CHAPTER VIII
Brazil—Contrast between Portuguese and Spanish South America—Moorish traditions—Amazing beauty of Rio de Janeiro—Yellow fever—The Commercial Court Chamberlain—The Emperor Pedro—The Botanic Gardens of Rio—The quaint diversions of Petropolis—The liveried young entomologist—Buenos Ayres—The charm of the "Camp"—Water-throwing—A British Minister in Carnival time—Some Buenos Ayres peculiarities—Masked balls—Climatic conditions—Theatres—Restaurants—Wonderful bird-life of the "Camp"—Estancis Negrete—Duck-shooting—My one flamingo—An exploring expedition in the Gran Chaco—Hardships—Alligators and fish—Currency difficulties.
My first impression of Brazil was that it was a mere transplanted Portugal, but a Portugal set amidst the most glorious vegetation and some of the finest scenery on the face of the globe. It is also unquestionably suffocatingly hot.
There is a great outward difference in the appearances of the towns of Portuguese and Spanish South America. In Brazil the Portuguese built their houses and towns precisely as they had done at home. There are the same winding irregular streets; the same tall houses faced with the decorative "azulejos"; the same shutterless sash-windows. A type of house less suited to the burning climate of Brazil can hardly be imagined. There being no outside shutters, it is impossible to keep the heat out, and the small rooms become so many ovens. The sinuosities of the irregular streets give a curiously old-world look to a Brazilian town, so much so that it is difficult for a European to realise that he is on the American Continent, associated as the latter is in our minds with unending straight lines.
In all Spanish-American countries the towns are laid out on the chess-board principle, with long dreary perspectives stretching themselves endlessly. The Spanish-American type of house too is mostly one-storied and flat-roofed, with two iron-barred windows only looking on to the street. The Moorish conquerors left their impress on Spain, and the Spanish pioneers carried across the Atlantic with them the Moorish conception of a house. The "patio" or enclosed court in the centre of the house is a heritage from the Moors, as is the flat roof or "azotea," and the decorated rainwater cistern in the centre of the "patio."
The very name of this tank in Spanish, "aljibe," is of Arabic origin, and it becomes obvious that this type of house was evolved by Mohammedans who kept their womenkind in jealous and strict seclusion. No indiscreet eyes from outside can penetrate into the "patio," and after nightfall the women could be allowed on to the flat roof to take the air. Those familiar with the East know the great part the roof of a house plays in the life of an Oriental. It is their parlour, particularly after dark. As the inhabitants of South America are not Mohammedans, I cannot conceive why they obstinately adhere to this inconvenient type of dwelling. The "patio" renders the house very dark and airless, becomes a well of damp in winter, and an oven in summer. To my mind unquestionably the best form of house for a hot climate is the Anglo-Indian bungalow, with its broad verandahs, thatched roof, and lofty rooms. In a bungalow some of the heat can be shut out.
On my first arrival in Brazil, the tropics and tropical vegetation were an unopened book to me, and I was fairly intoxicated with their beauty.
There is a short English-owned railway running from Pernambuco to some unknown spot in the interior. The manager of this railway came out on the steamer with us, and he was good enough to take me for a run on an engine into the heart of the virgin forest. I shall never forget the impression this made on me. It was like a peep into a wholly unimagined fairyland.
Had the calls of the mail steamer been deliberately designed to give the stranger a cumulative impression of the beauties of Brazil, they could not have been more happily arranged. First of Pernambuco in flat country, redeemed by its splendid vegetation; then Bahia with its fine bay and gentle hills, and lastly Rio the incomparable.
I have seen most of the surface of this globe, and I say deliberately, without any fear of contradiction, that nowhere is there anything approaching Rio in beauty. The glorious bay, two hundred miles in circumference, dotted with islands, and surrounded by mountains of almost grotesquely fantastic outlines, the whole clothed with exuberantly luxurious tropical vegetation, makes the most lovely picture that can be conceived.
The straggling town in my day had not yet blossomed into those vagaries of ultra-ornate architecture which at present characterise it. It was quaint and picturesque, and fitted its surroundings admirably, the narrow crowded Ruado Ouvidor being the centre of the fashionable life of the place.
It will be remembered that when Gonçalves discovered the great bay on January 1st, 1502, he imagined that it must be the estuary of some mighty river, and christened it accordingly "the River of January," "Rio de Janeiro." Oddly enough, only a few insignificant streams empty themselves into this vast landlocked harbour.
During my first fortnight in Rio, I thought the view over the bay more beautiful with every fresh standpoint I saw it from; whether from Botofogo, or from Nichteroy on the further shore, the view seemed more entrancingly lovely every time; and yet over this, the fairest spot on earth, the Angel of Death was perpetually hovering with outstretched wings; for yellow fever was endemic at Rio then, and yellow fever slays swiftly and surely.
One must have lived in countries where the disease is prevalent to realise the insane terror those two words "yellow fever" strike into most people. On my third visit to Rio, I was destined to contract the disease myself, but it dealt mercifully with me, so henceforth I am immune to yellow fever for the remainder of my life. The ravages this fell disease wrought in the West Indies a hundred years ago cannot be exaggerated. Those familiar with Michael Scott's delightful "Tom Cringle's Log" will remember the gruesome details he gives of a severe outbreak of the epidemic in Jamaica. In those days "Yellow Jack" took toll of nearly fifty per cent. of the white civil and military inhabitants of the British West Indies, as the countless memorial tablets in the older West Indian churches silently testify. Before my arrival in Rio, a new German Minister had, in spite of serious warnings, insisted on taking a beautiful little villa on a rocky promontory jutting into the bay. The house with its white marble colonnades, its lovely gardens, and the wonderful view over the mountains, was a thing of exquisite beauty, but it bore a very evil reputation. Within eight months the German Minister, his secretary, and his two white German servants were all dead of yellow fever. The Brazilians declare that the fever is never contracted during the daytime, but that sunset is the dangerous hour. They also warn the foreigner to avoid fruit and acid drinks.
