If Rosario has made a fortune out of the incredible increase of its corn harvests, it must not be supposed that cattle-rearing is neglected in the province of Santa Fé. By a fortunate coincidence, I arrived on the day of the opening of the great annual Cattle Show. The President of the Agricultural Society happens to be one of the most distinguished politicians, not only of the province but of the Republic, and, by his kindness, I was able to glean much information on general topics, and, at the same time, inspect some samples of agricultural produce that would not have been out of place in the first of our European shows. The surrounding provinces, including that of Buenos Ayres, had sent up some of their finest specimens of horses and horned cattle. As usual, there was a superabundance of British breeds to be seen; but our Norman horses were well represented, too. To tell the truth, the dual capacity of my guide, who was no less eminent as statesman than as cattle-breeder, caused politics to somewhat overshadow agriculture in our talk, and I found out that Señor Lisenadro de la Torre was the leader of a party that is aiming at the overthrow of the Cabinet now in power, whose majority, he informed me, was based on those very administrative abuses that I had already noted. The tendency is to use and even abuse authority to coerce the electors, who are unorganised for the defence of the public interests against private ambitions, [30] "an evil that spreads terror," as may truly be said, and one of which Rosario does not hold a monopoly. On this theme the clear-headed politician, with his concise manner of speech and decided tones, gave me a rapid sketch of the situation by a brief examination of the enemy's country. And I rejoiced to see that abuses common, more or less, in all old countries, and whose remedy lies only in private endeavour, have in this new community of the Argentine provoked the same keen intelligence and determination as others which I noted. Under whatever form of government, the worth of a country lies in its men—that is, in its sum total of disinterested activity. A race that can show the development of intelligence and character that have so struck me in the course of this journey can afford to await with tranquil courage the solutions of the future.
As it is my desire to leave no dark corners unexplored, I must make a reference to the strange hints of revolution that I heard at Rosario and, later, at Tucuman. "A certain military leader would be displeased if full satisfaction were not given him. There was every reason to fear a movement. Dispatches from the Government recommended a careful guard over rifle magazines," etc. I was, however, pretty soon convinced that all these rumours were but the expiring echo of a bygone condition with very little foundation in actual fact.
Here in Rosario we are not far removed from the life of Buenos Ayres. To-day the distance from one city to the other (300 kilometres) can be covered in five hours. The last part of the journey, which terminates at Tucuman (1100 kilometres from the capital), gives us the impression of a complete change of country. At daybreak, in full sunshine, the first discovery I made was that we were travelling through a cloud of dust that entirely concealed the landscape. With a kindness for which I can never be sufficiently grateful the President of the Republic, Señor Figueroa Alcorta, had lent me his own coach for the journey. I slept in an excellent bed, with windows carefully closed and blinds drawn. But the Argentine dust knows no obstacles. For this reason the prophecy in the Book that we shall all return to dust seems to me already fulfilled. My beautiful bedroom, my luxurious dressing-room, with its welcome douche, my clothes, my luggage, and my person, all were wrapped in a thick veil of fine red dust, ugly in appearance and dangerous to respiration. Yes, while I was sleeping in all confidence, the imperious dust had taken possession of train, passengers, and all that was visible to their dust-filled eyes. The stations: merely a stack of red dust; man: a vermilion-coloured walking pillar; the horseman, or vehicle: a whirlwind of dust. Horror! to my wrath a beautiful white shirt was discovered blushing rosy as a young girl surprised. I washed with red soap and dried with red towels my carmine-coloured face. Here is the explanation of the complexion of the Indian!
Tucuman is in sight—Tucuman, the land of Cacombo, the faithful servant of Candide. None can have forgotten that the Governor of Buenos Ayres, moved by the beauty of the lovely Cunégonde, was on the point of despatching Candide when he was saved by Cacombo. But what follows marks the difference between Candide's times and our own, for Candide and Cacombo in their flight paused in "a beautiful meadow traversed by streams of water," where befell the double adventure of the monkeys and the mumps, whereas for us meadow, rivulets, monkeys, and mumps all resolve themselves into universal dust. I strain my eyes to discern some features of the country: a dismantled forest is dying in the dust; some lean cattle are grazing, on clay apparently; enormous cactuses, like trees; flocks of small white birds with pink beaks, known as "widows" (viudas); and, from time to time, the beauty of a flight of cackling parrots, making in the sunlight flashes of emerald in the dusty air.
The Marseillaise! the Tricolor! the Governor, the French colony!—this is Tucuman's reception of me. Handshakes, salutes, welcoming words with affectionate references to the distant fatherland. An admirable official motor-car, but execrable roads where the best of pneus finds so many obstacles to jump that it becomes quite dizzy, as is shown by its continued stagger.
