The Amazing Argentine: A New Land of Enterprise

by John Foster Fraser

The chauffeur brought us to a chalet which we reached by crossing a brook and passing through a garden. It was a house of refreshment. And what kind of refreshment in an out-of-the-way part of the world? A sad-faced girl gave us a curtsy and waited our orders whilst we stretched our legs beneath an orange tree. Now what had she to offer in the way of refreshment? The señors could have what they wished. I inquired about champagne. Certainly! But who on earth could want champagne on the edge of the world out there? We did not have champagne. We had a bottle of native white wine and aerated water. The chauffeur! Oh, his fancy ran to a bottle of beer; indeed, he had two bottles of beer. And who was the dead man we had passed? we asked the maid. Her brother. Last night he took ill and ere morning he was dead, and now they had taken him away. An old man came to the door and looked up the sunlit valley. The little two-year-old son of the dead man had a stick, and was chasing some ducks toward the brook; he was radiantly happy. We commiserated with the old man. He thanked the señors and hoped the wine was as we wished. He did not know why his son died; the sweet Mother in Heaven knew; anyway, he had gone; could he get the señor another chair, for that he was sitting on could not be comfortable?

Back to Alta Gracia. Some of our friends had been playing golf, and we must go to the club-house. A well-laid-out nine-hole course, but the "greens" are of caked mud; they cannot grow grass out here as we can at home. There is the usual golfers' talk; there was "rotten luck being bunkered just in front of the fourth hole"; "That was a lovely drive from the eighth"; "Hang it all, he was quite off colour with his brassie, and he generally fancied himself with his brassie work"; "Well, of all the fortunate foozlers, a chap like that doing the fifth in three"—and so on. It was just like dear old England.

Somebody remarked there were gaucho races over on the other side of the town. Gaucho races—races amongst the men of the soil, the native cowboys of the Argentine prairies! Tune up that motor-car. I can see lots of golf in other parts of the world, but here was one of the things I had dreamed about coming out to see—a gaucho race-meeting.

No, I have no need to think out admiring adjectives to describe that course. It was only a bit of a course. The posts were ramshackle, and the wire which had connected them was broken and trailed on the ground, or had gone altogether. There was what I took to be intended for a grand stand, a wheezy erection of unpainted wood, but there was nobody on it.

There were hundreds of gauchos, the real article, with skins like leather, eyes as black as night, and most of them were on ponies and astride Spanish saddles, and they were picturesquely garbed, but not so picturesquely as you see them in coloured illustrations. They were noisy, and prancing their horses about and challenging each other. They had ridden in fifteen and twenty miles, some of them, and their women had driven in the carts with provisions for the day. The women had little encampments in the bushes, and fires burning, and they made coffee and served their lords with chunks of food.

The men are all laughing and arguing the merits of their ponies. Nearly everybody is mounted. One gaucho is jumping from group to group, waving two paper pesos (about 3s. 4d.) and demanding who will lay two pesos against his pony. The jabber is interminable. He gets taken. Excitement runs through the crowd. The competitors each hand the money to an old fellow who stands on a rickety platform which serves as judges' box. Then they amble off toward a tree where they are their own starters. A native policeman frantically yells for the course to be cleared. Some sort of passage-way is made, and then there is the customary confounded dog which will not get out of the way.

Here they come, and in a pelt of dust. They ride well and with a loose rein. The riders swing their arms and yell as though they would frighten their steeds to greater efforts. You can feel the quiver in the crowd. By go the horses, running neck to neck. But one has won by a nose. The winner trots up smiling, and he gets the four pesos held by the judge.

But the clamour has begun again. One man, rather a gaudy buck and with a fine horse, challenges the world. He will race any man for five pesos, and he has the money in his hand to show he means business. Well, he will lay his five pesos to anybody else's four. Everybody is talking about his own horse, or somebody else's horse, or egging two enthusiasts to cease their talking and have the thing settled by a race.

These gauchos belong to a long line of men who have lived on their prairies and had to do with horses ever since the Spaniards first landed. They go to horse-races not for a pleasant holiday, but because the fever of horse-racing is in their veins.

And that night after dinner we sat in the great light of the veranda, and the mighty purple night was beyond, and the air was heavy with the musk which rises from the plains after a hot day and the great locusts which swerved toward us! Some women gave little screams in fear they might get amongst their hair. Men who knew their harmlessness—except when there was a crop of young wheat to be devoured—caught them in their hands.