Read Ebook: The Girl of the Period and Other Social Essays Vol. 1 (of 2) by Linton E Lynn Elizabeth Lynn

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INTRODUCTION iii

CHAPTER

INDEX 427

SOUTH AMERICA TO-DAY

South America To-Day

THE OUTWARD VOYAGE

Not far away, heavily laden with nondescript burdens, the silent emigrant forces his way to the lower deck, dragging old parents and young children after him. Do not imagine the emigrant leaving Italy for the Argentine to be the miserable human specimen one generally sees. He is neither more nor less than a workman moving from one hemisphere to another. We shall meet him again on board. Strongly attached to family life, his peculiarity is to move about with his wife and progeny. The difference in seasons allows him, after cutting corn on the Pampas, to return to Italy for the harvest. Often he settles down in the Argentine under the conditions which I shall explain later, and takes strong root there. Often, again, the love of his native land speaks louder than his love of adventure, and the steamship companies are glad to profit by the circumstance.

The siren has blown its last authoritative blast; the last visitors have returned to land; the huge monster glides gently out to sea. One sees nothing but waving handkerchiefs and hears nothing but parting words. We are off. "Good-bye." The grand amphitheatre of white marble and sunburnt stones glides slowly past us, dazzling in the warm light. Already our eyes were looking with curiosity and hopefulness towards the liquid plain. Are we flying from Europe, or is Europe flying from us? From this moment we shall look to see America surge up from the horizon on the day ordained.

The Ligurian coast, crowned by Alpine heights; Provence, rich in memories, blue mountains darkened by the dying day; grey spots, which represent Toulon and Marseilles. A choppy, rather rough sea, complicated by a ground swell, as we cross the Bay of Lyons, tries the ladies, who had hitherto been very lively. They retire to their cabins, whence issue sinister sounds.

But let us pass on. To-morrow's sun will illumine the joyous hospitality of Barcelona.

Never did land look so fascinating to me. I have crossed the Atlantic eight times without ever feeling that kind of anticipated regret for the old Continent. Youth longs for the Unknown, but age learns to fear it.

But the signal is given. The teeming market disappears, and, without more ado, we put out to sea. In the dusk of the evening we discern the white summits of the Sierra Nevada, in whose shadow lie Granada and the Alhambra. We shall pass Gibraltar in the night, and at dawn to-morrow we shall have only the blue monotony of the infinite sea.

It is five days' steam to St. Vincent, in the Cape Verde Islands. The passengers shake down, grouping themselves according to national or professional affinities. Stretched on arm-chairs of excessive size--which turn the daily walk into a steeplechase--fair ladies, wrapped in shawls and gauzes, and profoundly indifferent to the comfort of others, try to read, but only succeed in yawning. They chatter aimlessly without real conversation. The cries of the children create a diversion, and a badly-trained dog is a fruitful topic for discussion. The men sit down to bridge, or smoke innumerable pipes in the Winter Garden. I catch scraps of business talk around me.

The boldest foot it on the deck, but their enterprise does not please the gentler passengers, who are in quiet possession of the only space available for exercise. Soon, under the guise of sops to the ravenous ocean appetite, piles of plates, glasses, and decanters, complicated with stools and travelling rugs, encumber the passageway. As the soft roll of the ship causes a certain disturbance of the crockery, the pedestrian, young or old, has always a chance of breaking his leg--a contingency to which the ladies appear to be perfectly indifferent. The piano suffers cruelly from sharp raps administered by knotty juvenile fingers. An Italian lady sings, and one of my own countrywomen sketches a group of emigrants.

In the primitive setting of the steerage everybody is already at home and appears happy. Attentive fathers walk and play with their offspring and occasionally smack them by way of showing them the right path. Mothers are nursing their babies or washing clothes. I am told that there are no fewer than twenty-six nursing mothers out of a total of six hundred third-class passengers on board. Amid the Italian swarm, brightly coloured groups of Syrians stand out. The women, tattooed, painted, and clad in light-coloured draperies, sometimes covered with silver ornaments, fall naturally into the dignified and statuesque pose of the Oriental. A few are really handsome, with a sort of passive sensuality of bearing. It is said that the Syrians are the licensed pedlars of the Pampas.

