March 1, 1891.
The wind blowing from the mouth of the La Plata River was thick with the scent of raw beef, heavy oil, and semi-decayed seaweed.
When the massive steel hull of the Sea Serpent finally docked securely against the piling pier of Buenos Aires Harbor, the thirty-four-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean finally came to an end.
Carrying his heavily worn leather suitcase, Ryan blended into the crowd of Italian immigrants wrapped in coarse wool blankets and merchants in wool coats, stepping down the greasy, sea-sour wooden gangway one step at a time.
The air here was entirely different from the Old World.
If London was a cold city locked tightly in a steam coffin of industrial coal ash and harsh order, then Argentina in 1891 was like a wild beast of the wilderness, gasping heavily in fertile mud, oozing pus, yet bursting with violent vitality.
The docks were swarming with shirtless, mixed-race laborers whose skin had been baked dark by the fierce South American sun.
They carried sacks of frozen beef and wheat, cursing at each other in Spanish and vulgar slang along the wooden boardwalks. On the distant freight tracks, steam locomotives belched thick black smoke and blew shrill whistles, transporting carloads of hides and bone meal from the Pampas to the granaries of the Old World.
In this era, this place was a paradise for capital and opportunists, as well as the perfect sanctuary for any fugitive from the Old World.
Ryan pulled down the brim of his black top hat and walked along the slippery piling corridor into the customs inspection area.
The Argentine customs official who received him was a mixed-race old man with a handlebar mustache and a cheap black cigar clamped in his mouth. He did not even bother to look up at Ryan, merely stamping his botanical researcher pass roughly with a purple seal bearing a five-pointed star and a sun pattern.
“A new researcher?” The old man blew a smoke ring and spoke in broken English, his eyes cloudy. “Stay far away from the Pampas to the west. The natives and bandits out there don't care whether you're holding plant specimens or gold pounds.”
“Thank you for the warning.”
Ryan took back his passport, his voice raspy and calm.
He stepped out of the harbor hall, which was thick with the smell of sea acid, and onto the cobblestone streets of the lower end of Buenos Aires.
On either side were Spanish colonial-style arcades, their peeling plaster revealing earthy red brickwork. Brass plaques for "Lloyds Bank" and "South American Steakhouse" hung on the street corners, where horse-drawn carriages and early low-slung steam tricycles ran side by side on the muddy roads, kicking up clouds of fishy dust.
Standing at the noisy street corner, Ryan closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
The humid, warm air, mixed with horse manure, heavy oil, and sea breeze, rushed into his lungs, bringing a coarse and tangible sense of survival.
He had not crossed the Atlantic to Buenos Aires with any profound, grand plan, nor with any passionate ambition to settle old scores.
He just wanted to live.
He was tired of being a chess piece, tired of surviving in the cracks between various factions and schemes.
This South American continent, situated on the edge of the Southern Hemisphere, was far enough, chaotic enough, and vast enough.
No one here knew him, and no one cared about his past.
Far from the docks and the bustling downtown, he rented a small brick cottage with a small courtyard in the East End. With no servants or guests, he lived like the most ordinary botanical researcher, wearing a faded trench coat, carrying a magnifying glass and a specimen collector, and traveling back and forth between the wilderness of the suburbs and the harbor's botanical garden every day.
He was using time to let his new identity as “Joshua Adams” completely dissolve into the massive, chaotic tide of immigrants in Buenos Aires.
Every morning at six-thirty, when the steam mill on the outskirts of the city blew its first whistle, Ryan would open the wooden door of his cottage right on time.
He was accustomed to walking two blocks to a small café on the banks of the Matanza River.
The wooden tables of the café were always covered in a thin layer of dust, and the brass steam coffee machine in the corner hissed as it released pressure. Ryan would spend two cents to order a cup of bitter, rich black coffee and a stack of the 《Buenos Aires Herald》 and the 《La Plata Times》, fresh from the printing press.
Hidden within these newspapers filled with commercial advertisements and court rulings was the truest pulse of the city, as well as the safety boundaries that would allow him to survive securely.
“...The aftermath of the July 1890 coup continues. Although President Rivadavia has resigned, the new government's ability to service its foreign debt remains weak. The Argentine peso depreciated by another twelve percent last week.”
“...The Bank of England has injected 1.5 million pounds into the Argentine Railway Company to lay a narrow-gauge railway from Buenos Aires to the inland salt marshes.”
Ryan tapped his fingertips on the table, scanning down the page.
