Show OUR VR GREAT SOUTH AMERICAN competitor r buenos ayres october 8 1898 the argentine republic amazes me acted to find it something like the cited ted states but it is as different as ons are different from pumpkins it seems to me that the ted states is the lemon and the aratine the pumpkin but oftener the felted cited states is the bigger of the two e have a booming country things yo boom in the argentine but the caracter acter and conditions of prosperity e entirely different here we raise ne e wheat so does the argent argentine ine we ise e wool the argentine far outstrips t in sheep we have the more land it the argentine has a territory which almost all good for something and Is 6 in area at least one third the size bur country without alaska and our fw Is islands landis the argentine is longer tatt in the north to south than the unit states it is almost twice as long wie we could fit it up at the corners rist t it around and spread it over our soitry y from east to west placing the rest est edge of patagonia at new york borders of brazil and bolivia would y some distance beyond salt lake if we could cut it up into patch irk k pieces and fit them upon the ter fory ry of the united states every inch i our uj land east of the mississippi fetilde id be coir covered ered and the remnants llad id be larger than the area of a num of our states west of that river ie argentine republic is twelve times big as great britain it is five hes es as large as france and it is beater ter in area that the states of mis appi I 1 louisiana texas new mexico azona zona california utah colorado and sag combined this wonderful land ilzade ade up of mountains and plains mountainous country is campara small but its plains are almost ft largest of the world extending from not lands of the tropics on the edge A to the cool terraced pampas pampa thern patagonia ephe best part of the argentine re kllc lic have been built up by the won gotful ul systems of streams which has t outlet in the river plate these fers rs are the uruguay Ur aguay paraguay pil etayo and parana they form a vast anage age system which has been carry 1 ite me lands down from the mountains ages and building up this country fey drain a country larger than the of the mississippi and in fact ge as half of the whole united e best lands of the argentine lie ile the rivers the most of at the cois a great greald plain gently ge sl sloping opting in hiorth orth C and central part from the an ta t these streams if you could see rio M de la plata or river plate you 10 realize what a great earth builder k it to is an immense river miles at its mouth and miles long bo point where is it formed by the s adon id on of the uruguay and parana so full ot of soil that it drops of mud every hour ho ur into its bed to ie a toad load so 00 great that it 11 you should floiad it on to two horse wagons it would take a line of teams sixty miles ong to carry it I 1 entered the rio de la platoon plata on a german steamer in which I 1 sailed from the falkland islands to montevideo the waters of the sea were stained by the mud long before we reached the mouth of the river it took us all night to sail across it and in the morning we were still some distance stance dil from crom montevideo when I 1 took my bath I 1 found the tub filled with what hooked like split pea soup and when I 1 let the fluid out there was a sediment in the bottom of the tub so thick that I 1 left root foot prints in it ft quite as plain as those which frightened crusoe ln in l n the sand of his desert island the sea captains tell me that these enormous masses of mud are rapidly filling up the bed of the rio de la plata its depth varies from thirteen to thirty s six ix feet but it has many mamy banks and shoals this silt has bias given tt a bottom of 0 f fine sand the big steamers which come to buenos ayres often have to ploy their way through the mud and already the people are talking of a jetty system similar to that which eades built at the mouth of the mississippi I 1 can give div e you a better idela idea of the Argen fisne republic by comparing it with parts of the united states take the great valley of the rio de la plata as you find it here and for hundreds of miles to the west and north of buenos ayres if you will imagine yourself in illinois south of springfield along the ohio and mississippi rivers you will b in a country much like this you must however cut out the cornfields leave out the woods and make the lands all pasture take away forty nine farm houses out of every fifty tear fear down all the barns and in the places of our neat country homes put huts of mud and straw and bricks sometimes thatched eu aad n d sometimes roofed with galvanized iron iiron then put here and there a larger group of low buildings surrounded by flowers and trees belonging to the rich proprietor ebor and you have the basin of the alo de la llata you must spot the landscape with sheep and cattle in flocks docks of thousands and aird imagine vast fields for the farms often include tens of thousands of acres and one man may own many square miles of land further south the Argent argentine ne is a ta ble land very like clor northern thern nebraska it 49 covered with sand and grass streams awen twenty ty feet dep deep and eight feet wide cut their way through crumbling banks the