The real Argentine: Notes and Impressions of a Year in the Argentine and Uruguay

by J. A. Hammerton

Still, I would not have you think that my thoughts were tinged with melancholy when I stepped aboard the old river steamer Eolo, on which so often I had journeyed between the two great cities of the Silver River, after bidding good-bye to a group of friends, among whom was no fellow-countryman, to look for the last time on the dancing lights of the fairy scene which the Bay of Montevideo presents each night to those on shipboard. In Montevideo our time had passed, on the whole, agreeably; excepting one tremendous storm of rain and hail, when fiercest thunder rolled and lightning swept the streets in blinding flashes, it had been a time of sunshine and fair weather,—sunshine tempered with refreshing breezes,—so that, after all, we had found something of which we went in search.

The Natural Bridge of Puente del Inca, on the Transandine Route into Chili.

I remember well how changed was the scene on arriving in the early morning at Buenos Ayres, where torrential rain was falling. Through the mud and slush I drove once more to the old, familiar hotel, and nothing but the most essential duties of the day took me out of doors, for it rained “as if the heavens had opened and determined to empty themselves forever,” and next morning I awakened to the rain thundering on the roof with unabated vigour. So it continued all that day, while I made furtive dashes here and there, saying a few hurried good-byes, visiting the bank, arranging travelling accommodation for my journey across the continent and over the Andes to the city of Santiago de Chili. The train was to leave about eight o’clock on the Sunday morning, and so admirable is the accommodation for passengers’ luggage, that if your heavier baggage is not delivered the previous day, it runs great risk of being left behind in the morning. This I discovered somewhat late in the evening, and a hurried packing ensued.

Still in the streaming wet, I saw the last of the sodden city that Sunday morning, and found myself in a particularly crowded train, with three travelling companions. One of these was the most talkative and genial of Argentines I have met, whose family history was speedily at my disposal, and much of whose companionable character came, I doubt not, from the French origin to which he confessed. Full of a delightful admiration for all things English and American, except the language, which he had found too hard a nut to crack, he proved the best of travelling companions, having made the journey from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso many times before. He was the publicity manager of a very famous Anglo-American firm of advertising chemists, and I can assure them they are admirably served, as I found his knowledge of the journalistic conditions of the Argentine thoroughly sound in every detail on which I was able to test it, and that meant a very representative test, as it had been an important part of my own occupation in the country to familiarise myself with journalistic conditions.

The second of my travelling companions was a typical Argentine of the town-hating variety. There was nothing of the gaucho in his blood, and I judged him to be entirely Spanish in origin, of that fair type which could pass for Anglo-Saxon, but he was a lover of the open spaces and the wild life of the Camp. Wiry and slim, with blue, inquiring eyes, he had travelled far, and was familiar with many parts of North America and Europe, although he had just completed some five years in the wilds of Paraguay and the Gran Chaco, where I believe the lovers of primitive life can have more than their fill. He recounted many of his experiences among the wild Indians of the Chaco, and showed me numerous photographs he had taken there, with all the pride of a schoolboy. Here was none of your desperadoes of the wild places, though he carried a big enough Browning in his belt and the usual long knife of the gaucho in a sheath over his hip. These accoutrements struck me as strangely unsuited to the man, who, in general appearance and in the quietness of his demeanour, would have seemed far more in place perched on a high stool in a counting house.

The third of my companions was a red-headed youth from Christiania, on his way to Valparaiso, where a fellow Norwegian was managing a successful business, and had offered him a post. He spoke English well, but Spanish not at all, and made the most elephantine attempts to pronounce the simplest words, much to the merriment of our other companions, who had at first marked him down un inglés. It was something of a wonder to us how he had come so far without mishap, as he showed so little ability to deal with the ordinary difficulties of travel in foreign lands, and, as the Franco-Argentine remarked to me, he had poca cabeza, or “little head.” But I suppose there is a special providence that watches over such travellers as he and brings them safely to their journey’s end.

The rain continued as we sped along through the flat and uninteresting country. Every road was a running stream, and ditches were swollen into rivers. Any prospect more dismal or less appealing to the affections than the Argentine Camp in time of rain, I do not know. And at this time the rain meant a great drop in the temperature that sent all Nature a-shivering, so that the dripping herds and the sodden sheep on the far-reaching pasture lands through which we passed were objects of pity, while the mud-splashed horses and the dripping drivers were supreme pictures of wretchedness. From shanties here and there by the railway side, grey faces peeped out at the train, as one of the events in their dreary day, and the little country towns were so many houses in seas of mud. I remember we passed some ostrich farms, and these birds, at no time suggestive of the life joyous, looked the saddest of bipeds. They are of a different breed from those that are reared in South Africa to furnish ladies with their “fine feathers,” and are used for supplying the feather dusters, or plumeros, with which lazy servants throughout the Argentine flick the dust from furniture to walls and back again from walls to furniture—an operation of infinite amusement and no utility.

I remember little of our various stopping places, except Junin, the great railway centre of the Buenos Ayres and Pacific Railway on which we were travelling, and where are situated its engineering works. The station was thronged with English people, many of whom had come down to see the train go through, as that is one of the amusements all along the line, the young people in the remoter country towns dressing up to promenade the stations as though these might be pleasure piers. Junin is some four hours’ run from the capital, and is typical of most Argentine towns, with its earthen streets which are periodically ploughed and rolled, and so remain quite passable for a few days after that operation, but for the rest of the year alternate between the conditions of river-bed and dust heap.

The little station of “Open Door” I remember. We could see in the distance the buildings and fields of the great asylum, which I should very much have liked to visit. This is one of the most remarkable institutions in the Argentine, for here many hundreds of insane are employed in all sorts of healthy labour, under the supervision of a famous alienist, whose methods of treatment are entirely original and have been the subject of much discussion. I remember reading in the pages of M. Clemenceau, who wrote a most interesting chapter on his visit to this great asylum, that the superintendent told him so wonderful were the results of studying the tastes of the lunatics entrusted to his care and placing them at congenial occupations, that he often thought he was the only insane person among all the inhabitants of Open Door. Why this English name should have been chosen for the place, I do not know, for surely the association of lunacy and the open door does not seem particularly desirable.