Iquitos is a fever-stricken port of twelve thousand inhabitants on the left bank of the Amazon. It is built on the high banks above the river opposite to some islands of the same name, and not far above the confluence of the Nanay and the Amazon. Above the town is a fair-sized stream, the Itaya, which makes the city located on a peninsula. It is the capital of the Province of Loreto, which comprises the entire Peruvian Amazonian lowlands, and has a wireless telegraph communication with Puerto Bermudez (which is only a three days' trip from the Perené Colony). From Puerto Bermudez telegraph wires run to Lima via La Merced. Iquitos is the center of the rubber industry of the Upper Amazon and is a booming town in spite of the yellow fever which is nearly always prevalent. It has steamship communication with Manaos, Para, and the outside world.
Up to a decade ago, if a man in Lima had business in Iquitos, he was obliged to take a steamer to England, tranship to Para, and there tranship again to Iquitos. He had the alternative of going to Panama, across the isthmus to Colon and thence take a steamer to Barbadoes. From Barbadoes he would go to Para, and thence to Iquitos. These were long trips, several months being endured in the passage. Now Iquitos is reached across country from Lima; the trip takes anywhere from three weeks to six months, according to which route the traveler chooses. It has been done in sixteen days, but from four to five weeks is the average allowing time for misconnections. I believe that the shortest way to reach Iquitos from Lima is to take a steamer to Pacasmayo, which is a day and a half north of the capital. Thence go by rail and horseback to Cajamarca. From there go by horseback via Chachapoyas to Moyobamba. From Moyobamba one can go in two to three days to Yurimaguas on the Huallaga River, whence one can go by launch to Iquitos in a week and a half. I know a person who went from Cerro de Pasco to Iquitos. He followed the Huallaga to its mouth and it took him six months. The common way of reaching Iquitos from Lima is to go to La Merced; thence overland through Puerto Bermudez to Puerto Victoria on the Sampoya River down which one descends on a canoe to the Ucayali, taking a chance of making connection with the launch at Santa Rosa de los Canivos, which is about one third of the way downstream between Cumaria and Contamana. There is also a northern route which takes about five weeks. The eastbound traveler goes from Paita to Piura by rail; thence via Huancabamba to Jaen by horseback. Jaen is a day's stage from the Maranon which one must descend by canoe.
In the night after the day on which the steamer left Iquitos, the Napo River was passed. It flows into the Amazon from a northwesterly direction. One of its tributaries is the Curaray which rises in the Andes of Ecuador. Along its course live a tribe of head-hunting Indians. These savages after they capture a white man or an Indian of another tribe, behead them. They boil the head in a concoction which loosens the bones. These they take out and fill the cavity with hot stones. By some process of their own, they shrink the head until it becomes no larger than a large orange, yet retaining the features that the victim possessed during life. These they offer for sale, and are to be purchased in the curiosity shops of Lima and Guayaquil on the Pacific Coast, and even in Para at the mouth of the Amazon. From the savage to the curiosity shop proprietor they pass through many hands so that it is impossible to arrive at the source of the murder. A certain Swede once left Guayaquil for the interior on an exploring expedition. A year afterwards a head was purchased in that city which was found to be that of the Scandinavian. Since he was never heard of after he crossed the Cordillera, it is assumed that his party was beset by savages and he was murdered, his skull boiled down, and hawked about until it reached the hands of a Guayaquil dealer. The September, 1918, number of the South American Magazine published in New York, has an article which says that there is believed to be a head factory in Guayaquil. The dealer in this sketch is undoubtedly in league with body-snatchers who supply him with corpses, which he beheads and boils down, having obtained the recipe from the Indians. These heads he places on sale. One of his relics was the head of an employee of the Quito-Guayaquil Railroad who had died the previous year of yellow fever in Guayaquil and was supposed to have been given a decent funeral. This horrid trick of the Indians cannot be eradicated until the law puts a stop to the purchase of these heads. By punishing the dealers and the middle-men, the Indians will cease to find a market for these gruesome souvenirs.
CHAPTER XVI
BUSINESS PROSPECTS IN ARGENTINA, PARAGUAY, AND CHILE
The object of these travels was not to see the country dealt with as much as it was to study the business conditions and future possibilities in those lines in Chile, Argentina, and Paraguay.
Although there are undoubtedly great opportunities at the present time and in the future to enter into business enterprises in the northern republics of South America, which as yet, only have their surface towards development, the republics farther south which are partially developed, offer better inducements owing to their forms of government, the character of the races who inhabit them, and the incentives which are offered to the foreigner who wishes to start a new industry. With the exception of Argentina and Uruguay there is practically no manufacturing done on a large scale, such as we are accustomed to see on all sides in the United States and in Europe. There are many small industries employing from three to twenty men, providing the employers with not much more than a good living, and the employees with a mere subsistence, but there are no really large ones which are a credit to their country.