land rises in terres terraces from the sea bo the andes the soil is poor and much of it ts a sandy plain upon whilce nothing will grow except by irrigation agate going from the basin bf the ro rao de la ia plata westward the land rises gently to the province of cordoba one of the seats of the old civilization and still further west to mendoza in the toot foot hills of the andes cordoba CoT doba Is devoted largely to grazing it haab has a chain running through it and it Is much like west virginia save that it is not wooded the province of mendoza is on the plateau of the andes andel it is a grape and wine itne country its vines producing a ton of grapes to the acre and every twenty vines a gall gallon 0 of t wine its general character is like that of pennsylvania about sk and york going further northward the seen scenery ry of the argentine changes you get into the tropics the province of raises quantities of sugar cane it produces 96 95 per cent of the sugar consumed in the argentine lia its soil boll will yield one hundred bushe lei of cora to the acre much of it is wooded wit tropical trees it is mountainous having an average elevation as aa high AS denver and a general appearance much like that of the country along the tabe pennsylvania railroad at the conae shoe bend here the streams vms are ari dry half the year and boiling torrents dur ing the remainder the val leys leya are hot in the summer and war warns 10 to in the winter buenos ayres go g 0 there to get away from the cold a than thing gehi that seems ridiculous to me for the abe city Is s never much colder bhan savannah or atlanta in addina to these sections there are other lands still stil nearer bolivia heavily wooded the chaco and Forra formosa oft territories ri for instance they are tropical and wild and filled with half naked indians these theme countries have been life lib tle tie explored and are comparatively un known further west in the andes to 1 a cote try unlike anything in the united sta states tea it is both mountainous and tropical the ahn timber ber here disappears and mineral riches come to the surface the finest of marble and the most beautiful onyx I 1 have ever seen aden exist in this region here are mountains said aa id to bo be rich in gold and silver mafte mines are now being worked the mining engl engineers of the hll and others are prospecting in the theae mountains the preat great drawbacks d we the inaccessibility of the country W lack of water and the bt carrying mining machinery abt into ft r 1 the wheat region of the ArCe argentina to i comparatively a small savall part par of AM whole territory I 1 will write of tf it more fully in tie the future it has ly north of buenos ayres and am east erast oi 04 cordoba in the basin of thi the parana and also in the province of sartre ric between the uruguay and parana rivers rivera this country is like alan the ohio river it is divided lato comparatively small tracts and it largely farmed by colonies of foreigners such is a birds eye view of atoe e argentine republic I 1 will fill out ait afie picture in letters describing parts of the country and the 1 industries the argentine now has 0 4 ale it grows fast it ha has rel thirty years and iw jian claim they will have h 1 more than aa dabinett da inett last year more than one third dm of jaw the people in the country ase 40 foreigners and 70 per cent of tait are italians more italians we are cam ing and I 1 see from a statement in this mornings paper that king humbert that italians will emigrate next year eighteen per cent of the immigrants are spanish and 4 per cent Pr french enich this makes 92 per cent of all the immigrants of the tale latin race the remAl remaining ning 8 per cent Is made up of british russians danes swiss and portuguese until lately there were so few americans that they were not worthy of consideration now americans americana of the better class are coming in and they will form an important factor in the argentine the portuguese as a rule do not stay the men of the other classes remain in a generation or oa so they marry argentine girls and become gentines argentines Ar and out ot the whole is being evolved the argentine type of the future these argentine people are not like the south americans of the west coast they have no great strain of indian mood blood running through them they are of almost pure european extraction they are not spanish not french Fr enich not italian Ift lian not anglo saxon they are evolving a combination of all these with the latin strain predominating lust just as in america Ameri cla we are forming a type with the anglo saxon strain in great ascendancy I 1 think ho vever that bhat our type is tar far super superior lor to any that can be produced here the change in the argentine goes on very rapidly at the beginning of this century the old families were spanish and portuguese since then they have been intermarrying Inter marrying with the english scotch germans and americans and italians you can see this in the names of the distinguished gentines argentines Ar admiral brown one of the famous naval officers basof was of english extraction the livingston family whose ladies are noted for their wealth and beauty is in the fourth generation from the liv of new york PAll grine a former president and one of the most able men of the