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I cannot go further in the story of my stay in Buenos Ayres without saying something very definite about the weather. Passing references have already been made to that all-important topic; but it requires a chapter to itself, and it insists on having it here and now.

As I have said, we were seekers of sunshine. Well, we found it—and also some fine samples of most sorts of weather known between the Equator and the Poles.

We arrived early in April, which is the beginning of autumn in the Argentine. As the reader has heard, the morning of our arrival was a “perisher.” Next day I found my hands, for the first time since boyhood, sore and “chapped.” The cold wind was so keen that it had instantly roughened all exposed parts of the skin, and I had recourse to lanoline to soften my hands and to heal my cracked lips. But on the third day the sun came forth again and for nearly a fortnight the heat was almost as trying as in a New York summer. Everybody was mopping his forehead; men who, a day or two before, had been going about in great-coats, were walking the streets with handkerchiefs tucked inside their collars to absorb the sweat. And suddenly it would change to a bitter night; or perhaps one went forth in the sunny morning in summer clothes, and by noon the temperature had precipitately dropped fifteen or twenty degrees, so that one went shivering hotel-ward for lunch and a change of clothes.

Yet a Scotsman, long resident in Chile, told me that I would find Buenos Ayres had the finest climate in the world! I wonder where he will go to when he dies.

For eight months I had occasion to comment on the weather and seldom in terms of congratulation. The expatriated English and the few porteños of British parentage with whom I came into frequent contact were strangely prone to ask me what I thought of the weather, whenever it happened to be a really fine day.

“Compare this,” they would say, “with the weeks of fog in London when the gas has to be lighted all day long and one can’t breathe.”

“My dear sir,” (or “lady,” as the case more often was), I might timorously make answer, “you speak of what is as much a tradition as the red wig and beard for the part of Shylock, and moreover you speak to one who has seen as great variety of weather in Buenos Ayres as in London. Your memory is so short that you forget it rained monstrously for three days last week, and for the other four days there was a white chilling vapour over all the town, so that you could not see the length of two squares in the forenoon, and when the vapour had cleared it was as though you were walking on vaselined sidewalks.”

“Oh, but that was exceptional.”

“And so, it may be, are the fogs of London. But I’d much prefer a real old London ‘particler’ to this marrow-searching, flesh-chilling, white plague that comes up from the River Plate in your winter-time and gets one by the throat.”

That fine line of Tennyson’s,

All in a death-dumb, autumn-dripping gloom,

comes to mind in Buenos Ayres on one of these days, but, alas, the autumn dripping is not from branchy trees to fragrant, leaf-laden loam, nor is it “death-dumb.” It drips from gaunt iron frames, from broken plastered walls, from tram-cars, from horses’ harness. A billiard cue taken from the rack will feel as though it had been lying in the bath, and the boots which you have not been wearing for a few days will show patches of white and green mould.

But it is true that between April and November there may be many days of sunshine; nay, even weeks of it at a stretch. And these days are delicious. There is a tang of freshness in the air such as comes to one on a fine frosty autumn morning on the heights of uptown New York.

Then towards the end of November the sun begins his yearly revel and till the end of March Buenos Ayres swelters in the most oppressive heat imaginable. Not that the barometer ever attains a greater height than it frequently registers in New York City, but New York rarely experiences such long-sustained periods of heat, and the humidity—due to the mighty volume of the River Plate—makes the life of man and beast a burden. The nights bring no surcease. Horses die in the streets by the score every day, and you will see their carcasses in all parts of the town, awaiting removal. Lucky are the inhabitants who can escape to Mar del Plata, to Montevideo or to the Hills of Córdoba, but they are few compared with the myriads who must remain in the monstrous stew-pot. “Long drinks” and two or three cold shower baths are now the order of the day. But even the cold douche has its snares. I was once severely scalded by taking one, as the cistern was exposed to the sun and the water had been brought near to boiling point without the aid of a “geyser”! There is nobody in Buenos Ayres during the summer who attaches much importance to the scientific wiseacres who tell us the heat of the sun is diminishing.

