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Dr. Mann and Party Inspect Argentine Delta Country

Huge Fruit Plantations, Streamlined Gaucho Add Interest to Trip

(No. 24 of a Series.)

By W. H. SHIPPEN, JR.,
Star Staff Correspondent.

ABOARD THE CERES.—All day, as guests of the Argentine Government, we have been cruising canals and rivers of the great Delta del Parana, that rich borderland of climates where the palm mingles freely with the pine.

Our tall mast, from the tip of which flows the sky blue and white official flag, with a yellow sum in the center, brushes aside the bright autumn foliage of sycamores; then our launch runs between green banks grown with palms and citrus tree weighted with ripening fruit. 

(W. H. Shippen, Jr.)

The delta and its network of rivers, canals and irrigation ditches, lies between the Parana and Uruguay Rivers above their confluence in the Plata. The great rivers, rolling down from the tropics in the north, bear floating islands of exotic vegetation, along with innumerable seeds and plant spores. Much vegetation from the hot countries has adapted itself to a colder climate.

We landed at many quints or fruit plantations, to stroll through tropical and sub-tropical groves in our overcoats. The fall wind rattled the bare branches of Lombardy poplars and planted borders of sycamores were turning yellow and red.

Traffic Over Waterways.

All traffic of the delta moves over the waterways. Our launch ran by scores of river craft carrying fruit, cordwood telephone poles and fence posts to B. A. markets. Vast areas of the delta are planted in Lombardy poplars. Their avenues stretch away in transit lines to the horizon. The poplars grow straight and fast in the rich loam. Their wood is put to all manner of uses in a country almost barren of commercial timber.

The cultivation of the great fruit plantations is brought to a high degree of perfection. Citrus fruit, peaches and sweet potatoes are processed in plantation canning factories. This morning we rode in a buggy behind a team of fine bays, mile after mile across a plantation whose seemingly endless irrigation ditches were bordered with tall poplars and cedars. Pond lilies floated on the water in the ditches and every tenant cottage was bright with fall flowers.

A gaucho in flowing breeches, wide hat, half boots and silver accessories superintended the hitching of our horses, but left the driving to an inferior. He strode about splendid stables, hung with silver trappings, with the rolling, bow-legged gait of the Western cow hand. He was more aloof, however, and seemed possessed of a fierce pride.

A Streamlined Gaucho.

“Just a streamlined gaucho,” said one of four National University nature students accompanying us on the Ceres. “The real gaucho, he exists no more—not even in Hollywood!” The student, however, spoke in English and well out of the horseman’s hearing. I was glad of that.

The stables were decorated with old Spanish tile and grillwork. The saddles, boleros, bridles, neck bells and other hand-wrought gaucho trappings were museum pieces.

We will sleep tonight aboard the Ceres—a 60-foot luxury launch assigned to the Department of Agriculture. Our host on the boat is Señor Estaniclato Chiarelli, director of the department of fruits and horticulture, who conducts us on inspection trips and presides over the dining table in the little salon with all the grace of a Chesterfield.

The four college students aboard so far have been unable to outdo the older members of the party in the consumption of Argentine steaks, native vegetables and fruits; an Argentine dish which might correspond to a New England boiled dinner (puchero), except there is more of it, and Argentine preserves and cheeses.

Studying Natural History.

The students are studying natural history—the plants, animals and insects of their native land—under the informal tutelage of Dr. Chiarelli and Dr. William M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park in Washington, D. C. The Washington scientist helps them identify their collections. Students and their elders hold informal, round-table question and answer sessions in English and Spanish. All four college boys are studying English. All have asked me several times—without getting anything very definite—how many students in the United States are learning Spanish. The answer seems of importance to them.

Dr. Mann is learning all he can of Argentine, through travel and talks with the residents in the hope of assembling a representative, if small, collection of native birds and animals for the Washington Zoo. There are almost no animal dealers here, and the collectors are attached to public institutions or are the owners of private estancias interested in the conservation of wild life.

Tonight we talked late on deck (I’ve learned a few words of Spanish) while a yellow moon rose over the Parana de las Palmas and the Southern Cross reached its zenith. The Latins sang their college songs, their tongoes and national airs.

One of the college boys said:

“They tell us—the Germans, the Italians, the British—that we must beware of the North Americanos with their big Navy, their dollar politics, yes?

“But we four don’t believe that now…we think North Americanos are very much like the Argentines, yes?”

Fire Ants Are Discovered To Chagrin of Correspondent

Forced Into Argentine Foliage to Discard Trousers and Stinging Insects

Dr. William M. Mann, director of the National Zoological Park, is now in Argentina collecting birds, reptiles and animals. Among those accompanying him is William H. Shippen, jr., feature writer of The Star staff, who here presents the 25th of a series of articles about Dr. Mann’s travels.

