AMONG THE ARGENTINES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1424, 15 June 1899, Page 11

AMONG THE ARGENTINES.

STRANGE CUSTOMS OF LIFE AND DEATH IN THE LAND OF THE RIVER PLATE. It is now midwinter in the United States. It is midsummer in the Argentine Republic. Our people are going to Florida to keep warm. The fashionable Argentines are rushing to the seaside to keep cool. The most popular seaside resort of the Argentine is Mar del Plata. It is the Long Branch, the Newport, the Saratoga of the Argentine Republic. Situated 210 miles south of Buenos Ayres, on the coast of the Atlantic, it has a splendid bathing beach in which just now thousands of Argentines are taking the warm plunge of summer. There are at least 20,000 strangers at this resort. There are big hotels filled with the fashionable families of the Argentines and foreigners. There are numerous seaside cottages, and there are gambling rooms where the roulette wheel goes the whole afternoon and all night long. Thousands of dollars are won and lost at every turn, for the people gamble at Mar del Plata quite as desperately as they do at Monte Carlo. The scenes on the beach are different from those of our resorts. The hath houses do not stand back from the edge of the water as at Atlantic City or Asbury Park. The undressing is done in bathing boxes about six feet square and not over six feet high. These are on the edge of the surf, Both sexes bathe together, and one sees a mixture of dull blue bathing suits, some with skirts on and some without, moving about through the water. Outside of the skirts it is hard to distinguish the sexes, for bright colours are not worn by the women in bathing, and the Argentine summer girl makes all her conquests outside the water. Cameras are not tolerated on the beach, and the man who attempts to take a snapshot will surely be arrested. PRESENTS WITH STRINGS. Many of the rich Argentines have seaside homes at Mar del Plata. Not a few keep iip three different establishments. One is a house in Buenos Ayres, another a home in the country and a third a cottage at the seaside. Such people live well. They are very hospitable, and during your stay they will place everything at your disposition. In fact if you admire anything belonging to an Argentine politeness demands that it he at once offered to you. This is so in all Spanish-American countries. At Santiago I dined one day with Mr Edwardo McClure, a millionaire friend of the president of Chili, and a gentleman of high education and standing. The dinner was given at his magnificent home in the suburbs of Santiago, which is surrounded by a garden considered one of the best of South America. The house was a. palace, and as I walked through it with its owner I could not help admiring it. He at once offered it to me, and that in such a cordial manner that I feared for a moment he might be in earnest. When I reflected, however, that the property would bring at auction at least 100,000 dollars, I thought there might be a mistake and refused it with thanks.

This habit sometimes causes the giver trouble when he comes into contact with a foreigner who does not understand him. Not so long a Spanish don was travelling down the west coast of South America upon a steamer with a charming young American girl as a fellow passenger. The don was married, but the young lady was beautiful, and when she admired a poodle that he was carrying, he at once placed it at her disposal, and grandiloquently told her it was hers. He expected that she would thank him and refuse. But to his surprise she thanked him and accepted. Now the don was carrying this poodle to his wife, who was as jealous as Spanish girls usually are. He had especial orders to bring it home safe and sound, and as the American girl was going to the same town he knew that serious complications would arise if he didn’t recover that dog. Befoi’e he left the ship he was compelled to ask one of his friends to explain to the young lady that his offer was not intended to be taken in earnest, ancl that he hoped she would send back the poodle as it belonged to his wife. There are many similar cases of the failure of such polite lies and cheap generosity. One of which I heard related to a young navy lieutenant who has since risen to be one of the chief officers of a great American man-of-war. It was during his salad days that he was in South America on a coasting tour and became acquainted with an Argentine don. One day he asked the latter for a match, and was handed in reply a beautiful gold cigar lighter. The lighter must have been an expensive one, for it was set with diamonds. Our young lientenant admired it, and the don, putting his hand across his heart told him it was his and at his disposition. The young lieutenant, when green to Spanish ways, as grandiloquently accepted it, and the Argentine don was too amazed to protest. At least he never asked that it be returned, and I doubt not but that the American naval officer has it among his trophies to-day. CITIES OF THE DEAD. There are fine cemeteries in all of the Argentine cities. Buenos Ayres has 230 acres of them, not a large area as compared with some of our cemeteries, but big enough when it is considered how South American cemeteries are built. The South American cities H the dead are genuine cities, in which’wfe deceased are as closely packed and crowded as the living in a New York flat. The cemeteries have their paved streets, their narrow courts and even, their tenement houses or

