PART III.

Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR AND HIS GUIDES THREE FAITHFUL MEN]

THROUGH FIVE REPUBLICS ON HORSEBACK

BEING AN ACCOUNT OF MANY WANDERINGS IN SOUTH AMERICA

BY

G. WHITFIELD RAY, F. R. G. S. Pioneer Missionary and Government Explorer

With an Introduction by the Rev. J. G. Brown, D. D. Secretary for the

Foreign Missions of the Canadian Baptist Church

TWELFTH EDITION--REVISED

EVANGELICAL PUBLISHING HOUSE C. HAUSER, Agent CLEVELAND, OHIO, U. S. A.

1915

[Illustration: SOUTH AMERICA]

PREFACE

The _Missionary Review of the World_ has described South America as THE

DARKEST LAND. That I have been able to penetrate into part of its

unexplored interior, and visit tribes of people hitherto untouched and

unknown, was urged as sufficient reason for the publishing of this

work. In perils oft, through hunger and thirst and fever, consequent on

the many wanderings in unhealthy climes herein recorded, the writer

wishes publicly to record his deep thankfulness to Almighty God for His

unfailing help. If the accounts are used to stimulate missionary

enterprise, and if they give the reader a clearer conception of and

fuller sympathy with the conditions and needs of those South American

countries, those years of travel will not have been in vain.

"Of the making of books there is no end," so when one is acceptably

received, and commands a ready sale, the author is satisfied that his

labor is well repaid. The 4th edition was scarcely dry when the

Consul-General of the Argentine Republic at Ottawa ordered a large

number of copies to send to the members of his Government. Much of it

has been translated into German, and I know not what other languages.

Even the _Catholic Register_ of Toronto has boosted its sale by

printing much in abuse of it, at the same time telling its readers that

the book "sold like hot cakes." A wiser editor would have been discreet

enough not to refer to "Through Five Republics on Horseback." His

readers bought it, and--had their eyes opened, for the statements made

in this work, and the authorities quoted, are unanswerable.

Seeing that there is such an alarming ignorance regarding Latin

America, I have, for this edition, written an Introductory Chapter on

South America, and also a short Foreword especially relating to each of

the Five Republics here treated. As my portrayal of Romanism there has

caused some discussion, I have, in those pages, sought to incorporate

the words of other authorities on South American life and religion.

That the following narratives, now again revised, and sent forth in new

garb, may be increasingly helpful in promoting knowledge, is the

earnest wish of the author.

G. W. R.

Toronto, Ont.

INTRODUCTION

"Through Five Republics on Horseback" has all the elements of a great

missionary book. It is written by an author who is an eye-witness of

practically all that he records, and one who by his explorations and

travels has won for himself the title of the "Livingstone of South

America." The scenes depicted by the writer and the glimpses into the

social, political and religious conditions prevailing in the Republics

in the great Southern continent are of thrilling interest to all lovers

of mankind. We doubt if there is another book in print that within the

compass of three hundred pages begins to give as much valuable

information as is contained in Mr. Ray's volume. The writer wields a

facile pen, and every page glows with the passion of a man on fire with

zeal for the evangelization of the great "Neglected Continent." We are

sure that no one can read this book and be indifferent to the claims of

South America upon the Christian Church of this generation.

To those who desire to learn just what the fruits of Romanism as a

system are, when left to itself and uninfluenced by Protestantism, this

book will prove a real eye-opener. We doubt if any Christian man, after

reading "Through Five Republics on Horseback," will any longer conclude

that Romanism is good enough for Romanists and that Missions to Roman

Catholic countries are an impertinence. We trust the book will awaken a

great interest in the evangelization of the Latin Republics of South

America.

Of course, this volume will have interest for others besides missionary

enthusiasts. Apart from the religious and missionary purpose of the

book, it contains very much in the way of geographical, historical and

scientific information, and that, too, in regard to a field of which as

yet comparatively little is known. The writer has kept an open mind in

his extensive travels, and his record abounds in facts of great

scientific value.

We have known Mr. Ray for several years and delight to bear testimony

to his ability and faithfulness as a preacher and pastor. As a lecturer

on his experiences in South America he is unexcelled. We commend

"Through Five Republics on Horseback" especially to parents who are

anxious to put into the hands of their children inspiring and

character-forming reading. A copy of the book ought to be in every

Sunday School Library.

J. G. Brown.

626 Confederation Life Building, Toronto.

A PRELIMINARY WORD ON SOUTH AMERICA

The Continent of South America was discovered by Spanish navigators

towards the end of the fifteenth century. When the tidings of a new

world beyond the seas reached Europe, Spanish and Portuguese

expeditions vied with each other in exploring its coasts and sailing up

its mighty rivers.

In 1494 the Pope decided that these new lands, which were nearly twice

the size of Europe, should become the possession of the monarchs of

Spain and Portugal. Thus by right of conquest and gift South America

with its seven and a half million miles of territory and its millions

of Indian inhabitants was divided between Spain and Portugal. The

eastern northern half, now called Brazil, became the possession of the

Portuguese crown and the rest of the continent went to the crown of

Spain. South America is 4,600 miles from north to south, and its

greatest breadth from east to west is 3,500 miles. It is a country of

plains and mountains and rivers. The Andean range of mountains is 4,400

miles long. Twelve peaks tower three miles or more above ocean level,

and some reach into the sky for more than four miles. Many of these are

burning mountains; the volcano of Cotopaxi is three miles higher than

Vesuvius. Its rivers are among the longest in the world. The Amazon,

Orinoco and La Plata systems drain an area of 3,686,400 square miles.

Its plains are almost boundless and its forests limitless. There are

deserts where no rain ever falls, and there are stretches of coast line

where no day ever passes without rain. It is a country where all

climates can be found. As the northern part of the continent is

equatorial the greatest degree of heat is there experienced, while the

south stretches its length toward the Pole Quito, the capital of

Ecuador, is on the equator, and Punta Arenas, in Chile, is the

southernmost town in the world.

For hundreds of years Spain and Portugal exploited and ruled with an

iron hand their new and vast possessions. Their coffers were enriched

by fabulous sums of gold and treasure, for the wildest dream of riches

indulged in by its discoverers fell infinitely short of the actual

reality. Large numbers of colonists left the Iberian peninsula for the

newer and richer lands. Priests, monks and nuns went in every vessel,

and the Roman Catholicism of the Dark Ages was soon firmly established

as the only religion. The aborigines were compelled to bow before the

crucifix and worship Mary until, in a peculiar sense, South America

became the Pope's favorite parish. For the benefit of any, native or

colonist, who thought that a purer religion should be, at any rate,

permitted, the Inquisition was established at Lima, and later on at

Cartagena, where, Colombian history informs us, 400,000 were condemned

to death. Free thought was soon stamped out when death became the

penalty.

Such was the wild state of the country and the power vested in the

priests that abuses were tolerated which, even in Rome, had not been

dreamed of. The priests, as anxious for spiritual conquest as the rest

were for physical, joined hands with the heathenism of the Indians,

accepted their gods of wood and stone as saints, set up the crucifix

side by side with the images of the sun and moon, formerly worshipped;

and while in Europe the sun of the Reformation arose and dispelled the

terrible night of religious error and superstition, South America sank

from bad to worse. Thus the anomaly presented itself of the old, effete

lands throwing off the yoke of religious domination while the younger

ones were for centuries to be content with sinking lower and lower.

