rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_02013d42-4c26-5d99-be5f-3a6a4c0dabde">PROSPECTS AND PROBLEMS
LIST OF PLATES
| The Mayo Avenue, Buenos Aires | Frontispiece |
| FACING PAGE | |
| Plaza Del Congreso, Buenos Aires | 20 |
| The Plaza Hotel, Buenos Aires | 22 |
| The Tigre, Buenos Aires Rowing Club | 26 |
| Lola Mora Fountain, Buenos Aires | 32 |
| La Recoleta | 36 |
| The Government Building, La Plata | 38 |
| The Southern Station at La Plata | 40 |
| In the Great Square at La Plata | 40 |
| Statue presented to Argentina by the French Community on the occasion of the Centenary of Independence | 42 |
| Central Argentine Railway Company's Grain Elevators at Buenos Aires | 46 |
| Latest Type of Passenger Locomotive | 50 |
| Latest Type of Dining Car | 50 |
| View of Grazing Lands | 54 |
| A Drinking Place on an Estancia | 54 |
| Branding Calves on an Estancia | 60 |
| A Group of Gauchos | 64 |
| The Chamber of Deputies | 74 |
| The Kindergarten at Mendoza | 78 |
| Ox-Carts in the Argentine | 90 |
| A Typical Argentine Public Park | 100 |
| A Regatta near Buenos Aires | 110 |
| A Fine Argentine Bridge | 114 |
| Breaking-in Horses in the Argentine | 120 |
| Interior of Dining Car, Central Argentine Railway | 134 |
| The Statue of Christ on the Argentina-Chili Frontier | 148 |
| Plaza Constitution Station at Buenos Aires | 150 |
| The Rosario Express, Central Argentine Railway | 156 |
| On the Way to Market in Cordoba | 162 |
| The Ninth Green at Alta Gracia | 166 |
| In the Courtyard of the Monastery at Alta Gracia | 166 |
| 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 |
THE AMAZING ARGENTINE
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
