Through South America

by Harry Weston Van Dyke

II

Leaving the capital for a general tour through Argentina, the visitor will soon come to appreciate the Porteño’s division of the republic into the two parts: Buenos Aires and El Campo. For the greater part, the Camp is a vast plain, covering five hundred million acres of flat, fertile soil, with scarcely a natural hillock higher than those thrown up by the ants, and no depression more marked than those which the cartwheels have plowed—stretching from horizon to horizon, north, west, and south—vast, silent, and awe-inspiring in the majesty of its enormous extent and productiveness—the calm, inexhaustible bosom which suckles the prodigious infant on the Plata.

These pampas are the homes of the estancieros, the name given to the masters of the great breeding ranches and plantations. Some possess estancias that are really feudal in extent; one, in Patagonia, is as large as the State of Rhode Island. Their homes and outbuildings are about the only objects that give a human touch to the mile upon mile of cattle ranges, of green maize and golden wheat, of purple alfalfa and vivid blue linseed flower, unless one comes upon the black mud hut of the colono, or small farmer who works the field on shares. An occasional clump of man-planted trees may also be met with, and on the fringe of the pampas are a few widely scattered Indian settlements; but there is little to modify the metaphor of the ocean so universally used to describe these almost limitless plains. Even the seagulls sweep inland for hundreds of miles to add to its effectiveness. When the very heart of the country is reached, the traveler may scan the horizon from every point of the compass and know that in every direction what lies beyond is exactly the same.

The seasons, which are much like our own, although exactly the reverse in their occurrence, bring their appropriate activities. During the busy harvest period the Camp takes on an aspect of bustle which convinces the traveler that this great business republic has cast the word “mañana” (to-morrow) forever from its “bright lexicon of youth.” Harvesting machines cutting a swath, not four or six, but fourteen feet in width through the wheat fields, threshers with powerful blasts that pile the straw in great stacks, and on the ranches the great armies of horned cattle add the convincing touch to the scene of prosperity.

“A recent census,” says the Bulletin of the Pan American Union (July, 1911), “shows that in Argentina there are over 29,000,000 bovine cattle, 7,500,000 horses, about 500,000 mules and 300,000 asses, over 67,000,000 sheep, almost 4,000,000 goats and 1,403,591 pigs, with a total value of about $700,000,000, gold.... It is an interesting fact that all the animal food so abundantly supplied by this country is the result of stocking this incomparably rich land with animals introduced from European sources. In pre-Columbian times the only domestic animals possessed by the natives were the alpaca and llama. The alpaca was grown for its flesh and its fleece, while the llama was used as a beast of burden. In 1535 the Spaniards brought in horses and asses, and, shortly afterward, bovine cattle were taken to Asunción (Paraguay) by a Portuguese. In 1569 four thousand head were distributed along the regions of the Rio de la Plata. Sheep came later. At one time, when the natives were exceedingly hostile, a few horses and asses were abandoned on the pampas, and from that stock have descended the innumerable herds which to-day cover the almost limitless plains; ... but during recent years Argentina has imported the best animals obtainable and has bred with the direct intention of improving the stock as much as possible.”

PRIZE WINNERS FROM “THE CAMP.”

With the cattle rides the gaucho, the cowboy of the pampas. Dressed in smart poncho (a sort of cape, with a hole for the head to go through), and bright-hued zombachos, or wide Turkish trousers, tight-fitting boots, and sombrero, and sitting astride his saddle, richly ornamented with silver, he presents a sight worth seeing. To the gaucho the Camp is indebted for its only romance and picturesqueness; he has given to it its songs and tales of adventure, its tragedies and the brightness of its life. Lithe and graceful, he is a consummate horseman and rivals his Texan counterpart in feats of horsemanship and skill with the lasso. He is proud, simple-minded, and faithful in his friendships, but when aroused to anger by a slight or by deceit, he is as elemental in his vengefulness—for there is a strain of the old fierce Tupi-Guarany in the blood of most of them—as the early types of his race who ranged the pampas during the so-called mediæval period of Argentine history. Needless to say, he has contributed his quota in the wars of the republic and has furnished the inspiration for many a stirring drama in the literature of the country.

The story of the pampas and the life and habits of their workers and of the denizens nature has sent to share in their richness, has been told by many writers of our day, notably by W. H. Koebel, an Englishman, in his recently published “Modern Argentina.” It is the story of a great country and a great business enterprise that is fast spreading its activity farther and farther north, west, and south—to the north, toward the still savage Chaco country and the mountainous provinces of Jujuy, Salta, and Catamarca; to the west, toward the Andean uplands, and southward to the federal territories in the region that was once referred to on the maps as Patagonia. Gradually the cattle ranch is being pushed farther afield to give way to agriculture, while the ranchmen in their turn are penetrating the field of the timber industry.