Conditions have changed since then. The cause of the unhealthiness of Rio was a very simple one. All the sewage of the city was discharged into the landlocked, tideless bay, where it lay festering under the scorching sun. An English company tunnelled a way through the mountains direct to the Atlantic, and all the sewage is now discharged there, with the result that Rio is practically free from the dreaded disease.
The customs of a monarchial country are like a deep-rooted oak, they do not stand transplanting. Where they are the result of the slow growth of many centuries, they have adapted themselves, so to speak, to the soil of the country of their origin, have evolved national characteristics, and have fitted themselves into the national life. When transplanted into a new country, they cannot fail to appear anachronisms, and have always a certain element of the grotesque about them. In my time Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, had surrounded himself with a modified edition of the externals of a European Court. A colleague of mine had recently been presented to the Emperor at the Palace of São Christovão. As is customary on such occasions, my colleague called on the two Court Chamberlains who were on duty at São Christovão, and they duly returned the visit. One of these Chamberlains, whom we will call Baron de Feijão e Farinha, seemed reluctant to take his departure. He finally produced a bundle of price lists from his pocket, and assured my colleague that he would get far better value for his money at his (the Baron's) ready-made clothing store than at any other similar establishment in South America. From another pocket he then extracted a tape measure, and in spite of my colleague's protest passed the tape over his unwilling body to note the stock size, in the event of an order. The Baron de Feijão especially recommended one of his models, "the Pall Mall," a complete suit of which could be obtained for the nominal sum of 80,000 reis. This appalling sum looks less alarming when reduced to British currency, 80,000 Brazilian reis being equal to about £7 7s. I am not sure that he did not promise my colleague a commission on any orders he could extract from other members of the Legation. My colleague, a remarkably well-dressed man, did not recover his equanimity for some days, after picturing his neatly-garbed form arrayed in the appallingly flashy, ill-cut, ready-made garments in which the youth of Rio de Janeiro were wont to disport themselves. To European ideas, it was a little unusual to find a Court Chamberlain engaged in the ready-made clothing line.
On State occasions Dom Pedro assumed the most splendid Imperial mantle any sovereign has ever possessed. It was composed entirely of feathers, being made of the breasts of toucans, shaded from pale pink to deep rose-colour, and was the most gorgeous bit of colour imaginable. In the sweltering climate of Brazil, the heat of this mantle must have been unendurable, and I always wondered how Dom Pedro managed to bear it with a smiling face, but it certainly looked magnificent.
One of the industries of Rio was the manufacture of artificial flowers from the feathers of humming-birds. These feather flowers were wonderfully faithful reproductions of Nature, and were practically indestructible, besides being most artistically made. They were very expensive.
The famous avenue of royal palms in the Botanic Gardens would almost repay anyone for the voyage from Europe. These are, I believe, the tallest palms known, and the long avenue is strikingly impressive. The Oreodoxa regia, one of the cabbage-palms, has a huge trunk, perfectly symmetrical, and growing absolutely straight. This perspective of giant boles recalls the columns of an immense Gothic cathedral, whilst the fronds uniting in a green arch two hundred feet overhead complete the illusion. The Botanic Gardens have some most attractive ponds of pink and sky-blue water lilies, and the view of the bay from the gardens is usually considered the finest in Rio.
Owing to the unhealthiness of Rio, most of the Foreign Legations had established themselves permanently at Petropolis, in the Organ Mountains, Petropolis being well above the yellow fever zone. On my third visit to Rio, such a terrible epidemic of yellow fever was raging in the capital that the British Minister very kindly invited me to go up straight to the Legation at Petropolis. The latter is three hours' distance from Rio by mountain railway. People with business in the city leave for Rio by the 7 a.m. train, and reach Petropolis again at 7 p.m. The old Emperor, Dom Pedro, made a point of attending the departure and arrival of the train every single day, and a military band played regularly in the station, morning and evening. This struck me as a very unusual form of amusement. The Emperor (who ten months later was quietly deposed) was a tall, handsome old gentleman, of very distinguished appearance, and with charming manners. He had also encyclopædic knowledge on most points. That a sovereign should take pleasure in seeing the daily train depart and arrive seemed to point to a certain lack of resources in Petropolis, and to hint at moments of deadly dulness in the Imperial villa there. Dom Pedro never appeared in public except in evening dress, and it was a novelty to see the head of a State in full evening dress and high hat at half-past six in the morning, listening to an extremely indifferent brass band braying in the waiting-room of a shabby railway station.
Nature seems to have lavished all the most brilliant hues of her palette on Brazil; the plumage of the birds, the flowers, and foliage all glow with vivid colour. Even a Brazilian toad has bright emerald-green spots all over him. The gorgeous butterflies of this highly-coloured land are well known in Europe, especially those lovely creatures of shimmering, iridescent blue.
These butterflies were the cause of a considerable variation in the hours of meals at the British Legation.