A visit between decks shows that the ventilation is good and that cleanliness is insured by incessant application of brush and hose. The sick bay is well kept. One or two patients are in the maternity ward awaiting an interesting event before the Equator can be reached. The food is wholesome and abundant. The Italian Government keeps a permanent official on board who is independent of the officers of the ship, and sees that the regulations concerning hygiene and safety for this class of passengers are rigorously carried out. Frightful abuses in former days necessitated these measures, which are now entirely efficacious.

We are looking forward to calling at St. Vincent as a welcome break in the monotony of our days. However, thanks to wireless telegraphy, we are no longer cut off from the world on this highly perfected raft which balances our fortunes between heaven and sea. One cannot help feeling surprised when presented with an envelope bearing the word "Telegram." Some one has sent me his good wishes for the voyage from France by way of Dakar. Then by the same mysterious medium the passengers of a ship we shall meet to-morrow wave their hats to us in advance. On several occasions I have had the pleasure of receiving messages of this sort; they are incidents in a day. From time to time we can read the despatches of the news agencies posted in the saloon. I leave you to imagine how, with our abundant leisure, we discuss the news. From St. Vincent to the island of Fernando de Noronha, the advanced post of Brazil, I do not think we were ever more than two days out of range of wireless telegraphy. When it is compulsory to have a wireless installation on board all ships, collisions at sea can never occur. I visit the telegraph office situated forward on the upper deck. It is a small cabin where an employee sits all day striking sparks from his machine as messages arrive from all parts of the horizon; the sound reminds me of the crackling of a distant mitrailleuse. Here one must not allow the mind to wander even with the smoke of one's cigarette. Through a technical blunder our unfortunate telegraphist, without knowing it, sent the information to Montevideo that we were in danger. In consequence, we learnt from the newspapers on our arrival that the Government was sending a State ship to our help. We thus experienced the sweet sensation of peril without danger, whilst the employee guilty of the error found himself discharged.

We shall not profit by the call at St. Vincent, since we arrive in the night. It is in vain that they tell us that the Cape Verde Islands are nothing but a series of arid, yellow rocks; that St. Vincent can only show commonplace houses and cabins with the inevitable cocoanut-trees; that the "town" is only inhabited by negroes who pick up a living from the ships that put in here to coal; whilst the English coal importers and real masters of this Portuguese possession live up in the hills. Nevertheless, we are disappointed of an opportunity to stroll on shore towards a clump of trees, apparently planted there with the object of justifying the name of the place, which is in reality the most barren spot.

Once more we fall back on the small events of our daily life on board, of which the principal is to find the point in the southern horizon by which the speed of the ship can be calculated, under given conditions of wind and tide. On the New York crossing, the Americans make of this detail an excuse for a daily bet. I notice that the South Americans are less addicted to this form of sport. The first impression made upon me by these South American families with whom I am thrown in daily contact is eminently favourable. Simplicity, dignity, and graciousness are what I see: I find none of the extravagance ascribed to them by rumour. Only on one point am I led to make a criticism: their children seem to enjoy the utmost license of speech and action.

We amuse ourselves by watching troops of dolphins, divine creatures, passing from the joys of the air to those of the sea with a facile grace. What legends have been created about these mammals! From the most ancient times they have been the friends of the seafarer! They save the shipwrecked, and surrender to the charms of music. According to Homeric song, it was from the dolphin that Apollo borrowed the disguise in which he led the Cretan fishermen to the shores of Delphi, where later his temple was built. How true to life is the undulating line of the bas-reliefs on the monument of Lysicrates, in which the Tyrrhenian pirates, transformed into dolphins, fling themselves into the ocean, as though in feverish haste to try a new life! Souvenirs of this old tale surge in my brain until I hear a voice saying harshly: "All these filthy beasts ought to be killed with dynamite, for they destroy the nets of the fishermen." Good-bye to poetic legend! Friendship between man and the dolphin ends in utilitarian holocausts!

Civilisation has not yet stamped out the flying-fish. It is still left to us to enjoy the spectacle of the great sea-locusts in flight, rising in flocks into the air to escape from their greedy comrades in the water, and dappling the wide blue plain with their winged whiteness. They remind me of the story of the traveller who was readily believed when he declared he had found at the bottom of the Red Sea a horseshoe belonging to the cavalry of Pharaoh swallowed up in their pursuit of the Hebrews. But when he talked of flying-fish, he found no credence anywhere! It is true men have told so many tales that it is not easy to know when it is safe to show surprise.

