£223 SPANISH-AMERICAN LETTERS T. E. CALVERT CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Cornell University Library F 2223.C16 Spanish-American letters from T. E. Calv 3 1924 020 425 611 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/cletails/cu31924020425611 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS Spanish -American Letters from T. E. Calvert 1911 - 1912 PRIVATELY PRINTED FOR MRS. T. E. CALVERT OVERLOOK LINCOLN, NEBRASKA Copyright, 1917 Mrs. T. E. Calvert Lincoln, Nebraska THE FAITHORN COMPAKY CHICAGO These letters are dedicated to the friends with whom he workedj by his wife, Cora Hardy Calvert. Washington, October 19, 191 7. My dear Mrs. Calvert: I am glad to know that you have in mind putting in more permanent form the letters which Mr. Calvert wrote con- cerning his South American trip. It was my good fortune, through your kindness, to have the pleasure of reading the letters when they were first written, and I shall be very glad to have them in my library not only because of the interest which attaches to the letters on account of their descriptive character, but also because they were written by Mr. Calvert, and unconsciously, as is always the case in such matters, he wrote into them much of himself. Mr. Calvert, to an unusual degree, retained during his entire life much of the freshness of youth. So far as I know, he never became pessimistic or despon- dent; he never ceased to be interested in the future. The mornings were always fresh and new to him, and the birds and flowers of the prairie were always wel- come. He loved nature and he loved his fellow men. He was the kindest man I ever knew. It does not seem to me, as I now think of it, that what I have written above is much, if at all, like an introduc- tion to a book; nevertheless, what I have written reflects the impressions that come to me at this moment concerning Mr. Calvert and his personality. I am sure that those who had the good fortune to know him intimately, as I did, will agree with all that I have said concerning his delightful personality. He was a gentle- man in every proper sense of the term. All of his friends — and all who knew him were his friends — will feel under lasting obligation to you for putting his Spanish- American letters in permanent form. Very sincerely yours, DANIEL WILLARD. Mrs. T. E. Calvert, Overlook, Lincoln, Neb. SPANISH-AMERICAN LETTERS New York, November 10, 1911. My Dear Dering: We have had a fine trip so far. Visited my old home in Penn- sylvania. Was in the old Church and yard where Anthony Wayne attended church and was buried. Was all over Valley Forge Field, through Washington's Headquarters there. My brother is well acquainted with William Wayne, the descendant of Anthony, and he took us through his house where Anthony lived. We saw the room just as it used to be, where he, Wayne, entertained LaFayette; his uniform, the old furniture, etc. I send you herewith my time card so you can see where I will be w^hile I am away. Leave New York, Steamer Trent, November 11th. Arrive Colon November 9th. Go to Panama November 19th. Will be at Hotel Tivoli, Ancon, Panama, November 19th and 20th. Leave Panama, Steamer Guatamala, November 20th. Arrive at Callao, Peru, Steamer Guatamala, November 27th. Go direct to Lima, Peru ; stop at Hotel Maury. Leave Lima via Callao, Steamer Oropesa, December llth, Arrive Valparaiso, Steamer Oropesa, December 18th. Will stay in Valparaiso only a day or two; will get mail in Val- paraiso at U. S. Consulate. Expect to get to Santiago about December 20th. Will stop at Grand Hotel. Will probably leave Santiago via Trans-Andean R. R. about December 26th or 27th, and will stop enroute at Mendoza and probably Los Andes, and arrive at Buenos Aires about January 3rd. Will get mail at U. S. Consulate, Buenos Aires, until about January 15th, on which date we expect to go to Montevideo, where we will get mail in care U. S. Consulate from January 15th to 20th. Leave Montevideo, Steamer Araquya, January 20th. Arrive Santos, Brazil, January 23rd. Will leave Santos at once for San Paulo by rail. Will be at Boa Vista Hotel, San Paulo, from about January 23rd to 31st. Will go to Rio De Janeiro by rail and stop at Hotel Inter- national until February 7th. Leave Rio De Janerio, Steamer Ama- zon, February 7th. Arrive Lisbon, Portugal, Steamer Amazon, Fel>- ruary 21st. Will be in Spain and Portugal during latter part of 12 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS February and March, sailing March 18th on the S. S. Carpathia from Gibraltar for New York or on the Berlin, leaving same port March 26th for New York. Would like to do up Spain and Portugal while there and will, therefore, probably not sail before March 26th. Wish you would write me in care of Thomas Cook & Son, 52-54 Rua Aurea, Lisbon, Portugal, so I can get it on arrival. Tell me how things are and if I need hurry home. I can then tell definitely what to do in the way of sailing. T. E. Calvert. S S Kingston, Jamaica, B. W. I., Nov. 16, 1911. My Dear Dering: We arrived here this P. M. The Trent on which we came out from New York is discharging cargo and taking coal, giving us a chance to get our feet on the ground. Yesterday we stopped about eight hours at Antilla on the north- east corner of Cuba. Van Horn, who built the Cuba R. R., is trying to build a new port at Antilla. He built his railroad to a point at the upper end of Nipe bay where there is shallow water, so that ocean boats drawing over 20 feet of water cannot get within four miles of his terminus. The Cuban Government is reputed in that country of being so full of graft no considerable works such as dredging of such a harbor could be successfully executed, so practically nothing will be done unless the railroad does it. It would have been much cheaper for them to have built the railroad a few miles further down the bay to deep water. Antilla looks like a town which had its boom frost bitten. This town of Kingston is a most interesting place, and notwith- standing the fact, there don't seem to be anything to make business here, it seems to be flourishing. I feel like taking my hat off to the British Nation as colonizers ; they certainly do furnish their colonists a good government. Blacks are here everywhere employed. All store clerks, street car conductors and motormen and all laborers are black and these blacks seem to be a very much better class of blacks than those we are accustomed to. This hotel is fine. The dining room is out of doors, the kitchen is surrounded with lattice work. No way of closing up things and no necessity for it. Remember me to Mr. Byram and all. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 13 LiMA^ November 27, 1911. My Dear Dering: Here we are at last in the old City of Lima. Our sail down the coast from Panama to Callao was smooth and we all enjoyed it. Our first stop was Paita. This west coast, thus far, is very uninviting. The Andes range is so high and comes so close to the coast it leaves but little arable land on the west side and the mountains are so vety high little rain falls on the lowlands along the west coast. What farming is done, is by irrigation. Wherever a stream comes down, the valley is irrigated. A town is built at some elevation, generally away from the coast. A mole or wharf is built out beyond the surf and what stuff there is to ship is lightered out to ship anchored off the port. The stuff raised along the east coast just keeps the west coast going. At Paita, for instance, they raise cotton; a little farther south, at Eten, they raise cattle and at Pacasmayo they raise sugar and rice. Several boat loads of pump- kins came out from the latter port for one of the ships. At Salavarry there is a mole. Grace & Co. of New York have a big sugar planta- tion here, and I am told they raise sugar here for about half what they do in Honolulu. Our boat did not stop at Guayaquil. A boat from Guayaquil was at Eten when we got there, loaded with fruit, oranges and bananas for Southern ports. Guayaquil is quarantined from every other place and but few people come by that place if they can help it. All other ports above Callao are supervised by the U. S. Sanitary Department. It was interesting to see the crude way they handle freight to and from the ports along this coast. Cattle, for instance are brought out in big tubs of boats holding about forty head and lifted in over the edge of the boat and let down into lower deck by a steam hoist. Sometimes they lift them with a sling about their horns, and some- times they are put in a canvas sling. They are small, long-horned, high-speed critters. Merchandise is handled in and out in the same way. Salavarry is the mole, or wharf, for Trujillo. This is the first town Pizarro built in Peru and was a site of one of the Inca temples to the sun. We did not get ashore here, but with the glass could see the large mound on which I was told the temple of the Inca was built and the ruins of which show up quite well. A large, flat arch still stands, showing the wonderful perfection of the stone work done by these people. Mr. MacDougall, manager for Grace & Co., who owns the sugar plantation at Trujillo, told me that the Inca, when he was at Caxamerea, about 150 miles inland from the coast at this point, had 14 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS fresh fish taken one night the whole 150 miles by runners from Trujillo and they were served him before 1 1 A. M. in the morning. This is now a country of slow transportation. A woman with two Indian servants started last April from Iquitos in the northeast corner of Peru to go to Lima. They could have gone by steamer down the Amazon and around the Panama in 65 days, but they traveled across country and in 6 or 7 months reached the coast at Salavarry in time to catch our boat. The two Indian women serv- ants were loaded up with the cattle and forgotten and were given nothing to eat for two days after leaving Salavarry. Callao is quite a port. A good many ships about it; a lot of them old hulks of no use. One cruiser sunk right in the middle of the harbor with only masts sticking out. Said to have been sunk when the natives got into a row. The condition here seems to be always on the verge of a war. Chili is making faces at Peru and Argentine is growling at Chili. Business, I am told, is very dull on the west coast because of the unrest. I have not been about this town much yet, but it is a good deal like Mexico, little shops opening onto the street. Streets and side- walks very narrow. The old hotel is a curiosity. The inside is all courts and bal- conies. It occupies about a quarter of a block and has only about thirty bed rooms. I think we have about the only bed room with a bath. The tub is about the size of an engine tank; no hot water. Plumbing very crude. The grub seems to be pretty good, but it takes a lot of time to get a meal together. The city seems to be fairly well equipped with electric cars, but the narrow streets force them up against the sidewalk and there is about room for two persons between the building and car when it passes. The hauling is done by two wheel drays drawn by three little mules. A good Missouri mule would fill the street full. I am writing you these occasional letters, and wish you would show them to Mr. Byram if he cares to read them. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !li !li Lima, December 2nd, 1911. My Dear Dering: We have just returned from a trip over the Peruvian Central Railroad, Lima to Oroya. This is my first trip and I presume it will be my last trip, over a practically impossible railroad. They start at Sea Level and in 106 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 15 miles go over the Andes at an elevation of 15,665 feet. This relieves the air pressure on one's body about half in a few hours. I am pretty round under ordinary pressure, but on this trip over the hill, I swelled up like a poisoned pup. Four per cent, grades, making the working grade about five per cent. A large per cent, of the line is 15 degree curves, gauge 4 feet Syz inches, 67 tunnels and some of them quite long. Ten switch backs. I think a goat located this line. We went down on the Ama- zon drainage at Oroya, elevation 12,178 feet, and stayed all night. That swelling went to my head when I got to bed, and between elevation and fleas, slept but little. That hotel at Oroya is a corker. Our sleeping room did noti have a window in it. Had to leave doors open. Waiters in dining room were barefoot Indians. Every dog going past — and there were a lot of them — came into the dining room, walked around to see what we were eating and finally, while the dogs were scratching and eating, we suggested the dogs be kept out. One Indian chased out dogs while the other brought in the grub. It never occurred to them to shut the front door. On the down trip we got a hand car and rode an open car ahead of passenger train as far as Chosica, practically the foot of the hill. There never was and never will be another road like this. It broke the Government of Peru financially. It is said to have cost from $250,000 to $500,000 per mile. I should say we could build such a line in the States for $80,000 per mile. It is the most stu- pendous graft in spending money I ever saw. Think of such a rail- road with three trains a week of two passenger cars each and one freight train hauling about 120 tons per day. The fact is the rates these people must charge are prohibitive, and many reduction plants shut down along the line. The scenery is grand. They . run up stream on 4.0 grade until they run into the ground, then switch back up into the clouds and sail aS. again. The most interesting to me are the remains of the Inca farms and dwellings. These people must have been hard pushed; for instance, they went up on the mountain slopes and terraced the slopes as steep as lyi feet to 1 foot clear up to the top in places. Much of- this Canon of the Rimac is soft material and takes a slope. These ter- races are built up with dry retaining wall 5 to 10 feet high, then a flat slope, then another wall; between walls, in places, is not more than 10 to 20 feet; there are miles of these terraces in the Rimac Valley. They now raise some alfalfa. They cut like a barber does your hair but use more care. Every straw is laid just so; it is baled vC^ith the stalks aU straight. These fellows must keep their operating 16 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS expenses down pretty low to live at all. Their earnings certainly are not great. The men's pay is $0.70 gold. Lima is an odd, old city built just like the old cities in Spain. Streets narrow ; street cars so close to narrow sidewalk two men can- not comfortably pass on street car side between side of buildings and street car. We went through the Museum yesterday. They tell us there were three races — two before the Incas — reaching back to 1543 B. C, who exhibited a very much higher state of civilization than any of our North American Indians. The pottery and other relics taken from the mummies of these times show the Chinese face, with slanted eyes and the dragon. One, in looking over these very old things found in this country, is impressed with the Chinese stamp on them. We saw what was passed off on us as Pizarro's body in the Cathedral here, and a lot of his armor and crosses in the Museum. We sail from Lima this P. M. for Mollendo. From there we go by rail to Cuzco, the old Inca capital in the center of Peru. Here we hope to see a lot of Inca ruins, etc., and get into the real thing. This town of Lima is an odd combination. We get a hand out of chocolate, tea or coffee in our room^ abut 7 :30 A. M. Breakfast, 12 to about 1 :30 and dinner at 7:30 P. M. Bank opens at 11 A. M., closes at 3 P. M. Business houses and Post Office open about 9 A. M. Most stores are holes in the wall with very small stocks though some few are large stores with good stocks. As in Mexico, the rich are very rich and the poor very poor. All the people sell lottery tickets. In fact it seems to me the lottery is a disease with these people, and on Panama our North Americans are catching the disease. Sale is not allowed on the zone, but one don't have to go far to get them. The fellow who drew the last Grand Prize stands in this country about like Jack Johnson at home. They have horse races and bull fights here, but if the bulls are not better than anything I have seen, it must be a tame affair. Will go onto my schedule at Valparaiso. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !li !fi Arbquipa, Peru, December 10, 1911. My Dear Dering: We arrived in this town last Tuesday evening. It is a quaint old place founded in 1540 and has about 40,000 people. Just think of a town of so many people and not an automobile within hundreds of miles. Only about four or five four wheeled vehicles in the place^ All the transportation, except some little done SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 17 in two wheel carts, is on the backs of men, women and children, with the help of donkeys and llamas. I tried to hire a carriage to drive with Mrs. Calvert out to the Harvard Observatory. Harvard built the largest photographic observatory in the world and set it up here because at this point the atmosphere seemed to be clearer than at any other point. Well, the time I had getting that rig was interesting. I don't think a rig ever went so far out into the country from this town before. I had to draw up a contract setting forth that I wanted a team to drive for not exceeding four hours, that on the trip the observatory was to be reached, etc., and I signed it. This was the day before. At 8 :00 A. M. the rig was on hand and such a rig, two old skates of ponies, a bridle with collar and pair of traces was on each, no brake on the wagon or other hold back device; one wheel was bent so it wobbled about 18 inches, one front wheel had all the spokes loose, but we started out, down hill on the dead run — up hill we went sometimes, and at other times we did not. Once or twice I got out and helped the driver's assistant, for we had two men on the front seat, at the wheel to lift the ponies out of a rut. We went through many streets so narrow nothing could pass us. One place we turned a Jack-pack train into a man's house so we could get by; at another place a young Indian girl had climbed up a latticed window to get out of the way of our rig. We finally stuck in a narrow place in the pack trail, for that was all the road there was, and the assistant driver got out and cleared the big stones out of the road. I took hold of the hind wheel with him and with the head man using the willow club, and we two boosting the two hind wheels we got started again. The observatory is a very interesting place. They make stellar plates in the big instrument, fourteen inches square. One plate shown us, taking in about five degrees of the heavens, shows, I was told, by actual count, 240,000 stars. This clear atmosphere makes such plates possible. On our way back to town, being down hill, we went at a rapid rate. The wire spike which loosely held the tongue came out, and our skates went off with the tongue leaving us standing in the road. We finally got the team rounded up, repaired the break and got into town. I hired the rig by contract for four hours. We reached town in three, and while the driver was veiling to put in the four hours, I was not. We had enough fun for a whole day and I was anxious to quit with our necks whole. They have quite an extensive street ca:r system here. All cars are drawn by little ponies. Cars are about ten feet long, very lightly 18 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS built. Each has a man to drive, one boy to lick the horses and another small boy to collect the fares. Coming up to the hotel from the train the car jumped the track. Xhe passengers, or a part of them, your humble servant included, got out and lifted it bodily onto the track and off we went again as though nothing had happened. This city is mote interesting to us, even than Lima, the Capital of Peru, and a person visiting South America cannot afford to miss it. It has miles of paved streets, so narrow it would be impossible to drive a carriage through them. Everything