The Minister had recently brought out to Brazil an English boy to act as young footman. Henry was a most willing, obliging lad, but these great Brazilian butterflies exercised a quite irresistible fascination over him, and small blame to him. He kept a butterfly-net in the pantry, and the instant one of the brilliant, glittering creatures appeared in the garden, Henry forgot everything. Clang the front-door bell so loudly, he paid no heed to it; the cook might be yelling for him to carry the luncheon into the dining-room, Henry turned a deaf ear to her entreaties. Snatching up his butterfly-net, he would dart through the window in hot pursuit. As these great butterflies fly like Handley Pages, he had his work cut out for him, and running is exhausting in a temperature of 90 degrees. The usual hour for luncheon would be long past, and the table would still exhibit a virgin expanse of white cloth. Somewhere in the dim distance we could descry a slim young figure bounding along hot-foot, with butterfly-net poised aloft, so we possessed our souls in patience. Eventually Henry would reappear, moist but triumphant, or dripping and despondent, according to his success or failure with his shimmering quarry. After such violent exercise, Henry had to have a plunge in the swimming-bath and a complete change of clothing before he could resume his duties, all of which occasioned some little further delay. And this would happen every day, so our repasts may be legitimately described as "movable feasts." It was no use speaking to Henry. He would promise to be less forgetful, but the next butterfly that came flitting along drove all good resolves out of this ardent young entomologist's head, and off he would go on flying feet in eager pursuit. I recommended Henry when he returned to England to take up cross-country running seriously. He seemed to have unmistakable aptitudes for it.
The streets of Petropolis were planted with avenues of a flowering tree imported from the Southern Pacific. When in bloom, this tree was so covered with vivid pink blossoms that all its leaves were hidden. These rows of bright pink trees gave the dull little town a curious resemblance to a Japanese fan.
There are some lovely little nooks and corners in the Organ Mountains. One ravine in particular was most beautiful, with a cascade dashing down the cliff, and the clear brook below it fringed with eucharis lilies, and the tropical begonias which we laboriously cultivate in stove-houses. Unfortunately, these beauty spots seemed as attractive to snakes as they were to human beings. This entailed keeping a watchful eye on the ground, for Brazilian snakes are very venomous.
No greater contrast can be imagined than that between the forests and mountains of steamy Brazil and the endless, treeless, dead-flat levels of the Argentine Republic, twelve hundred miles south of them.
When I first knew Buenos Ayres in the early "'eighties," it still retained an old-world air of distinction. The narrow streets were lined with sombre, dignified old buildings of a markedly Spanish type, and the modern riot of over-ornate ginger-bread architecture had not yet transformed the city into a glittering, garish trans-Atlantic pseudo-Paris. In the same way newly-acquired wealth had not begun to assert itself as blatantly as it has since done.
I confess that I was astonished to find two daily English newspapers in Buenos Ayres, for I had not realised the size and importance of the British commercial colony there.
The "Camp" (from the Spanish campo, country) outside the city is undeniably ugly and featureless, as it stretches its unending khaki-coloured, treeless flatness to the horizon, but the sense of immense space has something exhilarating about it, and the air is perfectly glorious. In time these vast dun-coloured levels exercise a sort of a fascination over one; to me the "Camp" will always be associated with the raucous cries of the thousands of spurred Argentine plovers, as they wheel over the horsemen with their never-ending scream of "téro, téro."
As in most countries of Spanish origin, the Carnival was kept at Buenos Ayres in the old-fashioned style. In my time, on the last day of the Carnival, Shrove Tuesday, the traditional water-throwing was still allowed in the streets. Everyone going into the streets must be prepared for being drenched with water from head to foot. My new Chief, whom I will call Sir Edward (though he happened to have a totally different name), had just arrived in Buenos Ayres. He was quite unused to South American ways. On Shrove Tuesday I came down to breakfast in an old suit of flannels and a soft shirt and collar, for from my experiences of the previous year I knew what was to be expected in the streets. Sir Edward, a remarkably neat dresser, appeared beautifully arrayed in a new suit, the smartest of bow-ties, and a yellow jean waistcoat. I pointed out to my Chief that it was water-throwing day, and suggested the advisability of his wearing his oldest clothes. Sir Edward gave me to understand that he imagined that few people would venture to throw water over her Britannic Majesty's representative. Off we started on foot for the Chancery of the Legation, which was situated a good mile from our house. I knew what was coming. In the first five minutes we got a bucket of water from the top of a house, plumb all over us, soaking us both to the skin. Sir Edward was speechless with rage for a minute or so, after which I will not attempt to reproduce his language. Men were selling everywhere in the streets the large squirts ("pomitos" in Spanish) which are used on these occasions. I equipped myself with a perfect Woolwich Arsenal of pomitos, but Sir Edward waved them all disdainfully away. Soon two girls darted out of an open doorway, armed with pomitos, and caught us each fairly in the face, after which they giggled and ran into their house, leaving the front door open. Sir Edward fairly danced with rage on the pavement, shouting out the most uncomplimentary opinions as to the Argentine Republic and its inhabitants. The front door having been left open, I was entitled by all the laws of Carnival time to pursue our two fair assailants into their house, and I did so, in spite of Sir Edward's remonstrances. I chased the two girls into the drawing-room, where we experienced some little difficulty in clambering over sofas and tables, and I finally caught them in the dining-room, where a venerable lady, probably their grandmother, was reposing in an armchair. I gave the two girls a thorough good soaking from my pomitos, and bestowed the mildest sprinkling on their aged relative, who was immensely gratified by the attention. "Oh! my dears," she cried in Spanish to the girls, "you both consider me so old. You can see that I am not too old for this young man to enjoy paying me a little compliment."