There was no doubt about it—we had found the sunshine at last. And like so many of the quests on which mankind sets out, our find was no better than Dead Sea apples. What could we do with it? Why, we shut it out of our rooms by every means in our power; we wore smoked glasses so that we should not see it. We thought of the Kentucky nigger who was knocked down by an autumnal blast and got up and shook his fist at the invisible force, saying: “Wind, wheah wuz you dis time las’ July?”

The New Courts of Justice.

The “Tribunales” photographed just before the completion of the cement work on the top storey. In the foreground, the fine monument to General Lavalle, standing in the plaza named after him.

It will be gathered from what I have said that the Argentine has no lack of “weather,” wherein it resembles England, which Mark Twain alleged had only “samples” of climate. It has all the essentials of the finest climate in the world, but no wise Providence has blended these with any discretion. In the course of one short day you will pass through all the seasons of the year, and though it never snows, I have experienced cold in Buenos Ayres equal to a sharp frost in New York. Nay, I will roundly assert that no wind that sweeps across New York has a tooth so keen as the pampero. One has to be out in Buenos Ayres when the wind from the boundless pampas strikes the town to know how cold can rake through to the marrow. Over the thousands of leagues of plains it blows, direct from the snowy Andes, and stirring up the clammy effluvia of the River Plate it breathes rheumatism, bronchitis, consumption over the city—the hateful pampero!

Nor have the people learned how to combat their changeful weather. All their houses are built for summer. They are excellent for four months of the year, and uncomfortable for the best part of eight. The ceilings of the rooms are usually five feet or more higher than the American standard, which gives one a sporting chance of a breath of fresh air in the torrid season, but when the wind blows and the rain pours, such lofty rooms, tenanted by a myriad draughts, are veritable haunts of misery. For they have neither fireplaces like English houses, nor stoves like American, while steam heating is in its infancy. There are actually modern houses in which “dummy” fireplaces have been built for show, but a real genuine fireplace is a thing which most Argentines have only seen on a visit to Europe. A well-known steam-heating expert from New York, who was sent on a special mission of study to Buenos Ayres, told me that in many of the new departamento buildings which offer the attraction of calefacción central the steam heating installation is no more than make-believe for selling or letting purposes, but never calculated to supply the tenants with warmth. No, the Argentine either goes to bed earlier or puts on extra clothing in the cold weather, lounges about his house with an overcoat or a shawl above his winter suit, and tries to warm his toes at an oil stove. The ironmongers make great display of these stinking abominations at the first cold-snap, and the papers carry many advertisements of their merits, their “odourless” quality being insisted upon in every case. Electric stoves are largely and successfully used, and as electric current is cheap they form the best substitute for a coal fire—although the English believe there is no substitute in all the world for a fine glowing fire of coal.

“Weather” is indeed a staple of talk in the Argentine, just as at home. Indeed, to a greater degree does one hear people discussing the weather in Buenos Ayres even than in London, and with very good reason. The fortunes of all hinge on the state of the climate. Too much rain and the harvests are spoiled; too much heat and horses, cattle and sheep perish in their tens of thousands. And year after year the Argentine suffers either way. Tell an estanciero that you have seen two or three locusts flying about in the street and his face will blanch, his lip quiver, for already in imagination he sees the dreaded plague of these insects devastating his crops. He is ever in a state of nervous fear as to whether there is going to be too little rain or too much, and, poor man, he will tell you with glee when he meets you on the beastliest of rainy days that “it’s raining dollars.” If you meet him a fortnight later and it is still raining, there will be no smile on his face, for he fears it is to be the old, old story. “Last year and the year before the crops were nearly in the bags for putting on the rail and yet we lost them through the rain.” Raining dollars, forsooth! For a day or two that may be so, for a week, perhaps; but later on it rains bankruptcy. Que lindo país, as a dear old self-deluded lady used to say when telling me the most atrocious untruths about her adopted country. What a lovely country!

The uncertainty of the Argentine weather is really incredible to any one who has been fed on the pap of interested hack-writers. In the year 1911 the great national horse race at Palermo was three times postponed on account of the course being dangerously heavy from excessive rain, and in 1912 it was postponed once for the same reason, being run on the succeeding Sunday on a course that was still sloppy. Was the Derby ever postponed because of rain? I have no Derby lore, but I should be surprised to learn that such a thing had ever happened in rainy England.