is done on a very small scale. Each Indian raises a little produce and in the early morning the streets are lined with donkeys bringing in milk, vegetables, fruits, and in fact, everything the Country produces. They have a market here. We go out before breakfast and get a basket of fruit, assorted mangoes, figs, strawberries, oranges, etc. The hotel puts no fruit on the table, but Mrs. Calvert and I are eating a lot of it. This town has a volcano just back of it, Mt. Misti, about 20,000 feet high. They have earthquakes here, last bad one in 1868. Old Misti gets to smoking every little while and some day it is apt to let go as it evidently has done in times gone by, and there won't be anything left of this town. The Chili river runs through the City. It supplies water for their surface sewerage and at low water times, as at present, is itself but a surface sewer. Yet these poor people wash their clothes in the stream. Streets are narrow, houses gen- erally but two stories, — afraid of earthquakes. The Catholic church has many fine buildings here, and the church works itself over time. A Protestant in this country has no chance at all of going to heaven. No public schools in this town, all Catholic schools. No child who fails to attend early Mass regu- larly can go to school. A few days ago I was in my room writing. The bells began ringing in about the same way they give a fire alarm at home. I rushed out to see where the trouble was, but found no fire. Was told the church had installed or enthroned a Virgin, or performed some other stunt. The church is the whole thing here. Friday night we started by rail for Puno, the lake port for Lake Titicaca, said to be the highest body of navigable wate;r in the world, 12,400 feet., The railroad has a line of boats across the lake, 148 miles, to connect with a railroad at the other end for La Paz, Bolivia. I got all the country I wanted at Puna and came back from there yesterday. The railroad runs a train-de-Luxe, every other day, up one day and down the next, the de-Luxe part is a common day coach, such as the Burlington threw away about twenty years ago, with a few SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 19 easy chairs and a tea and coffee buffet in one end. One lavatory for all and one towel, a bath towel at that, made the round trip of two days without changing cars. This road is up against a hard pTof)osition as to grades. These mountains are a great big pile of volcanic ash, sand, cinders and lava, raising from the sea to a height of about 14,000 feet on the Arequipa line to nearly 16,000 feet where the Peruvian Central crosses them east of Lima. The road from Mollendo through Arequipa to Puno is better located and a more practical line than the P. C. out of Lima, but its grades 3.5, curves 15 degrees, and lots of them, make it rather an undesirable operating propKKition. The line runs up against this mountain of lava and wiggles back and forth until it gets on top. The work is very heavy, even with the high maximum curves and grades. They have no switch backs on the line. One cannot well keep his feet while train is in motion. Coming down the mountain yesterday an old lady from Ohio was trying to eat some lunch. She missed her mouth about half the time and finally in a fit of desperation said, "This is the most serpentine railroad I ever saw." Their rail is from 56 to 66 pwunds, mostly about 56. The rail they have been using came from England, but I notice new rail from Careuegu laying about the track. They use Oregon fir ties, not a stick of wood west of the Andes. The Manager here tells me that in this dry country these fir ties last 15 years. They last for us only 7 or 8 without treatment and these people give them no treatment. They use American up-to- date locomotives. Freight, light consolidation, passenger, light tea wheelers. Engines in good shape. They use flange oiler very suc- cessfully. Box cars like ours about 30,000 capacity, old style trucks, but they are going to steel wheels. They use on their rail an 18-inch splice extending below the rail. This going down between the ties acts as an anti-creeper. The business seems to be exceedingly light. They tell me they move a large amount of wool later and that is a large part of their business. They use practically all native Indian labor. Common laborers, roust-abouts, they pay as low as 25c gold per day. Man running driving wheel gets 90c gold per day. Their Enginemen do good work. The man who brought us down the mountain handled his train very nicely. Coal they now use here comes from Cardiff^, Wales. Is in brick- ettes and costs them $9.50 gold delivered here. They weigh every pound out to Engineers, each man has his own engine. When an Engineer gets sick the engine is laid up until he dies or gets well. 20 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS Water is quite a problem, especially west of Arequipa. They start a pipe line out of the Chili river a little way below Arequipa and carry it along the P. R. dear to Mollendo, about 100 miles. East of here they seem to get water locally from springs along the line. Water is a very precious thing here. It is used with great care, in fact, so much care is used, most of the natives never wash themselves. I have not yet seen any building which seemed to me ever had its floor scrubbed. In this country scrap iron has no market value. The railroad uses it for a lot of things such as ties on bridges, telegraph poles, though the standard telegraph pole seems to be a galvanized iron cylinder about 20 feet long and 3 or 4 inches in diameter. Water tanks are all of iron. All large depot grounds are fenced with high galvanized iron fence, folding gates at ends to let trains in. I sup- pose the natives carry everything off in sight unless it is locked up. Track is easily maintained in this dry climate, the roadbed ma- terial is all good and while they do not seem to have much labor on track it is in pretty good shape. Commercially, I cannot see much for this country west of the Andes in Peru. Nothing will grow without irrigation. Water and available land are both scarce and every foot that can ever be is now most strenuously cultivated and it barely suffices for the local con- sumption. On the east slope of the Andes things look more promising, more water, more rain, more available land on the mountain slopes, but in the headwaters of the Amazon the climate is very unhealthy, where the lower levels to which boats can run is reached. There are a lot of interesting things about this country. I have, I fear, written more than you will care to read. I will be prepared to tell you more when I get back. Possibly Mr. Byram and Mr. Besler may take interest in reading this letter. If so, please give them a chance. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !Ji !ii On Board R. M. S. Oropesa, off Chili, December 17, 1911. My Dear Dering: This South American Coast line is the most uninviting piece of this Earth I ever expect to see. The harbor at Panama and its vicinity is very pretty, but once away from that, with the exception of the few breaks where the streams come down to the sea from the summit of the Andes, the shore line is one stretch of rocks rising straight up from the water's edge, from one to several hundred feet with an occasional break of SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 21 sand, but never very wide. Not a thing grovvs on these shores. They are as bare of vegetation as the sidewalk in front of our office building, and I am told this desert condition exists all the way from Antofagasta on the sea shore to La Paz, Bolivia, 700 miles and I have personally seen that this same condition holds from Mollendo to Puno on Lake Titicaca, within the latter case some few green sjrots or oases, most of which are very small except that in which Arequipa is located which covers perhaps six miles square. On the road Antofagasta to La Paz not even an oasis. La Paz has some water and a few trees, but practically no water for agricultural purposes. The reason for its being is the copper and silver mines. They have very expensive fuel, and altogether it is a hard proposition. When the mines play out La Paz and the country about it will probably have to be abandoned. As I have told you little water reaches the sea coast on the west side of the Andes. What little there is, is used up for irrigation purposes in the flat beaches near heads of streams. The consequence is, that at all the sea coast towns water for domestic uses must either be distilled from sea water or brought down from the interior. At Mollendo the railroad brings water through a pipe line about 106 miles. To Antofagasta I was told it was piped 20O miles. The products of the land, Mollendo to Antofagasta, are all used in the interior and none is available for export, so that the sea port towns must be supplied from the outside. Steamers ply along the coast to make this distribution from Guayaquil on the north to ports south of Valparaiso, bringing oranges, bananas from the north and wheat, flour and corn from the south. In fact, some steamers are a traveling trading house. The natives come out at each port, sell cattle and goats if they have them, and buy such necessary things as they can get with the credit they have. The stuff raised along the west coast is all consumed up and down the coast. From Mollendo to Antofagasta the only export is copper from the interior where they have some wonderfully rich mines, and the nitrate beds along the coast. These two minerals are the source of wealth in that stretch of the coast. The nitrates are limited in extent and will probably be worked out in 50 years at the increasing rate of the working. One is impressed, on such a trip as this, with the great number of English ships. We find some German ships, an occasional French vessel, but more of the ships are English. I refeT to steamers. Coal being very high here there are many sailing vessels in the nitrate trade. The steamer we are on came from London via the Straits and north on west coast to Lima, whence it is now returning to London. It picks up all along the coast ore for England and this gives direct 22 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS communication from all these South American ports, east and wesfi side, to Liverpool. Most of these enterprises are handled either actually or financially by Englishmen and the profits must be large in the successful enter- prises. Money is 10% interest about here and this would indicate profits were large where an investment is made. Railroad rates in our country would be prohibitive. Was told the rate from Antofagasta to La Paz on coal was about twenty dollars per ton, distance about 700 miles, but a large part of this distance is straight up. Speaking of money, — Peru though practically a bankrupt nation, is on a gold basis. The libre is exactly the same as the English pound or sovereign, 4.866 of our money. No paper money in Peru. It works well. In Chili, which is a very much more substantial government, while on a gold basis have no metal in actual circulation ; all is paper and this paper varies from day to day. The pesos is worth theoret- ically in our money 36c. They are now exchanging for English sovereigns 24 to the pound or at the rate of about 20c. This paper money, I am told, is kept in circulation by the bankers and the corpor- ations employing labor, and as none are ever redeemed, because of war the banks profit greatly by the gradual wearing out of the notes as well as their loss. The paying of labor in this depreciated currency is, of course, a great saving to the employer. I got some Chilian money yesterday, a whole hand full. The notes are torn and so dirty as to be offensive, too offensive to com- fortably keep about one's person. A friend told me that when he was in Antofagasta a few days ago the hotel man tried to make him change, and with one bill which was in 12 pieces. At all these west side ports the steamers anchor out in the harbor and passengers must arrange to get themselves ashore with their baggage as best they can. This has bred a lot of sharks they call flotereo. These fellows have row boats and hold you up for all they can. Every port we come to we go through the same scramble. If a fellow don't watch he is apt to have his baggage carried off with as many different men as he has pieces. This condition is the one thing I think is very wrong. I have a ticket which takes me to Valparaiso, where I expect to arrive tomorrow, the 18th. Instead of putting me and my baggage on the dock, the steamer anchors in the harbor and I am supposed to get ashore as best I can with these sharks. I am told that at Callao the steamers once did dock and put their passengers ashore. The floteros made such a fuss about it that the SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 23 Government people in some way prohibited the steamer docking until after the floteros had taken the passengers ashore. Accidents are occurring all the time. Most of these landings are in open sea as at Mollendo. The roll of the sea is 4 or 5 feet and when one gets to the ship's ladder they must stand up in the rolling boat and jump for it at the exact psychological moment or get left and pos- sibly — wet. The baggage they hoist over the side with a rope. Every once in a while a trunk slips out of the rope and has to be fished out of the sea and drained. The west coast will never be a popular route for tourists until things are changed considerably. We are constantly having rumors of revolutions, small pox, Bubonic plague and some other disquieting rumor ahead, with pros- pects of being put in a dirty pest house for a month, etc. At Antofagasta we did not go ashore as we did not have much time; but with my glass I could see a very large and well filled graveyard. I was told the Bubonic plague did that a few years ago. I have enjoyed this trip, as has my wife, greatly, but I will be glad when I get out into the open and be able to say "It never touched me." Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !ii m Grand Hotel, Santiago, December 22, 1911. My Dear Dering: We have been in Chili now about a week. We spent about two days in Valparaiso, then came up to Santiago by rail. We start across the Andes to Buenos Aires tomorrow noon. These two towns in Chili are an agreeable surprise after spending two weeks in Peru. These people of Chili are civilized. The Peruvians outside the few first families in the larger cities, are not. Peru as a country bears about the same relation to Chili that art Indian reservation in our country does to the people of our Nebraska Prairies. Valparaiso, although shook to pieces by an earthquake only about five year ago, is again built up and practically all traces of the quake wiped out with fine new buildings. The people seem to be alive and all doing something. No lottery tickets hawked about the streets. Few, if any, beggars are seen and everybody seems to be making a living for themselves. I imagine some of the poorer have to cut their operating expenses. Valparaiso has a lot of shipping, some twenty large steamers in the harbor when we were there. This is a bad harbor. When 24 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS gales are from the north, shipping is exposed to the storms and I (am told ships sink right in the front of the town at times. No passenger boats get up to the dock. The night we landed we had a heavy wind, but fortunately it was from the south and we were protected by the hills so we got ashore alive; but somewhat wet. I am told there was 300 millions of business done on the west coast of South America — 1910 — of this United States got 30 million only 1/10. Of this the exchange was handled by foreign banks, mostly Germans. Reports show all but a bare 3/0 was handled through foreign banks. Most of the goods sold here are foreign, with foreign bankers, foreign capital from Europe in their enterprises. Foreigners for the most part here in business. There is not much chance for United States trade. Chili is said to be practically controlled by 100 to 150 families. When they want an outing it is cheaper and easier for them to go to Europe and there they go. The women to buy bonnets and gowns and the men to buy goods. We have seen a lot of French gowns and hats here. When the canal is open, the U. S. ought to extend its shipping and banking to this country if they expect to get any business. Valparaiso is peculiarly situated. There is a narrow beach along shore ranging in width from a couple of hundred feet to about 2,000 feet at widest point. On this flat the business part of town is located. From this flat the blufFs rise almost straight up for 2 or 3 hundred feet and on these bluffs is part of the residence portion of the town. To get from the low to the high level, they have several cable lifts working on inclines 30 degrees to 45. Our hotel, the Royal, was the best we have had but I cannot get used to the eating schedule. No breakfast before 1 1 :00 A. M. Dinner, 8:00 P. M. Our railroad from Valparaiso to Santiago is in fairly good shape. Rock ballast but they soon cover it with dirt. So they have very little rock in sight. The country as far as Santiago slopes gradually so they have not grades over two per cent and the curves are quite reasonable. Santiago has about 300,000 people and many fine buildings. It is laid out on a flat. Buildings are generally not over three stories and mostly two stories. Streets are of rather cheap construction gen- erally, but the elaborate cement finish which they can put on and have last in this warm climate, enables them to make a fine showing at small expense. Santiago is now having a bad case of small- pox. The cases by month have increased from 14 in January last SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 25 to about 600 in November. Of 2,700 cases up to December 1st, 1,700 have been fatal. We have concluded this is a good country to get out of. The rotten paper money they have in this country would spread such a disease faster than anything else. Talking of money. In Peru their money is all on a gold basis and does not fluctuate. Their 50-cent piece is a little larger than a dollar, they call it a Sol. 100 Centavos is one Sol. The silver Sol being one-tenth in actual silver value of the Libre or pound which is of exactly the same value as the English pound. In Chili they have the Pesos which is valued at 36c par; but while on a gold basis all money is of paper, with some small silver coins. The Pesos fluctuate. We have had exchange on basis of 20 to 24 Pesos to the pound. We paid our hack man for bringing four of us and our hand baggage about a mile from the station to the hotel, 3 Pesos or dollars as these people here call them. He was getting only about 60c of our money. We went out for two hours' ride, paid $20.00 or in gold $4.00. I am told the employer of labor and the banks keep this variable currency in circulation. Labor is paid in this depreciated currency, but when they go to buy, it trades in at only the depreciated price. The banks speculate on varying value and make a lot of money in that way. The agricultural country of Chili, while there is very much more of it than in Peru, is still quite limited. Everything must be irrigated and water is very scarce. They have on the average about 14 inches of rain a year about Santiago, and that is not enough for crops. Coming from Valparaiso to Llai Llai junction, we came up a valley which varies from one to two or three miles wide. From the edge of this valley barren mountains rise up on either side. This valley looked very dry in spots as though they were short of water. From the junction out for several miles we run over barren hills, some little grass, some goats feeding, but nothing more. 15 to 20 miles north of Santiago, we get into the "Central Valley" of Chili which is said to be 10 to 20 miles wide and 300 miles north and south. This is not actually one continuous valley, but a wrinkle in the mountain slope. The top apparently having settled down leaving a fold or flat place. This strip above outlined extending from Santiago south is really the agricultural part of Chili. The steamers come down to the valley, follow it for some distahce, then back through the lower mountains and run off toward the sea west- ward. This must be a dryer year than the average, foi- in Santiago parks,- all the lagoons are dry; they apparently having no water for them. 26 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS We have just gotten our transportation arranged to Buenos Aires. / think it would tickle Eustis to see the passenger department here do business. We go first to the railroad agent. He gives us a lot of useful information and sends us to the express company. Yesterday, when we called on the agent of the express company, he told us he was selling tickets for the train to leave that day and could not sell tickets for our train until today. So today we got our tickets in the form of a book. That book limits haul of baggage to 62j4 pounds per passenger and 3 cubic feet cubical contents. The baggage we can check or rather send free, — for they don't check it but paste a tag on it and give a receipt — is limited to 125 pounds per passenger. The express company takes charge of it and collects freight on the excess. I refer now to the Trans-Andean R. R. The State R. R., Valparaiso to Santiago, allows no free baggage. I had 132 Elio. They charged me as near as I could make out from the receipt sent me : For my baggage $ 8.60 Because I had 3 pieces 3.80 Because it was December 20th 3.50 Man signing receipt 10 $16.00— Four dollars of our money for hauling two trunks and one grip about 120 miles. The engines they use here are of English type, mostly made in Belgium. The freight cars are very light; about half are the old flat wheeled cars something like those old construction cars we have with two axles and four wheels. They haul few cars, go slow and have light loads, but I don't see how they keep the things on the track as well as they do. