In the small and crowded lounge, where we humbly waited for the privilege of securing accommodation, there was a mingling of the coming and the parting guests. The former one could recognise at a glance by their creased clothing, the latter notably chiefly for their bucolic touches. The room was uninviting, the shabby wallpaper in pendulous bulges, mouldy with damp, every item worthy only of a small country hotel. The gentleman in the temporary office, who carried out his duties amidst plasterers’ ladders and plumbers’ tools, was willing to concede us a small room with a bath for twenty-six pesos ($11) per day, including “board” but excluding certain “extras.” The terms would be the same for a stay of one night or for a stay of one year. I accepted with a feeling of disappointment, after discovering that a bedroom and a sitting-room of the most ordinary description were to cost me seventeen dollars per day. And had I to stay again for eight whole months in Buenos Ayres I should most willingly return to the same conditions which at first I regarded with frank contempt. It is a sadder and a wiser man that writes these lines than he who stepped hopefully into the best-recommended hotel in Buenos Ayres that chill morning of autumn.
The window of our room looked upon a street so narrow that, when all the high buildings in process of erection are completed, no faint ray of sun will ever enter it. At the corner immediately opposite stood one of the old single-story structures of the colonial type, which in the centre of the city are giving way to the multi-storied edifices of steel and concrete. This old shanty-like building was a centre of swarming life—Turks, Greeks, Swedes, Syrians, Italians, in short, the off-scourings of all nations, were to be our neighbours, and their babel of tongues sounded from the little drinking den into which our window looked as though the brawlers were in the hotel itself. A nice quiet neighbourhood! Being so near the corner, we had the advantage of two sets of tramways, and with the windows open it was almost necessary to use a megaphone to make one’s voice heard in the bedroom. The narrow streets intensified all noises to an extraordinary degree. Bedlam must be peaceful compared to that corner—and that is but one of thousands similar.
“We must clear out of here as soon as possible,” said my wife. But a woman’s “must” dwindles into the meekest acquiescence when pitted against the “must” of Buenos Ayres. “There must be quieter places in the centre of the town, away from these cramped and crowded back streets,” she opined. Alas, there are no back streets in Buenos Ayres. Or rather, there are few other.
As soon as possible I went forth to find the great open avenues where, perchance, I could move at my ease and enjoy the spectacle of the myriad life of the great metropolis. I half hoped that we had entered the hotel by a back door and would find on turning the corner that it had a noble frontage to some spacious street. Vain hope of a “Gringo”—as the native dubs the foreigner in South America. I found myself in a buzzing thoroughfare, where there were no tramways, but where coaches and motor cars were dashing along in the most reckless manner and with quite superfluous speed, as at nearly every corner they had to pull up suddenly in muddled mobs to allow the streaming traffic of the cross-streets to pass. The street was lined with splendid shops, many displaying the most luxurious articles of furniture, jewellery, or wearing apparel, and reminding one of London’s Bond Street. It was about the width of Wall Street, New York City. It was the Calle Florida, the very core and pride of Buenos Ayres!
The Changing Heart of Buenos Ayres.
Plaza de Mayo, looking westward along the Avenida towards Congreso. The appearance of this square has recently been modified, and two great diagonal avenues are now in construction, the one starting from the right-hand corner of the square and running northwest, the other from the left-hand corner southwestward.
As I went along, stepping off the narrow sidewalk every few yards to pass any two people inconsiderate enough to walk side by side, I recalled the one spark of wit I had heard from a youth of the “Rube” variety who had been a shipmate of ours. We were having dinner on board the river steamer and had reached the fifth or sixth course of the weirdest mixtures, when he said, “I wonder when they are going to bring us something to eat.” In all these thoroughfares, I wondered when I was going to find a street. I had heard much of the famous Avenida. That at least would not disappoint me.
The sun was now strong and the temperature must have risen fifteen or twenty degrees since the bitterly cold morning. Horses were sweating and giving off an offensive odour—the result, I fancy, of their “alfalfa” feeding—and were covered with a thick white lather along the parts of their bodies where the harness rubbed. I, too, was perspiring, though I was conscious of a brisk buoyancy in the air, as I continued southwards towards the Avenida.
Near the end of Florida, I noticed among the throng an acquaintance of mine who lives a few streets from me and whom I had not seen at home for more than two years. He was only on a short visit to the country, but I was soon to find that New Yorkers and Londoners who have business anywhere in Argentina and may never see each other for years at home are certain to meet in Calle Florida, which is a sort of funnel through which the whole stream of Argentine traffic must pass.