BUENOS AIRES
This is the largest and most densely populated and the most uniformly prosperous Province of the Republic.[23] It is bounded on the North by the Provinces of Santa Fé and Córdoba, on the West by the Territories of the Pampa Central and Rio Negro and on the East and South by the Paraná and Plate Rivers and the Atlantic Ocean. Its capital, La Plata, is of a somewhat sadly monumental aspect. It is indeed as yet but a monument to the still unrealized dreams of its modern founders and architects. It was to have been a great city with a busy port; it is now a place where Provincial parliamentarians, lawyers, university students and Law Court and Police officials spend some hours each day, coming each morning and returning each evening from and to the superior activity and attractions of the Federal Capital.
Nevertheless, La Plata has long, wide, eucalyptus-planted avenues; its chief Plaza, in which are the Municipality and the Cathedral, is not much smaller than Trafalgar Square; its Museum is world-renowned for its palæontological collections; and its Law Courts, University, Theatre, Police Offices and the above-mentioned Municipality are huge, magnificently solid-looking buildings. But the lack of all perceptible movement in La Plata leads one to imagine that if its broad avenues and noble Plazas are not grass-grown the fact is due much more to the action of street cleaners than to that of traffic. Truly, one may often gaze down a very long vista of pavement between tall eucalyptus trees for many minutes without seeing one single other human being.
The Port works of Buenos Aires have drained its only source of commerce from La Plata. Still, some day the trade of the Republic may need it also.
At the same time it is only just to add that La Plata makes out a claim to nearly 100,000 inhabitants. Where they all get to when one visits it is mystery. Perhaps they in their turn spend their days in Buenos Aires; returning home to sleep in the deep stillness of the Provincial Capital.
The real chief port of the Province of Buenos Aires is Bahia Blanca. First of all, in 1896, the National Government decided to build the naval port and arsenal now in existence there: subsequently the Buenos Aires Great Southern and the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway Companies realized the conveniences and situation of Bahia Blanca as a place of export for the produce of their great and ever-increasing southern and south-western zones and each company constructed a port for the almost exclusive purposes of its own traffic.
The Great Southern Railway’s port is called Ingeniero White and that of the Pacific Railway Puerto Galvan. Besides these, separate and distinct constructions, Bahia Blanca has a fourth port, Cuatreros, at the interior end of the bay, which exports large and increasing quantities of frozen and chilled meat.
The great railway ports of Bahia Blanca are fitted with every modern mechanical appliance, huge cranes, electric endless belts for loading loose grain, and immense grain warehouses and elevators. The town of Bahia Blanca is rapidly growing in importance and influence. Its municipal administration is largely in the hands of British exporters and merchants.
On the Atlantic coast, between Bahia Blanca and Buenos Aires and some 400 kilometres from the latter city, is the famous seaside resort of Mar-del-Plata, the Argentine Monte Carlo—Trouville-Biarritz-cum-Ostend (before the War!).
During the season there (at all other times of the year it is deserted) vast Hotels and Restaurants charge famine prices for accommodation and food and there is always more demand than available supply of either. Wealthy Argentine families have, of course, their palatial “Chalets,” and the Rambla, as the great promenade by the sea is called, is a very brilliant scene at all times during the weeks in which it is fashionable.
Music and dancing contribute to the nights’ amusement at the Casino, large Hotels and private houses; and at the Club members can indulge in those games in which chance plays a greater rôle than skill.
As one young gentleman, who had failed to get a bed at any of the Hotels he thought worthy of his patronage, once remarked, “No matter, one can always play Baccarat till it is bathing time again.”
The air of Mar-del-Plata, that of the wide Atlantic, would doubtless be a powerful restorative to anyone who could resist the temptations of amusement sufficiently to give it a chance. Some people possibly do, but if so keep very silent about it.
Mar-del-Plata is, however, destined to show a more serious side of its possibilities in consequence of the building of a commercial port; the construction of which has been entrusted to a French firm, also the constructors of the new port works of Montevideo. Potatoes which are deemed the best in the Republic come from near Mar-del-Plata.
Other chief towns of the Province of Buenos Aires are Avellaneda (situate on the Provincial side of the boundary line between the Province and the Federal City of Buenos Aires, but to all intents and purposes a district of the latter with which it is connected by unbroken lines of streets and houses), Chivilcoy, Pergamino, Tres Arroyos, Nueve de Julio, Azul, the residential suburbs (of Buenos Aires), Temperley and Lomas de Zamorra and many smaller “camp” towns.
All these minor camp towns of the Province of Buenos Aires look much alike and none of them are very interesting in appearance. Their stores, however, do good business in supplying the needs of large surrounding rural districts, and some of these towns have periodical cattle shows and sales which are well worth visiting.
Temperley and Lomas de Zamorra consist chiefly of Villa residences, of all sizes and styles of architecture, and some shops.
The Province of Buenos Aires, half as large again as the whole Republic of Uruguay, possesses some of the best land in Argentina, and in it farming has reached the highest developments as yet attained in either Republic. In it intensive farming has already made its first appearance in South America—as needs must when high land-values drive. The surface of this Province is one almost unbroken level plain.
It at present produces one-third of the whole output of wheat, nearly a similar proportion of maize, one-fifth that of linseed, 87% of that of oats, and also contains about 37% of the live stock of the whole Republic.
Good water is obtainable nearly everywhere in practically close proximity to the surface. This fact, combined with the comparatively few running streams and the tendency of these to dry up in hot weather, causes some parts of this Province to have the appearance of a forest of tall skeleton iron windmills. These are set up over artificially sunk wells, to draw water for animals and domestic purposes.
A detailed description of the Province of Buenos Aires would extend to a very great length indeed; as this Province is, as far as its climatic conditions permit, a compendium of the industrial activity, at its best, of the whole Republic. That it is so is due to its situation on, or always in relatively close proximity to, the estuary of the River Plate; the cradle of the civilization and progress of the countries under discussion.
Farming and most other industries find their highest expression within easy reach of and in the Federal Capital.
As far as its physical aspect is concerned, the Province of Buenos Aires has been accused with considerable justice of being generally uninteresting. Certainly its surface is one huge flat plain, until one gets south to the ranges of the Sierra de la Ventana and the Tandíl hills. Past them, nothing but monotonous plain again till its southernmost boundary, the Rio Colorado, is reached.
Its only romantic scenery, though that is delightful indeed, is on its north-eastern frontier, along the small River Tigre and the majestic Paraná; the banks and innumerable islands of which are clad with useful osiers, flowering reeds, peach trees and a large riot of other beautiful and luxuriant vegetation. Many a spring day can be passed in idyllic enjoyment among the islands of the Tigre.
At Tandíl, on the south-eastern side of the Province, there are quarries of fine marble and building stone, and until a year or so ago there was a famous rocking-stone perched on another rock, the surface of which is inclined at an angle of something like 45 degrees. To all appearances a mere gust of wind would have toppled the upper stone down into a hollow beneath; but the tale goes that Señor Benito Villanueva, a wealthy and sportsmanlike Argentine, once tied a rope round the rocking-stone and attached the other end to a double span of oxen on the plain below. The oxen pulled; but without any other effect on the rocking-stone than temporarily to cant it just as many centimetres as it could be moved by a good push from a man’s hand. Now, alas for Tandíl, someone has succeeded in dislodging the rocking-stone from its uncanny-looking eminence, so that it has, literally, fallen from its high celebrity.
Buenos Aires is, naturally, the Province of palatial estancia houses surrounded by model farms. The Queen Province. The most densely populated and cultivated and the one with the largest revenues.