Bridge on Road to Dique San Roque
Beneath the arch of this bridge some gipsy families have taken their abode
To go to Cosquin, thirty-seven miles from Córdoba, keep straight ahead until you reach the stone marked kilometro 28, which is the turning-off place for Dique San Roque. Keep straight ahead and you will come to the hamlet of San Roque where is a church and the residence of the jefe politico. A road to the left leads to Alta Gracia, but that to the right goes to Cosquin. After a long drive over the rocky karst, the village of Villa Bialet Masset is reached. It consists of a long dusty street flanked by sordid one-story houses. A National Consumptives Home on a grandiose scale is here. The scenery has become better as there is a green, although dusty valley watered by the Cosquin River. Cosquin is an unattractive town of three thousand inhabitants. The Hotel Mundial serves good meals but there is no diversion for its guests, who pass the time of day reading novels on the veranda or slumber in the garden.
The inhabitants of the Province of Córdoba talk in a sing song manner and are known by their fashion of articulation in any part of the republic they may chance to find themselves in.
It is a ten hours' ride on the accommodation train from Córdoba to Rosario, although the express trains which run by night only shorten the time by a couple of hours. The country is a dry but productive plain, and is fairly thickly settled; every few miles there is a town. These range from a few hundred to a few thousand inhabitants. In the summer of 1916 the whole region had been planted to corn, but the locust pest had been so busy that there was nothing left but the bare stalks. This disaster reached to the outskirts of Rosario. The locusts had even eaten all the leaves off the trees, their naked branches having the appearance of their winter garb. Millions of dollars had gone to waste on account of them, and I know an estanciero in the Province of Buenos Aires who in a single year had destroyed by them sixty-five thousand dollars' worth of crops. They attack everything but the garden truck, and by their sputum poison the streams. A man should never buy land for crops in Argentina without reckoning on this plague.
The Province of Santa Fé had, according to the last census, a population of 1,111,426, ranking in this line the second of the Argentine provinces. Its area is 50,916 square miles and has as its capital city, Santa Fé, which has a population of 91,636. Rosario, frequently called Rosario de Santa Fé to distinguish it from Rosario de La Frontera in the Province of Salta, is the largest city. Its population is 316,914, it being the second city of Argentina, and the sixth in South America, those larger in order being Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, Santiago, and Montevideo.
Rosario was founded by Francisco Godoy in 1725, but its growth dates from recent years. Although its aspect was practically the same as when I saw it three years previously, I could not help noticing that now there were much greater crowds on the streets than formerly, and that the principal business street had changed from the Calle General San Martin to its intersector, Calle Córdoba. It is the outlet to a grain country superior to that behind Buenos Aires, and is the livest commercial city in Argentina. There are quite a few local industries such as car shops, a sugar refinery, grain elevators, flour mills, and breweries. The largest importing house in Argentina, that of Chiesa Brothers, is located here as well as the largest drug firm. The city is essentially Italian, its influence predominating, although numerically the other foreigners and natives together have a larger population than the immigrants from the Lavinian shores. Rosario is also a center for artisans, their sculptors vying with those of Genoa in the chiseling of marble for tombs and statuary in Buenos Aires and in different parts of South America. The city is by no means beautiful nor can it ever be on account of the flatness of its location. There are eight small plazas but none of them are near the center of business. The streets are narrow, and are solidly lined with buildings many of which are imposing. This with the absence of plazas as breathing spaces, together with the street crowds give to Rosario an entirely commercial atmosphere. The courthouse is a large, long pile with a high domed tower surmounting the center, and is one of the most imposing buildings in Argentina. It is on the north side of the Plaza San Martin about a mile from the hub of activity of the city. On the east side of the same plaza, and just completed, is the Police Headquarters covering an entire block and undoubtedly the most modern and largest of its kind in the world. Two other fine buildings are the Jockey Club and the Centro Español, both also recently completed.