[Footnote: History is repeating itself, for here in Canada we see

Quebec more Catholic and intolerant than Italy. The Mayor of Rome dared

to criticize the Pope in 1910, but in the same year at the Eucharistic

Congress at Montreal his emissaries receive reverent "homage" from

those in authority. No wonder, therefore, that, while the Romans are

being more enlightened every year, a Quebec young man, who is now a

theological student in McMaster University, Toronto, declared, while

staying in the writer's home, that, as a child he was always taught

that Protestants grew horns on their heads, and that he attained the

age of 15 before ever he discovered that such was not the case. Even

backward Portugal has had its eyes opened to see that Rome and progress

cannot walk together, but the President of Brazil is so "faithful" that

the Pope, in 1910, made him a "Knight of the Golden Spur."]

If the religious emancipation of the old world did not find its echo in

South America, ideas of freedom from kingly oppression began to take

root in the hearts of the people, and before the year 1825 the Spanish

colonies had risen against the mother country and had formed themselves

into several independent republics, while three years before that the

independence of Brazil from Portugal had been declared. At the present

day no part of the vast continent is ruled by either Spain or Portugal,

but ten independent republics have their different flags and

governments.

Since its early discovery South America has been pre-eminently a

country of bloodshed. Revolution has succeeded revolution and hundreds

of thousands of the bravest have been slain, but, phoenix-like, the

country rises from its ashes.

Fifty millions of people now dwell beneath the Southern Cross and speak

the Portuguese and Spanish languages, and it is estimated that, with

the present rate of increase, 180 millions of people will speak these

languages by 1920.

South America is, pre-eminently, the coming continent. It is more

thinly settled than any other part of the world. At least six million

miles of its territory are suitable for immigrants--double the

available territory of the United States. "No other tract of good land

exists that is so large and so unoccupied as South America." [Footnote:

Dr. Wood, Lima, Peru, in "Protestant Missions in South America."] "One

of the most marvellous of activities in the development of virgin lands

is in progress. It is greater than that of Siberia, of Australia, or

the Canadian North-West." [Footnote: The Outlook, March, 1908.]

Emigrants are pouring into the continent from crowded Europe, the old

order of things is quickly passing away, and docks and railroads are

being built. Bolivia is spending more than fifty million dollars in new

work. Argentina and Chile are pushing lines in all directions. Brazil

is preparing to penetrate her vast jungles, and all this means enormous

expense, for the highest points and most difficult construction that

have ever been encountered are found in Peru, and between Chile and

Argentina there has been constructed the longest tunnel in the world.

[Footnote: One railway ascends to the height of 12,800 feet.]

Most important of all, the old medieval Romanism of the Dark Ages is

losing its grip upon the masses, and slowly, but surely, the leaven is

working which will, before another decade, bring South America to the

forefront of the nations.

The economic possibilities of South America cannot be overestimated. It

is a continent of vast and varied possibilities. There are still

districts as large as the German Empire entirely unexplored, and tribes

of Indians who do not yet know that America has been "discovered."

This is a continent of spiritual need. The Roman Catholic Church has

been a miserable failure. "Nearly 7,000,000 of people in South America

still adhere, more or less openly, to the fetishisms of their

ancestors, while perhaps double that number live altogether beyond the

reach of Christian influence, even if we take the word Christian in its

widest meaning." [Footnote: Report of Senor F. de Castello] The Rev. W.

B. Grubb, a missionary in Paraguay, says: "The greatest unexplored

region at present known on earth is there. It contains, as far as we

know, 300 distinct Indian nations, speaking 300 distinct languages, and

numbering some millions, all in the darkest heathenism." H. W. Brown,

in "Latin America," says, "There is a pagan population of four to five

millions." Then, with respect to the Roman Catholic population, Rev. T.

B. Wood, LL.D., in "Protestant Missions in South America," says, "South

America is a pagan field, properly speaking. Its image-worship is

idolatry. Abominations are grosser and more universal than among Roman

Catholics in Europe and the United States, where Protestantism has

greatly modified Catholicism. But it is _worse_ off than any other

great _pagan_ field in that it is dominated by a single mighty

hierarchy--the mightiest known in history. For centuries priestcraft

has had everything its own way all over the continent, and is now at

last yielding to outside pressure, but with desperate resistance."

"South America has been for nearly four hundred years part of the

parish of the Pope. In contrast with it the north of the New

World--Puritan, prosperous, powerful, progressive--presents probably

the most remarkable evidence earth affords of the blessings of

Protestantism, while the results of Roman Catholicism _left to itself_

are writ large in letters of gloom across the priest-ridden, lax and

superstitious South. Her cities, among the gayest and grossest in the

world, her ecclesiastics enormously wealthy and strenuously opposed to

progress and liberty, South America groans under the tyranny of a

priesthood which, in its highest forms, is unillumined by, and

incompetent to preach, the gospel of God's free gift; and in its lowest

is proverbially and habitually drunken, extortionate and ignorant. The

fires of her unspeakable Inquisition still burn in the hearts of her

ruling clerics, and although the spirit of the age has in our

nineteenth century transformed all her monarchies into free Republics,

religious intolerance all but universally prevails." [Footnote:

Guiness's "Romanism and Reformation."]

Prelates and priests, monks and nuns exert an influence that is

all-pervading. William E. Curtis, United States Commissioner to South

America, wrote: "One-fourth of all the property belongs to the bishop.

There is a Catholic church for every 150 inhabitants. Ten per cent. of

the population are priests, monks or nuns, and 272 out of the 365 days

of the year are observed as fast or feast days. The priests control the

government and rule the country as absolutely as if the Pope were its

king. As a result, 75 per cent. of the children born are illegitimate,

and the social and political condition presents a picture of the dark

ages." It is said that, in one town, every fourth person you meet is a

priest or a nun, or an ecclesiastic of some sort.

Yet, with all this to battle against, the Christian missionary is

making his influence felt.

_La Razon_, an important newspaper of Trujillo, in a recent issue says:

"In homage to truth, we make known with pleasure that the ministers of

Protestantism have benefited this town more in one year than all the

priests and friars of the Papal sect have done in three centuries."

"Last year," writes Mr. Milne, of the American Bible Society, "one of

our colporteurs in Ayacucho had to make his escape by the roof of a

house where he was staying, from a mob of half-castes, led on by a

friar. Finding their prey had escaped, they took his clothes and

several boxes of Bibles to the plaza of the city and burnt them."

It was not such a going-back as the outside world thought, but, oh, it

was a deeply significant one, when recently the leading men of the

Republic of Guatemala met together and solemnly threw over the religion

of their fathers, which, during 400 years of practice, had failed to

uplift, and re-established the old paganism of cultured Rome. So

serious was this step that the _Palace of Minerva_, the goddess of

trade, is engraved on the latest issue of Guatemalan postage stamps.

Believing that the few Protestants in the Republic are responsible for

the reaction, the Archbishop of Guatemala has promised to grant one

hundred days' indulgence to those who will pray for the overthrow of

Protestantism in that country.

"Romanism is not Christianity," so the few Christian workers are

fighting against tremendous odds. What shall the harvest be?

PART I.

THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC

The country to which the author first went as a self-supporting

missionary in the year 1889.

And Nature, the old nurse, took

The child upon her knee,

Saying, "Here is a story book

Thy Father hath written for thee."

"Come, wander with me," she said,

"Into regions yet untrod,

And read what is still unread

In the manuscripts of God."

