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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by A. W. Boote & Co., Buenos Aires._ A TYPICAL HOUSE IN CORDOBA PROVINCE.]
We tramped through the dimly lit village and heard the songs of Spain and Italy streaming from the cafes. We saw the crowd of merry-makers packing into the train to return to Cordoba. And when the train, a streak of light, had snorted into the blackness till in the distance it appeared like a crawling glowworm, we got chairs from out of the private car and sat beneath the stars and smoked our pipes, and wondered what was happening in England. At first there was warmth in the air. But the chill of midnight had come, and the gra.s.shoppers had ceased their song, before we climbed to bed.
CHAPTER XIV
BAHIA BLANCA AND THE COUNTRY BEYOND
If I were suddenly asked to name the town which has most rapidly sprung ahead during the last few years, Bahia Blanca would at once jump to my lips.
It is 350 miles south of the River Plate, and if you searched the coast line for six hundred miles below Buenos Aires it is only here you would find a natural harbour capable of receiving the largest of steamers.
With the gradual silting of the River Plate, which, notwithstanding constant dredging, will be a constant handicap to the shipping of the capital and Rosario, Bahia Blanca, with advantages which neither of the other two towns possesses, will undoubtedly become the real Liverpool of Argentina.
In 1880 the place had a population of less than 2,000. To-day its population is 70,000, and it is increasing rapidly. Already it has third place in commercial importance amongst the cities of the country, and its ambition is to rival Buenos Aires itself.
Old timers--men who have been in the place a dozen years--waxed enthusiastic to me about the way in which an unpaved village, built on a flat, dusty, treeless waste, has become a city of broad paved streets and plazas, with imposing public buildings, public gardens, electric tramways, electric light, and an excellent water supply.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A STREET IN BAHIA BLANCA]
There was something exhilarating in driving in a motor-car along a busy thoroughfare, with big shops on either side, and with clanging tramcars picking up and dropping pa.s.sengers, and to be reminded that seven years before the place was quite a wilderness. The way in which some men had made money quickly made the mouth water when one was shown a plot of land which had originally been purchased for a few dollars, sold a few years later for 10,000 dollars, and which had changed hands only a month or two later for 30,000 dollars.
Though open to the scourge of disagreeable sand-storms--I experienced one during my visit--the town is well placed, with fine open s.p.a.ces; and though the public park is a little "raw," the fact that there is a park at all, with excellent drives and many trees, is the wonderful thing. I dined one night at an excellent hotel, and afterwards accompanied some friends to a wine hall, where men brought their wives and children and witnessed a pleasant kinematograph entertainment. Of course there is an Argentine Club, and, though without the sedate restfulness which English folk like to feel is the characteristic of their clubs, its dimensions and luxuriance provide a building which would be a credit to any town three times its size. Bahia Blanca has a model munic.i.p.ality, and, with all respect to the Spanish-Italian Argentines, I believe the secret is that the development of the town has been chiefly in the hands of Englishmen.
With the opening of the country, fresh areas of land placed under cultivation and with thousands of miles lying at the back capable of wheat growing and cattle raising, Bahia Blanca is swiftly coming into its own. The land was practically useless so long as there was no transport, but now, with the Great Southern Railway, the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway and other lines converging upon the town, every year marks an increase in trade. For instance, in 1901 seventy vessels were cleared from the port; in 1912 there were four hundred and twenty-two.
In the same two years the shipments in wool jumped from 26,123 tons to 55,552; the number of hides from 394 to 77,401; the tons of hair from 3 to 248; and the tons of cereals from 188,875 to 1,747,702.
Let honour go where honour is due. It was the coming of the railways which gave Bahia Blanca its leap forward. In 1884 the Great Southern Railway first pushed its rails so far south. They ran through a country which, loosely, might be described as desert. The bringing of the railway was like putting new life into the desert. _Estancias_ dotted the landscape. In 1885 an insignificant mole was built by the Great Southern to receive its own materials, but this mole has developed into the present Port of Engineer White--called after the man who built it--which deals with over a million tons of public traffic yearly. This port is a little over four miles from Bahia Blanca, and has berths for ten vessels of less draught. I climbed through the two grain elevators, stacked with 26,000 tons of wheat in sacks. By means of electric bands grain can be conveyed to eight vessels at a time, and in the busy season ships have been known to take over five thousand tons in a little over six hours. Being a place of yesterday"s growth all the newest appliances are to be found, including thirty electric cranes, powerful tugs, floating grain elevators. Indeed, the Southern company admit to an expenditure on the port of 2,000,000.
