolves itself into ten or twelve more or less lucky shots apiece. This is inevitable, since the wire fence which effectually stops horses and cattle is powerless against running game. The day when the destruction of the hare is decided upon, which is certainly desirable, it will only be necessary to fence in three sides of an enclosure and drive the game towards the opening. In the present state of affairs the mere sight of three or four hundred hares running straight towards the guns, even though they make a right-about turn just in time, is an entertainment much appreciated by Europeans.
Shooting à la corde has a different aspect. The mounted peons form up to make a line of beaters a hundred yards apart. But, unlike our own battues, the beater precedes the shooter, instead of walking towards him. The reason is that every peon is attached to his comrade to right and to left by a rope of twisted wires, which sweeps the ground and puts up every living creature to the guns, which follow behind at the pace of a horse's walk. The hare does not wait till the rope reaches him. Often he gets away out of reach. But there is such an abundance of game that none misses the animal that may escape. The important point is for the peons to keep well in line, else huntsmen and horsemen are likely to get a charge of lead. At the Eldorado, M. Villanueva's place, this happened twice or three times in the same day. The partridge (always flying singly) and the martinette are never weary of marking time. They run before one without haste, and apparently determined not to fly away.
It occasionally happens that a sportsman tires of his game and wants to end it. Several times I left the line of guns and ran upon the enemy, which, without any excitement, still kept its distance and never gave its pursuer the satisfaction of seeing it even hasten its step. You look around for a stone, a bit of wood, or a lump of earth, which should have the effect of driving off the creature. On the Pampas is neither pebble, nor stick, nor clod of earth. You have no resource but to swear and make violent gestures that have no effect at all. The martinette, too, has a way of glancing sideways at you which expresses a profound contempt for the entire human race. All generous minds are sensitive to rudeness and feel a just vexation when thus treated. The rapid chase is the more painful that you have very soon before you several martinettes and as many partridges which fly backwards and forwards, leaving you in doubt at which to point your weapon, while, at the same time, you know that in leaving the line of fire you expose yourself to all the guns which may be tempted, by fur or feather, to aim in your direction. There is only one way out of this critical situation that I know of. It is to fling your cap at the running bird. He will fly off then and keep his distance.
The victory would be yours afterwards were it not that the chase under a sun that would seem hot even in summer has left you out of breath. To take aim while struggling for breath is to risk missing the bird. Happily, both partridge and martinette have a straight, low, and heavy flight, which permits you to return to the estancia without dishonour. Such are the peripatetics of this amusing form of sport, in which, all along the line, firing is incessant. The steady walk of the guns is only checked by the rope getting caught occasionally on some tuft of grass, or by an encounter, not at all rare, with the carcass of horse or ox in process of decomposition. Having left on his own initiative, he at least escapes from man's ferocity. You pass without even having to hold your nose, so thoroughly does the strong, purifying air of the Pampas carry away in its boundless currents every germ that cannot be returned to the soil to perform the eternal labour of fertilisation. On all sides the last vestiges of clean and fretted bones tell us how lives now ended are taking on new forms of life, and in the gentle murmur of the grass that bends to the breeze the huge white skeletons that brave the blue of heaven have all the eloquence of philosophy in their tale of the supreme defeat of living matter beneath the irresistible triumph of fatality.
With no other break in the horizon but the distant ombu, a group of paraisos, a ranch, or travelling herd, the murderous band pursues its way. The walking is good, and the motor-car, which follows slowly in the rear, is at hand to pick up the weary sportsman. But before that point is reached one is tempted to cast off, little by little, articles of clothing which rapidly become a burden under the sun's rays. A shirt and trousers are already much. Even so, a rest becomes necessary, and those who have any acquaintance with M. Villanueva will guess that there was present a cart laden with refreshments. Halts like these, in the precious shade of the car, are not without charm, if you have taken the wise precaution to put on something warm. When the incidents of the day have been thoroughly discussed the chase is resumed, but if you are really done up do not imagine your fun is over. The auto will take your place in the line of march behind the rope of peons, and, apart from the game of running after martinettes, nothing is changed. The endless prairie is so truly a billiard-table of turf that not a jolt need be felt, and, after a few attempts, one gets the knack of firing from the car with a good average of successful shots. The hare suffers most; martinette and partridge get off more easily. It must be admitted that the experienced chauffeur is a powerful auxiliary. In any case, if you are shooting the less brilliant, the pleasure of sport in repose, varied by all sorts of unforeseen circumstances, more than compensates for the misses and lends a flavour to the sport that is lacking in European shooting parties.