Autres pays, autres moeurs! Just conceive the feelings of an ordinary British middle-class householder, residing, let us say, at Balham or Wandsworth, at learning that the sanctity of "The Laurels" or "Ferndale" had been invaded by a total stranger; that his daughters had been pursued round the house, and then soaked with water in his own dining-room, and that even his aged mother's revered white hairs had not preserved her from a like indignity. I cannot imagine him accepting it as a humorous everyday incident. Our progress to the Chancery was punctuated by several more interludes of a similar character, and I was really pained on reaching the shelter of our official sanctuary to note how Sir Edward's spotless garments had suffered. Personally, on a broiling February day (corresponding with August in the northern hemisphere) I thought the cool water most refreshing. Our Chancery looked on to the fashionable Calle Florida, and a highly respectable German widow who had lived for thirty years in South America acted as our housekeeper. Sir Edward, considerably ruffled in his temper, sat down to continue a very elaborate memorandum he was drawing up on the new Argentine Customs tariff. The subject was a complicated one, there were masses of figures to deal with, and the work required the closest concentration. Presently our housekeeper, Fran Bauer, entered the room demurely, and made her way to Sir Edward's table,
"Wenn Excellenz so gut sein werden um zu entschuldigen," began Frau Bauer with downcast eyes, and then suddenly with a discreet titter she produced a large pomito from under her apron and, secure in the license of Carnival time, she thrust it into Sir Edward's collar, and proceeded to squirt half a pint of cold water down his back, retiring swiftly with elderly coyness amid an explosion of giggles. I think that I have seldom seen a man in such a furious rage. I will not attempt to reproduce Sir Edward's language, for the printer would have exhausted his entire stock of "blanks" before I had got halfway through. The Minister, when he had eased his mind sufficiently, snapped out, "It is obvious that with all this condemned (that was not quite the word he used) foolery going on, it is impossible to do any serious work to-day. Where ... where ... can one buy the infernal squirts these condemned idiots vise?" "Anywhere in the streets. Shall I buy you some, Sir Edward?" "Yes, get me a lot of them, and the biggest you can find." So we parted.
Returning home after a moist but enjoyable afternoon, I saw a great crowd gathered at the junction of two streets, engaged in a furious water-fight. The central figure was a most disreputable-looking individual with a sodden wisp of linen where his collar should have been; remnants of a tie trailed dankly down, his soaked garments were shapeless, and his head was crowned with a sort of dripping poultice. He was spouting water in all directions like the Crystal Palace fountains in their heyday, with shouts of "Take that, you foolish female; and that, you fat feminine Argentine!" With grief I recognised in this damp reveller her Britannic Majesty's Minister Plenipotentiary.
Upon returning home, we found that our two English servants had been having the time of their lives. They had stood all day on the roof of the house, dashing pails of water over passers-by until they had completely emptied the cistern. There was not one drop of water in the house, and we had to borrow three pailfuls from a complaisant neighbour.
A few years later the police prohibited water-throwing altogether, so this feature of a Buenos Ayres Carnival is now a thing of the past.
As time went on I grew very fond of Sir Edward. His temper may have flared up quickly, but it died down just as rapidly. He was a man with an extraordinarily varied fund of information, and possessed a very original and subtle sense of humour. He was also a great stylist in writing English, and the drafts I wrote for despatches were but seldom fortunate enough to meet with his approval. A split infinitive brought him to the verge of tears. The Argentine authorities were by no means easy to deal with, and Sir Edward handled them in a masterly fashion. His quiet persistence usually achieved its object. It was a real joy to see him dealing with anyone rash enough to attempt to bully or browbeat him. His tongue could sting like a lash on occasions, whilst he preserved an outward air of imperturbable calm. Sir Edward both spoke and wrote the most beautifully finished Spanish.
A ball in a private house at Buenos Ayres had its peculiar features in the "'eighties." In the first place, none of the furniture was removed from the rooms, and so far from taking up carpets, carpets were actually laid down, should the rooms be unprovided with them. This rendered dancing somewhat difficult; in fact a ball resolved itself into a leisurely arm-in-arm promenade to music through the rooms, steering an erratic course between the articles of furniture, "drawing the port," as a Scottish curler would put it. Occasionally a space behind a sofa could be found sufficiently large to attempt a few mild gyrations, but that was all. The golden youth of Buenos Ayres, in the place of the conventional white evening tie, all affected the most deplorable bows of pale pink or pale green satin. A wedding, too, differed from the European routine. The parents of the bride gave a ball. At twelve o'clock dancing, or promenading amidst the furniture, ceased. A portable altar was brought into the room; a priest made his unexpected entry, and the young couple were married at breakneck speed. At the conclusion of the ceremony, all the young men darted at the bride and tore her marriage-veil to shreds. Priest, altar, and the newly-married couple then disappeared; the band struck up again, and dancing, or rather a leisurely progress round the sofas and ottomans, recommenced.
A form of entertainment that appeals immensely to people of Spanish blood is a masked ball. In Buenos Ayres the ladies only were masked, which gave them a distinct advantage over the men. To enjoy a masquerade a good knowledge of Spanish is necessary. All masked women are addressed indiscriminately as "mascarita" and can be "tutoyée'd." Convention permits, too, anything within reasonable limits to be said by a man to "mascaritas," who one and all assume a little high-pitched head-voice to conceal their identities. I fancy that the real attractions masquerades had for most women lay in the opportunity they afforded every "mascarita" of saying with impunity abominably rude things to some other woman whom she detested. I remember one "mascarita," an acquaintance of mine, whose identity I pierced at once, giving another veiled form accurate details not only as to the date when the pearly range of teeth she was exhibiting to the world had come into her possession, but also the exact price she had paid for them.
It takes a stranger from the North some little time to accustom himself to the inversion of seasons and of the points of the compass in the southern hemisphere. For instance, "a lovely spring day in October," or "a chilly autumn evening in May," rings curiously to our ears; as it does to hear of a room with a cool southern aspect, or to hear complaints about the hot north wind. Personally I did not dislike the north wind; it was certainly moist and warm, but it smelt deliciously fragrant with a faint spicy odour after its journey over the great Brazilian forests on its way from the Equator. All Argentines seemed to feel the north wind terribly; it gave them headaches, and appeared to dislocate their entire nervous system. In the Law Courts it was held to be a mitigating circumstance should it be proved that a murder, or other crime of violence, had been committed after a long spell of north wind. Many women went about during a north wind with split beans on their temples to soothe their headaches, a comical sight till one grew accustomed to it. The old German housekeeper of the Chancery, Frau Bauer, invariably had split beans adhering to her temples when the north wind blew.
