The Bovril Co. alone kills
100,000 a year. On its broad plains there are estandas, or cattle
ranches, of fifty and one hundred thousand acres in extent, and on
these cattle, horses and sheep are herded in millions. Argentina has
over twenty-nine million cattle, seventy-seven million sheep, seven
and a half million horses, five and a half million mules, a quarter-
million of donkeys, and nearly three million swine and three million
goats. Four billion dollars of British capital are invested in the
country.
Argentina has sixteen thousand miles of railway. This has been
comparatively cheap to build. On the flat prairie lands the rails are
laid, and there is a length of one hundred and seventy-five miles
without a single curve.
Three hundred and fifty thousand square miles of this prairie is
specially adapted to the growing of grain. In 1908-9 the yield of
wheat was 4,920,000 tons. Argentina has exported over three million
tons of wheat, over three million tons of corn, and one million tons
of linseed, in one year, while "her flour mills can turn out 700,000
tons of flour a year." [Footnote: Hirst's Argentina, 1910.]
"It is a delight often met with there to look on a field of twenty
square miles, with the golden ears standing even and close together,
and not a weed nor a stump of a tree nor a stone as big as a man's
fist to be seen or found in the whole area."
"To plant and harvest this immense yield the tillers of the ground
bought nine million dollars of farm implements in 1908. Argentina's
record in material progress rivals Japan's. Argentina astonished the
world by conducting, in 1906, a trade valued at five hundred and
sixty million dollars, buying and selling more in the markets of
foreign nations than Japan, with a population of forty millions, and
China, with three hundred millions." [Footnote: John Barrett, in
Munsey's Magazine]
To this Land of Promise there is a large immigration. Nearly three
hundred thousand have entered in one single year. About two hundred
thousand have been going to Buenos Ayres, the capital, alone, but in
1908 nearly five hundred thousand landed there. [Footnote: "Despite
the Government's efforts, emigration from Spain to South America
takes alarming proportions. In some districts the men of the working
classes have departed in a body. In certain villages in the
neighborhood of Cadiz there arc whole streets of deserted houses."-
Spanish Press.] In Belgium 220 people are crowded into the territory
occupied by one person in Argentina, so yet there is room. Albert
Hale says: "It is undeniable that Argentina can give lodgment to
100,000,000 people, and can furnish nourishment, at a remarkably
cheap rate, for as many more, when her whole area is utilized."
Argentina's schools and universities are the best in the Spanish-
speaking world. In Buenos Ayres you will find some of the finest
school buildings in the world, while 4,000 students attend one
university.
Buenos Ayres, founded in 1580, is to-day the largest city in the
world south of the equator, and is "one of the richest and most
beautiful places of the world." The broad prairies around the city
have made the people "the richest on earth."
Kev. John F. Thompson, for forty-five years a resident of that
country, summarizes its characteristics in the following paragraph:
"Argentina is a land of plenty; plenty of room and plenty of food.
If the actual population were divided into families of ten persons,
each would have a farm of eight square miles, with ten horses, fifty-
four cows, and one hundred and eighty-six sheep, and after they had
eaten their fill of bread they would have half a ton of wheat and
corn to sell or send to the hungry nations."
CHAPTER I.
BUENOS AYRES IN 1889.
In the year 1889, after five weeks of ocean tossing, the steamer on
which I was a passenger anchored in the River Plate, off Buenos
Ayres. Nothing but water and sky was to be seen, for the coast was
yet twenty miles away, but the river was too shallow for the steamer
to get nearer. Large tugboats came out to us, and passengers and
baggage were transhipped into them, and we steamed ten miles nearer
the still invisible city. There smaller tugs awaited us and we were
again transhipped. Sailing once more toward the land, we soon caught
sight of the Argentine capital, but before we could sail nearer the
tugs grounded. There we were crowded into flat-bottomed, lug-sailed
boats for a third stage of our landward journey. These boats conveyed
us to within a mile of the city, when carts, drawn by five horses,
met us in the surf and drew us on to the wet, shingly beach. There
about twenty men stood, ready to carry the females on their backs on
to the dry, sandy shore, where was the customs house. The population
of the city we then entered was about six hundred thousand souls.
After changing the little gold I carried for the greasy paper
currency of the country, I started out in search of something to eat.
Eventually I found myself before a substantial meal. At a table in
front of me sat a Scotsman from the same vessel. He had arrived
before me (Scotsmen say they are always before the Englishmen) and
was devouring part of a leg of mutton. This, he told me, he had
procured, to the great amusement of Boniface, by going down on all
fours and baa-ing like the sheep of his native hills. Had he waited
until I arrived he might have feasted on lamb, for my voice was not
so gruff as his. He had unconsciously asked for an old sheep. I think
the Highlander in that instance regretted that he had preceded the
Englishman.