But the port made by the Buenos Aires and Pacific Railway Company, Puerto Galvan, occupying a position of fine natural advantage on the estuary of the bay and lying a mile or two across the flat from Engineer White, has also to be seen. At high tide there is a mean depth of twenty-eight feet, and plenty of good anchorage is in the mainway.
Puerto Galvan is five miles from Bahia Blanca, and to a great extent has been built on reclaimed swampy ground. I see the day when warehouses and further elevators will cover this piece of reclaimed mudbank, and it should never be forgotten that Mr. Stevens, the engineer, a man of great ability and much modesty, has performed a fine piece of work. The port has accommodation for twelve ocean-going steamers, and the berths, which have a total length of over 4,000 feet, have been constructed with a view to the rapid handling of cargo. Here again the appliances, elevators to handle 8,000 tons a day, thirty-six cranes, traversers, capstans, are all electrically driven. The total effective power amounts to 4,265 horse-power. The port and the shunting yards are all lit at night with electricity, and ships can be illuminated. There are special facilities for the embarkation of cattle. Large bonded warehouses are in course of construction. There is a flour mill with a capacity of 100 tons a day. Large storage tanks have been erected for the acc.u.mulation of crude oil, an important provision in a country so deficient in coal.
I looked across the sweep lying between Puerto Galvan and Engineer White, and visioned the day when it will be occupied with warehouses and industrial enterprises, for oil fuel and electric power can be quickly and cheaply supplied.
One morning I visited the Victoria Wool Market, long rows of well-built sheds, where not only wool but cereals and general camp produce are sold. I doubt if anywhere there is a similar market quite so large, for it has a floor area of 484,000 square feet and a storage capacity of 50,000 tons. Close by are the deposits to receive the Mendoza wines, which will have a profitable European sale when once the supply grows beyond the Argentine demand. Then there are deposits for the storage of alfalfa. The spread of development was revealed by the remarks which came in reply to my inquiries. "Oh, that was built last year"; "This was erected a couple of years ago, but we are going to make extensions"; "Five years ago we thought this place big enough, but we are going to pull it down and put up something ten times the size." Here was commercial progress expanding monthly. Here was a town which had been little more to me than a name on the South American coast before I visited it--and I consider myself a travelled man--and when I saw its energy and its growth I wondered how much the great industrial populations of crowded Europe knew of what was taking place so many thousands of miles across the sea.
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE ELEVATORS AT INGENIERO WHITE.]
The success of Bahia Blanca lies in the back country known as the pampa.
I journeyed across it in a trip from Mendoza to Bahia Blanca, and, as the name denotes, it is a vast featureless plain. Most of it is naturally fertile, but even regions that are sandy will be productive in the growing of alfalfa, which seems specially suitable, and which will not only maintain herds of cattle, but is profitable as a feeding stuff to be exported. As yet the pampa has been little more than scratched.
From the railway cars the idea is obtained that the whole of the country is converted to the use of man. Ten or twenty miles beyond the line you reach desert--desert so far as use is concerned, though the illimitable expanse of waving gra.s.s tells the tale of future possibilities. Wherever the railways stretch their arms there is cultivation, for the ever spreading population follows quickly on the laying down of the rails.
I have heard people talk about the monotony of the pampa. But this territory has a special fascination of its own. There is a bigness, an immensity, an unendingness which lays hold of the imagination. The great silence, save for the play of the wind amongst the long gra.s.s, seizes the fancy. Sunrise and sunset come and go in a wonderful glory. At the birth of day all the gra.s.s sparkles with dew; the softest colours seem to brush the world. When the sun is up, and blazes from a sky with all the blue burnt out of it, a sort of oppressive hot hush rests upon the world. The long gra.s.s seems to drowse beneath the pitiless glare. You can travel for hundreds of miles and never see a hillock or a tree or a beast, or hear a bird. But into this land man is slowly but persistently penetrating. To folk who live at home the life seems deadening. Yet men come to love it, not pa.s.sionately but clingingly, so that many a man who has "made his pile" and returned home to spend it in ease begins to crave for the pampa, and he is not content until he visits it again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: PLAZA RIVERDAVIA, BAHIA BLANCA.]
Gradually this area is being transformed. _Estancias_, with their eternal clump of trees and inevitable windmill pump, break the line of the horizon. Cattle stray over the prairie. The mud hovels of the colonists are black specks, and when you reach them you find that a big slice of the land has been given to the plough and is fenced with wire.
