SOME NOTES FROM SOUTH AMERICA.

Otago Witness, Issue 3610, 22 May 1923, Page 60

SOME NOTES FROM SOUTH AMERICA.

Employment Scarce—The Language Trouble—Sunny Brazil—Carnival at Buenos Aires—Coffee Plantations. In a chatty letter to his parents, a Dunedin young man who decided to try his fortune in South America, gives a description of the difficulties he experienced before securing a position. We are permitted to make some extracts of an informative nature- from the letter. After referring to his arrival at Montevideo hi the Argentine Republic, the ex-Dunedin boy writes.:— ''Ever since I arrived in Montevideo I have been on the run either flying round looking for jobs, fightin-ir for passports, or travelling in boats or trains. !t is now all over and I have secured wdiat I believe is a very good job, with, I am assured, excellent prospects. So I hope everything is all right once more. All the time I was in Monte Video, through a letter of introduction from a leading Dunedin citizen, I had the best people there writing and wiring away to the different estancias trying to get me a position, but a had drought was on, and there was nothing doing. When I went to Buenos .Aires a carnival was on. We had to wmit four days for the business houses to open. At first chance I presented a letter of introduction to a well known firm, and one of the principals invited me to lunch at the British Club. He explained that in the Argentine all I could expect, if I could get a job—which he considered impossible —would be 50 Argentine dollars a month ; the /Argentine dollar being 13 to the £l. After a ldng talk, he said that if I liked he would send me to a place of theirs in Brazil, put me on probation for a month or so, if I turned out to be any good, pay me a salary of from £lO to £l2 per month. lam on the place now, and from what I have heard, the chances of advancement are excellent. The conditions too, are better than any other place I have been on. My room is in the house; towels, sheets, blankets and bed ding supplied, washing done, and a housemaid (black) to do one’s -room. The manager is an- Englishman and with the exception of an accountant, who is here at present going over the books, we arc the only Englishmen for leagues around. However, there is one big fly in the ointment, and that is the language. It is Portugese and I speak not one word. I will have to start at the bee-inning again and go through the same old struggle, although mv knowledge of Spanish will be a help. Portugese is a more difficult language and full of nasals which make the people seem to be eternally sneering. I was getting quite proficient in Spanish and it seems a shame to have to drop it to take up a more difficult sneery language that I do not like. However, as no one speaks anything else, it will have to be learnt and quickly too. We had a wonderfid Argentine carnival time in Buenos Aires when the Carnival was on, but in spite of it being a wonderful city with tubes, huge railway stations, crowded streets and millions and millions of elpotric lights, I did not like it so much as Montevideo, although one could put the same Montevideo in one of Buenos Aires’s suburbs. The Carnival was the most marvellous sight I have ever seen. The whole town closed down and went out to enjoy itself. The main street—the Aven.ida Mayo was one blinding glare at night- of different coloured lights, millions of them in arches across the road. It was a. sight no one could ever forget. Up and down the street in two solid streams moved decorated motor cars with evervone in fancy dress blowing horns, rattling rattles, and throwing coloured ribbons at each other. The girls’ costumes were wonderful, and nea-rlv all wore the huge Spanish comb called a ‘peineta. ’ You never saw such a display of fancy dress in all your life. At- 12.30 every night the lights went out, and the dancing started in the theatres and casinos. “In all mv spare time I- ate kilos of the most beautiful grapes I have ever tasted. Thev were very cheap, costing about 7d for 2i pounds. I might sav that they are about- the only cheap things in Buenos Aires, the cost of living being very expensive. The weather was verv hot and oppressive, and if I hurried niv shift stuck to my back. I booked a passage to Santos on the Royal Mail Steam Packet’s liner ‘Avon,’ and leaving Buenos .-Vires stewing in 100 degrees in the shade, headed for SUNNY BRAZIL where the knots come from. We called at Montevideo, but did not get ashore. Tt is a three days’ trip un the coast to Santos and when we arrived there it was indeed hot. Santos is a place about the size of Dunedin, with electric trams, niggers, mosouitoes and bananas. It is the great coffee port of Brazil. T had the cheerful experience of landing alone in a strange country, knowing not one word of the language. However I spoke to them in Spanish, and when thev didn’t understand, which was nearly always, I would shout a bit louder and wave my arms and a brain wave would strike them, and thev would bring someone who could speak Spanish and everything in the garden would be lovelv. Santos is surrounded by swamps over which a grey mist hangs until t.he intense heat of the sun drives it away. It is not exactly a health resort.

THE BACK-BLOCKS. I had to go to the agents of niy employers in Sao Paolo—a two hour’s trip by train inland. A train drawn sometimes by engines, and at others bv cables, pulled us up 3,000 feet into the mountains and an-ded us at Sao Paolo which is the second largest town in Brazil and a really fine town too. The agent explained that it was a 16 hours run north-west to Barretos in the train, where a car would meet me and whisk me another 60 or 70 miles to the station or as it is called in Portugese ‘fazenda’. This made me come to the conclusion that I was once more heading for the back-blocks. I had a good look round San Paolo, and got on the train at 7.30 p.m., and after changing three times landed at Barretos at 11.30 next morning. It was a very interesting trip, as we passed through miles and miles of coffee plantations. The country looks beautiful, the soil being a brick* red. and the grass vivid green, and tons of it. The land is all lightly timbered, and palms grow everywhere—very different from the dull, drab, uninteresting Argentine camp. Barretos is the end of the railway and the beginning of no-man’s-land. It is a pretty place of about 8,000 to 10,000 inhabitants, though one would not think so. The place, I fear, is only half civilised, although it has a picture show and highly coloured gilt framed photographs of \Villiam S. Hart in the jeweller’s window. Fully half the inhabitants go bare-footed—-the clerks and barbers’ assistants dress perfectly, while the 'Brazilians with money, who own cattle or have robbed someone else, wear knee-high boots, slouch hats and drive furiously through the streets at a terrific pace in Ford cars. There are very few English and Americans who buy cattle for Armours. I was introduced to a- New Zealander, who comes from Lyttelton, and his wife, who comes from Auckland, at the hotel where I stayed the night.”