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Through Five Republics on Horseback

Through Five Republics on Horseback

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Chapter 1 BUENOS AYRES IN 1889.

Word Count: 3827    |    Released on: 06/12/2017

ky 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 passen

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 abou

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

ves the house a barnyard appearance, while the iron-barred windows below strongly suggest a prison. Strange yet attractive dwellings they are, lime-washed in various colors, the favorite shades seeming t

metimes the pretence of a struggle to blind the lookers-on, if there be any curious enough to interest themselves. This man in khaki is often "the terror of the innocent, the laughing-stock of the guilty." The poor man or the foreign sailor, if he stagger ever so little, is sure to be "run in." The Argentine law-keeper (?) is provided with both sword and revolver, but receives small remuneration, and as his salary is often tardily paid him, he augments it in this way when he cannot see a good opportunity of turning burglar or something worse on his own account. When he is low in funds he will accost the stranger, begging a cigarette, or inviting himself at your expense to the nearest cafe, as "the day is so unusually hot." After all, we must no

xcellent and worthy of

which decrees that ba

ld on Sundays, the vot

ic chu

such is the lax custom that everything will do to-morrow

for the number and extent of its tramways." [Footnote: Turner's "Argentina."] A writer in the Financial News says: "The pr

as a beautiful climate. For perhaps three hundred days out of ev

cts.; its almacenes, where one may buy a pound of sugar or a yard of cotton, a measure of charcoal (coal is there unknown) or a large sombrero, a package of tobacco (leaves over two feet long) or a pair of white hemp-soled shoes for yo

, or, more likely, $30. Although one hundred and seventy tons of sugar are annually grown in the country, that luxury is deci

orseback (for there wishes are horses, and beggars do ride), who piteously whines for help. This steed-riding fraternity all use invariably the same words: "Por el amor de Dios dame un centavo!" ("For the love of God give me a cent.") If you bestow it, he will call on his pat

hand on a boy's head giving him a benediction that he may be enab

,143.57. The Government takes forty per cent. of this, and divides the rest between a number of charitable and religious organizations, all, needless

erected in the vestibules of some of the churches,

curses. Tickets are bought by all, from the Senato

o customers at five cents a pail. The poorer classes have no other means of procuring this precious liquid. The water is kept in a corner of

his hands have been well wiped on its tail, which almost touches the ground. The other cans of the lechero contain a mixture known to him alone. I never analyzed it, but have remarked a chalky substance in the bottom of my glass. He does not profess to sell pure milk; that you can buy, but, of course, at a higher price, from the pure milk seller. In the cool of the afternoon he will bring round his cows, with bells on their necks and calves dragging behind. The calves are tied to the mothers' tails, and wear a muzzle. At a sh-h from the sidewalk he stops the

into which the horses often fall. There the driver will sometimes cruelly leave them, when, after his arm aches in using the whip, he finds the animal cannot rise. For the veriest trifle I have known men to smash the poor dumb brute's eyes out with the stock of the whip, and

r and thirst, for three consecutive days, before kind death, the sufferer's friend, released them. Looking on such sights, seeing every street urchin with coarse laugh and brutal jest jump on such an a

el natures? How often have I seen a poor horse fall between the shafts of some loaded cart of bricks or sand! Never once have I seen his harness undone and willing hands help him up, as in other civilized lands. No, the lashing of the cruel whip or the knife's poin

rry truthfulness still further, however, I must state that more than once I have known them bridged over with the putrefying remains of a horse in the last stages of de

iends of the departed one on their journey to the chacarita, or cemetery, some six miles out from the centre of the city. Cemeteries in Spanish America are divided into three enclosures. There is the "cemetery of heaven," "the cemetery of purgatory," and "the cemetery of hell." The location of the soul in the future is thus seen to be dependent on its location by the pries

and who has none?) go to the chacarita, and for a few pesos bargain with the black-robed priest waiting there, to deliver their precious dead out of Purgatory. If he sings the prayer the cost is double, b

them. November 1 is a special day for releasing thousands of souls out of Purgatory. We printed thousands of tracts and the workers started out to distribute them. By ten o'clock six of them

t there is great need for mission work. Of course Romanism in this and other cities is losing its old grip upon the people, and because of this the priest is putting forth superhuman effort to retain what he has. La Voz de la Iglesia ("The Voice of the Church"), the organ of the Bishop of Buenos Ayres, has lately publi

-five of whom conducted me bound. I received fifty blows on the head and 108 on the breast. I was pulled by the hair 23 times, and 30 persons spat in my face. Those who struck me on the upper part of the body were 6,666, and 100 Jews struck me on the head. I sighed 125 times. The wounds on the head numbered 20; from t

dreds being attacked and very many dying; we have had the bubonic pest in our midst; a bloody provincial revolution in Entre Rios; and now at the time of writing there is an outbreak of a serious cattle disease, and England has closed her ports against Argentine live stock. Of course, we do no

S AT THE PR

f Buenos Ayres. To-day passengers land in the centre of the city and step on "the most expensive s

re is here "the finest and costliest structure ever built, used exclusively by one newspaper, the home of La Prensa; the most magnificent opera house of the western hemisphere, erected by the government at the cost of ten million dollars; one of the largest banks in the world, and the handsomest and largest clubhouse in the world." [Footnote: John Barrett, In Munsey's Magazine.] The entrance fee to this club is $1,500. The Y.M.C.A. is now erecting a commodious building, for which $200,000 has already been raised, and there is a Y.W.C.A., with a membership of five hundred. Dr. Clark, in "The Continent of Opportunity," says, "More millionaires live in Buenos

theatres and 50 moving picture shows. Five thousand vessels enter the port of Buenos Ayres every year, and the export of meat in

t saw them, were roughly cobbled, now they are asphalt paved, and made into beautiful avenues, such as would grace any capital of the

tary white-tiled tambos, where pure milk and butter are sold, have taken

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