Cordoba, like other places, is quite certain it has the best-dressed ladies. In a sedate sort of way there is a good deal of gaiety. On hot summer evenings a band plays in the square, where there is a statue of San Martin. There may be a town in Argentina which has not an equestrian statue of the Liberator from Spain. If so, I must have missed it. The statues are all facsimiles of the original, and there must be dozens of them. It is the one point on which all the towns agree; they must have a statue of San Martin on a prancing steed, and eternally pointing in the direction of the Andes. Once I unfortunately made an Argentine angry, for, being anxious to show me the beauties of his town, he sought my wishes as to what I desired to see, and I replied, "Anything you like, so long as you do not take me to see the statue of San Martin—I've seen him so often during the last month." The feathers were up at once. I smoothed them down by assuring him that we have very few statues of Wellington in England.

The Cordobians are fond of music and racing and gambling, and sitting in the cafés throwing the dice-box. There is a delightful theatre, the Rivera Indarte, built by the provincial Government. Opera companies which go to Buenos Aires are invited to come to Cordoba, and the authorities give a guarantee against loss. The proper thing is to buy a box, holding six persons, for the little season of ten performances. The cost of such a box is £150. The charge is a dollar for the entrada (entrance), which provides nothing except permission to enter the building. This entrada charge is like the charge for "attendance" in old-fashioned hotels in England, which is an excuse for sticking another eighteenpence a day on your bill so that you may be deceived into thinking you are paying six shillings for your room when you are really paying seven and sixpence. So at the opera in Cordoba, usually Italian, the lowest ticket is two dollars to be permitted to stand up, but you have already parted with one dollar to go in. Cordoba province, like the other provinces, thinks no small beer of itself. It rather resents receiving orders from the Federal Government sitting in Buenos Aires. Perhaps that is the reason the Argentine National Anthem is so seldom heard.

Students are attracted to Cordoba University from all over the country. Most of the professors have had experience of European universities, generally French. The library is extensive and varied. I handled some fine old Bibles, bound in sheepskin, relics of the early Spaniards. Also there is a remarkable collection of old maps, showing that the priests as they travelled this way were first-class geographers. Whatever literary sentiment there is in Argentina finds expression in Cordoba. Indeed, it is the natural meeting-place for men inclined to culture for its own sake. But it is by no means a sleepy hollow. It has several really good newspapers. There is a great export of lime. Being the centre of a big wheat area, much milling is done by modern electric appliance. Light and power are provided by an enterprising English company. There is a shoe factory, which turns out 2,500 pairs of footwear a day.

Yet, as I have said, though there is plenty to prove that Cordoba is awake, the impression left on the memory is that it is an old-fashioned Spanish university town that has strayed to the central part of South America. This may be because I spent most of my time in the university buildings, or roaming through the churches. In the cathedral a shrivelled but kindly old priest showed me a gallery of bishops of Cordoba; but I suspect they are much like the Scottish kings which adorn the walls of Holyrood Palace, many painted by one hand, and from imagination of what the bishops looked like rather than from any knowledge of their actual appearance.

Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires.
ON THE WAY TO MARKET IN CORDOBA.

I went to the Jesuit church, where a tonsured, jolly monk showed me the relics. People who had had rheumatism, and who had been cured by prayer, gave acknowledgment by sending golden arms or silver legs. There was a little golden motor car, and this came from a lady who in a terrible smash prayed her life might be saved; and it was saved, and here was her gift. Here was the statue of the Virgin, which performs miracles. Those who are inclined to doubt are shown a stack of crutches of those who hobbled into the church to seek the aid of the Virgin and walked out quite cured. The little figure of the Virgin is as fresh as though it had been carved and painted only last year. Yet the story goes it has never been touched for nigh four hundred years. In those far-off days it was sent from Spain. But the ship was wrecked in mid-Atlantic. Those who had expected the statue were in distress, and prayers were offered on the coast that the good Mother would send another statue. And whilst they prayed the case in which was the statue was floated on the shore, and the statue was quite unharmed. At once miracles were performed, and miracles have been performed over since. I saw the crutches and I saw the golden motor-car.

From the rafters hung many flags of foreign countries captured by Argentina in war. There is a Union Jack, with colours dimmed with years, which was seized from the British nearly a hundred years ago, when a British force landed and it was a toss-up whether Argentina would not become a British Colony. Many British visitors cast a regretful eye upon that drooping flag in the Jesuit church at Cordoba. They are not told—but it is a fact all the same—it is not the real flag. I was shown the real flag folded in a glass case in a room behind the altar. Some years ago a number of young Englishmen travelling in the country recovered the real flag, which then hung in the chancel. There was such a how-d'ye-do that it had to be returned. To avoid a similar mishap it was put under lock and key in a glass case, and kept in a chamber not accessible to the public. But the public would still want to see the British flag. So not to disappoint them an exact copy was made, and it is the imitation flag upon which most visiting Englishmen cast a patriotic but regretful eye.