Brazilian territory is now in sight--Fernando de Noronha. It is a volcanic island three days off Rio de Janeiro. Successive streams of lava have given strangely jagged outlines to the peaks. A wide opening in the mountain lets in a view of the shining sea on the other side of the island. Three lofty poles of wireless telegraphy stand out among the foliage. They say that these posts were set there by Frenchmen. Goodluck to them!

Captain de Benedetti pays me the compliment of celebrating the Fourteenth of July. The Queen's portrait is framed in the flags of the two nations. In the evening we have champagne and drink healths. An Italian senator, Admiral de Brochetti, expresses, in well-chosen language, his appreciation of the friendship of France and I echo his good wishes for the sister nation.

Is there any better relief from the exhaustion of a sleepless night in the tropics than a solitary walk beneath the starry firmament of the Southern Hemisphere? Naturally, I sought the Southern Cross as soon as it had risen above the horizon. It was another disillusionment caused by an inflated reputation. Where are ye, O Great Bear and Pleiades, and where the Belt of Orion? On the other hand, words fail to describe the Alpha of Argo. Every morning, between three and four o'clock, I see on the port side a sort of huge blue diamond which appears to lean out of the celestial vault towards the black gulf of the restless sea as if to illumine its abysses. I receive the most powerful sensation of living light that the firmament has ever given to me. If there is in any part of infinite space a prodigious altar of celestial fire, that focus must be Canopus. It was assuredly there that Prometheus stole the heavenly spark with which he kindled in us the light of life. There, too, Vesta watches over the eternal hearth of sacred fire in which is concentrated a more divine splendour than even that of a tropical sun.

MONTEVIDEO AND BUENOS AYRES

Through the vaporous atmosphere of the sky-line appear the serrated edges of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay, which was formerly a province of the Argentine, but is to-day an independent republic. In the current language of Buenos Ayres, Uruguay is known simply as "the Oriental Band," and when you hear it said of any one that "he is an Oriental," know that by this term is not meant a Turk or a Levantine, but the inhabitant of the smallest republic in South America, hemmed in between the left bank of the Uruguay, Brazil, and the sea.

These are the impressions gathered in a hasty walk, since my first visit was necessarily for the President of the Republic and my time was strictly limited. The Presidential palace was a modest-looking house, distinguished only by its guard. Many of the soldiers show strong signs of mixed blood. Curiously enough the sentry is posted not on the pavement but out in the street, opposite the palace. As traffic increases, this rule will need to be changed. The President was not in his office. I was cordially received, however, by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, who was like the most obliging of Parisians. A few steps from the palace I met the President of the Republic, with a small crowd round him, and easily recognisable by his high hat. I was careful not to interrupt him. He is going to do me the honour of receiving me when I return to the capital of Uruguay.

Se?or Williman is a compatriot, the son of a Frenchman, of Alsatian origin. Before his election he was professor of physics, and he has not thought it necessary to allow his political duties to interfere with his educational work; twice a week he lectures in the college, where he becomes again the happy schoolmaster whose pupils have not yet developed their powers of contradiction. This charming democratic simplicity is in curious contrast with our own persistent efforts to save as much of the ancient autocratic machinery as possible from the revolutionary shipwreck. It is agreeable to be able to testify to the great personal influence that M. Williman wields in this land of Latin dissension.

The estuary of the Rio de la Plata that we have now entered is a veritable sea. Though this immense sheet of water is practically landlocked, there is no trace of land on the horizon. It is said to be as wide as the Lake of Geneva is long, not far short of thirty miles, spreading to nearly five times these dimensions at its mouth, after a course of 350 kilometres.

There is an epidemic of Italian architecture in Buenos Ayres. Everywhere the eye rests on astragals and florets, amid terrible complications of interlaced lines. I except the dainty villas and imposing mansions which call public attention to the dwellings of the aristocracy. I suppose that the business quarters of all cities present the same features. The commercial quarter of Buenos Ayres is the most crowded imaginable. Highways that seemed spacious twenty or thirty years ago for a population of two or three hundred thousand souls have become lamentably inadequate for a capital city with more than a million. The footway, so narrow that two can scarcely walk abreast, is closely shaved by a tramway, which constitutes a danger to life and limb. The traffic is severely regulated by a careful police. But so congested with foot passengers do certain streets become of an afternoon that they have had to be closed to vehicles.