And he wandered away and away

With Nature, the dear old nurse,

Who sung to him night and day

The rhymes of the universe.

--_Longfellow._

THE ARGENTINE REPUBLIC

The Argentine Republic has an area of one and a quarter million square

miles. It is 2,600 miles from north to south, and 500 miles at its

widest part. It is twelve times the size of Great Britain. Although the

population of the country is about seven millions, only one per cent,

of its cultivable area is now occupied, yet Argentina has an

incomparable climate.

It is essentially a cattle country. She is said to surpass any other

nation in her numbers of live stock. The Bovril Co. alone kills 100,000

a year. On its broad plains there are _estandas_, or cattle ranches, of

fifty and one hundred thousand acres in extent, and on these cattle,

horses and sheep are herded in millions. Argentina has over twenty-nine

million cattle, seventy-seven million sheep, seven and a half million

horses, five and a half million mules, a quarter-million of donkeys,

and nearly three million swine and three million goats. Four billion

dollars of British capital are invested in the country.

Argentina has sixteen thousand miles of railway. This has been

comparatively cheap to build. On the flat prairie lands the rails are

laid, and there is a length of one hundred and seventy-five miles

without a single curve.

Three hundred and fifty thousand square miles of this prairie is

specially adapted to the growing of grain. In 1908-9 the yield of wheat

was 4,920,000 tons. Argentina has exported over three million tons of

wheat, over three million tons of corn, and one million tons of

linseed, in one year, while "her flour mills can turn out 700,000 tons

of flour a year." [Footnote: Hirst's Argentina, 1910.]

"It is a delight often met with there to look on a field of twenty

square miles, with the golden ears standing even and close together,

and not a weed nor a stump of a tree nor a stone as big as a man's fist

to be seen or found in the whole area."

"To plant and harvest this immense yield the tillers of the ground

bought nine million dollars of farm implements in 1908. Argentina's

record in material progress rivals Japan's. Argentina astonished the

world by conducting, in 1906, a trade valued at five hundred and sixty

million dollars, buying and selling more in the markets of foreign

nations than Japan, with a population of forty millions, and China,

with three hundred millions." [Footnote: John Barrett, in Munsey's

Magazine]

To this Land of Promise there is a large immigration. Nearly three

hundred thousand have entered in one single year. About two hundred

thousand have been going to Buenos Ayres, the capital, alone, but in

1908 nearly five hundred thousand landed there. [Footnote: "Despite the

Government's efforts, emigration from Spain to South America takes

alarming proportions. In some districts the men of the working classes

have departed in a body. In certain villages in the neighborhood of

Cadiz there arc whole streets of deserted houses."-Spanish Press.] In

Belgium 220 people are crowded into the territory occupied by one

person in Argentina, so yet there is room. Albert Hale says: "It is

undeniable that Argentina can give lodgment to 100,000,000 people, and

can furnish nourishment, at a remarkably cheap rate, for as many more,

when her whole area is utilized."

Argentina's schools and universities are the best in the

Spanish-speaking world. In Buenos Ayres you will find some of the

finest school buildings in the world, while 4,000 students attend one

university.

Buenos Ayres, founded in 1580, is to-day the largest city in the world

south of the equator, and is "one of the richest and most beautiful

places of the world." The broad prairies around the city have made the

people "the richest on earth."

Kev. John F. Thompson, for forty-five years a resident of that country,

summarizes its characteristics in the following paragraph: "Argentina

is a _land of plenty_; plenty of room and plenty of food. If the actual

population were divided into families of ten persons, each would have a

farm of eight square miles, with ten horses, fifty-four cows, and one

hundred and eighty-six sheep, and after they had eaten their fill of

bread they would have half a ton of wheat and corn to sell or send to

the hungry nations."

CHAPTER I.

BUENOS AYRES IN 1889.

In the year 1889, after five weeks of ocean tossing, the steamer on

which I was a passenger anchored in the River Plate, off Buenos Ayres.

Nothing but water and sky was to be seen, for the coast was yet twenty

miles away, but the river was too shallow for the steamer to get

nearer. Large tugboats came out to us, and passengers and baggage were

transhipped into them, and we steamed ten miles nearer the still

invisible city. There smaller tugs awaited us and we were again

transhipped. Sailing once more toward the land, we soon caught sight of

the Argentine capital, but before we could sail nearer the tugs

grounded. There we were crowded into flat-bottomed, lug-sailed boats

for a third stage of our landward journey. These boats conveyed us to

within a mile of the city, when carts, drawn by five horses, met us in

the surf and drew us on to the wet, shingly beach. There about twenty

men stood, ready to carry the females on their backs on to the dry,

sandy shore, where was the customs house. The population of the city we

then entered was about six hundred thousand souls.

After changing the little gold I carried for the greasy paper currency

of the country, I started out in search of something to eat. Eventually

I found myself before a substantial meal. At a table in front of me sat

a Scotsman from the same vessel. He had arrived before me (Scotsmen say

they are always before the Englishmen) and was devouring part of a leg

of mutton. This, he told me, he had procured, to the great amusement of

Boniface, by going down on all fours and _baa-ing_ like the sheep of

his native hills. Had he waited until I arrived he might have feasted

on lamb, for my voice was not so gruff as his. He had unconsciously

asked for an old sheep. I think the Highlander in that instance

regretted that he had preceded the Englishman.

How shall I describe the metropolis of the Argentine, with its

one-storied, flat-roofed houses, each with grated windows and centre

_patio_? Some of the poorer inhabitants raise fowls on the roof, which

gives the house a barnyard appearance, while the iron-barred windows

below strongly suggest a prison. Strange yet attractive dwellings they

are, lime-washed in various colors, the favorite shades seeming to be

pink and bottle green. Fires are not used except for cooking purposes,

and the little smoke they give out is quickly dispersed by the breezes

from the sixty-mile-wide river on which the city stands.

The Buenos Ayres of 1889 was a strange place, with its long, narrow

streets, its peculiar stores and many-tongued inhabitants. There is the

dark-skinned policeman at the corner of each block sitting silently on

his horse, or galloping down the cobbled street at the sound of some

revolver, which generally tells of a life gone out. Arriving on the

scene he often finds the culprit flown. If he succeeds in riding him

down (an action he scruples not to do), he, with great show, and at the

sword's point, conducts him to the nearest police station.

Unfortunately he often chooses the quiet side streets, where his

prisoner may have a chance to buy his freedom. If he pays a few

dollars, the poor _vigilante_ is perfectly willing to lose him, after

making sometimes the pretence of a struggle to blind the lookers-on, if

there be any curious enough to interest themselves. This man in khaki

is often "the terror of the innocent, the laughing-stock of the

guilty." The poor man or the foreign sailor, if he stagger ever so

little, is sure to be "run in." The Argentine law-keeper (?) is

provided with both sword and revolver, but receives small remuneration,

and as his salary is often tardily paid him, he augments it in this way

when he cannot see a good opportunity of turning burglar or something

worse on his own account. When he is low in funds he will accost the

stranger, begging a

cigarette, or inviting himself at your expense to the nearest

_cafe_, as "the day is so unusually hot." After all, we must not blame

him too much--his superiors are far from guiltless, and he knows it.

When Minister Toso took charge of the Provincial portfolio of Finance,

he exclaimed, "_C-o! Todos van robando menos yo!_" ("Everybody is

robbing here except I.") It is public news that President Celman

carried away to his private residence in the country a most beautiful

and expensive bronze fountain presented by the inhabitants of the city

to adorn the principal _plaza_. [Footnote: Public square.] The

president is elected by the people for a term of three years, and

invariably retires a rich man, however poor he may have been when

entering on his office. The laws of the country may be described as

model and Christian, but the carrying out of them is a very different

matter.

