THE NATIONAL NURSERYMAN 
223 
maintain at the feet of Christ the Redeemer;” and let me 
tell you, gentlemen, that those two nations will never fight 
while that statue stands there. 
It takes from daylight to dark to cross the Andes from 
Los Andes to Mendoza, which is all made on narrow gauge; 
then all night and all the next day we cross the pampas of 
the Argentine, as level as a billiard table, and not a hill and 
very few trees in sight for 600 miles; but there are cattle, 
horses, sheep, and ostriches on both sides of the track, and 
thousands of scarlet flamingoes in the water. I never saw 
so many cattle before. In one place the track runs along 
for 175 miles without a curve. What a contrast after 
crossing the Andes! 
Buenos Ayres, meaning ‘‘Good Airs,” is a modern city of 
1,400,000 people. In beautiful parks, boulevards, and 
plazas it surpasses both Paris and Berlin. The climate is 
warm and pleasant, and in the afternoons the business men 
drive through the beautiful gardens and boulevards in 
Spanish style; for the language and life of the people is 
Spanish. It would take me an hour to tell you much 
about this fine city. Its avenues, plazas and boulevards are 
not duplicated in the United States. Their Capitol build¬ 
ing is finer than ours in Washington. Their custom house 
is finer than our New York one. We went through the 
.famous newspaper office. La Prenza. In the parks they 
have whole avenues lined with forty-foot palms. I saw 
specimens of Phoenix Canariensis as high and broad as a 
five-story building and furnished to the ground. Every¬ 
thing has the appearance of newness in their bright sun¬ 
shine; even their famous Avenue Mayo is only four years 
old, lined with buildings of uniform height and architecture. 
Their four miles of splendid docks have been reclaimed from 
the Rio de la Plata and are always filled with numbers of 
large steamers flying the flag of every maritime nation— 
except the stars and stripes. 
The Botanical Gardens of Rio are famed the world over 
and rightly so, too. I spent nearly a whole day there. 
One avenue of royal palms dividing the gardens is half a 
mile long. There are avenues twenty feet wide so em¬ 
bowered with bamboos that not sufficient light gets into 
them to take a photograph. Other avenues are lined with 
Areca Lutescens and all kinds of tropical plants; for there 
are over 800 varieties there. What beautiful places these 
South Americans have to spend afternoons or Sundays 
with their children! Most of the consulates are at Petropo- 
lis, about forty miles up in the mountains from Rio. The 
United States Consulate there is almost as good a building 
as the Portuguese, which is more than can be said of some 
places. 
We felt like millionaires in Brazil. Their language is 
Portuguese and they use Portuguese money of Reis and 
mil-reis. A million reis amounts to about $260 in our 
money. Trolley fares or a post card costs 400 reis and 1000 
reis is an ordinary tip for a waiter. All through South 
America they have a pleasant way of naming their streets 
and parks after some historical event. It is just as if 
Broadway were called Fourth of July Street. 
All of the South American cities are fine places to live in. 
They are made beautiful. A city like Buenos Ayres or Rio, 
for instance, has more acreage in parks and gardens than 
five cities of the same size in the United States; and they 
are fine parks too, not open squares of grass dead half the 
year. They plant good trees and fine palms—not the 
common varieties, but varieties like Cycas Circinalis, 
Phoenicophorum Sechelarium, Licuala Grandis, and 
Phoenix Rupicola, in magnificent specimens; and they keep 
them in fine shape too, so that a drive or walk through 
these parks is a refreshing diversion after a day’s work. 
We always think of Brazil as having a very hot climate. 
True, the average is high, but it never gets really hot. The 
maximum temperature of Para, only eleven miles south of 
the equator is only 78 degrees. We get it hotter than that 
right in New York City sometimes, and they get it in 
Buenos Ayres too. On the entire trip we were never both¬ 
ered with mosquitoes, and there are so few flies that even 
in the hottest cities meat is hung outside without protection. 
The cities down there are nearly all progressive and up to 
date. 
f; The growth and prosperity of the South American 
republic has been amazing within the past two or three 
decades. Englishmen and Germans of intelligence, and 
business or mechanical ability control the commercial, 
shipping, and engineering enterprises of South America. 
North America is represented only in a few isolated places. 
Every railroad in the Argentine, with one exception, was 
financed and built by Englishmen and is now officered by 
them. The public water works of Buenos Ayres were 
built and are run by Englishmen. In the year 1909, English¬ 
men took 250 million of dollars in dividends out of the 
Argentine alone. The docks at Santos and at Rio, also the 
wonderful Trans-Andean Railroad, which runs across the 
continent from Buenos Ayres to Valparaiso, more than 800 
miles over and through the Andes, are owned in England. 
^ The engines and rolling stock on the Chilian railroads and 
most of their trolley systems were installed by the Germans. 
Even their soldiers all wear German uniforms. There are 
over 40,000 English residents in the Argentine, and only 
400 Americans. The banks, docks, and railroads are 
controlled by the English or Germans, and we as a nation 
are hardly known there; and why should we be? They see 
large ten and twelve thousand ton British, German, and 
Italian steamers entering their ports, but never an Ameri¬ 
can one. Why, the American Consul at Santos told me 
that last year 393 large steamers left their port laden with 
Brazilian products, but a steamer flying the American flag 
had not been in there in ten years. No wonder that the 
United States has had little share in the thriving prosperity 
of the wealthy regions of the equator. 
So long as the banking laws of the United States forbids 
any branch or succursal of American banks in South 
America, and so long as we have no ships of our own and 
prevent foreign ships from trading from one American port 
to another en route to South America, the Monroe doctrine 
will appear a farce to South American republics, and their 
trade will go to European houses who know how to handle 
it. The citizen of the North, be he manufacturer or ex¬ 
porter, has little hold upon the South American market. 
He does not seem to understand the situation. 
