The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-07-21
PLAINS OF ARGENTINA.
IMMENSE LEVEL TRACTS or FARMING AND GRAZING LAND.

Where Fortunes are Made-Distinction
 Between the Land Owners and Ten-
 ants-English Landlords Who Live in
 Style of Their Native Country--Grain D Trains.
 The pampas of Argentina correspond very closely to the Mississippi valley of the States and the great plains of the Canadian northwest, but on a show down they would prove far truer to the name of plains than anything we have north of the Isthmus of Panama. Mo- where else in the world Is there so large an area that approaches so near an ab- solute level as do the pampas.
 The exigencies of railroad building best illustrate this fact. Look at 8 railroad map of Argentina and see how the lines radiate from Buenos Ayres like the spokes of 8 wheel. Whether northwest to Rosario and Cordova, west to the Andes, southwest to the Pampa Central, or south to Mardel Plata and Bahia Blanca, their course is invariably almost perfectly direct. The Buenos Ayres and Pacific Railway has the longest straight" in the world where, between Vedia and Mackenna in the heart of the pampas the rail run for 175 miles without an inch of curve, and but for an "S' at the former place would continue for 206 miles. This is indicative of the real thing in level land. To the average inhabitant of the pampas a gentle swell on the bosom of the plain is a thing of interest and a hill is a thing of interest and and a hill Is a thing to revere. I don't know exactly what his idea of heaven is, but I feel perfectly safe in assuming that 1t contains mountains.
 The pampas of to-day are not the pampas of thirty years ago, says a cor- respondent of the Los Angeles Times.
 Then the prevailing pursuits were pastoral; now those horticultural take the lead and are rapidly increasing in importance. Formerly master and man lived alike, both in mud huts and on a diet of carne asado, galletas and mate. Now all this is for the peons while the master divides the time between his palatial estancia house, where he lives like a mediaeval baron, and Bue0os LAyres and Europe. Probably now~ where else in the world certainly not outside of the great cities, is there so great gulf between the standard of living of the highest and the lowest, Nowhere have seen such lavishly run establishments as those of these land kings of Argentina, both native and British and nowhere among Cau- casians have I seen such primitive quarters and such hard living as among the peons and gauchos of the same country.
 The eight or ten weeks that I have spent in various parts of the pampas were almost equally divided between these diametrically opposite ways of living, giving me all the advantage of sharp contrast in showing the one up against the other. It is an amusing and rather novel experience to sit with the knees under mahogany and sip French wine from a glass of Mauze crystal one day and the next to hunch up on a horse skull stool and suck mate through bombilla that has been in a dozen other mouths before it comes to you; or perhaps to have imported Eng fish lamb chops and French peas for il o'clock breakfast, and for o'clock din- ner a hunk of smoky, greasy carne as- ado, cooked on a steel spike in the midst of an open and eaten by holding in the hands and rending with the teeth. But whatever, and by whomever dispensed, it was rendered with a free and unforced kindliness that reduced it all to the same level.
 Talking with an Englishman in Bahia Blanca a while ago he divided his coun- }trymen who owned estancias in the pampas into two classes: Those who were gentlemen when they came to the chuntSy. and those who were not gentlernen when they came to the country, but had since become such