Better still—the day is slowly dying: soon the party will break up, but the shooting will go on all the same. The silent peons come up to say good-night. Dumbly, with courteous gestures, final greetings are exchanged, and then the order is given to set the helm for Eldorado. But there is still light enough to see by. So here we are zigzagging across the Pampas in complicated turns and twists, as one spot or another appears more favourable for game. And the slaughter is terrific, for hares abound. Martinette and partridge, with their dark plumage, have nothing to fear from us now. In the faint light of the setting sun the hare makes still an admirable target, and plover and falcon offer supplementary diversions. The gay little owl alone finds grace with the guns. And when the "dark light" of the poet left us no resource but to shoot at each other, pity or perhaps fear of the last agony sufficed to make us hold our hand. The gentle horned beasts moved out of our way, fixing on us their stupidly soft eyes, and leaving us wholly remorseless, while in the freshening breeze and empty blackness of sky and land we burst in upon the lights of hospitable Eldorado.
This simple tale of a day's sport in the Pampas has no other merit than that of being strictly accurate. The Argentinos might very well content themselves with the pleasures they have ready to their hand at all seasons of the year, for in these regions, half-way between barbarism and civilisation, the gamekeeper is unknown. But man can never be content with what is offered to him. Therefore the wealthy estanciero takes infinite trouble to get thousands of pheasants sent out to him from our coverts, so that he may breed them in his preserves. In districts that are not menaced by the locusts the birds will be let loose shortly in the woods, and the Argentine will then pride herself on shooting such as that of Saint-Germain. It is because of this approaching change that I have set down these impressions of a day's sport in conditions which will soon belong to a vanished age.
[CHAPTER X]
ROSARIO AND TUCUMAN
The traveller with only a few weeks at his disposal in this immense country of overflowing activity cannot pretend to make a very profound and detailed study of it. I am here setting down only those things that I saw, but, at the same time, I endeavour to show their significance, and to give some idea of their social import, while leaving my readers to judge for themselves. It is, of course, the subjective method, and is full of pitfalls, but it is, also, useful inasmuch as it sheds much light on the subject if used with discrimination. My friend Jules Huret, who has been inspired to reveal to the criminally incurious French public certain countries which they persistently ignore, takes all the time he needs to collect a voluminous amount of material, which he then proceeds to place before his readers in accordance with the strictest canons of the objective method. We know how successful he was with North America and Germany. He has marshalled before us so orderly a procession of men and things, that to my mind he has defeated his object, and left us no inducement to undertake the journey for ourselves and to obtain first-hand impressions by the direct contact which is worth all the books in the world. Huret is now publishing in the Figaro the result of a year's close study of the Argentine. He has taught and will still teach me much, no doubt, and I strongly recommend every one to read his admirable work. But in their way I still venture to claim for my unpretentious notes the virtue of creating in my readers a desire for further information, for the simple reason that they will assuredly want to test my views in the light of their own experience. Humanity, nowadays, is moving at high speed, and the chief interest that most men attach to each day's events is the opportunities they may afford for to-morrow's energy. But the real value of the "event of the moment," to which the Press attributes more and more importance, lies in the revelation it may bring of those general laws that we must all understand. Hence the living appeal made by cursory reflections, irrespective of what may be the verdict of the future thereupon, since our "truths" of to-day can never be more than successive eliminations of errors.
These generalities are intended to explain the spirit in which I prepared to leave Buenos Ayres, and drew up an itinerary that was necessarily curtailed by the limited time that remained to me. I had been told: "At Cordoba you will find a city of monks; Mendoza affords a charming picture of fine watercourses lined with poplars, vines in profusion, and a remarkable equipment for the wine industry; at Tucuman, there are fields of sugar-cane with dependent refineries and, also, the beginnings of an extensive forest." With irrigation-works, poplars, vines, monks even, I was already familiar: so without hesitation I headed for Tucuman, with a brief halt at Rosario, the second city of the Argentine Republic.
