Passengers on the company ship (whose name he never mentions) were an assortment of young Britishers — traders, engineers, miners, mechanics — mostly veterans drawn from the unemployed to accompany British money, machinery, and goods across the sea, where all could be used to someone’s advantage.
Most of the young men, like Hartnell, carried contracts precluding any share in the profits.
But hope accompanied each one, after hopeless years at home.
Here in South America the infant republics needed intelligent, educated citizens to aid in the establishment of democratic institutions.
Many of the young men would find the atmosphere so congenial that never would they return to the Old World.
Among these would be William Hartnell.
It was only a year since the combined arimes of Argentina and Chile, commanded by General San Martin, had decisively defeated the Spaniards at Maipu.
Only since then had foreign vessels been welcomed to Buenos Aires, where Hartnell’s sea voyage ended.
Having looked forward so long to final disembarkation, Hartnell must have experienced anticlimax when his ship anchored in the outer ocean roads seven or eight miles from the city.
Passengers, luggage, and cargo all must be piled into small landing boats, then rowed across the shallow waters of La Plata estuary, brushing past reeds and disturbing waterfowl on the way.
On shore carretas (wooden carts) drawn by oxen, pack mules or riding horses were available for transportation acr0ss the pampa that surrounded the city.
Buenos Aires, averaging sixty-five feet above sea level, is not dramatic in location.
But sea-weary Hartnell and his fellow passengers found much to interest them in a city typical of the capitals built by Spain in her Central and South American colonies.
They gazed upon the magnificent cathedral and wandered in the plazas and elaborately laid-out alamedas (public walks).
They joined the inhabitants in listening to music, dancing, and playing pelota.
It was a temptation to Hartnell, welcome wherever he went for his modo corriente*, to linger in Argentina.
But he must press on to Santiago where new duties awaited him, and new pleasures too.
* Modo corriente, an idiomatic expression described by Hartnell’s contemporary traveler in South America, Captain Basil Hall, as meaning “the manner of a man who, without departing from his own natural character, is desirous of pleasing and willing to take all things as he finds them.”
THE LIVES OF WILLIAM HARTNELL
Susanna Bryant Dakin
Stanford University Press 1949
Pages 10 – 11
CCC – LA ROSA TRANSCULTURAL HARTNELLIANA 1949 – 2009
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