On the second day out, the broad Paraná River is entered; the water unlike the blue Paraguay is muddy, and it is so wide that it is much like an inland sea. Numerous islands are passed. The shores on the Correntine side are high and there is no luxuriance of vegetation like in Paraguay, which republic was left behind when the Paraná was entered. The aspect is drier and the vast plains extend back to the eastern horizon. The Chaco and Santa Fé side is a vast wilderness of cane and brush. The city of Corrientes, famous for internecine strife, and the birthplace of Sergeant Cabral, a hero of the War of the Liberation, was reached in the early hours of the morning of the second day. The rocks in the quiet water of the roadstead, overhung with trees above which appeared church steeples and the domes of the government buildings, made a fine picture. Soon after leaving Corrientes the boat anchored at Barranqueras, the port for Resistencia, capital of the territory of Chaco, and at nightfall in a pouring rain it anchored again off Puerto Goya, from which a railroad runs to Goya and to San Diego. On the third day the boat stopped in the morning at the ancient capital of Argentina, Paraná, built high on the left bank of the river, and at night at Rosario. Buenos Aires was reached on the morning of the fourth day.
Another line of steamships plies also between Asuncion and Buenos Aires, that named the Empresa Domingo Barthe, but the Mihanovich Line is the best. Domingo Barthe, the controller of the rival line, is a French adventurer who made a fortune in Argentina and in Paraguay. He acquired a large yerba maté concession from the Paraguayan government which has made him rich. The trademark of the tea from his yerbales bears the name Asuncion. Another large firm competed with him, putting out yerba maté with a different trademark. Barthe then had some of his tea put up in similar packages to theirs, and stealing their trademark had it sold widely in Argentina under their name. The rival company brought suit against Barthe which went against him. A heavy fine was imposed upon him with the alternative of a year in jail. Barthe neither paid the fine nor went to jail. He has simply kept out of Argentina. Nevertheless Barthe is a man who has done a lot for Argentina, and the court may have in view of this fact been too stiff with him; anyhow that is what the public thinks. Not only has Barthe been the means of facilitating transportation between these two countries but he has opened much of the waste lands of the territory of Misiones and put them under production, besides being in a large way responsible for the growth of Posadas, his home town.
It is pleasant to make the return trip to Buenos Aires from Asuncion by water after having seen the fields of Entre Rios and Corrientes from the car window. The study of faces, the stops at the small towns, the unloading and loading of cargo make the river trip extremely interesting. The cargo of the passenger boats is worth inspection but the odor of the poultry and of the parrot cages is nauseating. The main deck becomes a storage room for sacks of yerba maté, the vile tea that the Argentine natives are crazy about. Much of this on passenger boats goes to Goya for consumption by the poor chinos, as the civilized Indians and halfbreeds of the Correntine hinterland as well as in the rest of the republic are called. The freight boats handle the Buenos Aires and Rosario supply. Besides the maté there are numerous pails, tin cans, and molasses tins filled with plants from Matto Grosso and the Paraguayan Chaco, mild-eyed deer for the museum at La Plata, mangy sarias, martinets in cages, a bedlam of parrots, and bottles of home-made cana, which gives the imbibers murderous intentions.
I sat between two Spaniards at the dining room table. One had become involved in a domestic scandal, the day before we left Asuncion, and the wronged husband was looking for him with a gun, besides having invoked the aid of the police to find him. The foxy Spaniard, a middle-aged aristocrat, escaped across the river to Pilcomayo at night, and as there is no extradition treaty with Argentina, he was safe. He boarded the Bruselas at that stop. Both the Spaniards fell to discussing the charms of the various lady passengers and would occasionally ask me my opinion. I could not agree with them as they would pick out some fat type of woman and exclaim: "Que linda mujer" ("Oh, what a beautiful woman!"). I was fascinated by the looks of the recently married Brazilian woman who with her groom sat across the table from us. She was of that dark type of beauty so common in Matto Grosso where one meets women of dark complexion, black gorse-like hair, black flashing eyes, with strong virile mouths and chins.
In South America it is not considered a breach of table etiquette to be continually picking one's teeth and no sooner did the meals on the Bruselas begin than the snapping of wooden toothpicks rent the air. Some of the guests were ambidextrous as to the use of forks and knives, the latter especially; they would shovel so much food into their mouths that they could not contain it all, and consequently goulash would drop from their mouths onto the tablecloth. One young barbarian, when passed the menu, kept it, and instead of passing it on, amused himself by reading the advertisements on the reverse. He had never seen one before.
CHAPTER IX
SANTIAGO
It is not the intention of the writer in these pages to go into a detailed and minute historical, geographical, and statistical description of Chile. This will appear in a later work. Therefore here will be taken up only those statistics, political conditions, and geography that the reader should digest in following me on my trips.
The Republic of Chile, whose total length of 2660 miles is included between latitudes 18° and 56° south, averages in width but 150 miles which is the territory embraced between the summits of the Andes on the east and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It is divided into twenty-four provinces and one territory. Each of these provinces is in turn divided into departments. Each of the provinces has its own governor and each has its own representation in the national government at Santiago. Of the twenty-four provinces, fifteen are latitudinal, stretching the whole width of the country. From north to south these are Tacna, Tarapacá, Antofagasta, Atacama, Coquimbo, Choapa, Aconcagua, Santiago, Colchagua, Curico, Talca, Concepcion, Cautin, Valdivia, and Llanquihue. Four provinces are maritime, Valparaiso, Maule, Arauco, and Chiloé; their eastern limits are defined by the summits of the Coast Range and do not extend to the central valley. Chiloé is an archipelago. In the littoral provinces the climate is cooler than in others whose latitude is farther south owing to the breezes that blow from the Pacific. Four provinces are Andean, O'Higgins, Linares, Ñuble, and Bio-Bio. These extend from the Argentine frontier westward to the central valley but in no part do they ever reach the coast. There is only one interior province, Malleco; it is absolutely surrounded by other provinces, and neither extends to the ocean on the west nor to the mountain peaks on the east.