In its external aspect Rosario de Santa Fé differs but little from Buenos Ayres. There is the same florid architecture, the same desire to do things on a large scale, the same busy spirit, though naturally on a smaller scale. Rosario exists by reason of its port, which commands the Parana. The prodigious extension of the town is due to the building of numerous railway lines, which have produced an enormous development of agriculture in the provinces of Santa Fé, Cordoba, and Santiago del Estero. The cereals grown in these provinces, representing one half the total exported by the Argentine, are carried by these railways, whilst the Parana furnishes a waterway several thousands of kilometres in length for coasting vessels on the upper river and from Paraguay as far as the mouth of the Rio. A volume might be written of its docks, built by a French firm under the management of M. Flandrin, a compatriot and native of my own Vendean village. There is a peculiar charm about meetings of the sort. A journey of many days has brought you to the unknown land, where, with the help of some imagination, any strange event is possible. After sundry adventures, the curtain rises, and the first face that meets your eye, the first voice you hear, belong to your native place. Names, scenes, and memories rush in upon the mind with a train of unexpected impressions and emotions.
To think I had come all this way to be confronted with that special spot of earth to which through all travels and all life's changes we remain so firmly bound! Far away in the distant Brazilian mountains, I met a charming Vendean woman, whose tongue had kept that accent of the langue d'oil which belonged to Rabelais. When Sancho, from the height of his waggon, beheld the earth no larger than a grain of millet, his sense of proportion was truer than ours. Only, instead of being so many hazel-nuts upon the millet, as Sancho thought, men are, in reality, merely imperceptible particles in a restricted space, bound to collide at the least movement.
My philosophy did not prevent my feeling great pleasure at meeting M. Flandrin, who is as unpretentious as he is kind, and who is a credit to his native land. We made a tour of inspection of the docks, and the inevitable trip by boat round the harbour. All I can say of the port thus hastily seen and already described in many technical publications is that, in spite of tremendous natural difficulties, it has been satisfactorily accomplished, thanks to the tenacity of the engineers and the admirable method adopted. [29] Moored alongside the quays were a number of English and German cargo-boats (amongst which, I saw but one French, alas!) taking in grain at the rate of 800 tons per hour. The docks were begun in 1902. They were designed to cope with an average tonnage of 2,500,000, and it was at that time believed impossible to attain that figure before some thirty years at least. By 1909, however, it had been reached and passed, and a contract for their enlargement was immediately given to a French firm. Under these conditions, it is easy to understand how a town numbering 23,000 inhabitants in 1869 should, in 1910, contain nearly 200,000. This, also, explains a rivalry that exists between the second city of the Republic and Santa Fé, the historic capital of the province. Rosario complains, with some show of reason, that the enormous fiscal contribution paid by her to the national exchequer does not procure for her the advantages to which her population entitles her. The deplorable deficiency of schools in Rosario is more especially a subject of loud recrimination. I cannot but think that this claim will be before long admitted. As for the æsthetic future of the city, I can say nothing. When I saw it, it was disfigured in every direction by extensive road-making operations, thanks to which there will, in all probability, be open spaces enough, one day, to arouse the admiration of visitors. An excellent and modern hotel seems a good augury for the future. As usual, the welcome I received far exceeded anything I could have expected. But the municipal improvements scheme had occasioned a fever of speculation in land values, and the one subject of conversation was the fabulous fortunes to be realised in this way—so much so, indeed, that I was strongly tempted to spend a few sous on a plot of land which by now or a little later perhaps might be worth a hundred millions.