Some of the laws are excellent and worthy of our imitation, such as,

for example, the one which decrees that _bachelors shall be taxed_.

Civil elections are held on Sundays, the voting places being Roman

Catholic churches.

Both postmen and telegraph boys deliver on horseback, but such is the

lax custom that everything will do to-morrow. That fatal word is the

first the stranger learns--_mañana_.

Comparatively few people walk the streets. "No city in the world of

equal size and population can compare with Buenos Ayres for the number

and extent of its tramways." [Footnote: Turner's "Argentina."] A writer

in the _Financial News_ says: "The proportion of the population who

daily use street-cars is _sixty-six times greater in Buenos Ayres than

in the United Kingdom_."

This _Modern Athens_, as the Argentines love to term their city, has a

beautiful climate. For perhaps three hundred days out of every year

there is a sky above as blue as was ever seen in Naples.

The natives eat only twice a day--at 10.30 a.m., and at 7 p.m.--the

common edibles costing but little. I could write much of Buenos Ayres,

with its _carnicerias_, where a leg of mutton may be bought for 20

cts., or a brace of turkeys for 40 cts.; its _almacenes_, where one may

buy a pound of sugar or a yard of cotton, a measure of charcoal (coal

is there unknown) or a large _sombrero_, a package of tobacco (leaves

over two feet long) or a pair of white hemp-soled shoes for your

feet--all at the same counter. The customer may further obtain a bottle

of wine or a bottle of beer (the latter costing four times the price of

the former) from the same assistant, who sells at different prices to

different customers.

There the value of money is constantly changing, and almost every day

prices vary. What to-day costs $20 to-morrow may be $15, or, more

likely, $30. Although one hundred and seventy tons of sugar are

annually grown in the country, that luxury is decidedly expensive. I

have paid from 12 cts. to 30 cts. a pound. Oatmeal, the Scotsman's

dish, has cost me up to 50 cts. a pound.

Coming again on to the street you hear the deafening noises of the cow

horns blown by the streetcar drivers, or the _pescador_ shrilly

inviting housekeepers to buy the repulsive-looking red fish, carried

over his shoulder, slung on a thick bamboo. Perhaps you meet a beggar

on horseback (for there wishes _are_ horses, and beggars _do_ ride),

who piteously whines for help. This steed-riding fraternity all use

invariably the same words: _"Por el amor de Dios dame un centavo!"_

("For the love of God give me a cent.") If you bestow it, he will call

on his patron saint to bless you. If you fail to assist him, the curses

of all the saints in heaven will fall on your impious head. This often

causes such a shudder in the recipient that I have known him to turn

back to appease the wrath of the mendicant, and receive instead--a

blessing.

It is not an uncommon sight to see a black-robed priest with his hand

on a boy's head giving him a benediction that he may be enabled to sell

his newspapers or lottery tickets with more celerity.

The National Lottery is a great institution, and hundreds keep

themselves poor buying tickets. In one year the lottery has realized

the sum of $3,409,143.57. The Government takes forty per cent. of this,

and divides the rest between a number of charitable and religious

organizations, all, needless to say, being Roman Catholic. Amongst the

names appear the following: Poor Sisters of St. Joseph, Workshop of Our

Lady, Sisters of St. Anthony, etc.

Little booths for the sale of lottery tickets are erected in the

vestibules of some of the churches, and the Government, in this way,

repays the church.

The gambling passion is one of Argentina's greatest curses. Tickets are

bought by all, from the Senator down to the newsboy who ventures his

only dollar.

You meet the water-seller passing down the street with his barrel cart,

drawn by three or four horses with tinkling bells, dispensing water to

customers at five cents a pail. The poorer classes have no other means

of procuring this precious liquid. The water is kept in a corner of the

house in large sun-baked jars. A peculiarity of these pots is that they

are not made to stand alone, but have to be held up by something.

At early morning and evening the milkman goes his rounds on horseback.

The milk he carries in six long, narrow cans, like inverted

sugar-loaves, three on each side of his raw-hide saddle, he himself

being perched between them on a sheepskin. In some cans he carries pure

cream, which the jolting of his horse soon converts into butter. This

he lifts out with his hands to any who care to buy. After the addition

of a little salt, and the subtraction of a little buttermilk, this

_manteca_ is excellent. After serving you he will again mount his

horse, but not until his hands have been well wiped on its tail, which

almost touches the ground. The other cans of the _lechero_ contain a

mixture known to him alone. I never analyzed it, but have remarked a

chalky substance in the bottom of my glass. He does not profess to sell

pure milk; that you can buy, but, of course, at a higher price, from

the pure milk seller. In the cool of the afternoon he will bring round

his cows, with bells on their necks and calves dragging behind. The

calves are tied to the mothers' tails, and wear a muzzle. At a _sh-h_

from the sidewalk he stops them, and, stooping down, fills your pitcher

according to your money. The cows, through being born and bred to a

life in the streets, are generally miserable-looking beasts. Strange to

add, the one milkman shoes his cows and the other leaves his horse

unshod. It is not customary in this country for man's noble friend to

wear more than his own natural hoof. A visit to the blacksmith is

entertaining. The smith, by means of a short lasso, deftly trips up the

animal, and, with its legs securely lashed, the cow must lie on its

back while he shoes its upturned hoofs.

Many and varied are the scenes. One is struck by the number of horses,

seven and eight often being yoked to one cart, which even then they

sometimes find difficult to draw. Some of the streets are very bad,

worse than our country lanes, and filled with deep ruts and drains,

into which the horses often fall. There the driver will sometimes

cruelly leave them, when, after his arm aches in using the whip, he

finds the animal cannot rise. For the veriest trifle I have known men

to smash the poor dumb brute's eyes out with the stock of the whip, and

I have been very near the Police Station more than once when my

righteous blood compelled me to interfere. Where, oh, where is the

Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals? Surely no suffering

creatures under the sun cry out louder for mercy than those in

Argentina?

As I have said, horses are left to die in the public streets. It has

been my painful duty to pass moaning creatures lying helplessly in the

road, with broken limbs, under a burning sun, suffering hunger and

thirst, for three consecutive days, before kind death, the sufferer's

friend, released them. Looking on such sights, seeing every street

urchin with coarse laugh and brutal jest jump on such an animal's

quivering body, stuff its parched mouth with mud, or poke sticks into

its staring eyes, I have cried aloud at the injustice. The policeman

and the passers-by have only laughed at me for my pains.

In my experiences in South America I found cruelty to be a marked

feature of the people. If the father thrusts his dagger into his enemy,

and the mother, in her fits of rage, sticks her hairpin into her maid's

body, can it be wondered at if the children inherit cruel natures? How

often have I seen a poor horse fall between the shafts of some loaded

cart of bricks or sand! Never once have I seen his harness undone and

willing hands help him up, as in other civilized lands. No, the lashing

of the cruel whip or the knife's point is his only help. If, as some

religious writers have said, the horse will be a sharer of Paradise

along with man, his master, then those from Buenos Ayres will feed in

stalls of silver and have their wounds healed by the clover of eternal

kindness. "God is Love."

