The houses in the residential part are chiefly of the familiar one-story variety, with here and there a modification of a French Renaissance building, austere, withdrawn, and always somewhat dusty. Grass sprouts luxuriously between the cobbles in all the streets a little way from the centre, and the great avenues that cut athwart the town in all directions still lack many finishing touches in the way of pavement, while most of the public squares speak of plans stopped short of completion. The great public park, amply shaded with lofty eucalyptus trees and no lack of shrubbery, though a worthy monument and an adornment to any town, has still that unkempt appearance of a partly finished exhibition ground. Some day, I do not doubt, it will receive its finishing touches, and will probably be a nearer approach, as indeed it is at present, to our notions of a public park than anything to be seen elsewhere in the South American continent. The museum in the park presents a rather scabby face of flaking cement, which goes ill with its severe Greek modelling. Interiorly, it is admirably arranged, and noteworthy chiefly for its wonderful collection of glyptodons, those giant armadillos of the country’s prehistoric past. In no museum have I seen such splendid specimens and so many have here found house room, that later on, when the other provinces come to organise their local museums, it should be possible to supply them all with specimens and still leave sufficient to make a brave show at La Plata. Noteworthy also is the famous stucco cast of the monstrous brontosaurus, taken from the original in New York Museum of Natural History and presented by Mr. Andrew Carnegie.
La Plata is not ill supplied with hotels and restaurants, and contains a number of well-designed churches, as well as two or three handsome theatres, while its race-course is second in the Argentine only to that of Buenos Ayres. Withal, a beautiful, and in many ways an attractive city, where it would be no ill lot to pass one’s life, though I am prepared to be told it is a hotbed of political bickerings; inevitable that, in any centre of South American government. One drawback it has, which would plague me sorely, I must confess. On the occasion of my first visit, a beautiful calm day of winter sunshine changed in an instant, on the rising of a sharp wind, to the greyness of a London fog, but ten thousand times more abominable in character than any fog could ever be, for the greyness came from dense clouds of finest dust, raised in such abundance from the sand-laden streets that even the great public buildings, one of which I was in the act of photographing, were suddenly blotted from sight, and everybody out of doors was making a desperate dash for shelter. I saw it again in rain, and once more in sunshine, and I shall prefer to think of it in the last condition, and always to defend it from those who will tell me it is not worth the forty minutes’ journey from the capital.
Montevideo from the South, showing the Cerro with its Fort.
Shipping in the Roadstead at Montevideo and the Maciel Quay.
Entirely different in character from La Plata is the busy, go-ahead, self-reliant, commercial town of Rosario, on the right bank of the Paraná River, some 160 miles northwest of Buenos Ayres. This splendid city is no costly product of political ambitions, but the quick flowering of a great trade centre, Rosario being the market-place of the vast and bountiful provinces that lie between the Paraná and the Andes, and a river port of great and growing activity. The province in which it is situated, that of Santa Fé, still contains considerable less than a million inhabitants, and of these about 150,000 live and work in Rosario, yet this great town, the second in commercial importance in the entire Republic, is under the political control of the city of Santa Fé, the capital of the province, with a population of less than 40,000. These two cities, by the way, have equal appropriations for public education! In a country where population and commerce are the determining factors of importance, it can easily be imagined how Rosarians chafe under the domination of the political groups in sleepy Santa Fé. That is a state of things that cannot endure, and some day the agitation, periodically renewed, for the shifting of the seat of provincial government, will surely succeed, and give to Rosario the political importance which the enterprise of its citizens and its commercial prosperity demand.
It is one of the Argentine towns from which I have carried away the pleasantest memories. I am not at all certain that its superior hotel accommodation does not to some extent colour my recollections. Nor is that a small matter, for had it been possible to secure in the capital city so near an approach to European comfort as may be obtained in at least two of the excellent and ably conducted hotels of Rosario, I fancy I should have passed my long months in Buenos Ayres more agreeably. As a provincial city, Rosario undoubtedly approximates more nearly to our ideals than Buenos Ayres does as a capital. It is hardly less cosmopolitan in character, and there is a large and agreeable sense of commercial movement everywhere in its bright and ample thoroughfares. Lacking in public buildings, for the reason stated, the city contains many fine commercial edifices, while its shopping centres are wonderfully well-furnished with world-wide products, one large establishment, devoted to sanitary appliances, excelling anything I have ever seen in the quantity and variety of its wares, having a huge show-room devoted entirely to all sorts of porcelain and enamel baths.
All the principal banks have substantial-looking buildings, and the residences of the merchants of the town are no unworthy competitors with those of Buenos Ayres itself. There are several good theatres, where the best foreign companies that come to Buenos Ayres invariably make an appearance. The principal park, a favourite centre of social life, is admirably laid out, and has its inevitable statue of Garibaldi, for the Italians are here as plentiful as elsewhere, and wherever a colony of Italians can get together sufficient money for a statue of their national hero, there will he be seen in some heroic pose. M. Huret was reminded of Bluebeard, in looking upon the Garibaldi of Rosario, and I confess the somewhat ferocious aspect of the hero of Italian Independence as portrayed in this particular statue, would fit not ill that ogre of our childhood.