In spite of the wisest of precautions, the problem of shopping in the chief business district is not easily solved. To stroll along, or, still worse, to pause to look in at a shop window, is out of the question. Politeness demands here that the honours of the road be paid to age as to sex; so if by chance, in the confusion, you come upon a friend, you must stand on the outer edge of the pavement so as to check as little as possible the flood of human beings driven inwards by the almost continuous passing of the tramway. It is only just to add that this means of locomotion, which is universally adopted here, is remarkably well organised. Still, there are occasions when one must go on foot, and the municipal government, which has laid out elsewhere broad highways in which cabs, carriages, and motors may take their revenge for the scanty accommodation afforded them in the overcrowded centre, is faced with the urgent necessity of laying out hundreds of millions of francs in a scheme for street improvement that cannot be much longer postponed.

Without comparing in density of shipping with the ports of London, or New York, or Liverpool, a noble line of sea-monsters may be seen here stretching seven miles in length, most of them being rapidly loaded or unloaded in the docks by powerful cranes. The scene has been a hundred times described, and offers here no specially characteristic features.

The big grain elevators have been described over and over again. Those of Buenos Ayres are no whit inferior to the best of the gigantic structures of North America. Each can load 20,000 tons of grain in a day. To one there is attached a mill said to be the largest in the world. Covered by way of precaution with the long white shirt that stamped us at once as real millers, we wandered pleasantly enough amongst the millstones and bolters which transform the small grey wheat of the Pampas into fine white flour. Our Beauce farmers accustomed to heavy ears of golden wheat would not appreciate this species, which, moreover, requires careful washing. We were told that it is the richest in gluten of all known species. Diabetics know, therefore, for what to ask.

The first colonists, arriving by sea, naturally built their town close to the port. The capital now, in its prosperity, seeks refinement of every kind, and laments that the approach to the seacoast is disfigured by shipping, elevators, and wharves. The same might be said of any great seaport. Buenos Ayres in reality needs a new harbour, but it looks as if the present one could scarcely be altered.

It is naturally in this part of the town that you find the wretched shanties which are the first refuge of the Italian immigrants whilst waiting for an opportunity to start off again. Here is to be seen all the sordid misery of European towns with the accompaniment of the usual degrading features. I hasten to add that help--both public and private--is not lacking. The ladies of Buenos Ayres have organised different charitable works, and visit needy families; as generosity is one of the leading traits in the Argentine character, much good is done in this way. There are no external signs of the feminine degradation that disfigures our own public streets.

Why is it that this swarm of Italians should stop in crowded Buenos Ayres instead of going straight out to the Pampas, where labour is so urgently needed? I was told that the harvest frequently rots on the fields for want of reapers, and this in spite of wages that rise as high as twenty francs per day. There are a good many reasons for this. In the first place, such wages as this are only for a season of a few months or weeks. Then again, these Italian labourers complain that if they venture far from the city, they have no protection against the overbearing of officials, who are inclined to take advantage of their privileged position. I do not want to dwell on the point. The same complaints--but more detailed--reached me in Brazil. Both the Argentine and Brazilian Governments, to whom I submitted the charges brought against their representatives, protested that whenever any abuse could be proved against an agent he was proceeded against with the utmost rigour of the law. There can be no doubt as to the good faith of the authorities, who have every interest in encouraging the rapid growth of the population in the Pampas. Besides, it must be borne in mind that the elements of immigration are never of the highest quality. Still, I should not be surprised to learn that there was occasion for a stricter control in the direction I have indicated.

So far, I have said nothing of the beauties of the city. It is a pity that amongst the attractions of Buenos Ayres the sea cannot be counted. A level shore does not lend itself to decorative effect. A mediocre vegetation; water of a dirty ochre, neither red nor yellow; nothing to be found to charm the eye. So I saw the sea only twice during my stay at Buenos Ayres--once on arrival, and again when I left. During the summer heat, that section of the population which is not compelled to stay flees to Mar del Plata, the Trouville of Buenos Ayres, a charming conglomeration of beflowered villas on an ocean beach.

