Buenos Aires is not a city that calls for the usual precautions taken by travelers. All the creature comforts may be had here, although, it must be confessed, at a cost greatly in excess of prices familiar to North Americans. There are good physicians and dentists, and no less than sixteen hospitals—one of which, the British Hospital, is a magnificently equipped institution, and the one patronized by the American colony. There are electric street cars (which carried 125,000,000 passengers last year), splendid trains that carry passengers in thoroughly modern and well-served coaches to almost every part of the settled country, first-class carriages, taxicabs, hotels, department stores, and shops of every description.
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.