Aside from these grand political and commercial news items, the corners of the tabloids were often filled with absurd yet real stories:
“Two bodies of mixed-race laborers who had been drained of blood were discovered at the suburban slaughterhouse yesterday. The police department has preliminarily ruled it as retaliation by bandits.”
“The South Seas whaling ship The Voyager captured two right whales in the far southern seas, bringing in a large amount of whale oil, which will be publicly auctioned at Pier Two next week.”
Ryan folded the newspaper and took a sip of his coffee.
In this era, the flow of information relied on shipping, telegraphs, and paper. From these complex fragments of information, he gradually pieced together the current situation of the South American continent: a deformed society controlled by British and American capital, plagued by civil wars among local warlords, and extremely xenophobic yet highly dependent on immigration.
Here, as long as your coins were hard enough or you were patient enough, no one would care who you used to be.
“Mr. Adams, are you going out to the wilderness to collect specimens again today?”
The owner of the café was a chubby Spanish old man wearing a dirty apron, who asked with a smile while wiping a glass. The old man was named Old Guan, and he had run this café for over a decade, having seen countless down-and-out souls fleeing from the Old World.
“Yes, Old Guan.” Ryan set down a copper coin and adjusted his hat. “I heard that several species of wild agave with great medicinal value grow near the salt flats in the suburbs. I want to try my luck.”
“It's not safe out there,” the old owner said, shaking his head. “Just last week, two English gentlemen out hunting had their horses and shotguns stolen by bandits. You'd better carry a reliable revolver.”
“I'll be careful,” Ryan replied with a smile, walking out of the café with his suitcase.
The suburban salt flats were desolate.
Sparse, low shrubs grew tenaciously on the arid land, and on the distant horizon, herds of wild horses occasionally galloped past.
Ryan squatted on the ground, using a delicate sampling shovel to dig into the hard soil, placing a plant with grey roots into a glass reagent bottle.
For the past half month, he had insisted on going out of the city to collect specimens every day.
This was not just to maintain his disguise as a botanical researcher, but also to find a gentle outlet for his body and mind.
After months of cold struggle, this most primitive physical labor of contact with soil and sunlight could soothe his tense nerves in an extremely gentle manner.
The afternoon sun was fierce and scorching.
Ryan sat on the wooden crate he had brought with him, unbuttoned the collar of his shirt, and took a sip from his canteen.
On the distant tracks, a train carrying raw hides and ore slowly rolled past, its billowing white smoke torn into thin wisps against the blue sky.
Though this desolate land was barren and chaotic, it possessed an unpolished, raw freedom.
Ryan watched the rolling clouds on the distant horizon and let out a long breath.
He felt a long-lost sense of peace in his heart.
This was what it felt like to be alive.
Not to complete some grand design, not to carve a path of blood out of a dead end, but simply to breathe the warm air, feel the slight itch of sunlight on his skin, and enjoy a simple meal of bread and water.
He did not want to get involved in any more conflicts, nor did he want to pry into any secrets hidden in the mists of history. He only wanted to guard his own small sanctuary of peace and spend the coming years in safety on this foreign land.
Ryan packed away his sampling shovel, carefully stored the glass bottle, put his top hat back on, and walked back toward the city against the glow of the setting sun.
In mid-March, the late summer of the Southern Hemisphere still carried a mugginess.
The banks of the Matanza River in the East End of Buenos Aires were the concentration point for the city's massive slaughterhouse and leather processing industries. The air was perpetually thick with a high concentration of bloody stench and the odor of rotting entrails. Grease and fragmented bones of cattle and sheep floated in the black river water, while countless crows circled and fought on the roofs of the low wooden slaughterhouse sheds.
Yet, on the periphery of these foul-smelling slaughterhouses, an extremely vast and chaotic underground trading market had formed.
There were no official business licenses here, nor any customs inspections.
Smuggled fabrics from the Old World, cheap whiskey, untested medicines, and even all kinds of bizarre bones and plants plundered from native tribes were openly displayed for sale at stalls.
At noon, Ryan, wearing a loose grey hunting suit and a low-pressed soft leather cap, stepped into the muddy market covered in cattle blood.
He had come here today to purchase some long-term daily necessities—such as salt pork that could be stored for a long time, a few bottles of moisture-proof medicine, and some iron nails and wooden boards for repairing his roof. To live in seclusion in this chaotic city for a long time, adequate material preparation was essential.
The market was bustling with noise.
“Fresh Pampas beef! Only three cents a pound!”
“Coarse woolen fabrics shipped from Liverpool! Don't miss out as you walk by!”
Ryan walked through the stalls, his gaze calmly sweeping over them one by one.
