The majority of the beasts sold at the cattle markets are for local consumption: those going to the freezing manufactories are generally bought by private treaty. We were taken over one of the largest of these frigorificos, as they are called, where some 1,200 cattle and 3,000 sheep are killed daily. Each animal is inspected from a sanitary point of view on arrival, and every beast is again examined after it has been killed. It is skinned and cleaned at the same time, and in fifteen minutes, from the moment of being slain, is ready in two sides to hang up in the chilling or freezing chamber. Each of the sides is subsequently enclosed in a muslin covering ready to be shipped. The hides are, of course, also a most valuable commodity, and the fat is subjected to pressure, the oil being used for cooking purposes and the solid residue for candle-making. The unused portion of the beast is turned into guano. Some of the meat is reserved for canning, and the tinned goods are particularly attractive. Each tin is closed save for one small hole at the top, and is then passed into a vacuum pump, which extracts the air and closes the hole with an electric needle.

A very determined set was being made to bring all the Argentine frigorificos into the American meat trust; those which, like the one we visited, are determined to resist have to fight hard to hold their position. There was a loud outcry with regard to the increase in the price of meat, which had gone up retail to about sevenpence a pound; but buying through a ship’s chandler, who could obtain it for wholesale prices, we were able to purchase at a lower rate. The prices for tinned meat were much the same as in England. Salt meat we were warned to avoid, as it could not be guaranteed for more than two months, though the remainder of our stock that had been put on board in England, ten months before, was still in excellent condition. Every attempt, we were told, had been made to discover the reason for this failure, which is common to all meat south of the Equator; the services of experts from Europe had been requisitioned, the method, the meat, the salt, and the water had all been carefully examined, but so far without result.

The city of Buenos Aires itself, of which the docks have already been described, is simply a glorified port for this trade, and for the produce of a wealthy hinterland. The old part of the town, in which all business is transacted and which most impresses itself on the memory, is a labyrinth, or rather chess-board, of terribly narrow streets. The thoroughfares are at right angles, and the houses, which are in regular blocks, are all precisely similar in appearance; nothing, therefore, but an exact knowledge of the names and orders of the numerous streets as they lie in each direction of the chess-board can enable a stranger to find his way. The same street extends for miles, and he who forgets the number of his destination may as well give up the search. So narrow are these thoroughfares that two persons can only just pass on the pavement, and there is imminent danger of being pushed under the trams which run within fifteen inches of the curb. Traffic is only allowed in one direction.

In a town which has never been walled, and where space was no object, such a state of things is surprising; the original construction is said to have been due to the desire to obtain a maximum of shade, and any alteration now is of course fraught with much difficulty. Great efforts are, however, being made to render the Argentine capital worthy of its wealth and position. An imposing avenue, with the House of Congress at one end, has been cleared at great cost. The more recent portion of the town boasts good squares and parks, for the network of streets is but the hub of a huge and quickly growing city. Underground railways are being constructed, but so rapid is the extension of Buenos Aires that it is said they will only relieve the traffic for eleven years. The general impression of a bustling sea port with a southern element recalls Marseilles, but it has not the same beauty of situation. Buenos Aires has been called “a horrible travesty of Paris,” but perhaps the most correct description is that which styles it “a mixture of Paris and New York.”

Of what description are the people in whose hands lie the development of this country, with its growing influence on the destinies of the world? The new-comer arriving from the north is at once struck with the distinction between Brazil and the Argentine. Rio, with its strain of dark descent living in the midst of a dream of sleepy beauty, is still perhaps partly mediæval and undoubtedly tropical; Buenos Aires, on its flat plain and dreary river, is awake, twentieth century, and wholly European; but it is to the south of Europe that the Argentine is akin and not to the north. A Latin race was the first to colonise the new land, and successive waves of the same are still reaching its shores. In 1911 the immigrants from Spain, Italy, and France numbered nearly 2,000,000, as against 13,000 from Britain and 7,000 from Germany. Many Italians, it is true, come only for one harvest, or possibly for two, returning for the busy season in their own homes. The wages earned are such that the more idle are in a position to disdain all other work, and a crowd of loiterers round the docks, who appeared to us to be unemployed of the usual character, turned out to be agricultural workers living on their own resources till the next harvest. Many, however, of these immigrants settle in the new land, by the law of which every child born in the country becomes ipso facto an Argentine subject. It is perhaps because of this comparatively uniform origin that an Argentine type seems to be already developing. It is fundamentally that of Southern Europe, but it is moulded by a new environment, is wide-awake and energetic, with an absence of all mystery and tradition, but alive to the finger-tips. The practical aspect of life is the dominant note, whether for the native or temporary resident. “We are all here to make money,” the stranger is frankly informed, “and we talk of nothing else.” No apology shall therefore be made for once more referring to the question of pounds, shillings, and pence, for in South America it is impossible to get away from it.

The cost of living in Buenos Aires is two or three times as high as that of London in normal times. At the best hotel, usually frequented by European travellers, the smallest bedroom cannot be obtained under eighteen shillings a night, and even at the less dear hotels, resorted to by those to whom expense is an object, the ordinary price for dinner is five dollars or 8s. 9d. “One thinks a good deal in England of a £5 note,” was the remark to us of one Argentine; “here one never goes out without a fifty-dollar note (between £4 and £5) in one’s pocket.” Rents are enormous, and a would-be purchaser told us ruefully that he could not obtain in the suburbs a house with three sitting and four bedrooms, on a plot of ground some thirty yards square, under £15,000. All this falls hardly on the visitor or foreign official, but it affects the resident but little; an 8 per cent. investment is looked upon as reasonable and cautious, and for the working classes wages are proportionately high. The temporary immigrant who wishes to go back to Europe saves most of the money by living under very meagre conditions; thus two or three Italians frequently join together in one room at about half the rate paid by less thrifty workmen. Most visitors to Southern Europe are acquainted with the little mansions, built in the villages of their birth, by natives who have returned with modest fortunes from the Argentine, and this is the process by which that wealth is accumulated. More rapid roads are occasionally found to success. Our Sailing-master was acquainted with a former gaol-warder who went out as an emigrant from Southampton; his wife joined him, but came back before long, saying little but that her husband was also returning. In less than two years the man was back with a competency for the rest of his days, the source of which continued to be veiled in mystery.