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !fi !li Grand Hotel Calle Florida 25, Buenos Aires, December 30th, 1911. My Dear Dering: We left Santiago, Chili, about noon Saturday last, coming to Los Andes and remaining over night at the latter point. This Trans- Andean Route is a disjointed affair. West of Los Andes it is 5 feet gauge; Los Andes to Mendoza it is meter gauge — about 39 inches. From Mendoza to Buenos Aires it is again five feet. We left Los SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 27 Andes at 7 :20 A. M. Sunday and were all day coming over the range, arriving at Mendoza about 7:00 P. M., but the broad gauge train was about four hours late and ran late all the way to Buenos Aires. Leaving Llai Llai Junction, we went to Los Andes through as pretty an irrigated valley as I ever saw, from one to three or four miles wide. This part of the valley being well fixed for water, was well cared for and strenuously farmed. Alfalfa, wheat, corn, fruit, also quite a lot of stock. From the edge of the valley high mountains rise up to about Salto where we enter a pretty close canon. At Juncal the road doubles back on itself, not shown on map, and finally goes through the range with a 10,000-foot tunnel. This little road was built by two brothers named Clark who put into it all the money they could beg, borrow or steal; but they finally went busted and the exact status of the road at this time I am unable to find out about. This road up to the summit from Los Andes and down from summit to Mendoza runs along on three or four per cent, grade, and when they come to a steep place they use six or seven per cent, and have a cog wheel attachment on the engine and in these steep places on the track. The track arrangement is the same as is used on our cog roads in the States (Pikes Peak for instance). But the engine is built like a consolidated engine with the second axle from the head end left out and in its place a cog is inserted, coupled up with two independent cylinders, so that on light grades three pairs of drivers, operated with two cylinders, are pulling the train. When the rack comes into play, not only the two traction cylinders are used, but also the two cog connected cylinders are working. The cog speed is necessarily slow, and for a heavy freight traffic would be imprac- ticable, but they can handle passengers. Am told their rate for pas- sengers at this steep part of line is 20 cents per mile — about 10 cents of OUT money. Leaving Mendoza in the evening, we saw nothing of the country until the next A. M. at about Rio Quinto. About Mendoza it is a finely developed, irrigated country. Mendoza is, I am told, as old as any city in the United States. It was founded in 1561, has 30,000 people and was once the capital of Argentina. About it are immense vineyards. I saw more grape vines coming from Blanco Eucalada to Mendoza than I ever saw before and the condition of the vines seemed to be perfect. They make a lot of wine from their grapes raised here, and there certainly is a lot of it consumed. Everybody in this country seems to have been raised on the bottle. They certainly take to it kindly when they have grown up. The country from Mendoza to Rio Quinto is a cattle country; looks like the country about Apex, Texas ; some sand hiUs, but mostly a level plain with an occasional high hill sticking up out of the plain. 28 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS * Ground covered with a bunch of grass which somewhat resembles our fox-tail. As we go east the scrub brush, which is scattered over the land west of Rio Quinto, disappears and some farming begins, and when we get to Rufino we find quite a lot of Alfalfa. They seldom cut it. Labor seems to be very scarce. They turn the cattle in on the growing alfalfa and let them eat it. We saw immense fields of alfalfa all along the road with hundreds of head of cattle and horses grazing. None of the alfalfa fields seemed to be stocked any where near their capacity to care for the heads. Occasionally we found a large field of wheat or corn ; these grain fields grew smaller and more frequent as we came east. Everywhere business seemed to be carried on with a minimum of labor. Land is all owned by some one not living on it and in very large tracts. It is noticeable that even where land is farmed into fields and planted to alfalfa with large herds of cattle, one sees very few people or houses. The towns west of Buenos Aires along the railroad are all small and bvit few people living in them. Fields of wheat are rotting on the ground in places, apparently because labor cannot be procured to cut them. Corn is planted very dose on the ground and apparently is cultivated but little. Their theory may be that corn planted cIom together on the ground will keep the weeds out without cultivating, They don't raise much of a crop. We saw but little good corn, color good but spotted, in the field and few ears forming, apparently. We saw an immense number of cattle in the big pastures and the breed was good. The cattle shipments by rail must be large. Stock cars in this country are loaded in the end, no side doors. They have a stub track every few miles with an incline chute. Cars are backed up to this. The chute runs out by a sort of a lane parallel with the public road. They have nothing which we would call a stock yard. The herdsi are all large ; no sorting can be done in loading yards. This scheme would not, I think, work satisfactorily in our country where stock raisers are frequently small farmers, and the dealer must hold for a car load frequently. These people use their stock cars for stock only, so far as I can see. They store them on the stock spur up against the chute. A stockman comes along, turns his stock into the chute lane and drives them through the cars on siding, thus loading all cars first out, without doing any swatching to get cars to chute. A big saving is in stock pens, but a special siding is needed. The floors of the stock cars are all deated and no bedding used. First cleats about % inch high are nailed about one foot apart cross- ways of the car, then strips about 11 inches long, 12 inches apart between. This leaves one-half to one inch at ends of the short strips, so the water can be run off. These cars have no roofs on them. SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 29 All engines of the Buenos Aires Pacific Railroad are of the British type made in England and Belgium. They are fine looking machines, but rather small boiler. Their wheel arrangement on passenger is about same as our "S" engines. The trailer wheel being under the cab, they keep fire box warm and between driver wheels so their steam capacity must be limited. They have four wheel box and good old freight cars of light capacity, but their new type of coal cars are some like our iron cars carrying about 8,600 pounds, and weighing about 43,000 pounds. Their four-wheel cars look odd. Think the old time Chicago switchmen would soon put them out of business. Couplings are like the British. Big spring buiJers on each corner of the car and a hook and chain for coupler on freight. On passenger they have the same spring buffers, but a screw. Right one end, left on other, to pull up the slack and take the pull. They run sleepers on the railroad east of Mendoza. They are made in England. Corridor along one side, state rooms or compart- ments off to side. Each stateroom has two narrow berths, one above the other and a folding wash basin. These cars are very plainly furnished in walnut and white oak; oil cloth on floors everywhere, windows are single and very open. Dust comes in in clouds; one towel to a passenger for twenty-fouf hours; no cool drinking water on train except in dining car. These cars would not pass as sleeping cars in our country. One porter for two or three sleepers. Each sleeper has 24 berths, 12 compart- ments. No sleepwr conductor. They let me go to sleep at Mendoza after I had shown my tickets to the only railroad representative in sight, then woke me up about 1 A. M. to see the railroad ticket. They run diners here; call them "Restaurant Cars." In the morning we went in for "coffee." The tables were bare except for dust and some black oil cloth. Pretty soon a fellow came along and gave us a big pan of bread; then in ordinary course of events they bring a cup of coffee, but I got them to give me some chocolate. That is all that we have until noon, when we get breakfast. At the noon meal we had a coarse, white table-cloth, a course dinner of fried stuff, greasy and hashed up with vegetables. They give the ordinary passenger this kind of stuff and a lot of extras not on the bill of fare; turkey, roasted, fruit and anjrthing you drink is extra; all is garnished with dust. We happened to have some lunch with us and ate it for our evening meal. The railroad has a dirt roadbed. They use a hardwood tie made in this country and spelled "Quebraco?" — or "axe-breaker," trans- lated. They are putting in a lot of iron ties of the pressed steel type; they don't look good to me. They had in a lot of disk ties, the two disks being joined by a rod to keep the rails from spreading. 30 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS These things were evidently a failure for they have them stacked up along the road by the hundreds in all sort of repair. Their rail looks A. S. C. E. pattern and is quite heavy. Where the climate is dry their dirt track stays up pretty wrell, but they had been having a lot of rain just w^est of Buenos Aires and track was very rough in places. Their speed is low and wheel load is light, so they have no such strenuous problems as we have. They move light trains and are slow getting stuff moved. A man from the States who lives in Southern Chili told me the Chilean roads that have steep mountain grades to deal with, have stuff stacked up at ice ports for two years going to the interior and it is still there. In Argentina they ought to be pretty well cleaned up for they have no grades or curves. From Mendoza to Buenos Aires, I don't see why they could not make a tangent the whole 500 miles. They do have a tangent 175 miles long and only one curve in 210 miles and that curve only a few degrees. The country east of Rufino appears to be one unbroken plain with- out bumps of any kind in it, like the staked plains of Texas, but Argentina plains are much more fertile. The trouble with this country, everybody is in the cities. Unlike our country, the population never did get onto the soil. Think of a country with 1,135,000 square miles, 6,000,000 people, Indians and all, with one and one-half of these millions in one city. They have no factories here worth mentioning except to make wine and beer. Everything must be imjwrted except the agricultural products thfy raise. Coal, clothing, machinery, trinkets of all kinds are imported. Duties are very high and of course that puts up all stuff that comes in, so any article we make and sell in the States is just about double price here. Am told they charge duties on farm exports. The Gov- ernment must be getting a lot of money, for in this country they tax about everything. Buenos Aires certainly is a fine city. While they have some alamedas a full block wide with park in middle, the main part of their business streets are very narrow. Street cars go only one way on such streets, track being placed so there is not more than about seven feet from side of building to side of passing car. This leaves room for wagon traiBc over the other side of street. Sidewalks are very narrow on such streets-^two people only can pass comfortably. In the congested part of city, as in Florida Street in front of our hotel, wagon traffic is barred from 4:30 to 7:00 P. M., and the whole street, which is nicely paved with asphalt and kept clean, is given up to people on foot. It is a sight to see a whole street given up this way. On clear days it is jammed full from building line to building line. Elegantly dressed women and men herding in the middle of the street where only a few moments before vehicles were SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 31 chasing back and forth. This Florida Street happens to have no street car line. This city has a large number of small but elegantly kept parks. Markets scattered about the town where country people come to sell their wares. This market idea is carried out in all the southern cities and I think it is a good one. The markets here, as is every- thing about the city, are neat and clean. Everything one wants to eat is neatly arranged, but only things to eat are shown. In Peru you can buy anything from boots to tripe in the market places. I never saw so many jewelry stores in any city as are in Buenos Aires, and large ones. AU this stuff comes from Europe and they certainly give the people a chance to buy all they can absorb in both quantity and quality. We have no jewelry stores in Chicago to com- pare with several I have seen here. Dry goods are mostly French and stocks are fine. The women go to Paris for their gowns and bonnets. The men go along and the whole business for this country seems to be done in Europe. I don't see how the United States can do business in this country unless they can compete with Paris for gowns. People won't go to Paris for bonnets and to the United States for other stuff. Practically all automobiles in the country are French, and fine machines. There is no chance for "Fords" in this town. A pian can either afford an auto or he can't and when he can he gets a fine one. We have been in the town now a week, have traveled about it on foot, by auto, carriage ; crossed it back and forth in street cars and have come to the conclusion it is a wonderful city. The parks, large and small, seem to be almost too many to count and all are elegantly maintained. This climate seems to be ideal for park maintenance; practically no frost, yet not too hot, so plant -life grows all the year. In the Botanical Garden here they have plants and flowers from all parts of the world in finely arranged plats; each plat is labeled with a porcelain plate on an iron post provided for it. At each avenue intersection they have on a sort of inclined desk a map of the Garden in colors, made on an enameled plate. All the different shrubs are located. It seems to me the finest thing of its kind possible. The Zoo is near by and has a fine collection of animals, birds, monkeys, etc. This equable climate is great for these living creatures and they have hundreds of things w'hich could not possibly live in our climate. After seeing some of the monkeys, I feel like the old lady when she first saw the hippopotamus. After adjusting her goggles and walking around it three or four times, she finally concluded, "There ain't no such thing." 32 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS The business done here astonishes one, especially in the way of suburban passenger business. There must be considerable freight, but it is not in such evidence as passenger business. This city ought to grow indefinitely and if it continues to grow on same lines as now, it ought to be the most beautiful city in the world. Climate, its position as a railroad center (see map enclosed), its position at the mouth of the great navigable river and a seaport; its rich plains around it make a combination of advantages which, it seems to me, can be found no where else in the world. They cer- tainly are flying high now, and will probably have set backs. Nothing now seems too good. I saw what appears to be nice Ben Davis apples — that is all I have seen here — ^$5.00 per dozen, about $2.50 gold. That is going some for apples. I have had to cut them out. I can't digest Ben Davis apples at such a price; in fact, at home I won't eat them at any price. Their fruit here is generally not so good as ours in the States. They have nothing but agricultural prod- ucts and everything else being brought in makes an immense amount of shipping — a trip around the docks — all being in basins, no harbor outside. It is very interesting. So many steamers and sailing vessels in port, these basins look like a forest of smoke stacks and masts. Immense elevators for grain; warehouses for freight with derricks, etc., to handle it, make a city itself. They are having their labor troubles here. All the freight handlers of the Argentina boats are on a strike. The engineers land firemen on the railroads are in for a raise in pay and not settled yet. Am told all vessels are coaling at Montevideo because of the strike here. That port is congested. Vessels cannot get to dock. Yesterday, in transferring the mail from Europe and North America from ocean boat to a lighter, so that it might be expedited, they upset about 600 sacks into the sea and what was not saved was absolutely lost being so watersoaked as to be worthless. We have been waiting here for that mail, ours was probably in it. I got your letter written to Valparaiso but have had no mail from anybody since leaving there. I get hold of an English paper printed here and see Roosevelt breaks out again occasionally. We leave Tuesday night for Montevideo. Sail from there for Santos, Satur- day, January 6th and from Rio to Lisbon January 20th. My address at Lisbon I have given you as Thomas Cook & Son, 52-54 Rua Aurea. This is the only address I have given in Europe. I am two weeks ahead of my schedule so am somewhat uncertain as to when I will sail from Europe or where. I will, however, be in New York not later than April 2nd. Wish you would send there, care your General Agent, transportation for self and wife New York to Chicago via Penna or L. S. & M. S. SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 33 I enclose a small railroad map of Argentina ; also a map showing, in a general way, the Trans-Andean Railroad. I am buying all the pictures I can get of places I have seen and trying to take some of the special things myself. When I get settled I want my friends to come and visit me at our new Lincoln home and I will undertake to illustrate some of South America. This is a long letter. If you get tired reading it, throw it in the waste basket. Remember me to all my friends. Both of us are well and enjoying the trip immensely. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. Rio de Janeiro^ January 14th, 1912. My Dear Dering: We arrived in Rio on evening of 11th via Sao Paulo. After leaving Buenos Aires we went by boat to Montevideo, arriving there in A. M. We went to the Parque Hotel, a new build- ing kept in grand style as a sort of sea side resort. In fact, Monte- video does the resort business for Buenos Aires, the latter city being on the river nearly 100 miles from the sea, they get no salt water. I was agreeably surprised in Montevideo. While not comparable with Buenos Aires, it is a large place some 350,000 and being on the sea seems to be more comfortable during hot weather than B. A. These people, like those of Argentina, have nothing but agri- cultural products. Cattle are produced in large numbers. Liebig has his "beef extract" establishment on the river above Montevideo and there are some slaughtering and refrigerating plants in the city. The shipments out seem to be cattle products mostly. In the whole country of Argentina and Uruguay, labor seems to be scarce and while their products are agricultural, those things are produced which can be gotten with the least labor such as cattle, etc. We started by boat from Montevideo for Brazil, arriving at the port of Santos on the third day out. We stopped at Santos only long enough to get a train for Sao Paulo, some fifty miles inland. Santos is a hot place and it was their hot season. We missed the early train and had to wait for that leaving 2:00 P. M. Our party consisted of four — a Mr. Hunter and wife of St. Louis had been traveling with us. We went to a hotel to get dinner. We got some lemonade and just an ordinary dinner such as one would get at a Chicago restaurant of like quality for about fifty cents. When we got our bill it footed up for four of us, 30,000 reis. If Dr. Denney had not insured my heart before I left Chicago, am sure it would have failed me right there. I thought my trip was ended and that I would have to go into 34 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS bankruptcy, but when I found that 1,000 reis was only about 32 cents of our money, I felt better. But even at that rate they charged us about $9.65 gold for four ordinary meals. Everything is high in this country. In Sao Paulo we went to three hotels before we could get a room and then our party had to divide, each going to a difierent hotel. Santos has spent a lot of money in docks and they have a fine harbor. Boats get right up along side the docks but the coffee, of which Santos is said to be the greatest shipping point in the world, has to be carried on the backs of men out of the carts which haul it to the docks and taken on board ships. The dock men's union seems to have enough pull to keep out of use all the improved machinery which has been provided for the economical handling of such stuff. Santos once was a bad town for plagues of various kinds, and while there is much swamp about the town yet, a lot of land has been filled and raised and conditions have been greatly improved in the late years. We saw about 14 steamers there loading coffee. From Santos we went over the Sao Paulo Railroad to Sao Paulo. This railroad is certainly a curiosity. They have a level division for some 15 or 20 miles then they jump up onto the mountain with a 6.0 grade, using a cable for the ten miles of steep grades. This cable .section is divided into about 2 to 2j^ mile stretch with a power plant at the end of each stretch. The "grip" is in the shape of a dummy engine which handles itself by steam. Between the points where one cable is released and another picked up, grade is apparently level so a dummy engine carrying the grip can handle its train from one cable to the other, the necessary short distance. They arrange that a train is always holding the grip coming down, while a train is going up. In this way they have the grip cars on up and down trains work- ing, the weight of down train balancing the up train, the power plant furnishing only enough additional power to the cable to keep things moving. They evidently have had trouble getting their busi- ness over the line, for they have recently built a double track to one side without cable, apparently to haul their freight over. That is the kind of line which it seems to me ought to have been built in the first place, eliminating the cable. The really interesting thing about this line is the immense amount of work which has been put on it in way of permanent con- struction. They are earning big money. They are allowed to declare only a limited dividend, I am told, so that they must either spend their net earnings or give the money away, and they evidently have been spending it. Everything we would consider necessary in masonry. The side ditches in nearly all cuts, are brick gutters built of brick and cement. The slopes in very many places are masonry SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 35 walls, laid on the cut slopes. Open brick and cement drains run up the slopes and ravines and around the tops of cuts in a way I have never seen on any railroad before. Wherever the rock on cut sides was not solid and secure, they have filled up the projections with masonry. In fact it looks as though they went up and built a piece on the mountain when they could not spend their money in any other way. Their engines are of English make, elaborately trimmed with brass and polished up in a way we could not afford in the United States. Sao Paulo, the second city in Brazil, is in the center of the great coffee growing district and really the center of commercial life in the country. These people are holding us up on the price of coffee; about half of it goes to our country and they are making a lot of money. They spend it freely in Sao Paulo, making it what we would consider a red hot town. It has been so busy in a com- mercial way and grown so recently and so fast, it has not yet devel- oped the artistic, but it seems to be now where it must grow very fast if our people keep drinking its coffee and paying big prices for it. The city has just completed a Municipal Theatre which looked from the outside as fine as that of Paris. It is located in a beautiful little park, elaborately and tastily maintained. It would be a great credit to any city in the world. The Sao Paulo Railroad has recently built a new passenger sta- tion. While the building looks neat and is large, it is the worst arranged thing, for the purpose, I ever saw. They have six parallel tracks through the high shed, no platform between, no space for tracks and can load and discharge passengers only from two out- side tracks. The waiting room is limited and has not a seat of any kind where a passenger can sit. Trains are on second floor down. The only way a stranger can find his way in or out is to hire a boy to guide him. The "Cargadora" idea has developed to such an extent in this country as to be a nuisance. When we landed at our hotel, I set my grip down to help my wife out of the carriage and when I turned around the grip was gone. I supposed the hotel porter, of whom there were two or three rushing around, had taken it. After about half an hour, when I was going to my room, the clerk com- municated the fact to me that a "Cargadora" had carried my grip to the office and wanted 1,000 reis for doing it. The fact is, the railroads and all transportation companies play into the hands of these fellows, so that no one can get through the country without paying tribute to them and they are a nuisance. Here in Rio they have an ordinance or law of some kind, allowing the steamship com- panies to take their passengers to the steamers, none of which come to the dock, but they will not allow them to take baggage of any kind for passengers. People going aboard vessels here must hunt 36 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS up a "Cargadora" and make a bargain with him. They are all thieves and the process of getting on and off vessels with baggage is anything but pleasant. We left Sao Paulo in the A. M. for a daylight ride over the Central Railroad of Brazil. The distance is about 300 miles. We left Sao Paulo at 6,45 A. M. and arrived at Rio about 7 :00 P. M. The alignment is fair, grades do not appear to be bad until we gee about 20 miles from Rio where the fall from the table lands to Rio is rather abrupt. The country is rough but the railroad follows valleys for most of the way. Track nearly all single, ballast mostly the red soil and a red sand dug out of pockets along the line. They are putting rock ballast for about 50 miles out of Rio. Double track begins some 30 miles out of Rio. Engines used are Baldwins mostly. They use negro firemen. Native engineers look like Spaniards. I noticed the engineer in pas- senger train stays on his engine. Fireman came out with a sort of tea pot to oil round and from the looks of the right of way at oiling places, the oiling must generally be left to the fireman and his tea pot. I thought of Torry when I saw all that oiled right of way and wondered what he would say if he saw such a greasy spot on the C. B. & Q. The trains seemed to me very light for the engines used and grades encountered. They evidently have not developed the tonnage question here. Coach we came over in was marked first class. In our country it would be in work train service. The ballasting earth track they fill up level with top of rail for whole length of the tie. A small ditch is made clear across the roadbed about every eight feet and under the rail. The rainy season is on here and this dirt track was, in places, very rough. At each station the main line switches are all attended by a uniformed man. There are generally three tracks, side by side through each station. The center, what we would call a main track, the others, sidings. The platforms are side of side track and at nearly all points our passenger train was run through the siding. This method of operation takes a lot of men about a station. The agent and his two switch tenders show up at the smallest station, some of which are about on par with one of our blind sidings. Tha agent has a soldier to keep peace about the establishment, who is, I suppose, furnished by the Government. At one place about the size of Gladstone, the agent, dressed like a colonel on the governor's staff, with his soldier in blue and gold and red uniform with a musket on his shoulder and a funny three story knapsack on his back, cut quite a figure. I think the Interstate Commission ought to con- SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 37 sider the picturesque side of American railways and compel the rail- roads of the United States to furnish such an outfit at all our stations. The country for 20 or 30 miles out of Sao Paulo toward Rio is not very interesting; mostly grazing lands; quite a number of cattle. I saw what I at first thought were large stumps of trees, giving the country the appearance of just having been cleared of timber. It later developed these stumps were ant hills, some taller than a man. They appear to have been built of a clay plastered up into stump-like shape and the ants evidently are a great pest.' I saw ants here almost as large as the mules they drive about, and it occurred to me that they might improve the breed of ants a little and use them for driving. After getting about 50 miles out of Sao Paulo we began to strike cofiBee plantations, orange groves, etc. While there are some quite large coffee "Fazendas," as they are called here, this is not the coffee country. The great coffee Fazendas are northwest of Sao Paulo; 3,000 to 4,500 feet is the elevation at which coffee flourishes best in this country. The country along the T. T. we came on was very rolling and is not strenuously cultivated, as a whole. Having no re-rolling mills in this country, scrap rail and iron of all kinds is practically of no value except for such purposes as it can be used in its present shape. The Central of Brazil has its right of way fenced for the 300 miles with posts made of 70-pound rails, most of the way 8 feet apart, and in some places a rail bolted on length ways, top and bottom. That seemed to me a waste of good material. I have! wondered why some fellow did not start a bar mill in this country and re-roll this steel into commercial shapes for local use. If Carti- lege could see some of the bridges they use on this line he would have a fit. They are all very light, long spans, frequently have the rail spiked on a 12 x 12 wooden stringer resting on I beam as a floor, the I beams being about 4 feet apart. I shuddered to think what could happen if a train got off the track on such a bridge. I imagine they have been having some experience with this floor system, for they have apparently been changing some recently. All cattle guards are open pit. The details of construction and operation seem to have been copied from England. Station platforms are high and built of masonry. Their switch stands are very odd, but nothing we can profitably copy.. Their split switches are about same as ours. Their frogs, main and side tracks, are the old anvil frogs we discarded 30 years ago. I will write you about Rio later. When I was in Buenos Aires, I wrote you, it seemed to me that might be, all things considered, the most beautiful city in the world. While I have not changed my 38 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS mind, I have been thinking: "What if Rio had been Buenos Aires?" Rio has the most beautiful site, it seems to me, a city could ever have, but, so far as I have seen, all the attempts to improve on Nature here have, more or less, failed. If Rio had been treated from the beginning with the great expenditure of money, scientific judgment and artis- tic taste displayed in Buenos Aires, it could be a paradise. Buenos Aires certainly has gone about its improvement right. Take the Botanical Garden of the latter city. It is a wronderful collection of plants of all countries beautifully arranged. Here the botanical gar- den is of practically no scientific value and outside of two avenues of royal palms and a bamboo walk, has no beauty. Yet Rio is really a beautiful city in spite of itself. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. S » On Board Steamer Araguaya, Off Brazil, January 25th, 1911. My Dear Dering: We have seen Rio. Were there 13 days. Rode about it, climbed its hills on foot, on street cars and by the cog rail route to Corcovada where we could stand on the top of the mountain and see it all at once. It is a beautiful city. As I have written before, Nature probably never before has done so much in any one place to make a beautiful city possible. The hills are of granite ranging from the hardest to a fine, disintegrated rocL The hard rock makes the sharp peaks possible. The softer rocks have disintegrated and washed down making the fertile slopes on which, in this warm, humid climate, the flufiiy foliage grows so luxuriantly and covers every spot with a solid mass of green of varying shades, with here and there a tree with a peculiar foliage which appears almost white against the darker greens. Even the bare granite cliffs are covered on the flatter slopes with a short brush growth; on the steeper with a beautiful moss and the perpendicular places with gray lichens, with occasional ferns growing from the crevices. There are fine level areas between the large mounds which rise up out of the plain, for the business part of the city and these wooded slopes about the town make fine places for residences. We have seen coloring in flowers we find nowhere else. Much in lavender, everything seems to be a riot of color. The butter- flies are large, numerous and of the most beautiful color imaginable; in fact, if I had been shown before coming here some we have seen in the woods during our rambles, I could hardly have believed Nature could anywhere have been so eccentric as to have made such SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 39 a thing. Crimson and yellow, black and pwacock blue, no little things but very large ones. One kind I saw several specimens of last day I was out,, were about six inches from tip to tip; about three-eighths of an inch black border around the wing; the rest of the wing a solid color shading from blue next the body to a light lavender or peacock blue on the outside. They make a business of catching and selling these butterflies. We met one fellow with a box full in the timber and he let us examine the catch. This box looked like a bouquet of beauti- ful flowers rather than butterflies ; even the snakes here are beautiful. One I killed in the road while walking with my wife at "Boa Buena Vista," on the top of a mountain about six miles out, was the most beautiful thing in snakes I ever saw. I wanted to bring it home, but she refused to travel with a snake so I had to leave it. You will, no doubt, be interested to know what a freak of nature it was. The thing was about 2 feet long, % inch in diameter at largest part, very small head. It was covered with scales about -^ x ^, Its body was colored in circles, about \% inch band of the bright red, then about ^ of jet black with two rows of these little scales dividing the black and red of a white or cream color and this repeated for the whole length of the body. As I looked at it I wondered why Nature ever made such a thing. We have seen here large trees as large as our oak trees, covered with beautiful bloom. A tree near our hotel shaped like an umbrella with top some 40 feet in diameter ; the foliage like a collection of ferns of a light shade of green ; the bloom of scar- let sticking up through this green all over the top of the tree, making a beautiful thing to look down on from our mountain road to the hotel. We have seen hundreds of things just as interesting; in fact, on every walk or ride, we have taken, many new things are seen. Flowers we raise with care such as the Hyhiscus, which with us grows on a little bush, grows here in large double blooms on big trees. We find it here not only in the reds, as with us, but in the yellow with a black center. So it is that Nature here, unaided, furnished many things to beautify in Rio which can be had in other places only with the greatest effort. Everywhere here we see the stately palm trees as they grow nowhere else. This harbor of Rio is beautiful from an artistic standpoint and splendid from a mariner's point of view. One could almost throw a stone from the boat to either shore as we come out. Yet once inside it spreads out to many square miles in extent and is surrounded by high mountains. With all this, the climate of Rio is not bad when one gets a little way up on the mountain side. We stopped at the International Hotel, about 20 minutes' ride from the city's center by tramcar, and some 500 feet above the harbor, and were comfortable at all times, even in this, the hot, rainy season. With all these 40 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS advantages why should Rio not be a beautiful city. Yet, besides some parks and work done along the harbor front, the people. have not done much work with a view to making the city beautiful in the sense they have in Buenos Aires. These beautiful slopes within the city are being defaced for rock quarries and earth borrow, leaving it scarred all over as yiewed from the higher points. Most of the really beautiful and picturesque things and places in Rio just grew like Topsy, and are the result of a growth rather than an artistic plan. For instance, the Rua Aqueduct, up which we go from the town to our hotel, is very interesting, but the aqueduct which really forms the basis of things was built in 1744 and I imagine there was not much done purposely for artistic effect at that early date. As I mentioned in my last letter, if the talent and money which has been spent in beautifying Buenos Aires, had been spent in Rio, the latter city would be beyond description in beauty. For instance, Buenos Aires has a beautiful zoological and botanical garden. In Rio, where the possibilities are so great, the botanical garden amounts to but little. The zoo in Rio is in bad shape. Animals not cared for, a large entrance fee charged, the whole thing being rented as a concession to a beer garden outfit. In a business way Rio is not in the same class with Buenos Aires. Their stores are practically holes in the wall such as we see in Lima. Their stocks very ordinary, while in Buenos Aires their store