To start anything in any of these countries, the matter of prime importance is for the proprietor and his foreign employees to be able to converse fluently, read, and write in Spanish. Next he should understand the character of the Latin races which is not at all easy if he is prejudiced. Their ways of doing business are totally different from ours. Also owing to the scarcity of money in some of these republics, the new firm should have plenty of ready capital, and should never organize with a limited amount, the outstanding balance being made up of notes. To sell preferred stock to the natives would be nearly impossible, because no Latin would buy any unless he is "shown" first, and this "showing" would have to cover a period of a great many years, so susceptible are they of making investments. The company should be entirely capitalized with the cash paid in before the first stroke of business is begun. Many firms in South America have come to grief by being only partially capitalized, and their example is always before the native mind. Competing trusts and grafting politicians should be reckoned with. Many large firms give as a present to the governor of a province, or to the deputy in congress, a few shares of their stock. These men in turn make laws which benefit their company, and make it impossible for competitors to transact a legitimate business.
As Argentina offers less opportunities in the manufacturing line than its neighboring sister republics, it is best to deal with it first. To begin with, the country is a great expanse of land, for the most part in appearance a level plain, gradually rising as one travels westward. This rise is but two feet to the mile and is imperceptible. This plain is traversed by quite a few rivers, but so slowly does the land rise, that these streams are nothing more than sluggish watercourses, muddy, and affording no drainage. They often overflow their banks, forming muddy ponds and lakes a few inches deep. On account of the slowness of their flow they are valueless for waterpower. This part of the country is therefore not adaptable for factories; its sole use is for the growing of grain and stock-raising. Although this is one of the greatest wheat belts in the world, it has no flour mills, and but few grain elevators. The wheat is shipped a long distance by rail to the seaport towns, whence it is exported to Europe. That which is needed for local consumption is ground into flour in the seaports which have mills; much of it is shipped back over the same road that it went out on to be distributed over the sections where the grain was grown. The towns here are small and far apart. Their only excuse for an existence is that they are the distributing points for an agricultural section and to them the necessities of life are shipped which eventually find their way to the large estancias as the farms are called. To these towns grain is hauled to be shipped out by the railroad. Stores spring up, a hotel or two is built, a few professional men such as doctors and lawyers establish themselves, but nobody ever thinks of starting a factory. It would be folly to do so, because there is no future besides agriculture and stock. There is no fuel, no iron, and no waterpower.
West of the great Argentine plain we reach the mountains. The Andes here are the highest peaks in all America. They rise abruptly from the plain like a barrier and have no foothills. There are but few rivers in this section, and those which do exist are swiftly flowing, turbulent streams. They can furnish waterpower and some of them do for electricity. Yet there are no factories. It is again the question of the scarcity of fuel. So poor is Argentina in her fuel supply that most of the locomotives burn wood. The coal used for those which run in the eastern provinces is imported from Europe and the United States. Oil fields have been opened in Patagonia with a view of decreasing the price of fuel, but as yet they are in the embryo stage. It is not known whether they will ever be made an economic asset, because the quality of the oil is said to be poor. The country at the foot of the Andes near the latitudinal center of Argentina which is watered by the mountain streams is called the Zona del Riego. It is here that are located the extensive vineyards and fruit orchards. There are three separate belts each of which is fed by its own river. The two southernmost of these are in the Province of Mendoza, at San Rafael and Mendoza respectively, while the northern one, is at San Juan in the province of the same name. Factories which do not require an excessive amount of fuel could be started, but nobody has ever turned over their hands in that direction excepting in fruit-canning plants, which have not paid well.
In the city of Mendoza a flour mill could be made to pay. There are immense flour mills in Argentina, but with the exception of a few small ones of no importance and the large one of the Minetti Brothers at Córdoba, all are located on the seaboard. The Molino del Rio de la Plata at Buenos Aires has a capital of $14,945,000. It is the largest in South America. Nearly as large are two flour mills in Bahia Blanca; Rosario also has a couple of large mills. For a quarter of a million dollars a flour mill could be established at Mendoza, which the manager of the Molino del Rio de la Plata, told me would pay forty per cent. on the capital from the start, and which would be dependent on no other trade than that of the city of Mendoza. At San Juan, one hundred miles north of Mendoza, there is a small flour mill which is a lucrative investment. The beauty of having a mill in Mendoza is the fact that the wheat grown there, although inferior to that which is grown on the plains on account of its having to be irrigated, runs forty bushels to the acre and would be in close proximity to the mill, thereby saving freight. People in the Province of Mendoza who grow wheat ship their product to Buenos Aires where it is ground. The flour is then shipped back seven hundred miles to Mendoza where it sells for a high price, the freight rate being enormous. Tucumán is a city of over one hundred thousand inhabitants but has no flour mill worthy of the name. One would pay in that city but it would require much more capital both on account of the size of the city and its distance from the wheat fields. Mercedes, Bragado, Olavarría, Junin, and many other towns of their size (twenty thousand population and upwards) could all support flour mills. They have none and are in the heart of the grain belt. Wood would have to be used for fuel which would be expensive, but the profits derived from the flour would offset it. Pergamino is a growing town in the grain belt between Buenos Aires and Rosario, with good railroad facilities, yet it has not a single manufacturing enterprise. It has a population of forty-three thousand inhabitants. Personally I think that the flour mill proposition would be the best paying enterprise in Argentina. It would pay at all times, war or no war.