A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF PATAGONIA
It would be possible to write a very long chapter about the future of Patagonia. I do not, however, propose to do this, but to write what I have to say as briefly as possible.
To begin with, Patagonia can boast of a fine climate, for, though the winters are certainly hard, no endemic disease exists. The country is exceptionally healthy, nor are there any poisonous reptiles to endanger life on its far-reaching pampas. There are few parts of the earth of which so much can be said.
A large portion of the land is eminently suited for the support of sheep, as the enormous and prosperous sheep-farms to be found along the east and south coasts bear witness. Cattle and horse-breeding are also successfully carried on, and although a portion of the country is unsuited for agricultural purposes, it is equally certain that large expanses of ground of great fertility and rich promise are to be found here.
The tide of pastoral life from the thriving southern farms round and about Punta Arenas on the Straits of Magellan, and Gallegos on the Atlantic coast, is setting strongly north and west. The crying want of the country is capital to open up means of communication with the interior. At present there are no railways or other settled lines for the transport of produce, although I believe a steam-launch has lately been placed upon the River Santa Cruz. In consequence of this lack some farmers have to carry wool two hundred miles by bullock-cart to the coast; a few cover even a greater distance. To send wool two hundred miles in bullock-carts means at least three weeks of travel. To go and come from the farm to the coast would thus take up about two months of a farmer's time. Peones are necessary to look after the carts, and their wage is at least £5 a month and their keep. Then carts not infrequently break down upon the rough surfaces of the pampas and in the cañadones, hence more delay. Even when the port is reached difficulties have to be surmounted, for none of them, with the exception of Punta Arenas, are served by any steamship lines. This was so at the time of my being in Patagonia last year (1901). Government transports from Buenos Aires had the whole of the coast service of Argentine Patagonia in their hands, and these could boast of only very uncertain dates of departure and still more uncertain dates of arrival.
All these difficulties of transit do not make for prosperity. I understand that of late a German line has undertaken to call at some of the ports, and if they carry out their contract it should help events in Patagonia to get into the stride of success.
On the coast-farms, where ships could and did occasionally put in, especially in the wool season, money was made and men began to see fortune ahead. But far away in the interior, where a very few pioneers have made their homes beside a lake here and there, the wide and uninhabited pampas lie between the producer and his market. Until railways open up the land the position of these people cannot much improve. They are too heavily handicapped in the race.
It is almost impossible to tell what enormous numbers of sheep and cattle Patagonia could produce for the providing of the world if capital and enterprise would but pave the way. In the meantime the country remains the paradise of the middleman. At present there is little money in hand, much of the trade is carried on by barter, and on this system there is always an evil tendency towards profits accruing mostly to the storekeepers, who gradually become more or less masters of the situation. Many of the small farmers are deeply in debt to this class. A hard winter—and there are often very hard winters—fills the pocket of the storekeeper, for they advance provisions, without which no man can continue to live, and they, of course, thus secure mortgages on the farms.
This same unfortunate liability is observable in other countries where similar conditions obtain, but the opening up of the interior of Patagonia and the introduction of capital in the hands of employers of labour would probably lessen the pressure of hard times on the poorer farmers.
Beyond the pampas again tower the unnumbered peaks of the Cordillera, and among them all things, minerally speaking, are possible. Perhaps the future of Patagonia is to be found there. In a few years the Patagonian Andes may be as commonly known a seeking-place for fortune as Klondyke is to-day. But concerning this part of the subject I have nothing to say, being no prophet of El Dorados.
Although during our travels we had little time to spare for prospecting, or searching for the mineral wealth which may lie hidden in the Cordillera, yet there was one obvious source of riches that was always before our eyes in those regions.
The coast-towns of Patagonia are supplied with wood by sea from the woodlands of Tierra del Fuego, and this while many square miles about the bases of the Andes are covered with dense forests of magnificent growth. Here are to be found beech, cypress and redwood, not to speak of other trees, but the absolute absence of any means of conveying logs to the coast has so far left this store of wealth untouched. Until better means of transport can be developed, there are certainly one or two rivers which might be made use of in this connection.
I can only insist upon the fact that Patagonia is a great though at present undeveloped land; that it cries aloud to railway enterprise to become its salvation. Nevertheless, it is even now a good country for the man ready and able to work. A capable man will make £6 a month and his keep, but he must know the work required of him; a considerable time has to be spent in learning the skilled labour of camp life, and very hard labour that sometimes is. An emigrant does not consequently find it so easy to get employment. But, given vigorous health, an aptitude for hard work, and a small sum in hand to keep him going until he is broken in to the necessities of the life, and I know of few countries more favourable to the unmarried working man.
