Through Five Republics on Horseback | Page 5

THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC
The Argentine Republic has an area of one and a quarter million square
miles. It is 2,600 miles from north to south, and 500 miles at its widest
part. It is twelve times the size of Great Britain. Although the
population of the country is about seven millions, only one per cent, of
its cultivable area is now occupied, yet Argentina has an incomparable
climate.
It is essentially a cattle country. She is said to surpass any other nation
in her numbers of live stock. 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.