The icy pampero, the south wind direct from the Pole, was the great doctor of Buenos Ayres. Darwin used to consider the River Plate the electrical centre of the world. Nowhere have I experienced such terrific thunderstorms as in the Argentine. Sometimes on a stifling summer night, with the thermometer standing at nearly a hundred degrees, one of these stupendous storms would break over the city with floods of rain. Following on the storm would come the pampero, gently at first, but increasing in violence until a blustering, ice-cold gale went roaring through the sweltering city, bringing the temperature down in four hours with a run from 100 degrees to 60 degrees. Extremely pleasant for those like myself with sound lungs; very dangerous to those with delicate chests.
The old-fashioned Argentine house had no protection over the patio. In bad weather the occupants had to make their way through the rain from one room to another. Some of the newer houses were built in a style which I have seen nowhere else except on the stage. Everyone is familiar with those airy dwellings composed principally of open colonnades one sees on stage back-cloths. These houses were very similar in design, with open halls of columns and arches, and open-air staircases. On the stage it rains but seldom, and the style may be suited to the climatic conditions prevailing there. In real life it must be horribly inconvenient. The Italian Minister at Buenos Ayres lived in a house of this description. In fine weather it looked extremely picturesque, but I imagine that his Excellency's progress to bed must have been attended with some difficulties when, during a thunderstorm, the rain poured in cataracts down his open-air staircase, and the pampero howled through his open arcades and galleries.
The theatres at Buenos Ayres were quite excellent. At the Opera all the celebrated singers of Europe could be heard, although one could almost have purchased a nice little freehold property near London for the price asked for a seat. There were two French theatres, one devoted to light opera, the other to Palais Royal farces, both admirably given; and, astonishingly enough, during part of my stay, there was actually an English theatre with an English stock company. A peculiarly Spanish form of entertainment is the "Zarzuela," a sort of musical farce. It requires a fairly intimate knowledge of the language to follow these pieces with their many topical allusions.
The Spanish-American temperament seems to dislike instinctively any gloomy or morbid dramas, differing widely from the Russians in this respect. At Petrograd, on the Russian stage, the plays, in addition to the usual marital difficulties, were brightened up by allusions to such cheerful topics as inherited tendencies to kleptomania or suicide, or an intense desire for self-mutilation. What appeals to the morbid frost-bound North apparently fails to attract the light-hearted sons of the southern hemisphere.
Buenos Ayres was also a city of admirable restaurants. In the fashionable places, resplendent with mirrors, coloured marbles and gilding, the cooking rivals Paris, and the bill, when tendered, makes one inclined to rush to the telegraph office to cable for further and largely increased remittances from Europe. There were a number, however, of unpretending French restaurants of the most meritorious description. Never shall I forget Sir Edward's face when, in answer to his questions as to a light supper, the waiter suggested a cold armadillo; a most excellent dish, by the way, though after seeing the creature in the Zoological Gardens one would hardly credit it with gastronomic possibilities. The soil of the Argentine is marvellously fertile, and some day it will become a great wine-growing country. In the meantime vast quantities of inferior wine are imported from Europe. After sampling a thin Spanish red wine, and a heavy sweet black wine known as Priorato, and having tested their effects on his digestion, Sir Edward christened them "The red wine of Our Lady of Pain" and "The black wine of Death."
When the President of the Republic appeared in public on great occasions, he was always preceded by a man carrying a large blue velvet bolster embroidered with the Argentine arms. This was clearly an emblem of national sovereignty, but what this blue bolster was intended to typify I never could find out. Did it indicate that it was the duty of the President to bolster up the Republic, or did it signify that the Republic was always ready to bolster up its President? None of my Argentine friends could throw any light upon the subject further than by saying that this bolster was always carried in front of the President; a sufficiently self-evident fact. It will always remain an enigma to me. A bolster seems a curiously soporific emblem for a young, enterprising, and progressive Republic to select as its symbol.
It would be ungallant to pass over without remark the wonderful beauty of the Argentine girls. This beauty is very shortlived indeed, and owing to their obstinate refusal to take any exercise whatever, feminine outlines increase in bulk at an absurdly early age, but between seventeen and twenty-one many of them are really lovely. Lolling in hammocks and perpetual chocolate-eating bring about their own penalties, and sad to say, bring them about very quickly. I must add that the attractiveness of these girls is rather physical than intellectual.
The house Sir Edward and I rented had been originally built for a stage favourite by one of her many warm-hearted admirers. It had been furnished according to the lady's own markedly florid tastes. I reposed nightly in a room entirely draped in sky-blue satin. The house had a charming garden, and Sir Edward and I expended a great deal of trouble and a considerable amount of money on it. That garden was the pride of our hearts, but we had reckoned without the leaf-cutting ant, the great foe of the horticulturist in South America. At Rio, and in other places in Brazil, they had a special apparatus for pumping the fumes of burning sulphur into the ant-holes, and so were enabled to keep these pests in check. In private gardens in Brazil every single specially cherished plant had to have its stem surrounded with unsightly circular troughs of paraffin and water. In front of our windows we had a large bed of gardenias backed by a splendid border of many-hued cannas which were the apple of Sir Edward's eye, He gazed daily on them with an air not only of pride, but of quasi-paternity. The leaf-cutting ants found their way into our garden, and in four days nothing remained of our beautiful gardenias and cannas but some black, leafless stalks. These abominable insects swept our garden as bare of every green thing as a flight of locusts would have done; they even killed the grass where their serried processions had passed.
