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The Hotel at Alta Gracia 170 A Typical House in Cordoba Province 174 A Street in Bahia Blanca 176 The Elevators at Ingeniero White 180 Plaza Riverdavia, Bahia Blanca 182 A Bahia Blanca Bank 184 The Town Hall at Bahia Blanca 184 Conveying Alfalfa to a Railway Station 194 The Entrance to the Park at Mendoza 200 The Promenade in Mendoza Park 202 The Grape Harvest in the Suburbs of Mendoza 204 In a Mendoza Bodega 208 "Chico" in Charge 212 A Corner of the English Club at Mendoza 212 The Hotel at Inca 218 The Inca Bridge in the Andes 220 General View of an Estancia 224 A Gaucho and his Family 226 La Rambla, Mar Del Plata 234 The Esplanade, Mar Del Plata 238 A Historic Building: "Casa Independencia," at Tucuman 250 The Statue of San Martin at Tucuman 256 The Longest Girder Bridge in the Republic, near Santa Fé 266

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THE AMAZING ARGENTINE

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CHAPTER I

THE INVADERS

It was on a boat which was laden with bananas and running from Colon, on the Isthmus of Panama, to New York.

The steward called me at dawn. He thought I was mad because I stood in pyjamas without apparent heed of the mirky drizzle. Beyond the sad waters there was little to see but a low-lying and dreary island with a melancholy lighthouse. No vegetation brightened the scene. There was no gorgeous sunrise. There was nothing but a lump of barrenness heaving out of the sea. But this was the island of San Salvador, the western land which Columbus first touched when he sailed to find the Indies.

There are now near one hundred and fifty millions of people of European descent in the Americas. And a little glow came into my imagination that rain-swept morning when I felt I was the only traveller on the boat who had crawled forth to gaze at San Salvador. I tried to picture what thoughts must have crowded the mind of Columbus when he sighted this shore. He never knew what he had discovered for Spain. He could never have dreamt he was the first in the greatest invasion the world has ever witnessed.

A year later I was on an Atlantic liner. The fo'c'sle was thronged with poor Spaniards from Vigo and poor Portuguese from Lisbon. In the voyage across the Atlantic I had watched them in the steerage—tawny-visaged, easygoing men, and broad-set, figureless women, sprawling, gossiping, drowsing. To the accompaniment of an accordion they lifted their voices in song on the balmy, starlit evenings whilst the ship churned through the tropical seas.

Another misty morning and I climbed on deck. Saloon passengers were tucked in their bunks. But all the steerage had turned out and were crowding the foredecks, and were gazing at a dim strip of land and watching a blinking light. The land was the coast of Brazil, and the light was the harbour of Pernambuco, which means "the Door of Hell."

The immigrants raised a long-drawn shout of joy. They hailed