If Rosario has made a fortune out of the incredible increase of its corn harvests, it must not be supposed that cattle-rearing is neglected in the province of Santa Fé. By a fortunate coincidence, I arrived on the day of the opening of the great annual Cattle Show. The President of the Agricultural Society happens to be one of the most distinguished politicians, not only of the province but of the Republic, and, by his kindness, I was able to glean much information on general topics, and, at the same time, inspect some samples of agricultural produce that would not have been out of place in the first of our European shows. The surrounding provinces, including that of Buenos Ayres, had sent up some of their finest specimens of horses and horned cattle. As usual, there was a superabundance of British breeds to be seen; but our Norman horses were well represented, too. To tell the truth, the dual capacity of my guide, who was no less eminent as statesman than as cattle-breeder, caused politics to somewhat overshadow agriculture in our talk, and I found out that Señor Lisenadro de la Torre was the leader of a party that is aiming at the overthrow of the Cabinet now in power, whose majority, he informed me, was based on those very administrative abuses that I had already noted. The tendency is to use and even abuse authority to coerce the electors, who are unorganised for the defence of the public interests against private ambitions, [30] "an evil that spreads terror," as may truly be said, and one of which Rosario does not hold a monopoly. On this theme the clear-headed politician, with his concise manner of speech and decided tones, gave me a rapid sketch of the situation by a brief examination of the enemy's country. And I rejoiced to see that abuses common, more or less, in all old countries, and whose remedy lies only in private endeavour, have in this new community of the Argentine provoked the same keen intelligence and determination as others which I noted. Under whatever form of government, the worth of a country lies in its men—that is, in its sum total of disinterested activity. A race that can show the development of intelligence and character that have so struck me in the course of this journey can afford to await with tranquil courage the solutions of the future.
As it is my desire to leave no dark corners unexplored, I must make a reference to the strange hints of revolution that I heard at Rosario and, later, at Tucuman. "A certain military leader would be displeased if full satisfaction were not given him. There was every reason to fear a movement. Dispatches from the Government recommended a careful guard over rifle magazines," etc. I was, however, pretty soon convinced that all these rumours were but the expiring echo of a bygone condition with very little foundation in actual fact.
Here in Rosario we are not far removed from the life of Buenos Ayres. To-day the distance from one city to the other (300 kilometres) can be covered in five hours. The last part of the journey, which terminates at Tucuman (1100 kilometres from the capital), gives us the impression of a complete change of country. At daybreak, in full sunshine, the first discovery I made was that we were travelling through a cloud of dust that entirely concealed the landscape. With a kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful the President of the Republic, Señor Figueroa Alcorta, had lent me his own coach for the journey. I slept in an excellent bed, with windows carefully closed and blinds drawn. But the Argentine dust knows no obstacles. For this reason the prophecy in the Book that we shall all return to dust seems to me already fulfilled. My beautiful bedroom, my luxurious dressing-room, with its welcome douche, my clothes, my luggage, and my person, all were wrapped in a thick veil of fine red dust, ugly in appearance and dangerous to respiration. Yes, while I was sleeping in all confidence, the imperious dust had taken possession of train, passengers, and all that was visible to their dust-filled eyes. The stations: merely a stack of red dust; man: a vermilion-coloured walking pillar; the horseman, or vehicle: a whirlwind of dust. Horror! to my wrath a beautiful white shirt was discovered blushing rosy as a young girl surprised. I washed with red soap and dried with red towels my carmine-coloured face. Here is the explanation of the complexion of the Indian!
Tucuman is in sight—Tucuman, the land of Cacombo, the faithful servant of Candide. None can have forgotten that the Governor of Buenos Ayres, moved by the beauty of the lovely Cunégonde, was on the point of despatching Candide when he was saved by Cacombo. But what follows marks the difference between Candide's times and our own, for Candide and Cacombo in their flight paused in "a beautiful meadow traversed by streams of water," where befell the double adventure of the monkeys and the mumps, whereas for us meadow, rivulets, monkeys, and mumps all resolve themselves into universal dust. I strain my eyes to discern some features of the country: a dismantled forest is dying in the dust; some lean cattle are grazing, on clay apparently; enormous cactuses, like trees; flocks of small white birds with pink beaks, known as "widows" (viudas); and, from time to time, the beauty of a flight of cackling parrots, making in the sunlight flashes of emerald in the dusty air.
The Marseillaise! the Tricolor! the Governor, the French colony!—this is Tucuman's reception of me. Handshakes, salutes, welcoming words with affectionate references to the distant fatherland. An admirable official motor-car, but execrable roads where the best of pneus finds so many obstacles to jump that it becomes quite dizzy, as is shown by its continued stagger.