I have said the streets are full of holes. In justice to the

authorities I must mention the fact that sometimes, especially at the

crossings, these are filled up. To carry truthfulness still further,

however, I must state that more than once I have known them bridged

over with the putrefying remains of a horse in the last stages of

decomposition. I have seen delicate ladies, attired in Parisian

furbelows, lift their dainty skirts, attempt the crossing--and sink in

a mass of corruption, full of maggots.

In my description of Buenos Ayres I must not omit to mention the large

square, black, open hearses so often seen rapidly drawn through the

streets, the driver seeming to travel as quickly as he can. In the

centre of the coach is the coffin, made of white wood and covered with

black material, fastened on with brass nails. Around this gruesome

object sit the relatives and friends of the departed one on their

journey to the _chacarita_, or cemetery, some six miles out from the

centre of the city. Cemeteries in Spanish America are divided into

three enclosures. There is the "cemetery of heaven," "the cemetery of

purgatory," and "the cemetery of hell." The location of the soul in the

future is thus seen to be dependent on its location by the priests

here. The dead are buried on the day of their death, when possible, or,

if not, then early on the following morning; but never, I believe, on

feast days. Those periods are set apart for pleasure, and on important

saint days banners and flags of all nations are hung across the

streets, or adorn the roofs of the flat-topped houses, where the

washing is at other times dried.

After attending mass in the early morning on these days, the people

give themselves up to revelry and sin at home, or crowd the street-cars

running to the parks and suburbs. Many with departed relatives (and who

has none?) go to the _chacarita_, and for a few _pesos_ bargain with

the black-robed priest waiting there, to deliver their precious dead

out of Purgatory. If he sings the prayer the cost is double, but

supposed to be also doubly efficacious. Mothers do not always inspire

filial respect in their offspring, for one young man declared that he

"wanted to get his mother out of Purgatory before he went in."

A Buenos Ayres missionary writes "There are two large cemeteries here.

From early morn until late at night the people crowd into them, and I

am told there were 100,000 at one time in one of them. November 1 is a

special day for releasing thousands of souls out of Purgatory. We

printed thousands of tracts and the workers started out to distribute

them. By ten o'clock six of them were in jail, having been given into

custody by a 'holy father.' They were detained until six in the evening

without food, and then were released through the efforts of a Methodist

minister."

The catechisn reads: "Attend mass all Sundays and Feast days. Confess

at least once a year, or oftener, if there is any fear of death. Take

Sacrament at Easter time. Pay a tenth of first-fruits to God's Church."

The fourth commandment is condensed into the words: "Sanctify the Feast

days." From this it will be seen that there is great need for mission

work. Of course Romanism in this and other cities is losing its old

grip upon the people, and because of this the priest is putting forth

superhuman effort to retain what he has. _La Voz de la Iglesia_ ("The

Voice of the Church"), the organ of the Bishop of Buenos Ayres, has

lately published some of the strongest articles we have ever read. A

late article concludes: "One thing only, one thing: OBEY; OBEY BLINDLY.

Comply with her (the Church's) commands with faithful loyalty. If we do

this, it is impossible for Protestantism to invade the flowery camp of

the Church, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic and Roman."

Articles such as this, however, and the circulation of a tract by one

of the leading church presses, are not calculated to help forward a

losing cause. The tract referred to is entitled, "Letter of Jesus about

the Drops of Blood which He shed whilst He went to Calvary." "You know

that the soldiers numbered 150, twenty-five of whom conducted me bound.

I received fifty blows on the head and 108 on the breast. I was pulled

by the hair 23 times, and 30 persons spat in my face. Those who struck

me on the upper part of the body were 6,666, and 100 Jews struck me on

the head. I sighed 125 times. The wounds on the head numbered 20; from

the crown of thorns, 72; points of thorns on the forehead, 100. The

wounds on the body were 100. There came out of my body 28,430 drops of

blood." This letter, the tract states, was found in the Holy Sepulchre

and is preserved by his holiness the Pope. Intelligent, thinking men

can only smile at such an utter absurdity.

An "Echoes from Argentina" extract reads: "Not many months ago,

Argentina was blessed by the Pope. Note what has happened since:--The

Archbishop, who was the bearer of the blessing and brought it from

Rome, has since died very suddenly; we have had a terrible visitation

of heat suffocation, hundreds being attacked and very many dying; we

have had the bubonic pest in our midst; a bloody provincial revolution

in Entre Rios; and now at the time of writing there is an outbreak of a

serious cattle disease, and England has closed her ports against

Argentine live stock. Of course, we do not say that these calamities

are the _result_ of the Pope's blessing, but we would that Catholics

would open their eyes and see that it is a fact that whereas Protestant

countries, _anathematized_ by the Pope, prosper, Catholic countries

which have been blessed by him are in a lamentable condition."

BUENOS AYRES AT THE PRESENT TIME.

Perhaps no city of the world has grown and progressed more during this

last decade than the city of Buenos Ayres. To-day passengers land in

the centre of the city and step on "the most expensive system of

artificial docks in all America, representing an expenditure of seventy

million dollars."

To this city there is a large emigration. It has grown at the rate of

4,000 adults a week, with a birthrate of 1,000 a week added. The

population is now fast climbing up to 1 1-2 millions of inhabitants.

There are 300,000 Italians, 100,000 Spaniards, a colony of 20,000

Britishers, and, of course, Jews and other foreigners in proportion.

"Buenos Ayres is one of the most cosmopolitan cities of the world.

There are 189 newspapers, printed in almost every language of the

globe. Probably the only Syrian newspaper in America, _The Assudk_, is

issued in this city." To keep pace with the rush of newcomers has

necessitated the building of 30,000 houses every year. There is here

"the finest and costliest structure ever built, used exclusively by one

newspaper, the home of _La Prensa_; the most magnificent opera house of

the western hemisphere, erected by the government at the cost of ten

million dollars; one of the largest banks in the world, and the

handsomest and largest clubhouse in the world." [Footnote: John

Barrett, In Munsey's Magazine.] The entrance fee to this club is

$1,500. The Y.M.C.A. is now erecting a commodious building, for which

$200,000 has already been raised, and there is a Y.W.C.A., with a

membership of five hundred. Dr. Clark, in "The Continent of

Opportunity," says, "More millionaires live in Buenos Ayres than in any

other city of the world of its size. The proportion of well-clothed,

well-fed people is greater than in American cities, the slums are

smaller, and the submerged classes less in proportion. The constant

movement of carriages and automobiles here quite surpasses that of

Fifth Avenue." The street cars are of the latest and most improved

electric types, equal to any seen in New York or London, and seat one

hundred people, inside and out. Besides these there is an excellent

service of motor cabs, and _tubes_ are being commenced. Level crossings

for the steam roads are not permitted in the city limits, so all trains

run over or under the streets.

"The Post Office handles 40,000,000 pieces of mail and 125,000 parcel

post packages a month. The city has 1,209 automobiles, 27 theatres and

50 moving picture shows. Five thousand vessels enter the port of Buenos

Ayres every year, and the export of meat in 1910 was valued at

$31,000,000. No other section of the world shows such growth."

[Footnote: C. H. Furlong, in The World's Work.]

The city, once so unhealthy, is now, through proper drainage, "the

second healthiest large city of the world." The streets, as I first saw

them, were roughly cobbled, now they are asphalt paved, and made into

beautiful avenues, such as would grace any capital of the world.

Avenida de Mayo, cut right through the old city, is famed as being one

of the most costly and beautiful avenues of the world.