There is something further which I should like to suggest to intending emigrants of my own nation.
The greatest of British exports is, one might contend, Britishers.
The attitude of the young Britisher abroad towards the rest of the world in general is at once a source of great national strength and of serious national weakness.
First, as we know, he is a poor linguist, who prefers to go on speaking his own language, and, when not understood, attempting to enforce comprehension by the very simple expedient of shouting louder. The result of this uncompromising attitude, backed by a good national financial status, is that as the mountain will not go to Mahomet, Mahomet must needs come to the mountain, and the foreign Mahomet does come, wrestling his way through difficulties of pronunciation. By his attitude in this matter—an attitude dictated partly by a too common lack of the linguistic faculty and partly by a certain rooted conviction that a man who cannot speak English is a man of "lesser breed"—the Britisher has to a certain extent forced English upon a very unwilling world.
But whether this question of the one-language system is a loss or a gain to the country, it is very certain that there is another idiosyncrasy of the Englishman abroad which is an undoubted loss. Every country has its own ways and methods, not only peculiar to its inhabitants but adapted to their special needs. And here the brusque unadaptability of the Englishman becomes pitifully apparent.
He loses immensely by it. He will ride on his English saddle because he has been used to ride on it at home; he will wear his pigskin leggings for precisely the same reason.
You cannot teach him that he who walks in a noontide sun in latitudes near the equator is sometimes apt to contract a fever. Of course I refer chiefly to the "new chum," but we have an unfortunate gift of remaining new chums for an indefinite period.
Our young blood is very sure of himself, which is a first-rate national trait, and one to which as a nation we, no doubt, owe much. But it has its drawbacks. Thus, although he is physically excellent beyond his fellows, his death-rate is usually heavier, which in the nature of things it ought not to be.
But in cases where adhesion to the methods of the country to which he has migrated touches not himself but his goods and his work he needlessly—indeed, almost mischievously—handicaps himself. He takes pride in occupying a position of more or less splendid isolation.
The Britisher lacks adaptability. He lacks suavity. He often lacks common politeness. In fact, he is a good fellow when you know him, but you have got to know him first. An excellent reputation to possess, perhaps, apart from business, and when your position is assured. But in foreign countries, and in the case of dealing with strangers of other nations, who are very apt to like or dislike at first sight, its results are disastrous, for they rarely reconsider their first opinion.
The Continental races, on the other hand, aim at merging their individuality in that of their temporary hosts. Actuated by a sense of politeness or of self-interest—I do not know which—these peoples do not thrust forward the fact that they are aliens, but rather try to foster the idea that the land of their adoption is their own. But when the young Englishman comes along, his manner placards him with his nationality. He seems to say, "You fellows, I've got to live here, Fate orders it. But I am not of you. Apart from business, leave me alone."
He and his compatriots are sufficient unto themselves. And not infrequently also, though strangers in a strange land, they are a law unto themselves. Now this is all very well in its way, and we would not, I suppose, have it otherwise; yet, if the English youth abroad would modify their attitude towards the works of the alien, even while, if they so choose, preserving it towards the alien himself, they would rise to greater heights of success than they at present touch.
The fact is that the alien thinks the Englishman is a fool of a very notable kind, and in many cases he is right.
It is not in the excellence of their goods, or even in the cheapness of their tariff, that the Germans are forging ahead of us in trade. It is in their attitude towards those with whom they deal. They make an art of selling a yard of red flannel to an elderly negress. The negress feels the compliment, rather despises the complimenter, but likes it on the whole—and comes again.[32]
While the German studies the people who are to buy his goods in a spirit of subtlety, the Englishman makes up his mind without considering anybody save himself and his own ideas. In the days before competition assumed its present proportions this was all very well, perhaps; or at least it was not the commercial suicide that it certainly is to-day.
From the standpoint of the employer, the Englishman does not know his work. He has no money. He must, therefore, earn something. He expects to be allowed to earn and learn at one and the same time, which is an absurd notion.
The cause of all this is the same as that which sends out first-rate goods but to the wrong market.
The fact is, we do not study our markets seriously either for mercantile or for human exports.
If the South Sea Islanders want red cloth we send them yellow, and if in Patagonia there is an opening for men who are decent practical blacksmiths, we send them a stream of youths who have never fullered a shoe, but who are well up in the rudiments of Greek.