A perfectly healthy city. No expense has been spared to satisfy the demands of a good system of municipal sanitation. Avenues planted with trees, gardens and parks laid out to ensure adequate reserves of fresh air, are available to all, and lawns exist for youthful sports. The zo?logical and botanical gardens are models of their kind. A fine racecourse, surrounded by the green belt of foliage of the Argentine Bois de Boulogne, is known as Palermo.

A Frenchman, the genial M. Thays, well known amongst his European colleagues, has entire control of the plantations and parks of Buenos Ayres. M. Thays, who excels in French landscape gardening, takes delight in devoting his whole mind and life to his trees, his plants and flowers. He is ready at any moment to defend his charge against attacks--an attitude that is wholly superfluous, since the public of Buenos Ayres never lets slip an opportunity of testifying its gratitude to him.

Wherever he discovers a propitious site, the master-gardener plants some shoot which will one day be a joy to look upon. He has laid out and planted fine parks. He has large greenhouses at his disposal, and any prominent citizen, or any association popular or aristocratic can, for the asking, have the floral decorations needed for a f?te delivered at his door by the municipal carts.

In his search after rare plants for the enrichment of his town, M. Thays has visited equatorial regions--the Argentine, Bolivia, Brazil. As his ambition vaults beyond the boundaries of Buenos Ayres, he has conceived a project, already in process of execution, of founding a great national park, as in the United States, in which all the marvels of tropical vegetation may be collected. The Falls of Iguazzu--greater and loftier than those of Niagara--would be enclosed in this vast estate on the very frontiers of Brazil.

The trunk, if tapped with a cane, returns a hollow sound. The tree is, in fact, empty, needing only to be cut into lengths to give man all he needs for a trough. The Indian squaw uses it to wash her linen, and the wood, exposed to the double action of air and water, becomes as hard as cement. The unripe fruit, the size of a good apple, furnishes a white cream, which, if not quite the quality demanded for five o'clock tea at Rumpelmayer's, still supplies the natives with a savoury breakfast. Later, when the fruit comes to maturity, it bursts under the sun's rays into a large tuft of silky cotton, dotting the branches with white balls and furnishing admirable material for the birds with which to build their nests. It is for this reason that the species is known as the "false cotton-tree." The exceedingly fine thread produced by this tree is too short to be spun, but the Indians, and even Europeans, turn it to account in many different ways. Soft pillows and cushions are made with it, and I can speak personally of their comfort.

I cannot leave the Botanical Garden without noting the pleasing effect of the light trellises which are a feature of all large gardens here. In this fine climate, where winter's cold is practically unknown, neither shrubs nor flowers need the protection of glass. An arbour of trellis-work with gay flower-borders forms a winter garden without glass, in which sun and shade, cunningly blended, throw into delicate relief the beauties of the plants. It is not quite the open air, and neither is it the greenhouse. Let us call it a vast cage of decorative vegetation.

FOOTNOTES:

The census of 1904 shows only twenty-nine thousand.

The estuary, which is not a river, and which contains not a particle of silver, was thus named from a few native ornaments discovered in its bed by the first comers.

BUENOS AYRES

Botany and zo?logy are sister sciences. We leave the plants to inspect the beasts in the company of M. Thays, who is always glad to see his neighbour M. Onelli.

The governor of the Zo?logical Garden of Buenos Ayres is a phlegmatic little man, Franco-Italian in speech, and the more amusing in that his gay, caustic wit is clothed in a highly condensed, ironical form. What a pity that his animals, for whom he is father and mother, sister and brother, cannot appreciate his sallies! Not that it is by any means certain that they do not. It seems clear that they can enter into each other's feelings, if not thoughts, since an intimacy of the most touching kind exists between the man and inferior creation, to whose detriment the rights of biological priority have been reversed.

I should like to pause before the llamas, used as beasts of burden to carry a load of twenty-five kilogrammes apiece, or before the vicu?as, whose exquisite feathery fur is utilised for the motor-car, and whose private life would need to be told in Latin by reason of the officious interference of the Indian in matters that concern him not a whit.

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