On those streets the equestrian milkman is no longer seen. Beautiful

sanitary white-tiled _tambos_, where pure milk and butter are sold,

have taken his place. The old has been transformed and PROGRESS is

written everywhere.

CHAPTER II.

_REVOLUTION._

South America, of all lands, has been most torn asunder by war.

Revolutions may be numbered by hundreds, and the slaughter has been

incredible. Even since the opening of the year 1900, thirty thousand

Colombians have been slain and there have been dozens of revolutions.

Darwin relates the fact that in 1832 Argentina underwent fifteen

changes of government in nine months, owing to internal strife, and

since then Argentina has had its full share.

During my residence in Buenos Ayres there occurred one of those

disastrous revolutions which have from time to time shaken the whole

Republic. The President, Don Juarez Celman, had long been unpopular,

and, the mass of the people being against him, as well as nearly half

of the standing army, and all the fleet then anchored in the river, the

time was considered ripe to strike a blow.

On the morning of July 26, 1890, the sun rose upon thousands of

stern-looking men bivouacking in the streets and public squares of the

city. The revolution had commenced, and was led by one of the most

distinguished Argentine citizens, General Joseph Mary Campos. The

battle-cry of these men was "_Sangre! Sangre!_" [Footnote: "Blood!

Blood!"] The war fiend stalked forth. Trenches were dug in the streets.

Guns were placed at every point of vantage. Men mounted their steeds

with a careless laugh, while the rising sun shone on their burnished

arms, so soon to be stained with blood. Battalions of men marched up

and down the streets to the sound of martial music, and the low,

flat-roofed housetops were quickly filled with sharpshooters.

The Government House and residence of the President was guarded in all

directions by the 2nd Battalion of the Line, the firemen and a

detachment of police, but on the river side were four gunboats of the

revolutionary party.

The average South American is a man of quick impulses and little

thought. The first shot fired by the Government troops was the signal

for a fusilade that literally shook the city. Rifle shots cracked, big

guns roared, and shells screaming overhead descended in all directions,

carrying death and destruction. Street-cars, wagons and cabs were

overturned to form barricades. In the narrow, straight streets the

carnage was fearful, and blood soon trickled down the watercourses and

dyed the pavements. That morning the sun had risen for the last time

upon six hundred strong men; it set upon their mangled remains. Six

hundred souls! The Argentine soldier knows little of the science of

"hide and seek" warfare. When he goes forth to battle, it is to

fight--or die. Of the future life he unfortunately thinks little, and

of Christ, the world's Redeemer, he seldom or never hears. The Roman

Catholic chaplain mumbles a few Latin prayers to them at times, but as

the knowledge of these _resos_ does not seem to improve the priest's

life, the men prefer to remain in ignorance.

The average Argentine soldier is a man of little intelligence. The

regiments are composed of Patagonian Indians or semi-civilized

Guaranis, mixed with all classes of criminals from the state prisons.

Nature has imprinted upon them the unmistakable marks of the

savage--sullen, stupid ferocity, indifference to pain, bestial

instincts. As for his fighting qualities, they more resemble those of

the tiger than of the cool, brave and trained soldier. When his blood

is roused, fighting is with him a matter of blind and indiscriminate

carnage of friend or foe. A more villainous-looking horde it would be

difficult to find in any army. The splendid accoutrements of the

generals and superior officers, and the glittering equipments of their

chargers, offer a vivid contrast to the mean and dirty uniforms of the

troops.

During the day the whole territory of the Republic was declared to be

in a state of siege. Business was at a complete standstill. The stores

were all closed, and many of them fortified with the first means that

came to hand. Mattresses, doors, furniture, everything was

requisitioned, and the greatest excitement prevailed in commercial

circles generally. All the gun-makers' shops had soon been cleared of

their contents, which were in the hands of the adherents of the

revolution.

That evening the news of the insurrection was flashed by "Reuter's" to

all parts of the civilized world. The following appeared in one of the

largest British dailies:

"BUENOS AYRES, July 27, 5.40 p.m.

"The fighting in the streets between the Government troops and the

insurgents has been of the most desperate character.

"The forces of the Government have been defeated.

"The losses in killed and wounded are estimated at 1,000.

"The fleet is in favor of the Revolutionists.

"Government house and the barracks occupied by the Government troops

have been bombarded by the insurgent artillery."

That night as I went in and out of the squads of men on the

revolutionary side, seeking to do some acts of mercy, I saw many

strange and awful sights. There were wounded men who refused to leave

the field, although the rain poured. Others were employed in cooking or

ravenously eating the dead horses which strewed the streets. Some were

lying down to drink the water flowing in the gutters, which water was

often tinged with human blood, for the rain was by this time washing

away many of the dark spots in the streets. Others lay coiled up in

heaps under their soaking _ponchos_, trying to sleep a little, their

arms stacked close at hand. There were men to all appearances fast

asleep, standing with their arms in the reins of the horses which had

borne them safely through the leaden hail of that day of terror.

Numerous were the jokes and loud was the coarse laughter of many who

next day would be lying stiff in death, but little thought seemed to be

expended on that possibility.

Men looted the stores and feasted, or wantonly destroyed valuables they

had no use for. None stopped this havoc, for the officers were

quartered in the adjacent houses, themselves holding high revelry.

Lawless hordes visited the police offices, threw their furniture into

the streets, tore to shreds all the books, papers and records found,

and created general havoc. They gorged and cursed, using swords for

knives, and lay down in the soaking streets or leaned against the guns

to smoke the inevitable _cigarillo_. A few looked up at the gilded keys

of St. Peter adorning the front of the cathedral, perhaps wondering if

they would be used to admit them to a better world.

Next day, as I sallied forth to the dismal duty of caring for the dead

and dying, the guns of the Argentine fleet [Footnote: British-built

vessels of the latest and most approved types.] in the river opposite

the city blazed forth upon the quarter held by the Government's loyal

troops. One hundred and fifty-four shots were fired, two of the largest

gunboats firing three-hundred and six-hundred pounders. Soon every

square was a shambles, and the mud oozed with blood. The Buenos Ayres

_Standard_, describing that day of fierce warfare, stated:

"At dawn, the National troops, quartered in the Plaza Libertad, made

another desperate attack on the Revolutionary positions in the Plaza

Lavalle. The Krupp guns, mitrailleuses and gatlings went off at a

terrible rate, and volleys succeeded each other, second for second,

from five in the morning till half-past nine. The work of death was

fearful, and hundreds of spectators were shot down as they watched from

their balconies or housetops. Cannon balls riddled all the houses near

the Cinco Esquinas. In the attack on the Plaza Lavalle, three hundred

men must have fallen."

[Illustration]

"At ten a.m. the white flag of truce was hoisted on both sides, and the

dismal work of collecting the dead and wounded began. The ambulances of

the Asistencia Publica, the cars of the tram companies and the wagons

of the Red Cross were busily engaged all day in carrying away the dead.

It is estimated that in the Plaza Lavalle above 600 men were wounded

and 300 killed. Considering that the Revolutionists defended an

entrenched position, whilst the National troops attacked, we may

imagine that the losses of the latter were enormous."

"General Lavalle, commander-in-chief of the National forces, gave

orders for a large number of coffins, which were not delivered, as the

undertaker wished to be paid cash. It is to be supposed that these

coffins were for the dead officers."

"When the white flags were run up, Dr. Del Valle, Senator of the

Nation, sent, in the name of the Revolutionary Committee, an ultimatum

to the National Government, demanding the immediate dismissal of the

President of the Republic and dissolution of Congress. Later on it was

known that both parties had agreed on an armistice, to last till

mid-day on Monday."