The first impression given by Tucuman after the jolting and shaking of the road is that of a colonial land. Everywhere the "half-house," hastily put up, but rendered charming by its patio, and comfortable by the disposition of its rooms to take advantage of the shade. The Indian half-caste is king in Tucuman, "the Garden of the Republic," whose women, they say, are more beautiful than flowers. Everywhere, in fact, one sees bronzed faces in which two impassive black eyes shine with the brilliance of the diamond. A long, lingering glance which says, I know not what, but something that is totally un-European. Simplicity, dignity, with few words, slow gestures, an imposing harmony of bearing. I know not whether one day the dominant race will succeed in modifying or effacing the native traits. At present, nothing seems to touch the indelible imprint of American blood. A few of the women are very handsome. The French colony in Tucuman is larger than I thought. I shall see it when I return from Santa Ana, where I am going to visit M. Hilleret's manor. As we pass, I notice broad avenues well laid out: the Place de l'Indépendance, on which there stands the statue of General Belgrano, in remembrance of the battle of Tucuman (1812), and the new palace of the Governor, which is impressive. From sixty to eighty thousand inhabitants. The town very commercial. The country broken, with high mountains. Fertile plain suitable for growing sugar-cane, tobacco, oranges, and the most beautiful flowers. Large and noble forests that are being ruthlessly devastated to supply fuel for factory furnaces. Uninterrupted cane-raising all the way to Santa Ana, where M. Hilleret, who came to the Argentine as a labourer on the railway, set up a sugar factory, [31] thanks to which—and to Protection—he was able, at his death, to leave a fortune of a hundred millions. We were magnificently received in a hospitable mansion that betrayed the taste of a Parisian architect. [32] A park and garden bearing traces of a recent attack from locusts. Specially beautiful were the tufts of bamboo, and the false cotton plants with their big balls of white down, amid which a tiny grey dove cooed softly like a wailing child.
What can I say of the factory that has not already been said? It is admirably managed. The cane is automatically flung on a slope down which it drops beneath heavy rollers. Two thousand workmen are employed, half-castes for the most part—a few are pure Indians,—and a small number of French foremen. There is a picturesque scene in the town of a morning, when troops of women, old and young, followed by a procession of children, come to market and fill their wooden or earthenware bowls with provisions, balancing them on their heads; their parti-coloured rags, gaily patched, add a piquant touch to the faces, whose firm lines seem set in bronze, all vitality and expression being concentrated in the dark fire of their eyes. The workmen's quarters are indescribable slums. On both sides of a wide avenue there are rows of tiny low houses from which the most rudimentary notions of hygiene or of comfort are, apparently, carefully banished—dens rather than dwellings, to speak accurately, so destitute are they of furniture. Women and old men sit immovable in the dust, the bombilla between their lips, in an ecstasy of maté. Children moving about on all fours are scarcely distinguishable from the little pigs which are grubbing in the rubbish-heaps. Ineffable smells issue from boiling cauldrons and stewpans, whilst in the darkness of the doorway the nobly draped figure of the guardian of the hearth stands, speechless and motionless, surveying the scene. According to European ideas, these folk are wretched indeed. Yet the climate renders existence easy and they appear to find quiet pleasure in it. We may be permitted to imagine for them a happier future and higher stage of civilisation, which they will achieve when they draw a larger share of remuneration from the monument of labour their hands have helped to put up. Laws for the protection of labour are unknown in the Argentine, which is explained by the backwardness of industry there. Although life beneath this beautiful sky must undoubtedly offer many conveniences, and although the mill-owners whom I met seemed to me both humanely and generously inclined, factories such as those I visited can scarcely exist much longer without the labour question being brought before the legislators. Members of Parliament with whom I discussed the point appeared favourably disposed, though inclined to defer remedies indefinitely.
