The trip from Tucumán to Córdoba is an 11 hours' trip of 340 miles by the Central of Córdoba Railroad. The track is narrow gauge, but the sleepers, dining car, and service are the best that I have ever chanced on in Argentina. All trains between the two cities make the trip by night, for in the daytime the heat and glare of the sun on the Salinas Grandes, a great salt desert midway between the two cities, is unbearable. This desert abounds with rattlesnakes, called "cascabel." I met a tramp who walked from Tucumán to Córdoba; he was afraid to lie down by the wayside to rest on account of these reptiles. In one day he killed over fifty of them.
The first eighty miles of the journey crosses about as pleasant a country as can be found anywhere, passing through the cities of Bella Vista, La Madrid, and San Pedro. At the latter place, the first town in the Province of Catamarca, desolation begins and continues until daylight the next morning when the traveler awakes at the large town of Dean Funes, the junction for San Juan, capital of the province of the same name. Low rocky hills now rise in every direction; the soil, dry, parched, and somewhat stony is overrun with pampa grass. It is cool and a wind is invariably blowing. The nature of the country continues this way almost to Córdoba, although before reaching that city, the hills to the southwest take the form and acquire the height of mountains.
Córdoba, the third city of Argentina, has a population, exclusive of its suburbs, of one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants. It was founded in 1573 by Luis Geronimo de Cabrera, and has always been noted as a seat of learning and of religion. Its university, which vies with that of San Marcos in Lima in being the oldest in the Western Hemisphere, was founded June 19, 1613, by a Jesuit father, Fernando de Trejo y Sanabria. The first printing press in Argentina was brought to this university from Lima in 1765. Gaspar Rodriguez de Francia, Paraguay's able dictator, was a graduate of Córdoba's university. The churches, cloisters, convents, and religious institutions of the city are innumerable, and it is estimated that over six thousand of its inhabitants are connected with the religious orders and organizations. Córdoba is one of the cleanest cities in America, and it is difficult to find a place where civic pride, park system, cleanliness of house exteriors, public buildings, pavement, hotels, cafés, department stores, banks, residences, religious edifices, and water supply taken as a whole can equal that of it. Many cities may excel it in one or two of the above mentioned institutions but not in the majority. Personally I would not care to live there unless engaged in some business, as there are too many "lungers," and the surrounding country is but a dry and rocky karst; the diversion of street life would soon become irksome, for with the exception of cafés, moving picture shows, theaters, and an occasional horse race, no Argentine city possesses any real live amusement places, excepting those that are synonymous with lights seen through carmine transoms, and they happily are not in my line.
Northern Market, Córdoba
I can see no reason for Córdoba's existence and growth. The soil of the country is poor and rocky, while the rainfall is slight. In the year 1915, seven months elapsed without a drop falling. The city is situated to the west of the productive part of the province, and from it westward to San Juan at the foot of the Andes, the country is the poorest in the republic. Yet Córdoba has had a rapid growth recently. In the manufacturing line, it has three breweries, that of Pollak and Brueck, generally called the Córdoba Brewery; that of the Ahrens, and the main brewery of the Rio Segundo Company. There is a large flour mill owned by Minetti, an Italian, and several brickyards. Here are also located the shops of the Central of Córdoba Railroad.
The chief industry of Córdoba is brewing, this being largely due to the remarkable pureness of its well water which is artesian. Señor Nicolas J. Oderigo, manager of the bank of the Argentine nation, wrote me a letter of introduction to Mr. C. Davis, president of the Rio Segundo Brewing Company, which I visited in the company of Señor Stange, an employee of Oderigo's bank, and whom he had the kindness to send with me to accompany me. This large brewery has a branch at the town of Rio Segundo, which was the original brewery. The Rio II. Brewery is an independent brewery, not being allied to the Quilmes outfit as is generally supposed. Mr. Davis received me courteously and after having shown me the establishment invited Stange and myself to his house where he entertained us at dinner. Señor Stange is either a German or of German descent, but when I asked him about it he denied it, and also told me he could not speak a word of that language. A day or two later I passed by him while he was seated in animated conversation in a café with two other men, and the language he was conversing in was German. As Mr. Davis is an Englishman, Stange evidently had private reasons to cover his nationality. The brewmaster of the Rio II. Brewery told me that brewing was not a profitable industry in Argentina, because the Quilmes company was a trust and its members being affiliated with the political party that is in power, it has the capital and the means to drive the smaller breweries to the wall, by stringent legislation and usurious taxation. This Rio II. Brewery is smaller than the large breweries of Detroit, yet it pays more taxes than does the Anheuser-Busch Brewery or the Pabst or Schlitz breweries.
The Córdoba Brewery as I have mentioned is owned by Pollak and Brueck. Pollak is an Austrian Jew who married a Córdoba woman, and who turned Roman Catholic to get prestige, but like most people who are members of the race he abjured, his business methods are not considered synonymous with good faith.
His beer, to my idea, is the most palatable of any of the Córdobese beers. Amber is the name of his light product, while Muenchen is that of his dark. With the townspeople his product is the most popular, notwithstanding his personal unpopularity.