Barbers’ shops are in great abundance.
At the pulperias, or grog-shops, they sell almost every article of life; they are, indeed, perfect chandlers’ shops.
The pastrycooks neither cut a figure in their shops, nor in the articles they sell; here are no hot buns or tarts on a morning, nor stale pastry for the ragamuffin boys to purchase. Sweetmeats are the order of the day.
A pastrycook’s shop in the English style, I am confident, would succeed—with the addition of hot rolls in the morning: none of those luxuries are known here.
A good portrait-painter, I conceive, would meet with encouragement in Buenos Ayres: at any rate they would have a fine field for study. An English artist, named Hervé, practised some months: indisposition forced him to leave.
It had occurred to me, that a pawnbroker would be a good business in Buenos Ayres; but I find every shopkeeper, or monied person acts in that capacity, and that respectable persons do not hesitate to send silver spoons, matté-pots, and other valuables, to pledge from day to day—at what interest (or if any) I know not, though I am apprehensive some of them are guilty of what we should call usury. Poverty is a crime in England; here they dread not exposure: but such is my delicacy in money affairs, I should prefer being under an obligation to the gentlemen with three balls, and to slide in at one of their secret doors, to the publicity practised here.
An Englishman has lately undertaken a speculation which has cost him a considerable sum, to have the exclusive privilege of taking cattle in the Falkland islands—in fact, to be sole proprietor for a term of years. He has forwarded to his new sovereignty a small colony of settlers, servants, &c.; the chances of his success are very doubtful. Buenos Ayres claims the jurisdiction of these islands, and those claims will not cause such a dispute as in the year 1770. The voyage to them from Buenos Ayres is made in about fourteen days.