The fields of sugar-cane can be visited without fatigue by train. We passed teams of six or nine mules—up to their knees in dust—on their way to the factory with loads of cane grown at a distance from the railway. The drivers, sitting postilion-wise on their leaders, raised their whips with threatening cries that made the lash unnecessary. But who could have imagined that it took so much dust to manufacture sugar! Out in the fields the peons, armed with the long knife that is always stuck in the back of their belts, cut the cane and with two dexterous turns of the blade divide it into lengths for the presses, leaving the foliage and part of the stalk for the cattle. At the wayside station there were five or six dilapidated cabins, in which the numerous progeny of the cane-cutters seemed to be thriving. In appearance they formed a temporary encampment, nothing more. The huts are made out of odds and ends picked up at haphazard, and follow a simple principle of architecture which requires a space of some twenty or thirty centimetres between the floor and the palisade—for it can scarcely be called a wall—to insure a circulation of air. Thus, one could, at a pinch, sleep in the place without arousing the smallest envy in the four-footed beasts that are happily slumbering under the starry heavens. Children, pigs, and donkeys live together in friendly promiscuity. Women, bearing in their arms their latest-born, appear on their threshold dumbfounded, apparently, at the sight of strangers. In my own language, I ask one of them for permission to glance at the interior of her hut. She stands aside, and I look in, not venturing more than a single step. The only attempt at furniture is planks laid across trestles, with rags of clothing (incredibly dirty) doing duty for mattress or blanket. A movable stove adapted to open-air cooking, and four stakes in the earth, on which are laid bits of anything that comes handy, with tree trunks for seats—this constitutes a rough-and-ready dining-room. Scattered about on the ground are different utensils for the use of man and beast. Then a commotion. A naked baby, who is sucking a sugar-cane, suddenly sees its treasure carried off by a lively little black pig. A fight and loud screams. Biped and quadruped come to blows, and the effect of excitement on the dormant functions of infant life is such that it is the child who succeeds in worsting the pig. The latter noisily protests. Then, there being no such thing as Justice on earth, it is the child who is carried off and set on the heap of rags whose odorous dampness will at nightfall soothe its sleep.
M. Edmond Hilleret, the eldest son of the founder of the factory of Santa Ana, had invited us to a tapir-hunt. To camp out in the forest for three days did not in the least daunt us, but a member of the Society for the Protection of Animals having urged upon me the shamefulness of letting dogs loose upon so inoffensive a beast, and Providence, with the same intention probably, having smitten our hunter-in-chief with appendicitis, followed by an operation, our shooting was directed humbly against the parrots. I speak for my companions; as for my own part, I announced the most pacific intentions towards the birds of the forest.
Peons on horseback and light carts start off in an ocean of dust. The only way is to get in front of the procession and leave to your friends the duty of swallowing your dust. As a lack of altruism on the part of my comrades had inflicted this experience on me as we went, I took care to return the compliment on the way back. The forest, which belongs to the factory, is generally denominated "virgin" for the sake of effect. But my regard for truth compels me to state that it was not even demi-vierge, for there are herds grazing in the clearings, peons keeping watch, and woodcutters and colonists unceasingly busy dragging away its veils with a brutality that is never slaked. Such as it is, however, with its inextricable wildnesses, through which only the axe can clear a way, with its tall, flowering groves, its ancient trees covered with a luxuriant parasite growth that flings downwards to earth and upwards to heaven its showers of lovely colour, it is marvellously beautiful. The wonder of it is this haze of parasites, so varied in species, in colour, and in growth, with their invincible determination to live at all costs, which wrap the giant tree from root to highest twig in a monstrous profusion of new forms of life. The dead branch on which we trample has preserved, even in decomposition, the frail yet tenacious creeper whose blossoms had crowned it high aloft. The tree is no longer a tree: it is a Laocoön twisted in a fury of rage beneath the onslaught of an ocean of lives whose torrents recognise no barriers. Whichever way one looks, hairy monsters are agonising in despairing contortions, victims of a drama of dumb violence; and the spectacle conveys a keen realisation of the eternal struggle for life that is going on all around us, from the summits of these verdant heights to the subterranean depths whence issues this living force. And, as episodes in the universal tragedy, the brilliant colouring of lovely birds lights up the gloomy enchantment of the silent tumult of anguished lives whose effort after mastery can only end in death. Having not yet learnt to know man's baseness, the royal magpies of Paraguay, with their startling plumage, pause on the branches close beside our path to gaze on us in, perhaps, the same astonishment as we on them. But already in the great clearing shots resound, betokening the salute of the first arrivals to the denizens of the forest. Now, my parrot friends, make for the fields as fast as you can, out of reach of the horde of enemies!
