In 1911 the two largest Dreadnoughts of the world, the Rivadavia
and the Moreno, were launched for the Argentine Government. These
two battleships are half as powerful again as the largest British
Dreadnought.
CHAPTER III.
THE CRIOLLO VILLAGE.
The different centres of trade and commerce in the Argentine can
easily be reached by train or river steamer. Rosario, with its
140,000 inhabitants, in the north; Bahia Blanca, where there is the
largest wheat elevator in the world, in the south, and Mendoza, at
the foot of the Andes, several times destroyed by earthquake, five
hundred miles west - all these are more or less like the capital.
To arrive at an isolated village of the interior the traveller must
be content to ride, as I did, on horseback, or be willing to jolt
along for weeks in a wagon without springs. These carts are drawn by
eight, ten, or more bullocks, as the weight warrants, and are
provided with two very strong wheels, without tires, and often
standing eight and ten feet high. The patient animals, by means of a
yoke fastened to their horns with raw-hide, draw these carts through
long prairie grass or sinking morass, through swollen rivers or
oozing mud, over which malaria hangs in visible forms.
The voyager must be prepared to suffer a little hunger and thirst
on the way. He must sleep amongst the baggage in the cart, or on the
broader bed of the ground, where snakes and tarantulas creep and the
heavy dew saturates one through and through.
As is well known, the bullock is a slow animal, and these never
travel more than two or three miles an hour.
Time with the native is no object. The words, "With patience we win
heaven," are ever on his lips.
The Argentine countryman is decidedly lazy.
Darwin relates that he asked two men the question: "Why don't you
work?" One said: "The days are too long!" Another answered: "I am too
poor."
With these people nothing can succeed unless it is begun when the
moon is on the increase. The result is that little is accomplished.
You cannot make the driver understand your haste, and the bullocks
understand and care still less.
The mosquitoes do their best to eat you up alive, unless your body
has already had all the blood sucked out of it, a humiliating,
painful and disfiguring process. You must carry with you sufficient
food for the journey, or it may happen that, like me, you are only
able to shoot a small ring dove, and with its entrails fish out of
the muddy stream a monster turtle for the evening meal.
If, on the other hand, you pass a solitary house, they will with
pleasure give you a sheep.