build- ings are not up to ours, their stocks were the best in all lines. In a talk with a man in Rio I asked him where all the money came from to keep up the city in its present state of prosperity. I had seen nothing in the country here about in the way of agriculture to warrant it. He said the Government was the whole thing in Rio and it was government expenditures here by the government which kept the town going. It appears that Rio is what we call a district (as the capital of the U. S.) of Brazil, similar to our Washington, D. C, but the district here governed by the Central Government is some four times larger than our D. C. The Central Government runs this whole district, keeps up the parks, hires the police, sells the concessions. Here in Brazil it seems to be the place to tax everybody and everything in the whole country, and spend it on this little spot in the Republic. They make this the political poX. to which a lot of revenue must come. When I draw money on my letter of credit and pay for a lot of stamps to put on the draft I give the bank ; when the cash is paid me, a certain additional amount is deducted. When a man comes into the country to stay he is taxed and again when he leaves. I had a through ticket so they did not catch me. Everything imported and exported is taxed and all the money prac- tically spent in Rio. They ought to show better results, but much SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 41 must go as graft to the party in power. The army is large and expensive for such a country to maintain. They pay big money to street cleaners and all men who in any way get up to the public crib for political effect. But the poor devils who don't get a chance at the public crib or the communities outside of Rio are apt to get left and that is what is causing this trouble in the northern part of Brazil now. I cannot see how they can much longer avoid a turning over here in a political way similar to the recent revolu- tion in Mexico. This gathering of the money from all over the Republic and spending it in Rio is the reason for the town's existence more than any commerce which comes to it from the hinter land. Socially Rio is interesting. If I were a black man, I would rather live in Rio than any place I know of. Here among the trades, street car conductors, motormen, bricklayers and carpenters as well as the lower classes of labor, the black man works right in with the white. They apparently live together, inter-marry and the result seems to be about what one would expect from a cross between a Dago and ian Ethiopian. This mingling the races does not, I think, go on in the best society, but it does lower down. My wife was much shocked a day or two after we arrived in Rio to see a white man get off the street car with a big fat black woman and go off with her, apparently husband and wife. In fact, socially and commercially Rio is not in the same class as Buenos Aires. I had a talk with a young English traveling man who is here on business. I asked him how he found these people in a business way and he said they were very unsatisfactory to deal with. They seem to favor German and French trade as against English and that from United States. He could give no explanation. England has so much invested here in the way of railroads and there is so much friction with the Gov- ernment in all lines when foreign capital has come in that this friction may have caused some antipathy to English. Or the Englishmen being a little bull-headed may not have lubricated the wheels of trade as the more suave Frenchman or German. This immense tax on everything and the fact that these people make practically nothing with their hands, makes all articles in the stores very high. This high wage rate to Government employees and low return to the farmer or truck grower, has kept a lot of men in the city where they hope to catch onto a government job and where they just exist until they do. They ought to be out on the land producing something. Candy, fruit and all produce is from two or three times as high as with us, on a gold basis. Think of paying $3.00 for a cake of wash soap. That is the way it is marked in windows, but, that is only 92c of our money. There are really no plumbers in Rio. Not 42 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS a hotel in the town where one can get a room with a bath. Some plumbing work has to be done, but it is botched. Anything where brains or skill must be used at Rio is very hard to have done. Apples here come from Hood River, Oregon. One of the busiest professions in Rio is that of bur)'ing people. We went to a cemetery gate in the city one day last week, there were five funerals with five hearses standing in front of the entrance gate and two more hearses in sight coming, so that aU seven hearses were at the entrance gate at one time. No women go to funerals in Rio. Only men. These common people are such brigands that the Government were compelled tofix a schedule for funerals. They never do make any laws to protect a man when he is alive, so it may interest you to know that the price is fixed for everything about a man's funeral. The price is fixed for a certain class of hearse, coffin, etc. You can have a funeral at any price from $200 gold down to $7.00 of course, the $7.00 don't put on much style. The hearse is like the little spring wagon some of our butchers peddle meat in, the motive pwwer is two broncho mules and the livery of the driver is a plug hat made of pasteboard, painted black and varnished. If you cannot afford a $7.00 funeral you rent a coffin and hire a Carga- doro to carry the coffin on his head through the streets, put you under the sod somewhere and bring the coffin back for some other fellow. I saw several going this way. It would edify you to see the different styles and colors of hearses they use in this country. From the little low box of a meat wagon referred to "above, to the most elaborately planned, gilded and dressed hearse. If a collection of the hearses I have seen in South America could be gotten together in a procession, it would put any circus parade cairnival ever got up, out of business. Weddings are another interesting thing. The livery men have special carriages for such occasions. A small closed carriage, lots of glass on all sides. Glass all pairited over with orange blossoms. The harness all white. They apparently load the bride and brides- maid up in this rig and they go out in the street and the carriage stands on a corner where everybody can see them until the bride- groom and his party, in a similar rig, comes along and all go to church. We saw two brides standing on a street corner waiting during one afternoon we were out and later saw the man with his outfit coming. The street car system in Rio is very good. They have fares which are fixed by zones. You get on a car marked 200 Reis but you may have to pay three times that sum before you get to journey's end. I cannot make the street car conductor understand or they me^ SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 43 so I just handed the conductor my pocket book, let him take out what he wanted and hand the rest back. Getting laundry work done here is a proposition. The price is high if you want it right back but if you give ten days so they can Wear the stufi a week before they return it, you can get it washed for less. The man working with his hands as a carpenter, mason, or at any skilled labor comes to work without his breakfast. At about 10:00 A. M. he takes an hour and eats, when he again goes to work and works until about 4:30 when he quits. Having begun about 6:30 A. M. he gets in about 8 hours work. We were fortunate in getting across the Andes when we did. I see the engineers and firemen of Argentina are on a strike and they are having a lot of trouble. I wrote you about the trip from Sao Paulo over the Brazilian Central to Rio. This is a Government Road, has about 3,000 miles. The Leopoldean R. R., with about 1,000 miles is a private road. The party in power have found it necessary to do something for the dear people for political effect. So that notwithstanding the fact they lost some $3,000,000 in operating last year, they have recently cut the rates on freight in half in Leopoldean territory. The latter road is now willing to make the reduction and of course lose competitive business. I saw a statement of rates on different commodities before and after this cut and selected cement which is a fair index which shows: Distance, 147 kilometer 91.14 miles Weight, 1000 kilogram 2,200 pounds Cement for this distance before cut, $4.43, after cut, $1.87. This figure is the rate for 100.25 ton miles, or about 1.8 cents ton mile for the cut rate, which would be considered a pretty good rate in our country. These people are not operating cheaply and with the Government reducing rates on their railroad in the face of $3,000,000 deficit show what might be possible, with Government ownership, and the political party in power getting in bad repute. The service on the Government road is rotten now, and as one man expressed himself to me, the "Road is a joke." One thing I noticed on this Road when I came over it which I forget to tell you about. I saw several section gangs working without a shovel in the outfit. They use a large hoe here to a great extent instead of a shovel. I saw a gang digging out track preparatory to ballasting it. All was being done with these hoes and they seemed to get pretty good results. I saw them dressing up track with these hoes, using a tamping pick for tamping track in earth ballast. I don't think we are warranted in throwing away the shovel but the results 44 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS these fellows get with a hoe are better than one would really expect ; I believe die shovel is better. These people have no hand cars. They use rubble cars. Men stand upright on these and pull themselves along with bamboo poles and make pretty good time. They don't seem to have any brake iand I notice when one of these poled rubble cars come in sight the crossing gates are closed and street car traffic and everybody is tied up 'till they get by same as with a train. From Rio we went one day to Petropolis, about 50 miles north- west of Rio, 2,500 feet above the sea. This is on the Leopoldean R. R. referred to above. The grade is practically level for the first 40 miles then the ascent is made in about 8 miles with a "cog" to within some two miles of the Petropolis station where engines are changed and straight traction power is used. Engines being changed at both the top and bottom of the hill both ways. The ride up the "cog" is quite pretty but nothing out of the ordinary for a cog road. Petropolis has about 20,000 people and is practically a suburban town of Rio, where the people who do business in Rio and can afford it, live. Don Pedro had his home here when he was Emperor. The president of the Republic goes there for the summer when revolutions allow him enough time to get away. Was told he was too busy revoluting this summer to stay very long anywhere. Our Consul in Rio lives here. I called on him three times; once he did not come down at all ; once he was too busy to see anyone and once I got ten minutes, but with a hint he was very busy. He gets to his office at 10 A. M., takes two hours — 12 to 2 — for breakfast and goes home at three, having two hours ride each way between his home and office. That ought to keep any man busy. Petropolis is a pretty quiet home town and much cooler than Rio. Brazil, like Argentina, has never succeeded in getting the settler fixed on the land as they apparently have in Chili and as we have. Unfortunately, the land went out in large grants. The Government is apparently trying to co-operate with large land owners to settle the country. Laws of which I have an abstract seem to be such as to be tempting, but I am told two great barriers to actual settlement, such as we have succeeded in making on our western lands, exist. First; after the settler has complied with all the apparently liberal conditions and applies for his titles in these countries busted and discouraged he goes back to town and probably later to his own country. Second ; the settler available for South America is from Portugal, Southern Spain and Italy. Compare these people with the class of settlers we get in the States. Not one Dago in one thousand ever settled on and owns land even with us. Brazil and Argentina are certainly ripe for development agriculturally. First SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 45 they must clear up land titles, have greater stability of government, less graft and induce some of the hardier races of Europe to take hold with them in the development. In our country where investments risk much, interest rates are high. Here the lowest rates for money, I am told, are about 10%. Banks and foreign capital comes in, only on the promise of much higher rates where much risk is taken. The natives about Rio, as I intimated above, get wages. Laborers on the street 6,000 Reis or about $2.00 gold per day. Other wages in proportion and they blow it in as fast as they get it. I saw on the Avenida Central in Rio as many automobiles as I ever saw on Michigan Ave., and all high priced European makes with an occa- sional moderate priced U. S. machine. These people stay up all night apparently, if any go to bed they are not missed. We stopped one night at the Avenida Hotel in the midst of things. Such a rumpus I never heard, one might just as well try to sleep in a boiler shop in full action. The foreigners who have capital in the country are living modestly, loaning their money at high rates and letting the Brazilian pay the bill, and in my judgment they spend every night what they earn in the day. I saw in Rio Harbor those two warships you have heard so much about. First, when they were purchased from England. Second, when the crews mutinied and fired on Rio. These vessels are open for inspection "tomorrow." I was told that although they have not been used except for the Rio bombardment, they are practically use- less in their present condition. They filled the boilers up with sea water and ruined the flues. No flue replacement has been made since the bombardment. The brush blocks of the cannon are kept locked up on land. No ammunition is kept on board, but as I came out of the harbor I could see with my glass a lot of men on deck. I was told they were not yet fully paid for. There are five big vessels, and about as much use to the Brazilian Government as a tooth brush would be to a rooster. We were very comfortably situated for our stay in Rio, at the International Hotel, where we could sit on the veranda and see the entrance to the harbor and a part of the town below us as well as the mountain of Corcovada above us. In the evening it was inter- esting as the sun was setting to see the changes in the landscape color as the sun rays shifted. The houses are painted or rather washed of various colors from a bright blue to a bright red and all shades between. The varying rays of the setting sun bring these colors out as in a kaleidoscope. On the top of Corcovada the fog winds itself about the mountain like a white scarf and as the sun goes down and light of day fades the lights of the city come out below us. It was all very pretty. 46 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS I think I neglected to tell you in any of my former letters of a great misfortune which overtook me. The fellow in Washington, who made out my passport left out my mustache and in it described me with a smooth face. I had to shave it off or run the risk of being taken for some other fellow. January 29th. We have passed Bahia and Pernambuca, Brazil, and are now sailing across diagonally northeast towards Lisbon. Our next stop will be at Madeira, then Lisbon, where we expect to arrive February 7th. We have planned to remain in Lisbon a few days, thence to Madrid for about 8 days when we will go to southern Spain, visiting on the way Toledo, Cordoba, Granada, Ronda, Algeciras and Tan- giers, sailing from Gibraltar about March 18th, arriving in Chicago about April 1st. I have had two letters from you. One at Valparaiso; the other was forwarded to me on this boat where I found it, coming aboard at Rio. I was very glad to hear from you. We have not had many letters from the States since starting on our journey. We read everything we find in English and that is very little. Even the bill of fare on the English boats is in French or Spanish. It will be a great treat to eat in English once more. This is a long windy letter, but what else can you expect from a fellow on board ship with nothing in English to read for 14 days. Hoping you are all well and that business is good and everything running smoothly, I am, Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. Si m Lisbon, le 13th February, 1912. My Dear Dering: — My last letter was written to you on board the Araguaya, to be mailed at Cherbourg or Southampton, and described our experience in and about Brazil. The trip from Rio to Lisbon takes 14 days, a good while to keep a fellows feet off the ground. Our steamer stopped at Bahai, but they were indulging in a revolution, so we decided not to interfere. At Pernambuca there was not time to get ashore. The next stop was at Madeira where we had planned to go ashore, but sea was rough and Capt. advised against it. We got clear up to the town Funchal and could get a good idea of it through a glass. It was beautiful and green. Grape vines every- where. You, of course, know how much the world uses the Madeira wine label, but, of course it don't all (I mean the wine) come from this island, but they must make a lot of it. They raise grapes first SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 47 and as much stuff as they can between the grape vines. They make a lot of embroidery here, noted, as your wife will tell you, the world over. I presume that is like the wine — a lot of it made in other places. This little island could not supply the world as it apparently does to an outsider. They do have a lot of it. It seemed to me they had about two carloads of it spread out on the deck of our steamer during the few hours we were in port. My wife was sea sick when we arrived at Madeira. I described the layout on deck and she immediately got up and went shopping. They certainly do make beautiful things and they are cheap. About half of what we pay in Chicago for such things. The Islanders never have snow, but they use sleds drawn by oxen for about all their hauling. Their hacks or carriages are on skids and an ox team ahead. Imagine a bull team drawing a hack on skids, down Michigan Ave. A lot of English and Continental people come here to spend the winter. They have some fine hotels up on the mountain back of the town, with a cog road going up to them. One can toboggan down, as many do, on a sled. From Madeira to Lisbon the sea was unusually rough. Our steamer, a good sized one had been in the South America trade for several years and they told us this was the first storm which put water onto the dining room deck. The storm let up again as we approached the mouth of Lisbon Harbor where we must have pretty good weather to get in over the bar. Our Captain evidently feared trouble, for he hurried along reaching Lisbon two A; M. instead of six, and next morning he told us that if he had been two hours later he would not have made it, for after we got in the storm became fierce. The tender which should have come for us at 8 A. M. was afraid to come out into the river even until 3 P. M. and then, too, practically, no baggage taken, so we spent one whole day getting to our hotel in Lisbon and another getting our baggage. I don't think there was good reason for the delay. The fellows are pretty slow. One foreign native told me the following is a common saying here, "It takes U. S. one day to do a thing, England 2 days, Portugal 30 day, revolutions excepted." The Captain's statement about getting in was probably correct for an excursion steamer from New York to South America arrived next morning and cruised outside the bar 2 days before it could get in giving its people only about 8 hours in Lisbon instead