country has english blood in him the grandfather of the chief of police of buenos ayres was an american the father of Tron another prominent argentine was a new orleans man and there are many other leading families in whose veins flow rich strains of irish and italian blood already the spanish type has been materially modified indeed with its large percentage of foreign born this country is today as cosmopolitan as any country centry of the world it if you could be blindfolded and upon one of the magic carpets of fairyland transported in the winking aking of an eye to the business parts of buenos ayres ayrea you could not tell where you were by looking at the faces or dress of the people if you should be dropped into the stock exchange for instance you might if you were deaf imagine yourself in new york or london you tool could not imagine yourself in buenos ayres if your ears should be suddenly opened you would still be at a loss the cries of the brokers would be in spanish but from all around would come came a babble of It italian allain french and english it if you went outside your situation would be even worse you would hear the street sweepers swearing at each other in italian english merchants discussing trade in anglo saxon and groups of basques on every street corner gabbling babbling gab bling at each other in spanish you would hear much french and you might meet with russians poles or even with turks this large mixture of foreigners keeps the argentine up to date new ideas are coming in from everywhere and the latest improvements are to be found nearly an all the town have more or less electric lights many have good streets and their are excellent exe ellent railroad connections with the with the leading centers the argentine now has mues miles of railroads with a capital of half a billion dollars buenos ayres has trains by which you can go to any of the larger cities in a nights ride and there are sleeping cars on all lines this city is as big as boston rosario the next in size in the republic is you cango can go to bed in the cars at buenos ayres and awake in rosario it is the same with bahia blanca the metropolis of the south argentine the trains have sleepers and within a short time we shall be able to cross the continent from the atlantic to the pacific without stepping outside the cars the steamship accommodations are equally good I 1 came here from montevideo in a steamer like the puritan and pilgrim which run between new york and boston I 1 went to bed in the ship and awoke at buenos ayres docks the fare was 5 and I 1 think the argentine steamers gave me more for the money that I 1 get at home I 1 had a good state room the ship was lighted by electric lights and the passengers were served an excellent dinner with good claret and a buttonhole boquett boquet without extra charge in the morning a steward brought to my cabin a cup of coffee and a roll and more than that carried by baggage out to the custom house it if I 1 remember right the meals were charged extra on the new york and boston boats there are several mail steamers a week from here to europe there are others which go south through the strait of magellan and about the west coast therease Ther eare ships which will take you two thousand miles on the rivers into eheart th of the interior of brazil and twice a week you may ride up the parana to the capital of paraguay four thousand vessels engaged in foreign trade go inand in and out ou of the ports of the argentine every year and the volume of imports and exports in 1896 amounted to more than millions of hard american gold dollars one fourth of thle this commerce was with great britain the country that does more than half of the whole ocean car crying trade of the argentine she sent 40 per cent of the imports germany coming next and italy next after these came france land and belgium and then them the united states in things bought of the argentine france cornea comes first belgium second england third or te ermany fourth and the united states fifth our purchases amount to about six million dollars a year and our foreign trade is just about 7 per cent of the whole nearly all ot the business is in foreign hands the capital of the business houses and COMP companies aniels amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars and their establishments are run on business principles the foreign banks alone have a capital of twenty five million dollars and I 1 iam am told that nearly all of them pay wg big dividends P the argentine people are up to date in an intellectual way the government spends ten million dollars a year on its schools it employs eight thousand teachers and it has over a quarter of a million school ch ildrem there are a number of high schools ahr three ee universities two schools of agriculture a school of mines and thirty five normal schools both girls and boys attend these schools there are women teachers some of whom oame out from the united states years since to inaugurate the normal school when sarmiento ww was president of the argentine republic a decade or so oo ago he made a study of the public school systems 0 of the world and decided that that used in michigan was the best he imported a number of highbred high bred yankee and now the argentine te 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