A Five Years' Residence in Buenos Ayres, During the years 1820 to 1825: Containing Remarks on the Country and Inhabitants; and a Visit to Colonia Del SacramentoLove, George Thomas
History
A Five Years' Residence in Buenos Ayres, During the years 1820 to 1825: Containing Remarks on the Country and Inhabitants; and a Visit to Colonia Del Sacramento
Love, George Thomas
Buenos Aires (Argentina) -- Description and travel; Colonia del Sacramento (Uruguay) -- Description and travel
It is professions of the first necessity that succeed. Mechanics are
sure of employment, and with prudence can save money. A journeyman
carpenter may earn, by piece-work, four to five dollars per day; their
regular wages from the English masters are from forty to forty-five
and forty-eight dollars per month. Braziers, blacksmiths, &c. do
well: Englishmen have shops in all those branches. Labourers of all
descriptions are in request.
Farming I do not conceive a profitable concern: labour is high, and the
foreign farmer, from the sort of men he must employ, is continually
exposed to petty thefts, the punishment of which causes great annoyance
and trouble. English labourers generally manage to leave their master
the moment they become useful. Several Englishmen have tried the system
of farming, without much success; it is more adapted to the natives,
and, from what I have heard, they make nothing extraordinary of it. It
is possible that a man with a capital of 800 to 1000_l._ may more than
live; but it ought to be a strong temptation to induce an individual
with that property to leave his country, and to be well assured of the
probable advantages of such an experiment. At the present moment a rapid
fortune is not to be made as a farmer; he must be content to plod on for
years, with great anxiety, and labour to boot. The soil, rich as it is,
requires artificial aid.
It is in holding _estancias_, or grazing farms, that money has been
made; and from the high price of hides, and the continual demand for
them, this affords every prospect of advantage.
Emigrants will not find the conveniences they have at home, but as many
comforts as they can possibly expect in a foreign land, including the
favourable climate.
An English female, upon her first arrival in this country would not find
herself very comfortable; it must take some time to reconcile her to
the loss of home, dress, mode of living--every thing so different; the
only alleviation is in the society of her country folks, and the kind
behaviour of the people, which will soon soften those feelings, and
when somewhat conversant in the language, she would become attached to
Spanish society, from whom she may be assured of receiving the most
delicate attentions that hospitality can prompt.
A person will not be long in Buenos Ayres without picking up
acquaintances with its inhabitants; amongst whom are some very
intelligent young men. I have sometimes thought it would give me
pleasure to conduct one of them to England, to be--not exactly a Mentor
(needing that myself), but a sort of escort to him in the modern
Babylon, London; to explain its many varieties, from the mansions of the
nobility, down to the _fondas_ of St. Giles's, where plates, knives, and
forks, are chained to the tables, to prevent the customers walking off
with them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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