Here also are the sheep farms, and, as I have indicated, Bahia Blanca is the chief market for wool. Yet sheep rearing in the Argentine, extensive though it is, may be said to be stationary. This is not because the limits of expansion have been reached, but simply because cattle and wheat have been found more profitable. The quality of wool, inferior to that of Australia, may have something to do with the restriction. The constant tendency is toward hair, and the natural condition of wool is only maintained by the importation of English sheep. Then the animals are disposed to be gaunt rather than good meat producers. These are drawbacks which have had their influence on breeding as a money-making business. But the Argentines are a practical people, and everything connected with agriculture they tackle in a scientific manner. That the consequence of their experiments in cross breeding will be the production of an acclimatised sheep, valuable for wool or mutton or both, I have no doubt. Farther south toward Patagonia, where the climate is more temperate and where there is fodder, I look upon as one of the great sheep tracks of the world. The European market for chilled mutton will be a spur to sheep-breeding.
Indeed, there are indications that the country at the back of Bahia Blanca is being appreciated as the sheep lands. It has been found that English sheep do better here than elsewhere. The Lincoln, Leicester, Romney Marsh, and Merino sheep do well. There is a good opening in this area for the British immigrant with money. Though there are something approaching one hundred million sheep in the Republic, there is room for hundreds of millions more. But the indifferent strain, consequent on a long-woolled Spanish breed having run wild for over two hundred years, must be eradicated if Argentina is going to secure and hold a foremost place in the wool markets of the world. I have been told this has been done during the last half century, but I am by no means convinced. For a long time the West Riding of Yorkshire had a prejudice against Argentine wool. This no longer exists. The preference is given to Australian wool not for any patriotic reasons, but simply because it is better.
Argentina has for some time been attracting breeders from New Zealand, and they have done much, by the importation of stock from England, to improve the quality. At present three out of every four sheep stations are in the hands of men of British name. You can strike a line from a little north of Bahia Blanca, and then reckon that most of the country lying south, right down to Patagonia, is suitable for sheep. But it is not all of equal value. Sheep that are turned out on the alfalfa lands provide good mutton, but the wool is inferior. The fine gra.s.ses of the near south seem inclined to make coa.r.s.e wool; yet careful crossing is doing much to prevent this. Still, I am strongly disposed to agree with M. Bernandez, that there is no reason why either the coa.r.s.e or fine wools now produced should be abandoned. The coa.r.s.e, long wool will always have its use not only in rough goods, but also in the warp of fine cloths, which in the great mechanical looms has to be extremely strong. He looks to the establishment of woollen manufactories in the Argentine, and, as a consequence, the development on a colossal scale of all the breeds.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A BAHIA BLANCA BANK.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE TOWN HALL AT BAHIA BLANCA.]
CHAPTER XV
THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE
It is, as I have abundantly shown, a simple truism to say that Argentina is one of the princ.i.p.al agricultural countries in the world. But how far is the country going to advance?
In the great industrial lands of the earth the tendency of population is away from the land. But the increase of population means a bigger demand for food. The time is swiftly coming when the United States will have difficulty in growing sufficient to feed her own people, and must look elsewhere. The wheat area in Canada is immense, but its extent is now well known. The wheat lands in the Dominion are travelling farther north, and though a short summer with long hours of sunshine are sufficient speedily to raise crops, there is the danger--and it is foolish to close one"s eyes to it--that a summer frost may produce a sudden shortage in the world"s wheat supply. Russia is capable of further development in wheat growing, and there are huge possibilities in Siberia, which, physically, is a twin country to Canada. But the Russians are the poorest of farmers, and the agricultural progress of the land of the Tsar is doubtful.
Then there are plains of Australia which ought to be doing much more in food production. But it cannot be said that the native-born Australian is really fond of life in the back blocks. Anyway, the disproportionate size of the urban to the rural populations would indicate he is not.
Though of late years something has been done to stimulate immigration, the result is not sufficient to meet the needs of a country like the Commonwealth.
One reason is that Australia is so much farther off than Canada, and there is a belief amongst the country people of Great Britain that the prospects of success are not so immediate. Further, there is the unfortunate but undoubted and growing idea amongst Englishmen that Australians, as a whole, are not kindly disposed to new-comers, and that the fresh arrival has a rough time of it before he shakes himself down to the fresh life. I do not discuss these points. I mention their existence as some reason why Australia is not able to play the part it is ent.i.tled to play as a great wheat country.
Now the best wheat lands of Argentina lie within the semi-tropical or temperate zone. I have already explained why it does not have the attractions which British colonies can offer to the man with grit and muscle who desires to secure independence. But it does draw to its sh.o.r.es a big army of workers from Italy and Spain, without the ambition of Britons and content to be the servants of other men. Labour is comparatively cheap. The country is easy to reach. The drift is not to the towns but to the agricultural districts. The range for wheat growing is boundless. But the possibility of drought is not to be overlooked.