Of the third day's sanguinary fighting, the _Standard_ wrote:

"The Plaza Libertad was taken by General Lavalle at the head of the

National troops under the most terrible fire, but the regiments held

well together and carried the position in a most gallant manner,

confirming the reputation of indomitable valor that the Argentine

troops won at the trenches of Curupayti. Our readers may imagine the

fire they suffered in the straight streets swept by Krupp guns,

gatlings and mitrailleuses, while every housetop was a fortress whence

a deadly fire was poured on the heads of the soldiers. Let anybody take

the trouble to visit the Calles [Footnote: Streets] Cerrito, Libertad

and Talcahuano, the vicinity of the Plazas Parque and Lavalle, and he

will be staggered to see how all the houses have been riddled by

mitrailleuses and rifle bullets. The passage of cannon balls is marked

on the iron frames of windows, smashed frames and demolished balconies

of the houses.

"The Miro Palace, in the Plaza Parque, is a sorry picture of wreckage:

the 'mirador' is knocked to pieces by balls and shells; the walls are

riddled on every side, and nearly all the beautiful Italian balconies

and buttresses have been demolished. The firing around the palace must

have been fearful, to judge by the utter ruin about, and all the

telephone wires dangling over the street in meshes from every house.

Ruin and wreckage everywhere.

"By this time the hospitals of the city, the churches and public

buildings were filled with the wounded and dying, borne there on

stretchers made often of splintered and shattered doors. Nearly a

hundred men were taken into the San Francisco convent alone." Yet with

all this the lust for blood was not quenched. It could still be written

of the fourth day:

"At about half-past two, a sharp attack was made by the Government

troops on the Plaza Parque, and a fearful fire was kept up. Hundreds

and hundreds fell on both sides, but the Government troops were finally

repulsed. People standing at the corners of the streets cheering for

the Revolutionists were fired on and many were killed. Bodies of

Government troops were stationed at the corners of the streets leading

to the Plaza, Large bales of hay had been heaped up to protect them

from the deadly fire of the Revolutionists.

"It was at times difficult to remember that heavy slaughter was going

on around. In many parts of the city people were chatting, joking and

laughing at their doors. The attitude of the foreign population was

more serious; they seemed to foresee the heavy responsibilities of the

position and to accurately forecast the result of the insurrection.

"The bulletins of the various newspapers during the revolution were

purchased by the thousand and perused with the utmost avidity; fancy

prices were often paid for them. The Sunday edition of _The Standard_

was sold by enterprising newsboys in the suburbs as high as $3.00 per

copy, whilst fifty cents was the regulation price for a momentary peep

at our first column."

Towards the close of that memorable 29th of July the hail of bullets

ceased, but the insurgent fleet still kept up its destructive

bombardment of the Government houses for four hours.

The Revolutionists were defeated, or, as was seriously affirmed, had

been sold for the sum of one million Argentine dollars.

_"Estamos vendidos!" "Estamos vendidos!"_ (We are sold! We are sold!)

was heard on every hand. Because of this surrender officers broke their

swords and men threw away their rifles as they wept with rage. A

sergeant exclaimed: "And for this they called us out--to surrender

without a struggle! Cowards! Poltroons!" And then with a stern glance

around he placed his rifle to his breast and shot himself through the

heart. After the cessation of hostilities both sides collected their

dead, and the wounded were placed under the care of surgeons, civil as

well as military.

Notwithstanding the fact that the insurgents were said to be defeated,

the President, Dr. Celman, fled from the city, and the amusing

spectacle was seen of men and youths patrolling the streets wearing

cards in their hats which read: _"Ya se fue el burro"_ (At last the

donkey has gone). A more serious sight, however, was when the effigy of

the fleeing President was crucified.

Thus ended the insurrection of 1890, a rising which sent three thousand

brave men into eternity.

What changes had taken place in four short days! At the Plaza Libertad

the wreckage was most complete. The beautiful partierres were trodden

down by horses; the trees had been partially cut down for fuel; pools

of blood, remnants of slaughtered animals, offal, refuse everywhere.

Since the glorious days of the British invasion--glorious from an

Argentine point of view--Buenos Ayres had never seen its streets turned

into barricades and its housetops into fortresses. In times of

electoral excitement we had seen electors attack each other in bands

many years, but never was organized warfare carried on as during this

revolution. The Plaza Parque was occupied by four or five thousand

Revolutionary troops; all access to the Plaza was defended by armed

groups on the house-tops and barricades in the streets, Krupp guns and

that most infernal of modern inventions, the mitrailleuse, swept all

the streets, north, south, east and west. The deadly grape swept the

streets down to the very river, and not twenty thousand men could have

taken the Revolutionary position by storm, except by gutting the houses

and piercing the blocks, as Colonel Garmendia proposed, to avoid the

awful loss of life suffered in the taking of the Plaza Libertad on

Saturday morning.

At the close of the revolution the great city found itself suffering

from a quasi-famine. High prices were asked for everything. In some

districts provisions could not be obtained even at famine prices. The

writer for the first time in his life had to go here and there to beg a

loaf of bread for his family's needs.

A reporter of the _Argentine News_, July 31st of that same year, wrote:

"There is a revolution going on in Rosario. It began on Saturday, when

the Revolutionists surprised the Government party, and by one on Sunday

most of the Government buildings were in their hands. It is now eight

in the morning and the firing is terrible. Volunteers are coming into

the town from all parts, so the rebels are bound to win the stronghold

shortly. News has just come that the Government troops have

surrendered. Four p.m.--I have been out to see the dead and wounded

gathered up by the ambulance wagons. I should think the dead are less

than a hundred, and the wounded about four times that number. The

surprise was so sudden that the victory has been easy and with little

loss of life. The Revolutionists are behaving well and not destroying

property as they might have done. The whole town is rejoicing; flags of

all nations are flying everywhere. The saddest thing about the affair

is that some fifty murderers have escaped from the prison. I saw many

of them running away when I got upon the spot. The order has been given

to recapture them. I trust they may be caught, for we have too many of

that class at liberty already. * * * * It is estimated that over

100,000 rounds of ammunition were fired in the two days. * * * The

insurgents fed on horse-meat and beef, the former being obtained by

killing the horses belonging to the police, the latter from the various

dairies, from which the cows were seized."

In 1911 the two largest Dreadnoughts of the world, the _Rivadavia_ and

the _Moreno_, were launched for the Argentine Government. These two

battleships are _half as powerful again_ as the largest British

Dreadnought.

CHAPTER III.

_THE CRIOLLO VILLAGE_.

The different centres of trade and commerce in the Argentine can easily

be reached by train or river steamer. Rosario, with its 140,000

inhabitants, in the north; Bahia Blanca, where there is the largest

wheat elevator in the world, in the south, and Mendoza, at the foot of

the Andes, several times destroyed by earthquake, five hundred miles

west--all these are more or less like the capital.

To arrive at an isolated village of the interior the traveller must be

content to ride, as I did, on horseback, or be willing to jolt along

for weeks in a wagon without springs. These carts are drawn by eight,

ten, or more bullocks, as the weight warrants, and are provided with

two very strong wheels, without tires, and often standing eight and ten

feet high. The patient animals, by means of a yoke fastened to their

horns with raw-hide, draw these carts through long prairie grass or

sinking morass, through swollen rivers or oozing mud, over which

malaria hangs in visible forms.