By W. H. SHIPPEN, Jr.,
Star Staff Correspondent.

ABOARD THE CERES.—Sure enough, they were fire ants!

I had read about them—how they descend, like a shower of sparks, upon unwary travelers who jostle certain trees in the tropics. 

But the storied ants were big, arboreal creatures. These were minute, and swarmed about their burrow in the ground. They were my own descovery.

“Look what I’ve found,” I called to Dr. Mann. “Maybe they’re a new species—please come and identify them, doctor!” Dr. Mann, a world authority on ants, who began collecting them in the Solomon Islands as a harvard student on a scholarship, strolled over—not too near, I recalled later.

“Just stand where you are William,” he said, “and presently you will identify them for yourself.”

Presently I did. The ladies in the party thought I was practicing the tango—not too gracefully, with a hop, skip and jump, instead of a glide. I retired into some foliage of a happy density and got out of my trousers as rapidly as possible. They were only little ants—“chicos,” the Buenos Aires college boys called them—but what they lacked in size they made up in numbers. Their stings, fortunately, were more alarming than harmful.

After recovering my trousers and my poise, I emerged from the foliage much wiser in practical entomology.

Stopped at Fur Farm.

The launch Ceres, on which we are cruising as guests of the Argentine Department of Agriculture, had pulled in alongside a citrus and nutria farm on the Delta del Parana.

The nutria is a big native rodent which, crossed with a larger species from the north, produces a chocolate-colored fur once worn by such fastidious dressers as Chinese mandarins and war lords, and now prized by ladies of fashion in Europe and the United States. The nutria looks like a 50-pound rat with a flat, pensive countenance and walrus whiskers.

The water rodents are bred in pens which contain a canal. An elaborate system of stud books is kept to improve the stock and fur quality. The nutrias are vegetarians, but fierce fighters. Their long teeth can chop through a riding boot in a flash. The individual breeding pens usually contain one male and four or five sisters form the same litter, because sisters never quarrel, or chide each other’s children, in the best nutria families. They are death on strangers, however.

The coarse outer hair is removed from the pelts and used in the manufacture of felt hats. The inner fur, almost a half-inch thick, is comparable to fine seal—dense, soft and luxurious to the touch. (I had rather touch a pelt that a nutria—perhaps the fire ants have me intimidated.)
Floating School Buses.

Back on the canal, as the launch continued her cruise, we passed many landings where children, in their white school uniforms, waited for a floating “bus” to take them to their classrooms upon a Saturday.

“The choices will be tardy,” remarked an Argentine.

Apparently they were. We later passed the “bus.” A red-faced driver was trying to start the outboard motor. As we swung around a bend he was still trying. Yes, the “chicos” probably were late for school today—very late.

I hope they won’t be late for church in the morning—a floating church, complete with its tall steeple and a crucifix mounted on the forward mast. The church ship was named the Cristo Rey—or King Christ. Later we passed a wedding party. Their launch was a bower of flowers and the Argentines in attendance were quite gay—probably with the wine of the land, which flows freely on festive occasions.

The grocer-butcher in his motor boat hung his meat deliveries on trees beside the landing stages. There are no roads or railways on the delta which is covered with rivers, canals and irrigation ditches.

The flower-grown huts of the poor were made of reeds and clay, thatched with grass and mounted on stilts above the high-water line. Each house had its outdoor bake-oven of mud, its dogs, children and chickens.

Also a landing for its long Spanish bateau in a small canal cut through the thick, black loam and covered by a thatched shed.

Banks Lined With Trees.

The banks were lined with palms, pines, millions of tall Lombardy poplars, citrus trees, eucalyptus, sycamores, the native sauce, which resembles our willows, and weeping willows.

A Spanish college student asked about the latter trees:

“In the States what do you call those tree? The sobbing willow, yes?”

Geraniums, “the poor man’s flower,” grew to great size, and arbors were loaded with grapes. Benteveo birds (“I see you well,” is what they are supposed to cry in Spanish) swarmed in the groves, their shrieks rising above the beat of our Diesel engine.

The four students from the National University at Buenos Aires, who are accompanying us on the Ceres, tried to teach us to sing tangoes and their school songs—a tough assignment. The timing was complicated and the words elusive. They found the same difficulty with our songs, with the exception of “Ramblin’ Wreck.’’ The rather profane and explosive nature of the chorus appealed to them. It seemed off to hear four Argentine college boys banging out that familiar chorus as our launch slid between the strange banks of the Bara Grande：

“I’m a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech, and a hell of an engineer!”

“Dose words,” one of them said, “they sound magnifico! What of they mean, ples?”

I had a hard time explaining!