“La Merced,” a Typical Buenos Ayres Church.
“Teatro de la Opera,” Official Home of Opera before the Building of the Colón.
But let me tell you of the town that has sprung up here, before we go a-boating on the river. The railway approach to it is as unlike a pleasure resort as Newark, N. J., is unlike the Champs Élysées. In the town itself the streets are still to be made, and after a day or two of rain horses have to haul you through mud which reaches up to their knees, so that it is an agony to ride in a coach, as the animals can only be made to perform their terrible task by the most brutal thrashing. Once only did I consent to endure the experience of seeing two poor creatures flogged unmercifully to transport us a distance of about half a mile across the wooden bridge and through the monstrous mire to the Tigre Boat Club on the other side of the river.
Along the river banks there is foot-room enough, recalling the curate’s egg, in being good in parts. On the left bank there are the beginnings of what some day may be very pretty riverside gardens, but the roadway for vehicles is merely mother earth in her changing varieties of mud and dust. After rain it is impassable for motor cars and in dry weather it is covered with train-loads of dust. In its former state I have seen a large motor-car imbedded up to the level of the chassis and two other cars on drier ground, with ropes attached, utterly powerless to move it one foot, and I have seen it when the passage of an automobile meant “a pillar of cloud by day” which the Buenos Ayres Israelites—whose name is legion—might have descried in the wilderness of the city! Most of the quintas or country residences are situated on the left bank, in streets that run at right angles to the river, and many of these country chalets are very charming, both in architecture and rustic surroundings, but assuredly an aeroplane would be the most practical way of reaching them after a shower. I noticed a childish affection for plaster effigies of dogs and other animals in the gardens, one quinta achieving the limit of bad taste with a perfect stucco menagerie dotted about the garden. There were dogs, cats, geese, foxes, storks, hens, and many other “strange wild fowl,” to say nothing of the little gnomes, so popular as garden ornaments in Switzerland. A more ludicrous exhibition could not be imagined. The houses are built of many different materials, but stucco prevails, and they are painted in all the colours of the spectroscope, some of them rivalling the garish exterior effects of Italian ice cream saloons; but others, not a few, charming in every detail.
The river banks are occupied chiefly by numerous boat clubs, some of which possess very fine buildings, with every kind of modern luxury. All the nations of Europe seem to be represented in this way and so far as I could gather the Germans vie with the British in their devotion to the river sport, though the native Argentines can pull an oar with the best of them and have several handsome club houses. There is a large and well-appointed hotel and a magnificent home for the Tigre Club was nearing completion before I left Buenos Ayres. This is the fashionable resort of the smart set, who are infinitely more interested in the roulette table and baccarat than in anything so wholesome as the manly sport which the other and less gorgeous club-houses represent. They motor down the sixteen miles from Buenos Ayres on Sunday afternoon, after the races at Palermo are over; get inside the Tigre Club as quickly as possible, and so away from the mosquitoes; spend the evening in “play”; stay the night and so to Buenos Ayres in the morning.
But the scene along the river on a Sunday afternoon is bright with life. Crews practising in outriggers, lonely canoeists, loaded boats of trippers beating the water with ill-timed blades, motor-launches scurrying along well-laden with passengers and delightfully oblivious of the “rules of the road,” the gilded youth showing the pace of his new motor-boat and translating his Florida swagger into terms of the river. An animated and pleasing scene.
There are leafy shades on many of the islands where teas may be served or where you may picnic if you be so minded, just as at home. To one of these we went occasionally on our boating excursions. It is a little island orchard. The catering is excellent and among the spring-blossoms,—“under boughs of breathing May” used to ring strange in the memory when one knew it was October, though the conditions were May—it was pleasant to sip the fragrant herb, which in the Argentine they can brew as well as in England and better than I found elsewhere in South America. This particular island is the property of a certain lady who in the wicked past was a dancer at the Casino, when that was probably the most notorious entertainment in any civilised city (“according to information received”) but who is now a douce and not unattractive widow “with a past,” and with a present which includes good teas and a hearty welcome. Everything is so lacking in historic interest out in the Argentine that I found myself not a little piqued by the story of the ex-bailarina and her island retreat, to which she had withdrawn with a husband when her dancing days were done, and the husband dying soon thereafter, she added the tea-garden to her well-stocked orchard and new interests to her widowhood.