There is practically no village life in Argentina; there is no middle class between the lordly estanciero and the laborer. The very necessary element of the small farmer, working his own independent property, is gradually being introduced, as the owners of the great estates are beginning to subdivide their holdings. When this new element shall have been thoroughly absorbed into the commonwealth, and the nation shall have acquired a “volk,” the prosperity of Argentina will be assured for all time. The development of the country is still in its infancy; for years to come there will be room for an increasing influx of capital and men who can take part in the most modern and greatest wealth-producing enterprise on the globe. So far the English and Germans are the chief among the foreign capitalists who have sought out this present-day Eldorado. The better acquaintance with Argentina and the other countries to the south of us, so intelligently and industriously fostered by the Pan American Union at Washington, will, it is to be hoped, induce a North American financial invasion of Argentina, an invasion that will be more than welcomed by the “Yankis” of the South.

The traveler who takes the seven-hundred-mile journey westward through the Camp, luxuriously housed in the coaches of the Great Western Railroad, comes upon a different scene and a different life when he reaches the ancient city of Mendoza in the foothills of the Andes. Here it was that San Martín recruited and organized his Army of Liberation, the army with which, emerging suddenly from its isolated hiding place, he startled the world by his crossing of the Andes to fall upon the unsuspecting Spanish. Mendoza is now the center of the wine and fruit industry. It is a thriving, well-supplied little city, with a population of between thirty and forty thousand, comfortable hotels, a theater, and a broad boulevard of its own, overhung with trees and named for the great revolutionary leader, where they have their band concerts and afternoon carriage parade just as they do in Buenos Aires. Only here, in their rather more dusky complexions, lots of the raven-haired, black-eyed occupants of the carriages show traces of Indian descent.

The development of the wine trade is in keeping with the phenomenal progress of the rest of the country. Although the great bulk of the product is not of the highest quality, the presses turn out each year enormous quantities that bear the labels of Bordeaux, Burgundy, Moselle, and Muscatel, produced from the very best imported vines. Other fruits have been found to grow equally well in this section: peaches, pears, and plums reach a high state of culture, while apples, quinces, and cherries do very well. It is the boast of the Argentino that his country is capable of producing every conceivable kind of fruit, and it is not an idle boast.

At this point—Mendoza—a change of car is made to the less comfortable narrow-gauge road that takes the traveler through the fastnesses of the Andes. The route leads first through the peach orchards and vineyards, with the snow peaks easily distinguishable in the background. The Mendoza River, fed by the melting snows on the mountain tops, tumbles along its way and is crossed and re-crossed many times en route. Distant about one hundred miles, one comes to the Puente del Inca, the famous natural bridge spanning a chasm one hundred and fifty feet in width, about which are many native legends of Incarial times, for the bridge formed part of the great system of roads built by the Incas. A little farther on, mounting to a still higher altitude, the station of Las Cuevas is reached, the last stop in Argentine territory, and the entrance to the tunnel through the mountain, half a mile below the Uspallata Pass—an engineering feat deserving of a chapter by itself. The elevation here is in excess of ten thousand feet, and the scene one of impressive grandeur, fascinating in the kaleidoscope of color that floods the gorges and the giant peaks.

THE USPALLATA PASS.

Above, at the Cumbre, as the pass at the top is called, if one forsakes the comforts of the passenger coach for mule-back, he can view the now world-famous “Christ of the Andes,” a bronze figure of the Prince of Peace rising to a height of twenty-six feet above its massive granite pedestal. It was erected to commemorate the peace treaty that brought to an end the long-continued differences between Chile and Argentina. Growing out of the boundary dispute, this controversy had become more and more acute as the long-neglected Patagonian territory increased in promise. The boundary, finally fixed in 1902, by Sir Thomas Holdich’s commission, runs along the summit of the Andean ridge. On the base of the monument a tablet bears the words: “Sooner shall these mountains crumble to dust than the people of Argentina and Chile break the peace to which they have pledged themselves at the feet of Christ the Redeemer.”

From Carácoles, the Chilean terminus of the tunnel, the Transandino-Chileno carries the traveler to the station of Los Andes. From here to the port city of Valparaiso, Chile, the route is over the Chilean State Railroad, which is of standard gauge and passes through some rich and fertile valleys on its way toward the Pacific.