One could write a whole chapter on Recoleta, while its history and the stories of its tombs are worthy of a book. But our purpose is a paseo, and enough has been said, perhaps, to indicate that in its narrow and crowded lanes of mausoleums a paseo no less interesting, but very different in kind, from that of Palermo, may be made. Unlike the theme of the popular song, however, it is not “all right in the summer time.” What one misses most is “the storied urn.” The “animated bust” there is and to spare; but the tombs are lacking in interesting inscriptions. Usually, Propiedad de la familia Fulano de Tal is all that gives the wanderer a clue to the identity of the peaceful dwellers in these marble halls. The graveyard poet is unhonoured in Recoleta. One feature I had almost forgotten, and it is very much in tune with modern Buenos Ayres. Several magnificent tombs were unoccupied and bore tickets announcing that they were for sale. They had been erected by enterprising speculators. Thus the Argentine who has suddenly become wealthy by selling his “camp,” bought a fine mansion in Buenos Ayres, and joined the Jockey Club, may acquire a ready-made mausoleum for his “family.” Ah, the magic peso!
Chacarita, a long way westward from Recoleta, is the great general place of burial. It is many times larger than Recoleta and more varied in its memorials, though it also contains great avenues of handsome mausoleums. A portion of Chacarita is dedicated to the British and Americans, and here one encounters the names of many of one’s fellow-countrymen who have helped to build up the amazing prosperity of the Argentine and eventually laid their bones in its friendly soil. One grave, most likely to be passed unnoticed, bears a simple stone which records that he who sleeps beneath was the last lineal descendant of the Earls of Douglas. It’s a far cry from the historic haunts of the Black Douglas to Chacarita, but so runs the world away.
Still farther westward, yet within the boundaries of this wide-spreading city, is the Parque del Oeste, which covers even more ground than the Parque 3 de Febrero at Palermo. We never met any Gringos who were in the habit of taking a paseo there; while in the pretty little park in the Boca, to which we occasionally wandered, my wife and I, we never saw anybody above the loafer class enjoying its leafy shade. In fact, this applies to all the parks of Buenos Ayres, if we except Palermo and the Botanical Gardens—they are the haunts of undesirables, and while they certainly beautify the city and look extremely well as green spots on the coloured plans, they might not exist so far as the decent population is concerned.
On a very tiny scale the picturesque Plaza Constitucion reminds one of the debaters’ ground at Hyde Park, for here come the socialist orators to harangue little groups of artisans and labourers, and here the tireless warriors of the Ejercito de Salvacion raise the banner of “Blood and Fire” and wage an unequal battle against the forces of Unbelief, Idolatry and Indifference. To encounter these uniformed enthusiasts in the remotest corners of earth wrings even from the antipathetic a tribute of admiration for the genius of him who founded the strange movement and gave his life to a great idea. I am not sure but that the Salvation Army discharges a more urgent and useful social service in cities like Buenos Ayres and Montevideo than it does in the land of its birth. But it may be that the wanderer is apt to admire abroad qualities which at home would leave him cold.
In the Plaza Constitucion there is an elaborate artificial hill, with the artificial ruins of a castle! As the whole erection is now girt about with barbed wire, I suspect its constructors builded better than they knew and, in attempting to imitate ruins, succeeded so well that “the ruins” speedily became “dangerous.” But the pathos of the sight will not escape the reflective eye.
Of the Paseo de Julio I have already written. It is a great blot on the municipality that this most beautifully laid-out promenade, with all its pleasant greenery, its banks of flowers, its very remarkable marble fountain of the seductive mermaids, should be a haunt of the vilest classes of the community. Yet it was here, I confess, that when I went a-wandering alone I most often strayed, and an elderly gentleman who lived at our hotel told me that it used to be his practice of an evening to smoke his after-dinner cigar in a stroll along the Paseo de Julio, until he was warned that some night perhaps he would be added to the long list of victims who had there received a knife in their vitals and been robbed while they breathed their last. The shops along the Paseo certainly contain enough daggers to kill off the whole community in a comparatively short time, if used with system. There were several cases of murder in the Paseo during my stay, a man being done to death, in one instance, for the equivalent of nine shillings.
As I have already hinted pretty broadly, if there is but little that the visitor can find to interest him in the way of paseos within the wide boundaries of the city, there is even less beyond. When we have enumerated the Tigre, Hurlingham, San Isidro and San Andrés, the list of pleasure resorts in the near neighbourhood is exhausted, and I have deliberately made the best of it by including San Isidro, which is merely a residential suburb prettily set on rising ground. I tramped all round San Isidro one lovely autumn day, hunting for a new golf course, which I found to be so new that the greens had not yet been laid. At that time the place, pretty as it was, could not be said to hold the slightest interest for the visitor. Its church is pleasantly situated on the high ground of the barranca, an elevated ridge which denotes the former river course. There is a dainty public garden trending downward from the church to the railway level, and one has a spacious view of the country, now bosky and broken towards the River Tigre. The President of the Republic had a house at San Isidro and there were some very charming villas to be noted. But it could scarcely be considered a “show place”—there are many New York suburbs far more beautiful—though the patriotic Buenos Ayrian would probably complain if I failed to include San Isidro among the charms of the countryside between the city and the Tigre.
At San Andrés there is a fine golf-course, with a Scots professional, and indeed a fine flavour of Scots even to the name, which is the Spanish for Scotland’s patron saint. There is naught else at San Andrés, save the usual vast acreage of flat uninteresting earth. Hurlingham is more varied in its interests and more picturesque. These resorts are almost exclusively British, with a very light sprinkling of Americans, who are usually classed as ingléses by the natives. I have sunny—and also showery—recollections of both.
Remains the Tigre. And when all is said, the Tigre is the one playground of the Buenos-Ayrians, after Palermo. Of it I have many mingled memories. Some eighteen or twenty miles to the northwest of the city the River Tigre joins its turbid waters with the tawny flood of the River Plate. Near the junction, the Tigre is itself a river of considerable volume and it is broken up by numerous small islands, which, thanks to the frequent flooding in the rainy seasons, are rendered extremely fertile, as the river deposits coatings of rich soil upon them. It is the delta of the Nile on a miniature scale. Thus it is that these islands in common with the banks of the river for many miles are always clothed with verdure and all sorts of fruit trees flourish abundantly. The natural growth is low and bushy; the few clumps of taller trees have all been planted. But here at last we have something approaching “scenery.” Picturesque “back-waters” allure the oarsmen in all directions. There is no sensational beauty—not a vestige of anything unusual. Still the Tigre does offer to the hungry eye of the disillusioned wanderer some natural interest.