The first impression given by Tucuman after the jolting and shaking of the road is that of a colonial land. Everywhere the "half-house," hastily put up, but rendered charming by its patio, and comfortable by the disposition of its rooms to take advantage of the shade. The Indian half-caste is king in Tucuman, "the Garden of the Republic," whose women, they say, are more beautiful than flowers. Everywhere, in fact, one sees bronzed faces in which two impassive black eyes shine with the brilliance of the diamond. A long, lingering glance which says, I know not what, but something that is totally un-European. Simplicity, dignity, with few words, slow gestures, an imposing harmony of bearing. I know not whether one day the dominant race will succeed in modifying or effacing the native traits. At present, nothing seems to touch the indelible imprint of American blood. A few of the women are very handsome. The French colony in Tucuman is larger than I thought. I shall see it when I return from Santa Ana, where I am going to visit M. Hilleret's manor. As we pass, I notice broad avenues well laid out: the Place de l'Indépendance, on which there stands the statue of General Belgrano, in remembrance of the battle of Tucuman (1812), and the new palace of the Governor, which is impressive. From sixty to eighty thousand inhabitants. The town very commercial. The country broken, with high mountains. Fertile plain suitable for growing sugar-cane, tobacco, oranges, and the most beautiful flowers. Large and noble forests that are being ruthlessly devastated to supply fuel for factory furnaces. Uninterrupted cane-raising all the way to Santa Ana, where M. Hilleret, who came to the Argentine as a labourer on the railway, set up a sugar factory, [31] thanks to which—and to Protection—he was able, at his death, to leave a fortune of a hundred millions. We were magnificently received in a hospitable mansion that betrayed the taste of a Parisian architect. [32] A park and garden bearing traces of a recent attack from locusts. Specially beautiful were the tufts of bamboo, and the false cotton plants with their big balls of white down, amid which a tiny grey dove cooed softly like a wailing child.
What can I say of the factory that has not already been said? It is admirably managed. The cane is automatically flung on a slope down which it drops beneath heavy rollers. Two thousand workmen are employed, half-castes for the most part—a few are pure Indians,—and a small number of French foremen. There is a picturesque scene in the town of a morning, when troops of women, old and young, followed by a procession of children, come to market and fill their wooden or earthenware bowls with provisions, balancing them on their heads; their parti-coloured rags, gaily patched, add a piquant touch to the faces, whose firm lines seem set in bronze, all vitality and expression being concentrated in the dark fire of their eyes. The workmen's quarters are indescribable slums. On both sides of a wide avenue there are rows of tiny low houses from which the most rudimentary notions of hygiene or of comfort are, apparently, carefully banished—dens rather than dwellings, to speak accurately, so destitute are they of furniture. Women and old men sit immovable in the dust, the bombilla between their lips, in an ecstasy of maté. Children moving about on all fours are scarcely distinguishable from the little pigs which are grubbing in the rubbish-heaps. Ineffable smells issue from boiling cauldrons and stewpans, whilst in the darkness of the doorway the nobly draped figure of the guardian of the hearth stands, speechless and motionless, surveying the scene. According to European ideas, these folk are wretched indeed. Yet the climate renders existence easy and they appear to find quiet pleasure in it. We may be permitted to imagine for them a happier future and higher stage of civilisation, which they will achieve when they draw a larger share of remuneration from the monument of labour their hands have helped to put up. Laws for the protection of labour are unknown in the Argentine, which is explained by the backwardness of industry there. Although life beneath this beautiful sky must undoubtedly offer many conveniences, and although the mill-owners whom I met seemed to me both humanely and generously inclined, factories such as those I visited can scarcely exist much longer without the labour question being brought before the legislators. Members of Parliament with whom I discussed the point appeared favourably disposed, though inclined to defer remedies indefinitely.
The fields of sugar-cane can be visited without fatigue by train. We passed teams of six or nine mules—up to their knees in dust—on their way to the factory with loads of cane grown at a distance from the railway. The drivers, sitting postilion-wise on their leaders, raised their whips with threatening cries that made the lash unnecessary. But who could have imagined that it took so much dust to manufacture sugar! Out in the fields the peons, armed with the long knife that is always stuck in the back of their belts, cut the cane and with two dexterous turns of the blade divide it into lengths for the presses, leaving the foliage and part of the stalk for the cattle. At the wayside station there were five or six dilapidated cabins, in which the numerous progeny of the cane-cutters seemed to be thriving. In appearance they formed a temporary encampment, nothing more. The huts are made out of odds and ends picked up at haphazard, and follow a simple principle of architecture which requires a space of some twenty or thirty centimetres between the floor and the palisade—for it can scarcely be called a wall—to insure a circulation of air. Thus, one could, at a pinch, sleep in the place without arousing the smallest envy in the four-footed beasts that are happily slumbering under the starry heavens. Children, pigs, and donkeys live together in friendly promiscuity. Women, bearing in their arms their latest-born, appear on their threshold dumbfounded, apparently, at the sight of strangers. In my own language, I ask one of them for permission to glance at the interior of her hut. She stands aside, and I look in, not venturing more than a single step. The only attempt at furniture is planks laid across trestles, with rags of clothing (incredibly dirty) doing duty for mattress or blanket. A movable stove adapted to open-air cooking, and four stakes in the earth, on which are laid bits of anything that comes handy, with tree trunks for seats—this constitutes a rough-and-ready dining-room. Scattered about on the ground are different utensils for the use of man and beast. Then a commotion. A naked baby, who is sucking a sugar-cane, suddenly sees its treasure carried off by a lively little black pig. A fight and loud screams. Biped and quadruped come to blows, and the effect of excitement on the dormant functions of infant life is such that it is the child who succeeds in worsting the pig. The latter noisily protests. Then, there being no such thing as Justice on earth, it is the child who is carried off and set on the heap of rags whose odorous dampness will at nightfall soothe its sleep.
M. Edmond Hilleret, the eldest son of the founder of the factory of Santa Ana, had invited us to a tapir-hunt. To camp out in the forest for three days did not in the least daunt us, but a member of the Society for the Protection of Animals having urged upon me the shamefulness of letting dogs loose upon so inoffensive a beast, and Providence, with the same intention probably, having smitten our hunter-in-chief with appendicitis, followed by an operation, our shooting was directed humbly against the parrots. I speak for my companions; as for my own part, I announced the most pacific intentions towards the birds of the forest.