His hands remained tucked inside his trench coat pockets, his steps light and rhythmic. Although he tried his best to suppress his presence, on such a chaotic street, the innate calmness and detachment radiating from his bones still made many thieves and thugs instinctively avoid him.
Ryan stopped in front of a wooden board stall selling secondhand goods.
The stall owner was a one-eyed old man with a face full of crisscrossing scars, scraping a piece of dried black animal hide with a sharp skinning knife. On the stall lay a chaotic assortment of old brass locks, broken marine instruments, and a few old books with rotten leather covers.
“How much for these old books?” Ryan asked in standard Spanish.
The old man did not even raise his head, his shriveled lips taking a drag from his crude cigar. “Five cents a book, or trade with tobacco of equal value.”
Ryan squatted down and flipped through the old books.
Most of them were boring sailors' logs and outdated geographical atlases. Ryan did not look for any bizarre secrets; instead, he selected two ordinary reference books on local Argentine agriculture and geological distribution.
For him now, understanding more about the local soil and climate was much more practical than learning about any ephemeral legends. It would make his identity as a “botanical researcher” look even more flawless, and it would help him better manage the tiny vegetable patch in his small courtyard.
Ryan pulled out a one-peso silver coin and handed it over.
The old man took the silver coin, weighed it in his hand, bit it, and then nodded, returning a few copper coins.
“Young man, you look like you've been educated,” the old man said, suddenly raising his single eye to glance at Ryan. “In Buenos Aires, books won't buy you bread. You'd better have a gun in your hand.”
“Thank you, I'll consider it,” Ryan responded flatly, packing up the books.
After leaving the secondhand stall, Ryan walked slowly along the wooden boardwalk by the Matanza River.
Many low, flat-bottomed wooden boats were moored along the riverbank, and workers were using iron hooks to load barrels of rendered tallow onto them.
Just then, a commotion came from the wooden footbridge ahead.
Two local police officers in uniform, with batons hanging from their waists, were roughly pushing an immigrant woman selling homemade bread to the ground. The bread in her basket spilled everywhere, rolling into the black mud.
“You didn't pay the market management fee! Confiscated, as per regulations!” one officer shouted in crude Spanish, casually pocketing the few copper coins he swiped from the woman's pocket.
The woman lay on the wooden floor, crying and begging for mercy. The surrounding immigrants and coolies looked on with dark faces, but no one dared to stand up and speak out.
In the New World of this era, the line between police and bandits was extremely blurred. For low-class immigrants, the enforcers of the law were often far greedier than the outlaws.
Ryan stood in the shadows ten meters away, watching this scene with cold eyes.
He did not step forward, nor did he show the slightest righteous indignation.
He knew very well that he was now just an ordinary man named “Joshua.” On this unfamiliar and chaotic land, meddling in others' business would not save anyone; instead, it would only expose him to the local sheriff's view.
In this world, if you wanted to live well, the first iron rule was: never provoke an order whose consequences you cannot bear, and never try to save those you cannot save.
After pocketing the loot, the officers muttered curses and swaggered away.
Crying, the woman picked up the muddy pieces of bread one by one. The surrounding crowd dispersed quietly, and the market once again returned to its chaotic, noisy daily routine.
Ryan withdrew his gaze, stepped through the cold mud, and walked toward his residence.
Through his observations and understanding over the past half month, he had completely figured out the rules of survival here:
Here, the law was a rag to wipe one's feet, and order relied on compromises between money and power. As long as you did not try to challenge the magnates who truly controlled the ports and railways, no one would spare you a second glance no matter what you did in the corners of this vast city.
For Ryan, this was the perfect environment.
By the time he returned to his rented cottage, the sky had gradually darkened.
Ryan placed the secondhand books and life supplies he had bought on the table, carefully wiping away the dust with a damp cloth.
He walked out into the small courtyard, drew a bucket of well water, and washed his face and hands clean.
The afterglow of the setting sun dyed the La Plata River a deep, blood-like red. In the distance, steam locomotives at the harbor belched massive clouds of white smoke that slowly drifted and dispersed in the evening breeze.
Ryan stood in the small courtyard, letting the chilly sea breeze blow against his face.
On this South American wilderness of 1891, he had finally seen the true face of this world once more, through the eyes of an ordinary man.
He turned around, lit the kerosene lamp on the table, and under its warm yellow glow, pushed open the window to listen to the distant waves and the hustle and bustle of the streets.
A new life belonging to “Joshua Adams” had officially taken root in this vast and chaotic land. And this time, he only wanted to live in peace.
Rate on N.U.
