The Cordobians are fond of music and racing and gambling, and sitting in the cafés throwing the dice-box. There is a delightful theatre, the Rivera Indarte, built by the provincial Government. Opera companies which go to Buenos Aires are invited to come to Cordoba, and the authorities give a guarantee against loss. The proper thing is to buy a box, holding six persons, for the little season of ten performances. The cost of such a box is £150. The charge is a dollar for the _entrada_ (entrance), which provides nothing except permission to enter the building. This _entrada_ charge is like the charge for "attendance" in old-fashioned hotels in England, which is an excuse for sticking another eighteenpence a day on your bill so that you may be deceived into thinking you are paying six shillings for your room when you are really paying seven and sixpence. So at the opera in Cordoba, usually Italian, the lowest ticket is two dollars to be permitted to stand up, but you have already parted with one dollar to go in. Cordoba province, like the other provinces, thinks no small beer of itself. It rather resents receiving orders from the Federal Government sitting in Buenos Aires. Perhaps that is the reason the Argentine National Anthem is so seldom heard.
Students are attracted to Cordoba University from all over the country. Most of the professors have had experience of European universities, generally French. The library is extensive and varied. I handled some fine old Bibles, bound in sheepskin, relics of the early Spaniards. Also there is a remarkable collection of old maps, showing that the priests as they travelled this way were first-class geographers. Whatever literary sentiment there is in Argentina finds expression in Cordoba. Indeed, it is the natural meeting-place for men inclined to culture for its own sake. But it is by no means a sleepy hollow. It has several really good newspapers. There is a great export of lime. Being the centre of a big wheat area, much milling is done by modern electric appliance. Light and power are provided by an enterprising English company. There is a shoe factory, which turns out 2,500 pairs of footwear a day.
Yet, as I have said, though there is plenty to prove that Cordoba is awake, the impression left on the memory is that it is an old-fashioned Spanish university town that has strayed to the central part of South America. This may be because I spent most of my time in the university buildings, or roaming through the churches. In the cathedral a shrivelled but kindly old priest showed me a gallery of bishops of Cordoba; but I suspect they are much like the Scottish kings which adorn the walls of Holyrood Palace, many painted by one hand, and from imagination of what the bishops looked like rather than from any knowledge of their actual appearance.