For me, the great charm of the Argentine lay in the endless expanses of the "Camp," far away from the noisy city. The show estancia of the Argentine was in those days "Negrete," the property of Mr. David Shennan, kindest and most hospitable of Scotsmen. Most English residents and visitors out in the Plate cherish grateful recollections of that pleasant spot, encircled by peach orchards, where the genial proprietor, like a patriarch of old, welcomed his guests, surrounded by his vast herds and flocks. I happen to know the exact number of head of cattle Mr. Shennan had on his estancia on January 1, 1884, for I was one of the counters at the stocktaking on the last day of the year. The number was 18,731 head.
Counting cattle is rather laborious work, and needs close concentration. Six of us were in the saddle from daybreak to dusk, with short intervals for meals, and December 31 is at the height of the summer in the southern hemisphere, so the heat was considerable.
This is the method employed in a "count." The cattle are driven into "mobs" of some eight hundred ("Rodeo" is the Spanish term for mob) by the "peons." Some twenty tame bullocks are driven a quarter of a mile from the "mob," and the counters line up on their horses between the two, with their pockets full of beans. The "peons" use their whips, and one or two of the cattle break away from the herd to the tame bullocks. They are followed by more and more at an ever-increasing pace. Each one is counted, and when one hundred is reached, a bean is silently transferred from the left pocket to the right. So the process is continued until the entire herd has passed by. Should the numbers given by the six counters tally within reason, the count is accepted. Should it differ materially, there is a recount; then the counters pass on to another "mob" some two miles away. Under a very hot sun, the strain of continual attention is exhausting, and those six counters found their beds unusually welcome that night.
The dwelling-house of Negrete, which was to become very familiar to me, was over a hundred years old, and stretched itself one-storied round a large patio, blue and white tiled, with an elaborate well-head in the centre decorated with good iron-work. The patio was fragrant with orange and lemon trees, and great bushes of the lovely sky-blue Paraguayan jasmine. I can never understand why this shrub, the "Jasmin del Paraguay," with its deliciously sweet perfume and showy blue flowers, has never been introduced into England. It would have to be grown under glass, but only requires sufficient heat to keep the frost out.
I had never felt the joie de vivre—the sheer joy at being alive—thrill through one's veins so exultantly as when riding over the "Camp" in early morning. I have had the same feeling on the High Veldt in South Africa, where there is the same marvellous air, and, in spite of the undulations of the ground, the same sense of vast space. The glorious air, the sunlight, the limitless, treeless expanse of neutral-tinted grass stretching endlessly to the horizon, and the vast hemisphere of blue sky above had something absolutely intoxicating in them. It may have been the delight of forgetting that there were such things as towns, and streets, and tramways. And then the teeming bird-life of the camp! Ibis and egrets flashed bronze-green or snowy-white through the sunlight; the beautiful pink spoon-bills flapped noisily overhead in single file, a lengthy rosy trail of long legs and necks and brilliant colour; the quaint little ground owls blinked from the entrances of their burrows, and dozens of spurred plovers wheeled in incessant gyrations, keeping up their endless, wearying scream of "téro-téro." I always wanted to shout and sing from sheer delight at being part of it all.
The tinamou, the South American partridge, surprisingly stupid birds, rose almost under the horses' feet, and dozens of cheery little sandpipers darted about in all directions. Birds, birds everywhere! Should one pass near one of the great shallow lagoons, which are such a feature of the country, its surface would be black with ducks, with perhaps a regiment of flamingoes in the centre of it, a dazzling patch of sunlit scarlet, against the turquoise blue the water reflected from the sky.
In springtime the "Camp" is covered with the trailing verbena which in my young days was such a favourite bedding-out plant in England, its flowers making a brilliant league-long carpet of scarlet or purple.
There are endless opportunities for shooting on the "Camp" in the Province of Buenos Ayres, only limited by the difficulties in obtaining cartridges, and the fact that in places where it is impossible to dispose of the game the amount shot must depend on what can be eaten locally. Otherwise it is not sport, but becomes wanton slaughter.
The foolish tinamou are easily shot, but are exceedingly difficult to retrieve out of the knee-high grass, and if only winged, they can run like hares. There is also a large black and white migratory bird of the snipe family, the "batitou," which appears from the frozen regions of the Far South, as winter comes on, and is immensely prized for the table. He is unquestionably a delicious bird to eat, but is very hard to approach owing to his wariness. The duck-shooting was absolutely unequalled. I had never before known that there were so many ducks in the world, nor were there the same complicated preliminaries, as with us; no keepers, no beaters, no dogs were required. One simply put twenty cartridges in a bandolier, took one's gun, jumped on a horse, and rode six miles or so to a selected lagoon. Here the horse was tied up to the nearest fence, and one just walked into the lagoon. So warm was the water in these lagoons that I have stood waist-high in it for hours without feeling the least chilly, or suffering from any ill effects whatever. With the first step came a mighty and stupendous roar of wings, and a prodigious quacking, then the air became black with countless thousands of ducks. Mallards, shovellers, and speckled ducks; black ducks with crimson feet and bills; the great black and white birds Argentines call "Royal" ducks, and we "Muscovy" ducks, though with us they are uninteresting inhabitants of a farm-yard. Ducks, ducks everywhere! As these confiding fowl never thought of flying away, but kept circling over the lagoon again and again, I am sure that anyone, given sufficient cartridges, and the inclination to do so, could easily have killed five hundred of them to his own gun in one day. We limited ourselves to ten apiece. Splashing about in the lagoon, it was easy to pick up the dead birds without a dog, but no one who has not carried them can have any idea of the weight of eight ducks in a gamebag pressing on one's back, or can conceive how difficult it is to get into the saddle on a half-broken horse with this weight dragging you backwards. In any other country but the Argentine, to canter home six miles dripping wet would have resulted in a severe chill. No one ever seemed the worse for it out there.
