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

by J. A. Hammerton

On the whole, the conduct of this Spanish dancer during the voyage was so openly without sense of shame that there was little one could object to! Sometimes she appeared in gorgeous raiment and an enormous “picture hat,” ready for the Bois or the Alameda; even, on one occasion, sporting a huge muff in the tropics! Again she would pass the day in bedroom slippers, her corsets put aside, her lithe body draped only in a dressing gown, and her golden hair of yesterday, completely doffed, leaving only a shabby little nob of faded brown. She entangled at least one of the male passengers, a Chilian who later found another flame in an attractive demi-mondaine of the second class, and it afforded us some amusement to watch the rivalry which now ensued, but there was little sympathy when the gay Lothario came to the end of his cash and attempted to borrow.

The First Familiar Landmark for the Visitor To Buenos Ayres.

Part of the Paseo Colón, with the Government House on the right, and the tallest of the new commercial buildings on the left.

The other “interesting lady” of the saloon was of quite a different type. A French chanteuse of the smaller café concerts, she was extremely plain by nature’s wish, but the art of make-up and some potent hair-dye effected a magical change the day she left us. She behaved herself modestly enough and passed most of her time with her crochet needle, sitting side by side with the honest women aboard, yet I was told that her songs would have brought a blush to the cheeks of a stevedore! She sang to us several dainty and harmless little French and Spanish verses in the familiar café chantant manner, and altogether left the impression of a poor woman laying out her small gifts to the best advantage.

There was little or no intercourse between the saloon passengers and those of the second class, although it seemed to me that among the latter were many worthy people and a good-hearted companionship. They certainly showed to advantage in the diverting ceremony observed when Father Neptune held court on crossing the line. Included among them were a number of minor “artistes” bound for the music-halls of Buenos Ayres, not to mention several young women with a still less attractive journey’s end in view.

We heard much from the old South Atlantic voyagers on board about the doings on other and more popular lines than that to which our vessel belonged. The “muck-raking” magazines might work up a spicy stew of scandal about life on the South American liners if they gave themselves to the task. Wealthy Argentines and Brazilians travelling with their wives in the saloon and two or three concubines in the second class, offer quite attractive material for the journalist in search of the spicy, while the traffic in “white slaves” has long provided a certain percentage of the passengers for these very profitable lines, in which, perchance, some dear old christian ladies have their investments. How difficult it is to keep one’s hands clean in this soiled world!

From all that I have been told, and also from personal observation, the perils of the deep may have a curious resemblance to the perils of “the Great White Way.” And even those who ought to be the protectors of innocence may prove to be its assailants. A young married lady, lately arrived from England, was under the pain of having to travel alone from Buenos Ayres to a Brazilian port where her husband was lying in hospital with typhoid, and her plain story of how the purser, under cloak of sympathy for her in her distress, first ingratiated himself by talking sentimental slop about his wife and bairns at home, getting her to go into his cabin to look at the treasured photographs of his “dear ones,” and there, without more ado, attempted to assail the honour of the young wife, whose mental sufferings at the time were, to my knowledge, almost beyond endurance, is one of the ugliest I have heard. This was an English officer, note you: none of your sensual Italians.

It is to be feared that much co-mingling with pimps and procurers may have tended somewhat to blunt the native honour of the Englishman in these southern latitudes, for, up to a day so recent that it seems but yesterday, nothing had been done to dam the foul stream that has flowed so long from the human sewers of Europe into the still more noisome mares stagnantes of Buenos Ayres. Now, there is at least some pretence of stemming it, and from time to time one reads in the Buenos Ayres papers about the latest raid on the “apaches,” who are deported, with much pomp and circumstance, or about the rejected of Paris, in the shape of womankind, who are refused admission to the city of good airs.

But to return to a pleasanter, if less piquant subject, our voyage deserves at least a few words of description. We seemed to be lying off Las Palmas before the beautiful picture of Lisbon in sunshine had quite faded from our vision, and at this distance of time I would not undertake to say whether it was two or three days that had passed between the two ports, so dreamy was our progress. The sight of Las Palmas, with its grateful greenness of hill and valley, and far southward, cloud-high in a gorgeous flood of sunshine, the mighty mass of Teneriffe, thrusting itself boldly into the sky from the heaving wilderness of water, gave to the beholder one of those rare moments of spiritual exaltation which a first sight of such natural grandeur must always awaken in the thinking mind.