Street in San Luis
Excepting the capital, Villa Mercedes, which was reached at 7 A.M., is the only place of importance in the Province of San Luis. It is a well laid out little city with a fairly good hotel, the Marconi. It was here that I was met by J. D. O'Brien of Detroit who remained with me for some time in the capacity of servant. He had been gymnasium steward on the Vauban, and not liking the British ship's officers, took French leave at Buenos Aires, and decided to try his luck in Argentina. I needed a servant as I had considerable baggage so decided to hire him. He dropped his grip over the railing of the ship's deck one night when nobody was watching, and fearing arrest because he had quit the ship after signing a contract to make a round trip, thought it would be better to get into the country until after the Vauban had sailed. Therefore I had him precede me on the journey, he going to Villa Mercedes the day before. Dr. M. de Iriondo, president of the Bank of the Argentine Nation, had given me a letter to the manager of its branch bank in Villa Mercedes, but unfortunately I did not stop off there.
Bank of the Argentine Nation, San Luis
There was a remarkable change in temperature compared with the previous day, because it was now cool and windy. The country that we now traversed was very much like that of eastern Wyoming, only the soil was better. There seemed to be a lack of water. Cattle grazed the endless pampa; here and there buttes and mountains rose from the plains, their sides covered with coarse grass and sagebrush. At the wayside stations were halfbreeds in ponchos, strong, good-looking fellows. Presently the mountains came down to the railroad track and we were in a sort of an oasis watered by the Chorillo River.
San Luis, the capital of the thinly settled province of the same name, is 493 miles west of Buenos Aires. It is a poor, unpretentious, and uninteresting town of fifteen thousand inhabitants with nothing to attract the ordinary tourist. Its buildings, with the exception of a few on the main streets, seldom attain a height of over one story and are for the most part built of coarse red brick, which here sell for 28 pesos ($11.96) a thousand. Many of these brick buildings are plastered over, but most are not, giving them but a half finished appearance on account of the poor masonry. The original idea of the man who builds a house in most of the cities of the republic is to eventually have the brick stuccoed over, but it is frequently the case that his money gives out, before he gets that far, and he has to forego that luxury. There is also a considerable number of adobe buildings. These are mostly in the outskirts of the city. I also saw a few huts in the outlying districts whose roofs were thatched.
There are no large fortunes in San Luis although my informants told me that there might be one or two men who could boast of possessing the equivalent of one million pesos paper ($427,000.00). There are only seven automobiles in the city, two of them being Cases; two are Fords. The only one that I saw was of the last-named manufacture. When asked if the governor of the province, Señor Juan Daract, possessed one, I was told he was too poor to own one, although his monthly salary is 750 pesos paper ($320.25). This would make his yearly salary from governmental sources $3843.00. I was surprised to see horses sell so cheaply, mediocre hack ones bringing only thirteen dollars apiece. Good mules averaged about thirty-two dollars each.