At times I went into the lagoons without a gun, just to observe at close quarters the teeming water-life there. The raucous screams of the vigilant "téro-téros" warned the water-birds of a hostile approach, but it was easy to sit down in the shallow warm water amongst the reeds until the alarm had died down, and one was amply repaid for it, though the enforced lengthy abstention from tobacco was trying.
The "Camp" is a great educator. One learnt there to recap empty cartridge-cases with a machine, and to reload them. One learnt too to clean guns and saddlery. When a thing remains undone, unless you take it in hand yourself, you begin wondering why you should ever have left these things to be done for you by others. The novice finds out that a bridle and bit are surprisingly difficult objects to clean, even given unlimited oil and sandpaper. The "Camp" certainly educates, and teaches the neophyte independence.
I shot several pink spoonbills, one of which in a glass case is not far from me as I write, but I simply longed to get a scarlet flamingo. Owing to the spoonbills' habit of flitting from lagoon to lagoon, they are not difficult to shoot, but a flamingo is a very wary bird. Perched on one leg, they stand in the very middle of a lagoon, and allow no one within gunshot. The officious "téro-téros" effectually notify them of the approach of man, and possibly the flamingoes have learnt from "Alice in Wonderland" that the Queen of Hearts is in the habit of utilising them as croquet-mallets. The natural anxiety to escape so ignominious a fate would tend to make them additionally cautious. Anyhow, I found it impossible to approach them. The idea occurred to me of trying to shoot one with a rifle. So I crawled prostrate on my anatomy up to the lagoon. I failed at least six times, but finally succeeded in killing a flamingo. Wading into the lagoon, I triumphantly retrieved my scarlet victim, and took him by train to Buenos Ayres, intending to hand him over to a taxidermist next day. When I awoke next morning, the blue satin bower in which I slept (originally fitted up, as I have explained, as the bedroom of a minor light of the operatic stage) was filled with a pestilential smell of decayed fish. I inquired the reason of my English servant, who informed me that the cook was afraid that there was something wrong about "the queer duck" I had brought home last night, as its odour was not agreeable. (The real expression he used was "smelling something cruel.") Full of horrible forebodings, I jumped out of bed and ran down to the kitchen, to find a little heap of brilliant scarlet feathers reposing on the table, and Paquita, our fat Andalusian cook, regarding with doubtful eyes a carcase slowly roasting before the fire, and filling the place with unbelievably poisonous effluvia. And that was the end of the only flamingo I ever succeeded in shooting.
A London financial house had, by foreclosing a mortgage, come into possession of a great tract of land in the unsurveyed and uncharted Indian Reserve, the Gran Chaco. Anxious to ascertain whether their newly-acquired property was suited for white settlers, the financial house sent out two representatives to Buenos Ayres with orders to fit out a little expedition to survey and explore it. I was invited to join this expedition, and as work was slack at the time, Sir Edward did not require my services and gave me leave to go. I had been warned that conditions would be very rough indeed, but the opportunity seemed one of those that only occur once in a lifetime, and too good to be lost. I do not think the invitation was quite a disinterested one. The leaders of the expedition probably thought that the presence of a member of the British Legation might be useful in case of difficulties with the Argentine authorities. I travelled by steamer six hundred miles up the mighty Paraná, and joined the other members of the expedition at the Alexandra Colony, a little English settlement belonging to the London firm hundreds of miles from anywhere, and surrounded by vast swamps. The Alexandra Colony was a most prosperous little community, but was unfortunately infested with snakes and every imaginable noxious stinging insect. As we should have to cross deep swamps perpetually, we took no wagons with us, but our baggage was loaded on pack-horses. For provisions we took jerked sun-dried beef (very similar to the South African "biltong"), hard biscuit, flour, coffee, sugar, and salt, as well as several bottles of rum, guns, rifles, plenty of ammunition, and two blankets apiece. We had some thirty horses in all; the loose horses trotting obediently behind a bell-mare, according to their convenient Argentine custom. In Argentina mares are never ridden, and a bell-mare serves the same purpose in keeping the "tropilla" of horses together as does a bellwether in keeping sheep together with us. At night only the bell-mare need be securely picketed; the horses will not stray far from the sound of her tinkling bell. Should the bell-mare break loose, there is the very devil to pay; all the others will follow her. It will thus be seen that the bell-mare plays a very important part. In French families the belle-mère fills an equally important position. We were four Englishmen in all; the two leaders, the doctor, and myself. The doctor was quite a youngster, taking a final outing before settling down to serious practice in Bristol. A nice, cheery youth! The first night I discovered how very hard the ground is to sleep upon, but our troubles did not begin till the second day. We were close up to the tropics, and got into great swamps where millions and millions of mosquitoes attacked us day and night, giving us no rest. Our hands got so swollen with bites that we could hardly hold our reins, and sleep outside our blankets was impossible with these humming, buzzing tormentors devouring us. If one attempted to baffle them by putting one's head under the blanket, the stifling heat made sleep equally difficult. In four days we reached a waterless land; that is to say, there were clear streams in abundance, but they were all of salt, bitter, alkaline water, undrinkable by man or beast. Oddly enough, all the clear streams were of bitter water, whereas the few muddy ones were of excellent drinking water. I think these alkaline streams are peculiar to the interior of South America. Our horses suffered terribly; so did we. We had three Argentine gauchos with us, to look after the horses and baggage, besides two pure Indians. One of these Indians, known by the pretty name of Chinche, or "The Bug," could usually find water-holes by watching the flight of the birds. The water in these holes was often black and fetid, yet we drank it greedily. Chinche could also get a little water out of some kinds of aloes by cutting the heart out of the plant. In the resulting cavity about half a glassful of water, very bitter to the taste, but acceptable all the same, collected in time. Prolonged thirst under a hot sun is very difficult to bear. We nearly murdered the doctor, for he insisted on recalling the memories of great cool tankards of shandy-gaff in Thames-side hostelries, and at our worst times of drought had a maddening trick of imitating (exceedingly well too) the tinkling of ice against the sides of a long tumbler.