The money invested in agriculture falls short of that invested in live stock. But there are more persons directly interested in the growing of cereals, and I am one of those who believe it counts more for the genuine, happy prosperity of a nation that a large proportion of the population should be attached to the soil than when greater wealth is secured by a smaller number. In my opinion it would be better if there were easier means for the comparatively small holder, the man with anything from three hundred to a thousand acres, to settle. I was not unconscious of a movement, such as there is in Australia, to break up the big estates, but at the present it is nebulous, merely something in the air; and though the Latins, when they act, will act swiftly, the type of colonist and labourer who lands, though he votes Socialist when he gets the chance, is not of the brand to take vigorous political action to secure land. His conditions are improved in comparison within his native country, and he is inclined for the present to be content.
There is, however, a rustling amongst the leaves. There is a feeling amongst Argentine politicians that the peon and the colonist have little chance of becoming owners of small farms unless they are a.s.sisted by credit banks. Various proposals have been made; but the one now before the Chamber of Deputies, fathered by the Minister of Agriculture, provides for the establishment of agricultural banks and the erection of warehouses to receive produce as a pledge against cash advances.
It is reckoned that between 8,000,000 and 9,000,000 is necessary to set the scheme on its legs, and the idea is that the State should find half the money and private capital provide the other half.
Further, as most of the best land is in large estates and private ownership, there is a growing public opinion that the Government would do well if it bought up some of these enormous _estancias_ at their present value, cut them into small holdings, and let them on the deferred payment system to colonists. This would require enormous capital, State provided. But, human nature being what it is, men in one part of the country are opposed to finding money for the benefit of another part. They do not look upon it as a national investment which will bring good return to the State as a whole so much as increasing the productivity and population in particular parts. However, some progress has been made when you get a general consensus that, unbounded though Argentina"s capabilities are, closer settlement is necessary to provide ballast in the economic progress of the nation.
"Give us of the best; let us be up-to-date and scientific; let us have the latest twentieth-century equipment so that Argentina may have first place"--that is the temper of the people toward agriculture. Much has been done, an amazing amount, to place Argentina in the front line of agrarian education. In giving praise there is, I know, always the danger of overdoing it. And whilst the Argentine has a good conceit of himself, he has the quality, not always readily discernible in a new country, of being able to see his weak points and being willing to learn. Here is a frank statement which I cull from the _a.n.a.les de la Sociedad Rural Argentine_: "Up to the present agriculture has hardly been carried on in a scientific, regular, methodic, reasonable and economic manner with the endeavour to get from the soil all the benefit and yield it can give. The empiric methods of cultivation often employed up to now have given profits on account of the fertility of the land, its exuberance, which, without great expense, yields a return far larger than the general average known in other agricultural countries."
Less than forty years ago it took Argentina all its time to grow enough wheat to supply its own needs, though its population was only a third what it is at present. Within the memory of many Argentina had to import wheat. Indeed, as near as 1876 thousands of tons of flour had to be brought into the country. It is the recollection of this, in comparison with the conditions to-day, which proclaims better than any attempts at fine writing the strides which have been made. Look at the jumps. In 1888 the crops covered some 6,076,500 acres, representing an increase of 4,626,500 acres in sixteen years, an addition that seven years later had reached 6,012,000 acres. By 1895 the total was 12,088,000. Then came the wave. By 1908 the total was 43,692,228 acres, an increase of 31,603,728 acres in thirteen years, or 261 per cent. In 1911 the area cultivated was 54,258,772 acres, and at the time of writing it must be approaching 70,000,000 acres. That tells its own story. Yet only one-sixth of the country suitable for cultivation has been broken by the plough. The value of the princ.i.p.al products of Argentine agriculture, wheat, maize, oats and linseed, for 1913 is estimated at something over 80,000,000.
One strong advantage Argentina has is that the crops are spread over an extensive area. They are grown in regions so far distant from one another that no fear is felt at any time of a total loss of the harvest.
The Republic now sends her products to countries that were her purveyors up to a few years ago. In the production of linseed she has first place amongst the nations. In maize she figures in the third place, coming after North America and Austria-Hungary; but in export of maize she comes first. In the production of wheat Argentina holds the sixth position, coming after the United States, Russia, France, India, and Austria-Hungary; but in export of wheat and flour she has first rank. We in Britain have Canada so much before our eyes that we a.s.sume her progress is unequalled. The _a.n.a.les de la Sociedad Rural Argentine_ is responsible for some interesting comparisons directed to show that the Argentine farmer can produce for 43s. 5d. an acre what it costs the Canadian farmer 88s. 4d. to produce. Whilst the occupancy of land has increased 75 per cent. in thirty years in Canada, it has increased by 284 per cent. in Argentina. Whilst Canada has 20,000,000 more acres occupied than Argentina, the Republic is far ahead of the Dominion in the value of her live stock.