But it is precisely these clearings that the parrot loves, for here he, like us, can satisfy his appetite. When his tribe descends upon an orchard, good-bye to the fruit harvest. We were in a vast clearing, inhabited by a small colony of farmers, whose huts are built along a rivulet on the slope of a meadow. Here are fields of maize covered with dead stalks. The cattle wander freely where they will. In an orchard stands an orange-tree, the tallest I have seen, full of golden balls. Hard by a well, on a wooden post, there sits a green parrot, with red poll, his plumage ruffled, his eye full of contempt for the human race. Attracted by the noise, two women come out from a dark hut. Gossips probably, though what they can find to talk about in such a spot it would be hard to guess. One of them attracts attention by the beauty of her form, the nobility of her pose, and the warm, coppery tint of her face. She is a Creole equally removed from the two races. Her thick hair, intensely black, falls in a plait upon her shoulders. Instinctively she has twisted pink ribbon—found, probably, in a box of biscuits—in her hair, where it makes a line of light in the night of her tresses. Erect in the simplicity of the semi-savage, without a word, without the least acknowledgment of our presence, and without a trace of embarrassment or affectation, she stands looking at us, desiring, apparently, no better occupation. Her features are regular and delicate, according to the canons of European æsthetics. Two or three pock-marks make a startling patch. All the soul of the native race is visible in the dark light of her eyes, heavy with feelings that belong to an epoch too primitive to be comprehended, even dimly, by our aged and vulgar civilisation. That surprising pink ribbon and the shyness—like remorse for some unknown crime—expressed through the ingenuous and compelling eyes, are probably the secret of her charm. Whatever it springs from, the effect is the same. Whether girl or woman it would be hard to tell. This uncertainty often gives its brilliance to feminine power.
I tear myself from contemplation of the lady and wander into the forest in the wake of the chattering birds, carrying with me, by way of viaticum, an orange whose freshness and perfume have left me a souvenir no less delicious than that of the charm of the young beauty. I was slowly returning to the glaring sunshine of the clearing, absorbed in admiration of a flight of bright-plumaged parrots, when a vexatious gunshot brought me back to the realities of our sinful race. One of our party had concealed himself among the brushwood at the foot of the tree in which the birds were holding their parliament. The danger of the institution was instantly apparent, for five birds fell to the murderous lead. I still hold with parliaments, however, and with parrots which debate in the branches. I know not what they find to talk about, but, judged by the criterion of noise adopted at home, it must be of great importance. When we teach them to speak our language, I am aware they utter the words but attach no meaning to them. I have known humans to do the same without the birds' excuse. Moreover, a very remarkable trait in the parrot's character is that he is altruistic in the last degree, and will face any danger to assist a friend in distress by voice and gesture. When one is wounded, the rest, who have at first flown off in alarm, return with loud cries to the scene, abusing the sportsman and calling on deaf gods for justice. If further volleys make fresh victims, the flock will not give up its work of pity, thus exposing themselves to further slaughter.
All this is to explain how it was that, on my return to the place I started from, I saw on the ground a beautiful green parrot with a crimson head, lying now in the stillness of death, while two or three of his friends limped and fluttered round him, hurling maledictions at the human race. I fear they all figured later on the supper-table of the colony. The young woman with the pink ribbon, for whom the scene probably offered nothing new, stood and gazed at us as if we were the curiosity of the moment. One of the wounded birds had climbed a stump beside her, and, without any preliminaries, had nestled up against her like a child. The woman took no notice. Her questioning eyes seemed to be seeking forms in which to clothe her thoughts, but her tongue could give no assistance. I, too, would have liked to speak to her, to learn something of her story, of her notions about the world, and the ideas that influenced her actions. But I knew of no signs in which to clothe such questions, and not a word of either Spanish or Guarani (the name of a small tribe now applied to the relics of their language, which is that of the natives). With a rhythmic walk she returned to her hut, emerging once more to join our circle, with a tiny grey parrot perched on her shoulder, by way, perhaps, of a conversational opening. The bird, fluttering its wings, stepped down as far as her fingers, which were slim and coloured as though with henna, and I ventured to tease him. The long, red hand came slowly forward, accompanying the movements of the bird, without a shadow of a smile on her impassive face; and so, the time for our departure having come, we parted for ever with all our questions unasked.
On the following day we drove to the Salto, another clearing in the forest, enlivened by a waterfall. We fired at some hawks that we took for eagles. Large blue birds flew mocking above our heads, and our hunters ended by shooting at imaginary fish. They thought a walk in the forest absurd, so whilst I and two comrades ventured a little way, they chose the most natural occupation in the world for men who have come from the ends of the earth to see an almost virgin forest, and made up a game of poker. Oh, the joys of modern travelling, undreamed of by the early explorers!
