This far southern region of South America is shared by the British Empire, in its distant outpost of the Falkland Isles, forming its most southerly colony. The latitude here in the south corresponds roughly to that of England in the north, but climate is very different, with a constantly overcast and rainy sky, although the extremes of heat and cold are far less. The treeless, grass-covered lands maintain large numbers of sheep. The little capital of Stanley is mainly built of wood, with a Government House of grey stone, calling to mind an Orkney or Shetland manse. There is nothing of Spanish American atmosphere here. Far from the mainland, the only association with the continent of South America of the Falkland Isles is that they are the headquarters of the bishop of that diocese, which, as we have seen elsewhere, covers so wide a field in Spanish America, and perhaps the fact that Argentina still regards the possession of these somewhat melancholy and remote sea-girt isles by Britain with disapproval; claiming them as hers. The name is immortal in the destruction of the German fleet in those waters during the Great War.
CHAPTER XV
TRADE AND FINANCE
There is a certain element of interest, apart from money-making, attaching to commerce with that wide and varied group of peoples which come under the distinctive nomenclature of the Latin American Republics, and this is perhaps a fortunate circumstance. There is, as already remarked, an element of adventure about trade operations therewith which may be said to stimulate and assist enterprise—the enterprise of buying and selling in those remote and still half-developed communities.
Your merchant packs and dispatches his wares, marking his packages with names and destinations whose lettering and pronunciation, though they may cost him an effort to write or speak correctly, have in them something redolent of the blue seas and skies of the Tropics, upon whose shores they will presently be landed, to be handed over—the attentions of cigarette-smoking and gold-laced Customs officers satisfied amid much Castilian chárla—to the mercies in many cases of rude but patient muleteers, when, bound on the backs of mules they will be borne over mountain paths and through tangled jungles to many a distant interior village of the Pampas or the Cordillera.
And those returning goods which lie upon our quays, fresh from the hold of the steamer which brought them hither, have their own origin stamped upon them, and often betray by their aroma their special nature. Who has not walked upon the docks and remarked with interest the bales of coffee, the piles of hides, the sacks of ore, the packages of raw cocoa and other raw material sent hither, the product of industrious natives of the picturesque hacienda and the mine?
Your commercial traveller, too, if he be a man of parts—and such he must be to treat successfully in these communities—smells the battle from afar, and, setting forth again, girds himself thereto, prepared to exercise that needful show of courtesy which even commercial dealings require in those lands where Spanish and Portuguese is the medium of barter or sale, and schools his tongue to speak in their softer accents.
The trade of Latin America is now a much coveted field. The English merchant, who long held this field, has now to contend with the keen competition of others. There was, before the war, the German, who by ability and craft had firmly and remuneratively established himself therein, and who now seeks to build up the trade edifice which the punishment of his criminal war has caused to fall. There is the American, as keen as any, studying by what means he may overcome the disadvantages which worked against his more successful exploitation of the Latin American sphere in the past, and thinking, perhaps, to predominate over his rivals. There are the French, the Italian, the Spaniard and others, all demanding their share; and coming forward now is the Japanese, acclaiming his right to whatever he may wrest, either from the sphere of his competitors or in the finding of fresh pastures.
From whence is this keen desire to profit by the trade of the Central and South American States? Despite its attendant risks, of distance, of long credits, of "slow payers" and repudiated debts, it must be profitable. There must be a demand for goods, a wide and sufficient market and a margin of considerable balance over costs and expenses.