of 3 days. Our steamer was to coal here. They found their coal had sunk in the harbor. After staying here 36 hours trying to get coal, they went to Vigo to get coal there. Where, if they got it, they would be tied up a day or two more, and if they did not get it they would 48 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS wait indefinitely. I was glad to get of5. I am greatly pleased with Lisbon. It is a beautiful city, clean and wholesome. Of course, they have their troubles. They had a strike here a few days ago. They shot a few fellows and wound it up. I see along the main street here the windows are full of holes made by bullets. They are replacing them quite rapidly but they are not all changed yet. These fellows are making history for themselves. Two years ago Portugal was a kingdom. They shot the king and prince as you know. Manuel, the youngest prince, was acting as king under a regent. The mother, Amelia, a French woman, spent most of her time in France, was very unpopular here. After the king's death she spent still more time in Paris and took the young king with her where he got to flirting with that French actress. Throwing flowers on the stage from his box and generally making a fool of himself. In fact, people here say he never was very bright. Later, he brought that woman to Portugal and kept her, it is claimed, near the City Palace. That was too much, the people would not stand for it and they gave Manuel and his mother Amelia, 24 hours to leave the country or they told Manuel they would put him where his father and brother were, in a glass coiBn in one of the churches. Manuel at once got a move on himself, sent a steam yacht to the coast off Mafra about 40 miles northwest of Lisbon, then started in an auto for Pena Castle, at Cintra, about 17 miles northeast of Lisbon, where Amelia was staying. He picked her up and kept on to Mafra em- barking for England in good time. Last Saturday we went to Cintra. Fortunately, I secured through Cook and Son, a young man as guide who had for some years been a waiter in a Cintra hotel. He was a Norwegian ac- quainted with all the servants about the castles and through him we got into many places not open to public and where he himself had never been, though he has been acting as Cook's guide for about a year, taking people around. We started from Lisbon by rail at 8:40. The depot is inter- esting. You would never suspect its being a railroad terminus. It adjoins the hotel and the hotel has a private entrance to the station direct, used in the past for Royalty, but now barred up. It faces a little park and looks like any other building, and back of it rises a high hill covered with houses. The railroad approach is through a tunnel about one and one-half miles long. The portal of tunnel is right near the end of train shed. The ticket office is on street levels. The train floor about 4 stories up a big "lift" or elevator takes you up from ticket office to train; you pay 10 Reis or one cent of our money for this, or, if you don't have the cent you can get good leg action by climbing the stone steps. That SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 49 thing of paying to get from the ticket office to one's train tickled me a good deal more than a cent's worth. Trains are English. First class coaches have compartments open at the sides. Engines .are old type, inside connected tank at side of boiler. Trains are very light. Took up about 1 hour 20 minutes to go the 17j4 miles to Cintra. Track is virell ballasted, about 60 pound rail, good ties and in good condition except at splices which are not good ; they use about 18-inch fish plate. It does fairly well under their very light wheel loads, but would not last over night under our heavy traffic. Country between Lisbon and Cintra is quite hilly and soil not very good as we approach Cintra which is practically on a mountain. Cintra itself being some 750 feet above Lisbon. It is practically a suburb of Lisbon, many people having homes there. It is credited with 5,000 people. On our way out from Chicago we visited Valley Forge and I thought how far back the history of that country reaches, 150 years. Think of Cintra. The Moors were building castles here (and the remains still stand in fair state of preservation) 700 or 800 years before Columbus discovered America. 1,100 years before our Christ- ian era began, it is said the Phonecians founded Cadiz. We have not come to the time of long pants yet, I was in the hotel at Cintra and in the very room where about 100 years ago Lord Byron began his "Childe Harold" Pilgrimage. It is said he remained about Cintra some 24 months occupying this room. To the north it is a beautiful view which ought to inspire any poet. The things historically most attractive about Cintra are its old castles and its new. The Moorish Castle and walls are in decay but "Pena," built in 1840-50, "Palacio Real"; built in 14th and 15th century, recently the summer house of king Manuel's grand- mothers are in good repair and practically as the Royal Families left them when they skipped out. In fact, at Pena nothing has been touched. We were shown in Amelia's sitting room, the desk at which she sat when the young king came that night to notify her he must go and take her away. The papwrs and magazines she was reading are on the desk just as she left them. The drive from the railroad station is about 2J^ miles and about 1,000 feet up. It being 1,735 feet above the sea. The lane or road is narrow, moss covered walls on each side with overhanging trees. We stopped when we got to the park entrance and walked to the castle while the team went around and met us near the castle. This park is the most beautiful thing I ever saw. Lord Byron in "Childe Harold" calls it a "Glorious Eden"; these writers have commented on its beauty. 50 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS It is Spring here. In this Palace Garden are moss covered walks. King Ferdinand loved the "Camellias" and he had 5,000 plants put in here which now are trees and were in flower. The flowers bright red, white and mottled as large as tea cups. Fountains, fish ponds and waterfalls all about, so that the whole slope of the mountain was a mass of bloom. This Castle of Pena was the Summer residence of the King while the "Palatio Real" was for his grand- mother. I am not going to describe the beauties of the building. Have sent cards to Howard, Besler, Haynes and Dr. Denney which give some outside views, and will bring home others. We were shown through everything from dining room, bed room, billiard hall and chapel. Even the beds were as they left them, all very plain, but rich in furnishings. Our guide told us King Edward of England some years ago visited here and played billiards with King of Portugal at that table. We next visited the old or "Palacio Real" where the Grandmother Maria Pia lived at the time the king was run oflt. The people wanted the old lady to stay. She was quite popular with the people. But she would not stay after Royalty had been run out and went to Italy where she died only a short time ago. The old lady was close to the people. She spent her money helping the poor. She always took an ordinary carriage from the railroad station to her castle and her head did not swell up like that of her French daughter-in-law, Amelia. The furniture of this' old castle has been bunched in certain rooms. The building is being repaired by the Government and will probably be made a museum. Many things about this building are very interesting but I will relate only one or two now. John 1st of Portugal was quite a sport. His wife caught him kissing one of the maids. There was great gossip about the court. The old man got mad and painted magpies all over the ceiling of the dining room. Each holds in its beak a scroll with the words "Por Bom" (no harm done). These birds are all over the ceiling now. In another room, the tile floor is all worn off one side, where King Alfonso walked back and forth during his confinement for 9 years after being defeated in 1667. There is a lot of fine old furniture in this building but it is an old barn to live in; no sanitary arrangements. The kitchen is in two rooms with an arch between. The whole ceiling is chimney which tapers up to about a two foot round opening far above the roof. Another building we saw near Cintra, the Palace of Monserrate is modern, owned by a very rich English gentleman, who occupies it for about 3 months of Spring. It is visited for its beautiful grounds of probably 100 acres. A regular botanical garden with trees from SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 51 every part of the earth which can be made to grow here. Water- falls in many places, some very high, the whole thing being on a mountain side. We fortunately worked the care-taker to let us see the inside. We saw only the first floor. We were not allowed to see the second story. This building is the most elaborate private residence I ever saw. The outside of the building is of Moorish design, elaborately carved. I have pictures of the outside, which I will show you some day. The inside is furnished in Moorish design and is simply a dream. Screens of carrara marble as delicate as lace work are all about, a beautiful alabaster fountain in the center of the hall. The walls are finished in white stucco with a tracery of Moorish design and ' the hall, running from the entrance at one end to the large music hall at the other, is filled with Moorish arches and carved drapery hanging from the top. The furniture is all of the finest carved wood from India and China; tables are inlaid with gold and silver. It must have taken a long time and a large fortune to gather such a lot of fine stuff. This place belongs now to a Sir Frederick Cook. There are many other interesting places in Cintra, new and old. A number of the nobility lived here, but when royalty was run out they left the country so there are a number of Duke's houses for sale, empty and going to ruin. The place is so beautiful I presume some rich European will pick them up later. In Lisbon there are a lot of old castles and buildings formerly used as Convents and Monasteries. The Government has discon- tinued the orders and are using these old buildings for various public uses. The carving on these buildings is, in many cases, very elaborate and took a lot of time and money. Most of them were built in accordance with a vow made by some king or other influential person that if certain things he wished, came to pass, he would build a convent, a castle, tower or some other thing. John V, vowed if he could have a male heir he would build a fine convent on the site of the poorest convent in Portugal. The heir came arid he did build the Convent at Mafra. It took from 1717 to 1730 to build it and during that time it is said a daily average of 14,700 were employed. The employees at times reaching the sum of 45,000 men. Even with the small wages paid, the cost of this thing was $20,000,000. Pena castle was built in the same way. Lisbon has about 350,000 people. They all seem to be busy trying to make a living. About the only thing they have supplies of in this country is wine. They raise fruits of other kinds than grapes, but about all are consumed here. They tell me there are many poor people in the country, but all appear well fed and comfortably dressed. The city is clean and well policed. They have a great 52 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS deal of unfinished business nights, but they have no such gait of dissipation as we find in Rio. The new Republican Government seems to be trying to give the people a good honest administration. They have lots of public schools here, apparently well run, while in Rio they do not. The children here look bright and healthy. We see comparatively little smoking here, while in Rio the women and babies smoke. The better class in Brazil blame the Portugese for the bad moral condition in their country, but if he is as bad as the average appears to be, he must have been demoralized after he arrived. The fact is, outside of Chili the whole of South America needs some kind of a moral balance wheel. The harbor here is fiust fine, but they get no large ships up to a dock. A fellow has to risk his neck and his baggage coming ashore with a yawl or a steam tug. The thing they sent us ashore on was dirty and uncomfortable. The cleanest place we found was the coal bunker where my wife had my grip for a seat. Streets generally in the city are narrow, some side walks in quite important streets not over 2 feet wide. The pavement of both streets and sidewalks, is peculiar. They seem to have two kinds of stone available here, a hard white limestone and a black trap rock. The black rock in rough irregular shapes is used for streets proper. A flat surface up, bedded in sand; top not over 5 inches square, or 25 square inches on average. The sidewalks are laid in same way, except the tops of the stones are not over 4 square inches, the white and black being laid even in some of the 4 feet wide walks in a very artistic manner. In the "Rocio Square" of which you have, no doubt, seen photographs, they are laid in wavy line. A fellow while walking over this square is rather uncertain whether he is sober or not. In one way it gives him a snakey sensation, the other way it appears to be ridgey and keeps him stepping up high. In all these cities, as in South America they have markets. Here they are kept very clean and the stufi looks quite palatable. They sell about everything from tripe to hairpins. The flower section interested us very much. Just now the flower bloom is very fresh and in each new country we have visited, new flowers are shown which we have never seen. The Camellia being the national flower is cultivated and produced in many varieties, white mottled and pink with all shades of red to scarlet and very large. Lisbon being a hilly city, their wide streets or avenidas are generally short. The "Ruas" are generally narrow and crooked, fit- ting the hillside. Rua de Garrett, the principal shopping street and a few other newer streets being the exceptions. They have good electric car system, cars made by Bull of Philadelphia and St. Lx>uis SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 53 Car Co. In some places their grades are very steep. When too steep for traction they have cable inclines from lower to higher levels. There are some 6 or 7 of these. Some street car lines here run first and second class, some first class only. Where only one class, someone has put on a second class car, having a short car body, holding about 16 people in two double cross seats, with small wagon wheels under the deck of the car. Wheels have flat tires like any wagon the thing being drawn by two mules generally, four on steep hills. This rig runs along on the street car track until an electric car catches it then turns oil into the street, lets the electric by and jumps onto the rail again. It looks strange to see electric and mule cars on the same line. This is not the bull fight season so we could only look at the building. I am somewhat glad it is out of season so we can escape going. It is interesting to note in this, the old mother country, how many things and methods have been copied from it by the newer countries of Argentina and Brazil. The narrow streets, the style of buildings, the little parks, the tendency to immortalize their heroes by statuary and often especially in the newer country, poor speci- mens of art. The walling in by cheap masonry walls of truck gardens and private yards. In some places the covering of buildings by tiles in side walls has been done in the new country to a very slight extent. Here in Lisbon the square colored tiles cover entirely many of the oldfer buildings some of which, in fact most of which, are quite pretty though a few have badly chosen colors. The automobile is used quite extensively here, especially in cab service, and I saw quite a number of, fine private machines. The shops here, especially the dry goods are poor. We find ex- clusive glove stores with very fine grades of ladies gloves. Mrs. Calvert has stocked up, came near cornering the supply. Says the quality is very fine and price only about 33% of that in America. They don't think much of Madeira needle work here, and we dug up some very fine in one store which w^e actually purchased to better advantage than at Madeira itself. Grocery stores are small, people seem to buy most of their stuff in the market. Some beggars here but not more than with us. Our hotel is fine but the "lift" got out of order after taking us to our room on arrival and there is not talent enough in the town to fix it. I asked a fellow passenger on the Araguaya who had been here 2 years ago if they had a lift, he said let me see — yes, they had a lift, but it was out of order. So we are having knee action exercise. These people have not much mechanical ability. They can build a good stucco wall and such things, but they stick at a machine, and import everything except some such things as leather 54 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS goods, some silver objects, etc., which they and their great-great- grandfathers have been making for centuries. I find almost every- where a great respect for the ingenuity of the people of our country. A lot of people even among the English boat men, think that after the French people failed on the canal no other nation could build it. The completion and operation of that canal will be the eye- opener to all the common people of the world and set us away up in their estimation. We sail from Gibraltar March 25th, in Steamer Berlin of the North German Lloyd line, arriving New York, April 2nd. Want about 2 days in New York, will then go direct to Chicago. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. RiTz HoTEi., Madrid, Spain, February 24th, 1912. My Dear Dering: — We arrived at Madrid last week, Thursday, 15 th, leaving Lisbon on evening of 14th, coming over on the "train de Lux." Fortune has favored me quite a little in my traveling. I got into Buenos Aires ahead of the strike of engineers and firemen they had on the Argentina railroads and came out just after the dock laborers strike. We had a bad rain and wind storm the day we arrived at Lisbon, tieing up the railroad but the line to Madrid was opened the very day we had planned to come away. I had engaged my sleeper several days ahead, but could buy no ticket. The sleeping car office had sold some sleeper tickets for trains which did not run on account of the flood. Consequently, there were lot of claims for people had to pay about $20.00 more to get from Lisbon to Madrid by the long route and then not have a through car. After the claims were presented the sleeper agent at Lisbon shut up his shop and went out of business, refusing to sell any more tickets because of trains being uncertain. I could not buy a sleeper ticket except of the conductor and then not! until the train, with the sleeper on it, had been backed into the station and engine coupled on. This is an indication of the uncer- tainty of railroad service in Spain and Portugal. The train had restaurant car in which they served a fair meal of fixed courses for about $1.20. I only saw 5 boarders for supper. It must be a losing proposition. The sleepers are not comfortable. One berth over the other in compartments and the compartment is so narrow after the beds are made iip, it is hard for a fellow spread out as I am, to loosen his buttons. Cars have 4 wheel trucks, are rather short and light, con- SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 55 sequently they bob about a good deal on some of their track which has rather limber joints. The room in such cars is very uneconomically disposed of ; so much floor space taken up with the side corridor which in these cars is made extra wide, so passengers can loaf in it while their berths are being made up, and folding seats are provided along the side for that purpose. One toilet room in each end of car for either men or women. The apartments alone take up more floor than needed in American pullmans. The country between Lisbon and Madrid is rough out of Lisbon, but all available land is strenuously farmed. In the morning we saw the land for some 30 to 40 miles out of Madrid. It was in places very sandy. Looked like pure sand in spots, but all farmed ; nowhere very rich, but lays in good shape for farming, rolling in places quite a good deal. A lot of it planted to wheat. Many vineyards scattered along. Everywhere the population is in small villages. Land ap- parently in large tracts and the laborers with their families live at the headquarters of the Hacienda. Farming mostly done by ox teams and mules. Coming out from Lisbon, I saw where the high water was on the railroad, the big Tagus had been up very high and had been clear over the railroad for some days. The whole river bottom, many miles wide was covered and a lot of people drowned out were living on high ground in caves and in other places. Of course, you remem- ber, Madrid is the home of that wonderful art gallery where so many of the old church and other paintings of the old masters are on exhibition. Whole large rooms given up to pictures by artists such as Velazquez, Murillo, Rubens, Goya and many others. This immense building has about 2,400 paintings none very small; some as large as the side of an ordinary room. The feeling one has in going into some of the rooms is that you have been there before, so many of the pictures are familiar, having been copied and scattered broad-cast all over the world. Scores of painters are copying the paintings in oil and so great is the demand for space to copy some of the most popular that months at times elapse before space is ready. Sunday morning is best time to visit the most popular rooms, the painters have their work cleared out and one can get a clear view. All this great exhibit which people from all over the world come here to study is on the ground floor of the gallery. Up stairs is the statuary and an entirely different building has a collection of Modern art. This old collection is right across the street from our hotel. It is free to everybody and on Sundays many of the working people clad in their rough garments come to study the paintings. We have ridden over the city pretty thoroughly and find it less interesting than Lisbon. Streets not so well kept up and not so 56 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS clean. Parks while quite large, have less grassed space and more bare earth than Lisbon. This lack of grassed area is probably due to the fact that Madrid has very little rainfall, 15 inches average per year, and a limited water supply. This city while geographically right for the Capital and now made prosperous by its railroads which center here, is otherwise a very pyoor location for a city. Raw in winter, though not cold. Hot and dry in summer. From the southern suburbs at "Alto" we could see the snow covered mountains of the "Sierra de Guadarrama" to the north and the general layout reminded us of the suburbs of Denver looking off towards the Rockies, though the Spanish mountains are not so high. The weather here at present is pleasant. Some rainy days when an overcoat is comfortable, but when the sun is out one must shed it. Streets here are generally narrow. Some avenidas are very wide. They talk of this as the "newest" town in Spain, and say it was started only one. thousand years ago. Its stores are generally small, though it has some very fine ones. Like all the Spanish stores, they have little room where you enter, and a warehouse full of goods.back. We visited the collection of arms and armour at the "Royal Armeria" near the palace. This, to me, was the most interesting thing we saw in Madrid. Charles V, had a hobby for collecting armour and arms. He bought, stole and begged every thing in armour he could get track of. He lived at a time when the manu- facture of armour was in its prime, so you will understand how he came to get such a collection. Japanese, Turkish, Moorish and specimens from all who used it. Guns, swords, and javelins of all kinds. There must be nearly 100 samples of armours covering horse and man, and many more for foot men. Some of these armours are covered with gold inlaid in the iron, called "Damascene" work. This work is still done in Madrid on jewelry. Umbrellas and knife handles here in Madrid cost about $10.00. Think what one of these large iron coverings for a man and a horse would cost in the ancient days, probably over $100,000. Only some fellow like Charles V, with a strong pull could get such stuff rounded up. .They have guns of all kinds from the big steel bow gun you wind up with a cog wheel down through the flint locks to the more modern gun, most of them, captured in war from the chiefs of the army and of beautiful design and finish. Stocks of ivory inlaid, barrels inlaid with gold and all historically associated with stirring events. Am bringing home some photos and hope I may have the pleasure of showing them to you sometime. The king has a big residence but it is really a very uninviting place. This is Opera season and Saturday night we went. I was ifortunate in selecting that night, and getting my tickets well ahead. SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 57 It developed the show was to be a benefit for the Press Association. They are getting up a fund for something. The best of two operas was selected, all the stars appearing. All the best of the town in- cluding the King and Queen turned out and the audience interested me as much as the show. I am not much on audiences, but Mrs. Calvert says it was "away up," all the men in full dress and the women in their best gowns, nearly all white. Faces thoroughly calsomined, as all these southern people are. The five tiers of boxes all around the large room lined with red plush, white and gilt fronts. These women sitting around in the boxes looked like cameos against the red background. The Queen and King, instead of using what is known as the Royal Box at back of the theatre, had it full of visiting Nobility, while the royal pair sat in a box near the stage about 75 feet from us where we could get a good view of them. In the boxes under the king and at his side, were his premier Secretaries of War, Finance, and Public Improvement. The young king seems jolly, he stood up and clapped his hands like any other human being when he thought the right time had come, and between acts visited about with his generals and others of his official family who had boxes near his. The Queen is a fine looking woman. The young Prince Carlos was at the show, but I did not get a glimpse of him. The show was fine. The stars were all new to me. A woman Senora Barea and a Titta Rufo were particularly fine. The latter is a fine actor and I like his voice as well as Caruso's. He sings with more ease and can sustain himself in the high notes without catching for breath as Caruso does. The first part was from "Cavalleria Rusticana." The second a comic opera called "Payasos." The music of the latter is fine, but there is always some foolishness coming in to shut off fine singing. One song only gave Titta Rufo a chance to show his power, and the people went wild. He sustained the part of a clown and to show his ability to act he turned a spring somersault on the stage alighting on his feet, showing he is an acrobat as well as a singer. Caruso could not turn a hand spring so. The people went wild at the end of the show. ,We were five minutes getting out of the hall and they had the curtain up keeping this fellow on the stage bowing. It was a great show, began at 9:30 and we got back to our hotel at 2 A. M., I think by time I get home I will have my daily schedule changed from mid- night to noon for sleep, and work noon to midnight. We get coffee (which in my case is chocolate) about 8 :20 A. M. Breakfast 1 :45 P. M. and tea (oranges for me) about 7 P. M. Everywhere we go the meal arrangement is different. Sunday, 18th, began a carnival which is to last two or three days. This is a "Trades and Plain People" fiesta. In the after- 58 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS noon Sunday, was a parade of floats representing the different trades and they were very good. Aside from this the fiesta was a general rabble of people, dressed in every imaginable color and shape, danc- ing, skipping rope, ring around the rosy and other such games. Everybody throwing confetti until everybody and everything was covered with the colored bits of paper. We came home about dark, things were getting pretty rough then and as things continued into the night with an army of police to watch it is probable it gets very rough. The whole thing is confined to the "Pasco de Recoletas" a hroad street, very wide with a park in the middle, a great place for such a thing. Most of the heavy freight transportation in Madrid is done as in Lisbon, Rio and other South American cities, on two wheeled carts, but here the mules are driven tandem 2 to 5 mules, often the large mules behind with a little bit of a jackass leading the outfit. Monday we went to the Escorial — 31 miles out from Madrid. This is an immense structure, was built or rather begun by Phillip II, but the finishing touches were put on it by Phillip IV. The cost was about $3,300,000. It is 675x50 feet, immense in size, but about the ugliest thing of the kind in existence. It is historically rich. It has 16 court yards, 40 altars for religious worship, 2,673 windows and 1,200 doors. In the large patio just inside the main entrance is where the men of the Spanish Armada gathered and were blessed before they went to war. The main building has in it a monastery with 150 monks many of which we saw; a fine library containing hundreds of volumes of large illuminated books some 800 years old. A large chapel where church is now held and under the altar is the Pantreon where all the kings and queens who governed Spain are buried or rather boxed up and laid on a shelf. This room we were in. The coffins are of marble. There are empty spaces for future kings. The coffins are now ready for the present king and queen, but no name is cut on the coffin until after the king dies because he may be kicked out and then could not be buried there. Art galleries, cases of priestly robes beautifully wrought in needle work. The most interesting thing to me was the residence of Phillip II, who had his palace here right near the altar of the church where he could sit in his bed room and see what was going on. The room he lived in is bare and uninviting, while most of the rooms of the Palace are nicely furnished and hung with beautiful tapestry made especially for this building, but this fine furnishing was put in after Phillip's time. Phillip practically ruled his part of the world from this cell. The fellow who did not agree with him was killed off. In his old age he died vdth gout in 1598. The chair he sat in and the one he rested his gouty foot on are still in his SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 59 room with some other plain furniture; his bed is also in his bed room nearby. The building is prison like in its appearance outside, and in most places inside, but in spots inside is beautifully embellished. Near the south end of the Gardens of the Escorial — as it is generally spoken of (but which is really the "Monastery of St. Lawrence") is the castle of the Princess built in 1752 for the Infante Gabriel. It was finished in 1788 all that time probably having been taken in the inside finish which we had the pleasure of seeing and which is exquisite. Individual artists finished each of the small rooms and they are quite small, it being more of a play house than a real residence. I was told it took 25 to 30 years' work of a single artist in one room, and in the case mentioned he only did the needlework on the walls, the ceiling being painted by another man. In one room, wall covered with small frames, in which were hung what appeared to be large cameos, but which we were told were imitation in porcelain, practically a lost art, Napoleon having destroyed the last place of manufacture. Our guide told us some American had offered two millions for the collection. I pre- sume it was Morgan. This house is literally a jewel box and I am surprised they allow visitors in it at all. Coming back we were at the railroad station some time waiting for our train and I had a chance to look about. The Gauge here as in Portugal is between five and six feet. Their coaches are gen- erally English type, load at the side, but their best and newer cars are corridor. The one we traveled in yesterday was of that type, with seats arranged as in a Pullman car, covered with what appeared to be a grey figured haircloth. High backs like a Pullman. Heavy nickel rods running from the back, parallel with it, not against the side of car. Tops of coaches are covered like our caboose roofs and must be fearfully hot in this very hot climate in summer. This is on northern lines. They have pretty good engines of the German type. The engine we had yesterday was something like our K class. They had their freight trams our D class, with quite large wheels. Their freight cars are 4 wheels, very low capacity, many of 22 tons limit, and I saw none over 36 tons, though they may have some. They have turn tables at stations like we have for our small push cars about our shops, and in this way pick these little dinkies out of their trains, transfer them to parallel tracks or short spurs holding one or two cars, at right angles to main line. At each station they have an iron circle hung by chains from a horizontal arm as an outline for Max load. Their clearances are evidently small and they try to load light stuff right up to the size limit. They use for conductor's lanterns, a lamp with two cases about the shape of our switch lamp. It would kill oS, one of our old switchmen to 60 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS see these fellows give the engineer a signal with one of these things. They go through a lot of fuss starting trains here. When the agent thinks the work is done, he rings a little bell. If the engineer is ready he whistles once. When the conductor is through visiting he blows a dog whistle and the thing starts. Their first class coaches here on the southern line are the worst ever. They are short ■4-wheeled dinkies. Three compartments filled up, windows and all like a barouche carriage only wider, holding 12 people in a compart- ment when full. We have never found it necessary to share com- partment with anyone, yet. Possibly more people may travel at other seasons, but their passenger trains have been very light and freight trains also. They have not yet the science of railroad transportation down fine enough to compete successfully with the donkey, as he appears to be doing as 'much as the railroad. The lighting of these cars is interesting; when it comes dark a fellow walks along the roof and pokes a lamp with a flame just like one of our 'trainmen's lanterns through a hole in the roof. It don't illuminate very much. All trains use the 1-24 for time which I think is a good thing. The time table is more easily understood. Wednesday, 21st, we went out to Toledo, the old original. Prob- ably the oldest city in Spain. It made me, as a citizen of U. S., feel pretty new when I got to Toledo and found it had been a town for over 2,000 years. ,Livy, 192 year B. C, mentions it as Toletum, and nobody knows how much longer it has been a city. First the Romans built at it, one of their bridges, later repaired some, is still in use to cross the Tagus or Taja as they call it here. Later the Moors cleaned out the Romans and built a great lot of walls about the city. Some large castellated portals and a bridge across the Tagus opposite the city from where the Romans had built a bridge. Much of this Moorish work still remains in very good shape. Much is badly demolished. In 1492, the last of the Moors were driven out of Spain so all this Moorish work must have been put in before that date and after 734 when the Moor got foothold in Spain. The city is located on a high rocky knoll in the valley of the Tagus. The stream going through a caiion on three sides of the town. This city is now said to have 20,000 people. Houses are so close together that no streets are seen 25 feet wide, most of them 8 or 10 and I went through quite important streets which in places were as narrow as four feet — ^just . wide enough to let a donkey through with his pack. Yet they tell us this city at the time of the Catholic kings (who drove the Moors out) had in it 200,000 people. Where they all lived I cannot see. Half the town was churches, but many of the monasteries have been taken for schools and other purposes by the Government. SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 61 I am not up on cathedrals, but at Toledo is the finest old one I ever saw. It was begun in 587 and they are still working at it. I doubt if they had their A. F. E. approved for the whole job in the beginning. They have a great time getting water up into the town from the river. It is handled mostly in large earthen jugs, some on wheel- barrows, some on donkeys. The millionaire has a mule and cart to haul his water. I see no cows about, but herds of goats and I think these supply the milk of the town, and after tasting the butter at the hotel I am sure that is goat too. I could not hear it but it appealed to every other sense. I have a lot of pictures of Toledo which I hope to have the pleasure of showing you someday. They still make "Toledo blades" there, quite a large factory on the Tagus just below the town still, and I see quite a lot of swords in shop windows said to have been made in Toledo. They are so marked. Another interesting industry in Toledo is the making of "dama- scene" ware. This is the inlaying of gold in iron and steel figures. A lot of this work was done on the old armour; but the principal industry in Toledo is begging. Everybody, it seems to me begs, from the toddler who is. old enough to hold its hand, to the old man and woman. So many one-legged men here begging that I was tempted to suspect some of them of cutting off a leg purposely. We foreigners are a great mark for these fellows. When I was out with my wife they caught me. Alone, I can outwalk them all. We expect to leave here the 28th for Cordova, where we stay a few days, thence to Seville and Granada. Will stay about a week in Granada. Have received your letters written to Lisbon and have arranged that any letters written me at Lisbon will catch me on boat at Gibraltar. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. !fi \R Seville^ Spain, March 5th, 1912. My Dear Dering: We left Madrid as planned and came to Cordova for a day, then on to Seville where we now are. A hundred years here is about the same as five minutes on Adams Street. Tell Mr. Byram his old friend the "Barber" is still here. In fact, several of him, for all the barbers claim to be the original but he now calls himself a "Pelu- gueria," as our barbers call themselves "Tonsorial Artists," "Mozart's Don Juan" and "Bizet's Figaro" have, I think, left town. Our train out of Madrid was the "Express Sujo" ; the 274 miles was made in ten hours and they evidently think this is a hummer, 62 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS for the fast mail leaving an hour after makes the same run in ten hours and thirty minutes, or at the nerve racking rate of twenty miles per hour. The sleeper we came out in was new and I suppose up-to-date. It was. arranged like the one we came in from Lisbon to Madrid which I think I described, but had a small toilet room between the compartments. This has no water closet arrangements, only lava- tory. The closets being at each end of the car. Berths are very narrow; if the mattress was not made with a "dish" in it, don't see how a fellow could stay in bed. These cars are light; dance about a good deal but not so much as their coaches having eight wheels — these coaches have but four. They handle coaches on small turn tables in main line into and out of trains. At Cordova we had two of these dinkies to take out of train; after the baggage and express had been fixed, the train was cut, pulled up over turn table with two coaches to come off behind. Men took these coaches one at a time pushed separately, then by hand onto the turn table, turned them quarter round and then pushed them onto a right angled side track where they are stored and put into the corresponding returning train the same way. Thus two cars could be switched onto a siding as we do it in quarter the time and without any men except the crew, the train crew not participating in this case. No day signals are given by hand ; all with a little brass horn or a whistle. At all stations the starting is accompanied by quite a ceremony. When the agent has preliminaries done, he rings a big bell about half the size of our locomotive bells. This is apparently official notice a train has arrived. A fellow then goes along the platform advising those going on that train to get aboard. When the station men get the train work done, they ring a small hand bell such as is used in our country by the country school-marms. If the engineer has steam up he signifies his readiness to go by one short whistle, but I noticed the blower on a good deal and as quite a time generally elapses between the time the school bell tings and the engineer whistles, I suspect he is out of steam at times. After the engineer whistles, the conductor, if he is through visiting, blows a whistle and the thing moves out of town. I have thought I would like to ride one of these fellows on No. 7 out of Chicago to Burlington some night and be able to interpret his Spanish at the end of the run. Coming from Lisbon, I sent all our baggage to meet us at Gib- raltar, except one trunk, which I brought with us. Out of Lisbon I paid only about four cents extra baggage showing it was just about 132 pounds allowed free on two tickets. We bought a few thin^ in Madrid weighing not over 12 pounds ; my excess for the 355 miles, Madrid to Sevillle, was $1.25 United States money, or over ten centt SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS 63 per pound. This is very unreasonable. The consequence is, every body traveling regularly in this country takes his luggage into the coach with him and some of the stuff is a sight to see. They skin the coaches up lugging these big grips in and out. The railroad runs double the passenger cars which would be necessary if luggage were checked up closely as in our country and put into the baggage car. The train I came into Seville on had about seven coaches with about one good coach load of passengers in it and a dinky baggage car with practically no baggage in it. These fellows do not seem ta me to be onto the first principles of railroading. Their rates are so high little freight is moved by rail. If they would railroad as we do — get rates down — they could develop some business; now the donkey is doing most of it. We are now down into the Andulasian country in Southern Spain, the richest of the kingdom. The old Romans built castles all over this country; we see many of the remains coming along and in one place some fellow was rebuilding an old castle in somewhat modern style, apparently for a residence. In this country, as in the north, the people of the agricultural districts are herded in villages about the church, and have to go and come long distances to do farm work. I am told the Young King is trying to get the land into the hands of the small owner and get the surplus population fastened to the soil as with us; get schools for public instruction established and the people educated.' All are now very ignorant; few can read. A fellow who can spell out letter by letter the words of a newspaper is considered by the country population as a sage here. The church will antagonize both the segregation and the educa- tion of the people. So long as they can herd them in ignorance they can control them, but educated and segregated they cannot. I am told they have a very good man in charge of educational work in the kingdom and he is working up the public schools to a good degree of efficiency and it looks to an outsider as though something was being accomplished. But many of the people in Spain are so very poor, it takes the family seven long days a week to earn enough to keep body and soul together. Beggars are thick and persistent. Children are educated to beg as soon as they can walk, in some cases. The old people are good actors. I have come around a corner to find an old lady conversing with her companion, when she would suddenly be seized with the shakes, which, if continued for any length of time, would certainly wear her out. Able bodied men beg and work the foreigner in a hundred ways. I have hardened my heart so nothing can now affect me. I just tell them I "no comprehend" and let them go on with their antics. 64 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS Coming down someone went through my trunk and took out a very small quantity of gold I left in it. Think trunks are usually inspected. As I intimated in my last letter, everything is old in Spain. All these towns have had their ups and downs. Madrid is now "going up"; Toledo once 200,000 people now 20,000; Cor- dova is about the same. The only really interesting thing about Cordova is its Cathedral. It was built by the Moors originally, then the Catholics took hold and added to it and built it over until but little of the Moorish work remains, but there is some work inside tha church which is still very fine. The mosaic is of colored glass, the squares being not over J4 inch, involved an indefinite amount of work. The old Roman work still exists, to an extent, giving quite a good idea of how they did business. The old bridge over the Guadalquive'r River is on Roman piers, the arches having been rebuilt. These piers are so large they take up about half the opening. That is, the space between piers is only about the thickness of the piers. The markets in all these towns are quite interesting and we try to visit them. At Cordova we bought the best oranges we ever tasted, so sweet there was practically no acid taste, more like a sweet water- melon. Flowers are always in evidence in these markets. Mrs. Calvert has taken to violets ; for about 5 cents we get in the markets a large bunch which would cost 75 cents or $1 .00 in Chicago. Every town has its "Plaza de Toros," or bull fight ring. This country we are now in raises the best fighting bulls, so the fights are encour- aged here. This is not the bull-fight season so we have not seen any fight, but we see in the fields the long horn, short neck cattle, such as our pictures show us in connection with the bull ring. The boys bull-fight in the fields with each other as our boys practice baseball. Seville is one of the old towns, but seems to hold its own. Was surprised to find ocean going steamers lying in the river opposite the town. They have big monthly service direct Seville to New York. This keeps the town going. This was an important place when the Moors were here and the Sultan built himself a house which is still in very good repair; owned, repaired and exhibited by the Span- ish Government, called "The Alcazar." We visited it Sunday and found it all that has been said of it. Homely as mud bank outside, an exquisite palace on the inside. These old Moors, while their color is barbaric, their outline and detail of finish is exquisite. It has been so many years since these buildings were finished, many things have happened in them of historical interest. This was put up in 1181 on the foundation of an old Roman building. "Peter the Cruel" lived here and dispensed his kind of justice. He invited a Moor, Aba Said, to visit him here. Aba had a lot of fine jewelry, so Peter killed him in this building and kept his jewels, and he dis- SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 65 posed of his own brother in the same way. In the basement is a big tank where Maria de Padilla used to bathe and the knights used to show their gallantry by drinking the bath water. Henry II Charles V, Phillip IV and Phillip V were here. Near by is the Giralda, attached to the Cathedral. This was the prayer tower of the old Moors. It is square and has an incline on the inside so one gets up without steps. They have a beautiful chime of bells on this tower and we got a fine view, of the city from the belfry. Seville, like all Spanish towns we have visited, is dirty. The people are untidy in their habits and every corner smells rank. The stores are small and the stocks are old left-over stuff from Paris and Madrid. They have here in a little museum they have started, some of Murillo's finest paintings ; one in the Cathedral, "St. Anthony of Padua's Vision," is said to be one of Murillo's best. Some enter- prising thief in 1874 cut out that part of the canvas showing St. Anthony and took it to New York where he thought it would be more negotiable than in Spain, but the canvas was recovered, returned to Seville and replaced in the picture so skillfully one would not notice anything wrong, if their attention was not called to the black shade about the picture where it was joined together. Old Christopher Columbus has a fine tomb in this Cathedral. Many of the fine paintings in these Churches are so badly hung with reference to the light one cannot see them well. Here in Seville or 'rather in Triana, just across the river, is made a great deal of pottery, ranging from the common rough brick for rough walls, up through the various grades of floor and wall tiles, table dishes, Moor- ish vases, to the finest and most expensive vases and art tiles. I never saw such beautiful wall tiles as they have here. All shapes, sizes, designs and colors. The whole of Spain and I think some of other parts of the world are supplied with tiles from Triana — Dishes also. We were so taken with these old style flower pots, we bought two; have arranged to have them shipped to the United States and will exhibit them to such of our friends as visit us in Lincoln. The Catholic Church built so many buildings that the Govern- ment has taken from them all they need for barracks, schools, muse- ums, tobacco factories, etc., and the church has really, none left that it can well make use of. Streets here in Seville, as in other towns of Spain and Portugal, are narrow and crooked. In fact, if there ever was a "jag town," we find them here. I see people making chalk marks on buildings as they go along the street; presume they are blazing the trail so they can find their way back. I have been threatening to buy some chalk myself. The money here is really worse to handle than in Brazil. In the latter place most of the smaller transactions, such as street car fares, 66 SPANISH - AMERICAN LETTERS •' ' were paid in silver. Here few silver coins smaller than the peseta^ about 20 cents of our money, is used. If one gives a conductor 20 cents silver for a street car ride, he gets a big hand full of Copper, one and two cent pieces. Spanish cent is 5 centavos. Most oi the transactions between people is made, with copper coins, transactions are very small. People quite well-to-do apparently buy in the morning one cent's worth of charcoal for the day's cooking. We were in the market this A. M. and saw a dealer weighing out five potatoes. I bought a peseta's worth of tangerines, 18 cents in exchange of our money. I got 18 of them into, my pockets and had to quit for lack of room. We leave here tomorrow for Granada where we expect to remain about six days. Hope to get well acquainted with the Alhambra while I am there. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert. Hotel Reina Victoria, RoNDA, Spain, March 14th, 1912. My Dear Dering: Since leaving Seville, ,from which point I last wrote you, we spent a week at Granada and are now at Ronda. In Seville, I think I wrote you, the principal business was begging. At Ronda it has risen to, the dignity of industry and is the principal one of the town. I never conceived of such a place ; it is almost impossible for a stranger to get about some of the streets, such crowds follow. Our hotel is English, very comfortable and situated on the very edge of a rock cliff , about 500 feet above the valley, while the mountains in front across the valley rise several hundred feet above the hotel. Here the beautiful view and the few old Moorish walls and ruins are; about the only thing to see vnth the natural scenery of the place. This town has about 15,000 people, large flour mills, for this country, and there is absolutely no way to get a wheeled vehicle anywhere near, them; only pack trails, and all wheat to and from them is carried on the backs of donkeys who wand up and down the crooked trails about the steep blufls in great trains , and appear from the, top of the bluffs like strings of ants. I have not seen in this town, and I have walked all over it, a single pound of freight carried on anything but donkeys. The goat delivers the milk at one's door, as in, the other cities we have seen in Spain. People who can afford it, keep a goat in their back yard and draw on it any time of day when milk is needed. It has occurred to me what, a nice thing SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 67 one of these Spanish milk goats would be for a fellow who lived in a flat to keep, in his pantry, so he could have milk any time. That is practically what the well-to-do people do in this country. This hotel has a high wall all about it, with iron gates to keep beggars out and it .seems necessary, but every day the Sisters from the convent near by come in to pick up what pesetas the hotel people have to spare. Our week's stay at Granada was very pleasant in every way. We stopped at the new. hotel near the Alhambra Palace up on the moun- tain side, from which we could overlook the valley of the Genii. This old valley is beautiful with its white houses and small patches of cultivated land scattered about and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada in the distance beyond. The fruit trees were in full bloom and in all the delicate shades. Oranges in the groves and great orchards of olives with their dark. green foliage. The city of Granada lay in the foreground immediately against the rocky cliff on which the hotel was built and about 250 feet below. This country made history before America was discovered. In fact, they were doing business here a thousand years before the Chris- tian Era began. Sitting on our veranda we, could see in the valley to the west, the little town of Santa Fe where, during the siege of Granada in 1491, Columbus and Isabella signed the agreement whereby Columbus was to be furnished money, for his voyage of discovery. On the Genii near Santa Fe, was the old bridge from which Columbus was called back when, after vainly seeking aid from the Court of Spain, he was on his. way to the Court of France. We spent many hours in the Alhambra of which you have no doubt read. We took Washington Irving's "Tales of the Alham- bra" and went about the scenes he ; described, stood where he stood so often with his glasses and watched the people in the town below, weaving his narrative in his imaginative mind, and with powerful glass we watched the life now there, but while it was interesting, it did not appear romantic. In one window we saw one woman sorting lice out of another's head, and from her actions the search was suc- cessful. The donkey with his, load moves slowly along as he has ever since he looked into the manger at the Virgin's child, and one is constantly reminded of the, very important part the donkey still plays in the lives of these people in Spain and Portugal and even in the newer country of South America. But to return to the Alhambra. This is, as you know, the best preserved of the old Moorish castles. Granada was the last place to be given up by the Moors in Spain, and it was not until the second of January, 1492, the same year America was discovered, that the 68 SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS flag of the Catholic kings was hoisted over the castle, when the Moor got out and Ferdinand and Isabella came in. While ,the agreement with Columbus was signed at Santa Fe, five miles away, the final arrangements were probably made in the Hall of the Ambassadors in this castle of the Alhambra. I shall not attempt to describe the castle now, , but hope some day to show you by pictures what beautiful things those old Moors could do. It is in its ornamental detail like a, fairy land. After Ferdinand and Isabella passed away, it was occupied by successive rulers as their castle, until earthquake made it uncomfortable and all rooms are now bare of furniture. The details of walls and ceilings with the colors now remaining on some parts, show how magnificent it must have been with all its furnishings — ^first with the Moors and, later, when "Knighthood was in Flower" under Charles V, who lived here. It seems sad to think of all these people and its splendor gone. We stood beside Columbus' body in Seville. Charles V and the Phillips are in the Escorial near Madrid, where we saw their coffins. Ferdi- nand and Isabella lay side by side. in the Cathedral of Granada, where for a fixed sum of 36 cents, we saw their leaden coffins. After leaving Seville we get into a more fertile country than about Seville. About Granada the country gets rough but valleys are wide and apparently very fertile for this country, so far as Bobadilla. From the latter point to Ronda it is more mountainous and at Ronda it is very much so. The country which will admit of crop raising is farmed strenuously, raising mostly wheat. They used to raise grapes and make wine, but the demand for necessities of life has become so great they have left ofE the luxuries and gone to the necessities only. The ground here is farmed in little patches. They use an old style side hill plow, where any plow is used, having only one handle. A side hill plow ,is one which can be turned over at the end of a furrow and plow back, throwing the furrow down hill all the time. The ground here is in walled terraces, in some places, as in Peru; in others the hills are so steep the ox team almost upsets while turning around at , the end of the furrow. They have been using these side hill plows on these small patches of ground, plowing the furrows down hill for so many years that where the lower edge of land of one farmer joins the upper end of his neighbor there is frequently a drop of 8 or 10 feet, one having plowed land toward the other, from this line. Much of the land is spaded up with a big hoe instead of plowing it. I saw today 5 men hoeing up about one acre patch. They will work and palaver on this job 4 or 5 days. A man and team with an American plow would dig it up in half a day. When the Moors were here this country was very much more thickly settled than it is, now. When the Spaniard came in, he SPANISH -AMERICAN LETTERS 69 killed off all the Moors he could before they were conquered ; then the Church took hold through the Inquisition and killed off all who did not, promptly join the Catholic faith and they were, it is rumored, slaughtered by the thousands. A very few of Moorish blood remain and they are the Gypsies, most of whom are of Granada, who live in caves, having practically a cave city with a cave church just on the edge of Granada. A great many of these old Moors went back to Africa and I am told many are still found carrying keys to "Castles in Spain," handed down through generations, and they hope some day to drive out the , Spaniard and come back to Spain and claim their own. The Catholic Church in Spain will have a lot, of things to answer for at the final round-up. Each little town is the "See of a Bishop." They have kept the people in ignorance and poverty. They hold control through superstition. They have not taught the people any of the things we try to instill into our people. The people of Spain, as a class, are the filthiest we have encountered anjrwhere. I won't go into details here because I would not write them. Our experience in Lisbon was entirely different from that even in Madrid. Lisbon and its people are far superior in their personal habits to even those. of Madrid. This is the last letter I will write from this country. We go from here to Algeciras and Gibraltar ; thence to Tangier for two or three days, 'returning to Gibraltar, sailing from the latter point, March 25th. Hope to arrive in New York April 2nd. Yours truly, T. E. Calvert.