Meantime, I wandered straight before me through the woods, at the risk of losing my way. Once I thought I was going to know the pleasures, which are not unmixed, of being hopelessly lost. Already I saw myself reduced to the necessity of hunting for an ornero's nest, the opening of which is always in the north side; but one of the party pointed out a line of bluish-grey lichen on every tree-trunk, which indicated clearly, without the help of the birds, from which direction blows the north—naturally the warm—wind. Finally, by way of putting a finishing touch to my education, he assumed that I was thirsty, and leading me to a creeper growing parasitically on a large branch at the height of a man above the ground, he dexterously inserted his knife into the joint of the leaves, and there burst forth a jet of water slightly aromatic in taste, like the fine juice of some grass. The traveller's sherbet! A few minutes later we came upon a peon mounted on his mule, who, more surely than either bird or lichen, set us on the right path.
The first sugar factory founded by M. Hilleret was at Lulès. There we found a fine forest, wilder still than that of Santa Ana, with gorgeous great trees bearing bouquets of flowers, some white, some pale violet, and some pink. Fine gardens, and a park where, under the management of a French gardener, every fruit-tree of the subtropical zone may be found, from the banana and coffee-plant to the mango and chirimaya, beside a thousand other strangely named growths better calculated to surprise the eyes than charm the palate. Of an evening there was dancing in the garden. Though national in character, dancing here is much what it is elsewhere, since there is but one way to move the arms and legs. The most striking part of the picture was the attitude of the dancers when resting. In our countries these assemblies of young people would have been the excuse for jokes and laughter, often, probably, carried to a riotous excess. Here the immovable gravity of the native does not lend itself to merriment. Young men and young women exchange, now and then, a few words uttered in a low voice with the utmost composure. On the invitation of her partner, the young girl rises in exactly the same way that she would move to perform some household duty, and goes through the rites of the dance with its rhythmic measures without the vestige of a smile or a ripple of gaiety on her expressionless face. It is not, however, for lack of enjoyment, for no opportunity is missed of dancing, and the balls are prolonged indefinitely into the night. We must only see in this deportment a conception of dignity and of conduct that is not our own.
On my return to Tucuman a great reception was given by the French colony in my honour. I went to call—as, indeed, it behoved me—at the House of Independence, more modest but no less glorious than that of Philadelphia. It was here that the first national Congress was held, and here that the Oath of Independence was taken (July 9, 1816). In order to preserve the humble house, now an object of public veneration, it has been built into a large edifice, which will preserve it from decay in the future. There is no decoration—some commemorative tablets only—but it is enough. When the heart responds readily to the call of duty, an unobtrusive reminder is all that is necessary.
I was infinitely touched by the grandiose reception given me by the French colony. In a fine theatre, which is their own property, the Frenchmen of Tucuman extended the warmest of welcomes to their fellow-countryman. I found a surprise in store for me. It was arranged that I should lay the foundation-stone of the new French school of Tucuman, and, if I am to believe the inscription on the silver trowel that remains in my possession, given me for the purpose of spreading the cement, the school will bear the name of him who was thus its first mason. This honour, which is wholly unmerited, sprang, of course, from the natural longing to attach themselves in any way to France. Not a word was spoken that was not an invocation of our country, of its fight against ignorance, source of all human woes. There was a numerous and fashionable company present, whose large befeathered hats proved that Tucuman is not so very far from Paris after all. The ceremony was concluded by a pretty march-past of small boys and girls carrying the Argentine and French flags, and singing the national hymn, the Marseillaise. The little people put a world of spirit into their song. One little girl, about two feet high and gaily beribboned, was very determined to vanquish "tyranny." How congratulate her? I tried to express the very sincere pleasure the scene had given me, and remarked that these little Argentine tongues had a slightly Argentine accent in the Marseillaise.
"That is not surprising," said their proud master. "They do not know a word of French."
Then what about that charming baby's loudly expressed hatred of tyranny? It is true the significance of the hymn lies rather in the music than in its phraseology, now a century old. Children, begin by learning French, and do not wait for the opening of the school whose first stone I have just laid. All things shall be added unto you.