It had been represented to me before I went to Buenos Ayres that, so reliable was the climate, one could make engagements for outdoor sports months ahead, with the certainty of weather conditions being favourable. During my stay there, numerous lawn tennis, golfing, boating and picnic engagements were postponed from time to time because of the rain.

In short, Argentine weather is either too much of a good thing or too much of a bad thing. The dear old lady already mentioned told me that she had to live in Buenos Ayres during the winter because the roads to her estancia were quite impassable whenever it rained, but it was lovely there for a few weeks in the spring, though she had to clear out as soon as summer came, as the place was so infested by flies and mosquitoes that the family had to live in darkness, never daring to raise the blinds! Buenos Ayres being equally obnoxious in summer, she went to the Hills of Córdoba, and came back to town with the autumn. Thus she was able to spend a few short weeks of each year at her home in the “Camp,” and the rest of the year, from a chair in the hotel drawing-room she sang the praises of the glorious Argentine weather and of the country that blossoms as the rose.

The final touch of unloveliness is the loss of the ruddy glory of the fall. In the province of Buenos Ayres especially, there is no gorgeous funeral for King Summer; no shimmering gold of hedge and bough. The leaves rot on the trees suddenly, wither into pale colourless things that to-morrow’s wind sweeps away and, behold, so many gaunt and shivering skeletons of trees. When man dies in Buenos Ayres, they coffin him and consign him to his corner of Chacarita within twenty-four hours. Summer dies and is buried with similar despatch, but Nature relatively provides less pomp at the funeral of Summer than the experts in pompas fúnebres supply for the average Argentine who yesterday was and to-day is not.

Insect life is, of course, conditioned by the weather. Yet the Argentine mosquito has a wonderful power of surviving into the winter. It is a worker. Its industry is unquestionable. I shall not readily forget how I was plagued by this small product of a great country. On various occasions I had to limp about my affairs with absurdly swollen feet, thanks to the attentions of these tiny pests. An afternoon siesta could only safely be indulged in under a mosquito net. Even as I write I still bear traces on my right foot of a particularly venomous bite that dates back more than six months!

“Haw, yes, the mosquitoes always get the Gringos,” said a pimply faced young Englishman to me, when I was mentioning my first experiences nearly a year later in Montevideo.

“How long have you been out here?” I inquired.

“Oh, nearly three years now,” said he.

“So that you are a three years’ Gringo, I suppose.”

The English youth makes haste to range himself with the “old timers” and will lie to you abominably to convey the impression that he is no longer a tenderfoot (though a Gringo he must ever be), and tell you that the mosquitoes never touch him, while you can see him scratching his latest bite! The fact is that some people are more subject than others to mosquito bite and there are many thousands of native-born who never outgrow the susceptibility. I sincerely sympathise with all such, as the mosquito has the power to make their lives a misery for at least six months of the year. Fleas and bugs (the loathsome bed-hunter) also abound in the City of Good Airs. A gentleman of my acquaintance who took lodgings in a native doctor’s house was told by the housekeeper, when he complained about the bugs in his bed, that she couldn’t help them—“they were natural.” That was his complaint; he would rather they had been artificial. The bicho colorado is another busy little fellow, the size of a pin-head. He haunts the grass and as you walk over that he removes his habitat to your foot, bores a hole in your skin, burrows merrily into your flesh and produces a sore which you will have cause to remember for many a day. The chemists do brisk business in selling innumerable “preventatives” and “cures” for the bites of mosquitoes and bichos colorados, but all that I tried were failures, until I discovered in that familiar product, liquid ammonia, a really effective banisher of the pain.

On the whole, I do not seem to have formed an extremely favourable opinion of the weather in Buenos Ayres. Like that famous little girl, “when it is good it is very, very good; but when it is bad it is horrid.” And I have a notion that the little girl in question was none too often “good.” As for the insects; well, Stalky’s pet aversions, the “bug-hunters,” can always be sure of a busy time in and around Buenos Ayres.