In spite of thirst and the accursed mosquitoes it was an interesting trip. We were where few, if any, white men had been before us; the scenery was pretty; and game was very plentiful. The open rolling, down-like country, with its little copses and single trees, was like a gigantic edition of some English park in the southern counties. In the early morning certain trees, belonging to the cactus family, I imagine, were covered with brilliant clusters of flowers, crimson, pink, and white. As the sun increased in heat all these flowers closed up like sea anemones, to reopen again after sunset. The place crawled with deer, and so tame and unsophisticated were they that it seemed cruel to take advantage of them and to shoot them. We had to do so for food, for we lived almost entirely on venison, and venison is a meat I absolutely detest. When food is unpalatable, one is surprised to find how very little is necessary to sustain life; an experience most of us have repeated during these last two years, not entirely voluntarily. Chinche, the Indian, could see the tracks of any beasts in the dew at dawn, where my eyes could detect nothing whatever. In this way I was enabled to shoot a fine jaguar, whose skin has reposed for thirty years in my dining-room. One night, too, an ant-eater blundered into our camp, and by some extraordinary fluke I shot him in the dark. His skin now keeps his compatriot company. An ant-eating bear is a very shy and wary animal, and as he is nocturnal in his habits, he is but rarely met with, so this was a wonderful bit of luck. We encountered large herds of peccaries, the South American wild boar. These little beasts are very fierce and extremely pugnacious, and the horses seemed frightened of them. The flesh of the peccary is excellent and formed a most welcome variation to the eternal venison. I never could learn to shoot from the saddle as Argentines do, but had to slip off my horse to fire. I was told afterwards that it was very dangerous to do this with these savage little peccaries.
There are always compensations to be found everywhere. Had not the abominable mosquitoes prevented sleep, one would not have gazed up for hours at the glorious constellations of the Southern sky, including that arch-impostor the Southern Cross, glittering in the dark-blue bowl of the clear tropical night sky. Had we not suffered so from thirst, we should have appreciated less the unlimited foaming beer we found awaiting us on our return to the Alexandra Colony. By the way, all South Americans believe firmly in moon-strokes, and will never let the moon's rays fall on their faces whilst sleeping.
I judged the country we traversed quite unfitted for white settlers, owing to the lack of good water, and the evil-smelling swamps that cut the land up so. That exploring trip was doubtless pleasanter in retrospect than in actual experience. I would not have missed it, though, for anything, for it gave one an idea of stern realities.
On returning to the Alexandra Colony, both I and the doctor, a remarkably fair-skinned young man, found, after copious ablutions, that our faces and hands had been burnt so black by the sun that we could easily have taken our places with the now defunct Moore and Burgess minstrels in the vanished St. James's Hall in Piccadilly without having to use any burnt-cork whatever.
On the evening of our arrival at Alexandra, I was reading in the sitting-room in an armchair against the wall. The doctor called out to me to keep perfectly still, and not to move on any account until he returned. He came back with a pickle-jar and a bottle. I smelt the unmistakable odour of chloroform, and next minute the doctor triumphantly exhibited an immense tarantula spider in the pickle-jar. He had cleverly chloroformed the venomous insect within half an inch of my head, otherwise I should certainly have been bitten. The bite of these great spiders, though not necessarily fatal, is intensely painful.
The doctor had brought out with him a complete anti-snake-bite equipment, and was always longing for an occasion to use it. He was constantly imploring us to go and get bitten by some highly venomous snake, in order to give him an opportunity of testing the efficacy of his drugs, hypodermic syringes, and lancets. At Alexandra a dog did get bitten by a dangerous snake, and was at once brought to the doctor, who injected his snake-bite antidote, with the result that the dog died on the spot.
A river ran through Alexandra which was simply alive with fish, also with alligators. In the upper reaches of the Paraná and its tributaries, bathing is dangerous not only because of the alligators, but on account of an abominable little biting-fish. These biting-fish, which go about in shoals, are not unlike a flounder in appearance and size. They have very sharp teeth and attack voraciously everything that ventures into the water. In that climate their bites are very liable to bring on lockjaw. The doctor and I spent most of our time along this river with fishing lines and rifles, for alligators had still the charm of novelty to us both, and we both delighted in shooting these revolting saurians. I advise no one to try to skin a dead alligator. There are thousands of sinews to be cut through, and the pestilential smell of the brute would sicken a Chinaman. We caught some extraordinary-looking fish on hand lines, including a great golden carp of over 50 lb. ("dorado" in Spanish). It took us nearly an hour to land this big fellow, who proved truly excellent when cooked.
When I first reached the Argentine, travel was complicated by the fact that each province issued its own notes, which were only current within the province itself except at a heavy discount. The value of the dollar fluctuated enormously in the different provinces. In Buenos Ayres the dollar was depreciated to four cents, or twopence, and was treated as such, the ordinary tram fare being one depreciated dollar. In other provinces the dollar stood as high as three shillings. In passing from one province to another all paper money had to be changed, and this entailed the most intricate calculations. It is unnecessary to add that the stranger was fleeced quite mercilessly. The currency has since been placed on a more rational basis. National notes, issued against a gold reserve, have superseded the provincial currency, and pass from one end of the Republic to the other.
Upon returning to Buenos Ayres, my blue-satin bedroom looked strangely artificial and effeminate, after sleeping on the ground under the stars for so long.