Science, literature, and art do not as yet thrive very largely in Argentina, though exception must be made for the very interesting museum at La Plata, whose director was most kind in affording information to the Expedition. The great recreation is racing, in addition to which the inhabitants are all born gamblers. Sir Reginald Tower, to whose kind arrangements for us we owe much of the interest of our time in Buenos Aires, was good enough to take us to a race meeting, and we were greatly impressed with the lavish arrangements for the comforts of the spectators. It was also most pleasant to be spared all cries of the bookmakers—the betting system is that of the pari mutuel. The Jockey Club is the most important social club, and with an entrance fee of nearly £300 is naturally extremely wealthy; its existing premises are palatial, and even so the removal to larger ones was under consideration. We were kindly entertained there by a distinguished representative of the early Spanish stock, Señor Calvo, to whom we were introduced while he was practising his profession of auctioneer at the cattle-market. His ancestor was a viceroy of the Court of Spain, and he is by descent on both sides a pure Spaniard; the cosmopolitan influences of to-day have, however, been too strong for the continuance of this tradition in the family, and he himself and other members of it have allied with outside nationalities. His father, who was responsible for the conduct of a public journal, had his life attempted three times by his political enemies, and finally sought refuge in England. There the son was born and educated, but later on, going out to the Argentine, he too entered public life and became a member of Congress, whose buildings it was most interesting to see under his guidance.

The life of Argentine women is almost that of the East. The men go their own way, make their own acquaintances, live their own life. They ask strangers but little to their homes, and it is possible to be on quite intimate terms with an Argentine and unaware whether he is married or single. Country house hospitality scarcely exists, and even on the large estancias in the neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, a week-end party is unknown. A lady does not walk out alone, and never, even in her own home, receives a male guest without the presence of her husband. We have been credibly informed of a wife who boasted that during her husband’s absence in Europe, of over a year, she never went out of the house. There is no higher education for women except for those training professionally, and the interests of the majority, like those of a certain set at home in pre-war days, consist mainly in bridge and dress. Forty years ago all women wore the mantilla, but to-day fabulous sums are spent on clothes. One charming Argentine lady told me that £30 was quite a usual sum to give for a smart but simple hat. At the seaside resorts the expenditure on clothes is so lavish, that it is cheaper to take the trip to Europe than to procure the necessary garments in which to be seen among your friends. In appearance the women are pretty and effective, but spoilt to the eyes of a European by the inordinate amount of powder. I was told by one present at the dinner-party in question of an amusing scene witnessed in the ladies’ cloak-room; a daughter arriving with her mother called out, “Oh, Mother, you have not nearly enough powder on,” and made a dash for the powderpuff to remedy with two or three large splashes the supposed defect. It is said that the wave of female emancipation is reaching South America, but doubt was expressed by a keen observer whether it would necessarily take its European form of a demand for political and legal rights, or whether the Argentine woman would not begin by desiring the same social and matrimonial liberty as is assumed by her husband. At present, unfortunately, with the vicious circle in which such customs move, much of the precaution taken to guard women appears to be necessary, and I was sadly informed by more than one English girl employed in the business houses of Buenos Aires, that the freedom with which young women can move and conduct themselves at home was not only conventionally but actually impossible in their new surroundings.[[2]]

Argentina, as the depository of much that is undesirable from other nations, can hardly hope to escape the blackguard element. Assassination is the only thing which is cheap in the South American continent. The head of one of the seamen’s missions at Buenos Aires told S. that it was possible at any time to procure the murder of a man by paying five dollars, not quite ten shillings, in the right quarters: this was somewhat less than at Rio, where the price was stated to be thirteen shillings and fourpence. The scenes which occur nightly about the docks are incredible; hence returning to Mana after dark was always a matter of some anxiety. Our steward received a typewritten letter saying that he had been mentioned as a suitable man for a desirable situation, and giving an appointment after dark at a certain house in a certain street. On inquiry the address turned out to be that of a low street in the new part of the town, where much land is still waste, and there was no house yet built of the number given. With regard to the said steward, one Sunday evening he left the yacht and never returned. All anxiety about his fate was set at rest by the fact that he had cleared his cabin of all his goods. He may have been homesick and arranged to work his passage back, or he may have been enticed by a more substantial offer, a very usual occurrence where trained servants are difficult to obtain. As he had of course signed the ship’s articles for the trip, his desertion was reported to the consulate and the police, but we were told that to get him back would be practically an impossibility; while, scruples apart, nothing would have been gained by the simpler method of assassination. The man himself we did not regret, but after the manner of his kind he had waited till we were on the point of sailing, and therefore left us in the lurch.

In spite of the fact that personal safety still leaves a good deal to be desired, the Government of Argentina is one of the purest in South America; the result, it is said, of the wealth of her officials. She is already proudly conscious of her strength, and, in some quarters at any rate, is anxious to rely upon it alone for her position among nations rather than on any such external aid as the Monroe doctrine. Throughout the whole continent it is necessary in speaking of the citizens of the United States to term them carefully “North Americans,” avoiding the usual and more abbreviated form.