vaults, where the poorer dead are laid away to rest tor so much per year for a season. I saw such cemeteries in Peru Chili and Bolivia, and I have found tlmrn also m the Argentine. I have as vet however, seen no cemetery so crowded as Recoleta, the fashionable graveyard of Buenos Ayres. It covers thirteen acres and it contains, I am told, 200,000 inhabitants. Inside the high stone wall inclosing it there is a central street or avenue, paved with marble, cutting the city « A * its centre eight other streets branch off at angles. Ail of these streets are paved with marble or mosaics, and the> are cut by smaller streets dividing th “ ete iJ mto a great number of blocks In this beaut it ul city of the dead the houses resemble times of a city of the lving. I hey are of ail sizes and conditions, small and big, costly and mean; the palaces of the rich and the tenements ot the poor. Each house is a vault, and each contains from one to hundreds of inmates. borne of the houses are in blocks marble structures from eight to firteen teet high and eight to ten feet wide, each the property of one family. Some stand alone with only a crack between their walls and those of the vaults next door. AU have but one room that can be seen and tms room is in all cases the same shape, although furnished in different degrees oi magnificence and taste. It mffiht be called the chapel of the dead. if i 3 tour feet square or more and five feet high, being entered by a door at the level ot the street In the back of it there is a marble slab or table set into the wall and upon this sometimes rests a coffin. Ilie slab is covered with a lambrequin of fine lace and in its centre stands a crucifix with the dying Saviour upon it, or perfiaps a waxen image of Mary the Mother or God, Lpon some such altars are silver candlesticks and above many of them lamps burn incense from one year’s end to the other. On the marble floor there are flowers, sometimes real, in the shape of growing plants, sometimes bouquets placed there fresh for the day, and at others artificial flowers and immortelles made to last for years. The doors of the houses are often plate glass. All have locks and not a few padlocks. Many have lace curtains, and the most are covered with gratings of iron curiously wrought. But where are the inhabitants of these houses i God knows, lan only show you where their decayed bodies are. Gome with me to the cemetery. Through the grating in the floor of that vault which has been opened to admit a corpse you can see steps which lean below. Here the proprietor and his family sleep in the basement. Their beds are those coffins resting on the shelves, which have been fastened one above another in that brick wall, keeping them in death, as in life together, while their friends still living make their offerings and their prayers above. I don’t know but that this is better than our way. These people lie here and dry up within their vaults. We are planted in the earth to give the worms a iea3t. THE MARKETS OF BUENOS AYRES. Buenos Ayres has excellent markets, there are twenty in the city, but it is in the Mercado Central that the most business is done. This market has an area about equal to one of our city blocks. The food offered for sale is as good as that sold at home. There are all sorts of meat, fish and vegetables. There are huge pears from the Argentine and oranges and pineapples from Paraguay. There are grapes as sweet as any grown in California, winch have been brought to the city from the foothills by the bushel from about Buenos Ayres. Peach trees are often grown for fuel, and there are so many peaches in some sections that they are used for fattening pigs. Almost any kind ot fruit that grows in the United States is grown in the Argentine Republic. As to vegetables, I saw celery as big around as a pint cup and a yard in length. Nearly everything in the fruit and vegetable line is cheap, delicious oranges costing about three cents apiece.

Chickens are sold alive in Buenos Ayres by hucksters, whoi carry them from heuse to house in wicker crates swung over the back of a horse. There are no huckster wagons, and all peddling is done by men on horseback or on foot. Turkeys are driven through the streets by peddlers. Fish and vegetables are sold by men who go through the city with baskets hung to the ends of poles on their shoulders and the milk peddler on horseback is still to be found in the suburbs of Buenos Ayres. He has been driven from the main part of the city and his place taken by the dairy companies, who now furnish good butter and good milk in almost every block. Until within a very few years good butter was not to be had in Buenos Ayres. The country had millions of cows, but not a score of good butter makers. Farmers who owned ten thousand cows imported their butter in tins from the United States or Europe, and quantities came to Buenos Ayres from New York in firkins. A few years ago an enterprising Argentine established a large dairv outside the city. He brought in butter makers from Switzerland, and now the city has as delicious butter as can he found anywhere. The butter is made without salt. It is sent to Brazil and other countries, an deven shipped to London. Milkmen still drive their cows from house to house in all towns outside Buenos Ayres. They milk the cows while the customer waits, and there is no possibility of getting chalk and water in place of the pure extract of the bovine.—Frank G. Carpenter in " Detroit Free Press.”