The _voyager_ must be prepared to suffer a little hunger and thirst on

the way. He must sleep amongst the baggage in the cart, or on the

broader bed of the ground, where snakes and tarantulas creep and the

heavy dew saturates one through and through.

As is well known, the bullock is a slow animal, and these never travel

more than two or three miles an hour.

Time with the native is no object. The words, "With patience we win

heaven," are ever on his lips.

The Argentine countryman is decidedly lazy.

Darwin relates that he asked two men the question: "Why don't you

work?" One said: "The days are too long!" Another answered: "I am too

poor."

With these people nothing can succeed unless it is begun when the moon

is on the increase. The result is that little is accomplished.

You cannot make the driver understand your haste, and the bullocks

understand and care still less.

The mosquitoes do their best to eat you up alive, unless your body has

already had all the blood sucked out of it, a humiliating, painful and

disfiguring process. You must carry with you sufficient food for the

journey, or it may happen that, like me, you are only able to shoot a

small ring dove, and with its entrails fish out of the muddy stream a

monster turtle for the evening meal.

If, on the other hand, you pass a solitary house, they will with

pleasure give you a sheep. If you killed one without permission your

punishment would perhaps be greater than if you had killed a man.

If a bullock becomes ill on the road, the driver will, with his knife,

cut all around the sod where the animal has left its footprint. Lifting

this out, he will cut a cross on it and replace it the other side

uppermost. This cure is most implicitly believed in and practised.

[Illustration]

The making of the cross is supposed to do great wonders, which your

guide is never tired of recounting while he drinks his _máte_ in the

unbroken stillness of the evening. Alas! the many bleaching bones on

the road testify that this, and a hundred other such remedies, are not

always effectual, but the mind of the native is so full of

superstitious faith that the testimony of his own eyes will not

convince him of the absurdity of his belief. As he stoops over the fire

you will notice on his breast some trinket or relic--anything will do

if blessed by the priest--and that, he assures you, will save him from

every unknown and unseen danger in his land voyage. The priest has said

it, and he rests satisfied that no lightning stroke will fell him, no

lurking panther pounce upon him, nor will he die of thirst or any other

evil. I have remarked men of the most cruel, cutthroat description

wearing these treasures with zealous care, especially one, of whom it

was said that he had killed two wives.

When your driver is young and amorously inclined you will notice that

he never starts for the regions beyond without first providing himself

with an owl's skin. This tied on his breast, he tells you, will ensure

him favor in the eyes of the females he may meet on the road, and on

arrival at his destination.

I once witnessed what at first sight appeared to be a heavy fall of

snow coming up with the wind from the south. Strange to relate, this

phenomenon turned out to be millions of white butterflies of large

size. Some of these, when measured, I found to be four and five inches

across the wings. Darwin relates his having, in 1832, seen the same

sight, when his men exclaimed that it was "snowing butterflies."

The inhabitants of these trackless wilds are very, very few, but in all

directions I saw numbers of ostriches, which run at the least sign of

man, their enemy. The fastest horse could not outstrip this bird as

with wings outstretched he speeds before the hunter. As Job, perhaps

the oldest historian of the world, truly says: "What time she lifteth

herself up on high, she scorneth the horse and his rider." The male

bird joins his spouse in hatching the eggs, sitting on them perhaps

longer turns than the female, but the weather is so hot that little

brooding is required. I have had them on the shelf of my cupboard for a

week, when the little ones have forced their way out Forty days is the

time of incubation, so, naturally, those must have been already sat on

for thirty-three days. With open wings these giant birds often manage

to cover from twenty-five to forty-five eggs, although, I think, they

seldom bring out more than twenty. The rest they roll out of the nest,

where, soon rotting, they breed innumerable insects, and provide tender

food for the coming young. The latter, on arrival, are always reared by

the male ostrich, who, not being a model husband, ignominiously drives

away the partner of his joys. It might seem that he has some reason for

doing this, for the old historian before referred to says: "She is

hardened against her young ones as though they were not hers."

As the longest road leads somewhere, the glare of the whitewashed

church at last meets your longing gaze on the far horizon. The village

churches are always whitewashed, and an old man is frequently employed

to strike the hours on the tower bell by guess.

I was much struck by the sameness of the many different interior towns

and villages I visited. Each wore the same aspect of indolent repose,

and each was built in exact imitation of the other. Each town possesses

its plaza, where palms and other semi-tropical plants wave their leaves

and send out their perfume.

From the principal city to the meanest village, the streets all bear

the same names. In every town you may find a _Holy Faith street_, a

_St. John street_ and a _Holy Ghost street_, and these streets are

shaded by orange, lemon, pomegranate, fig and other trees, the fruit of

which is free to all who choose to gather. All streets are in all parts

in a most disgraceful condition, and at night beneath the heavy foliage

of the trees Egyptian darkness reigns. Except in daylight, it is

difficult to walk those wretched roads, where a goat often finds

progress a difficulty. Rotten fruit, branches of trees, ashes, etc.,

all go on the streets. A hole is often bridged over by a putrefying

animal, over which run half-naked urchins, pelting each other with

oranges or lemons--common as stones. When the highways are left in such

a state, is it to be wondered at that, while standing on my own

door-step, I have been able to count eleven houses where smallpox was

doing its deadly work, all within a radius of one hundred yards?

Even in the city of La Plata, the second of importance in Argentina, I

once had the misfortune to fall into an open drain while passing down

one of the principal streets. The night was intensely dark, and yet

there was no light left there to warn either pedestrian or

vehicle-driver, and _this sewer was seven feet deep_.

Simple rusticity and ignorance are the chief characteristics of the

country people. They used to follow and stare at me as though I were a

visitor from Mars or some other planet. When I spoke to them in their

language they were delighted, and respectfully hung on my words with

bared heads. When, however, I told them of electric cars and

underground railways, they turned away in incredulity, thinking that

such marvels as these could not possibly be.

Old World towns they seem to be. The houses are built of sun-baked mud

bricks, kneaded by mares that splash and trample through the oozy

substance for hours to mix it well. The poorer people build ranches of

long, slender canes or Indian cornstalks tied together by grass and

coated with mud. These are all erected around and about the most

imposing edifice in the place--the whitewashed adobe church.

All houses are hollow squares. The _patio_, with its well, is inside

this enclosure. Each house is lime-washed in various colors, and all

are flat-roofed and provided with grated windows, giving them a

prison-like appearance. The window-panes are sometimes made of mica.

Over the front doors of some of the better houses are pictures of the

Virgin. The nurse's house is designated by having over the doorway a

signboard, on which is painted a full-blooming rose, out of the petals

of which is peeping a little babe.

If you wish to enter a house, you do not knock at the door (an act that

would be considered great rudeness), but clap your hands, and you are

most courteously invited to enter. The good woman at once sets to work

to serve you with _máté_, and quickly rolls a cigar, which she hands to

you from her mouth, where she has already lighted it by a live ember of

charcoal taken from the fire with a spoon. Matches can be bought, but

they cost about ten cents a hundred. If you tell the housewife you do

not smoke she will stare at you in gaping wonder. Their children use

the weed, and I have seen a mother urge her three-year-old boy to whiff

at a cigarette.

Bound each dwelling is a _ramada_, where grapes in their season hang in

luxuriant clusters; and each has its own garden, where palms, peaches,

figs, oranges, limes, sweet potatoes, tobacco, nuts, garlic, etc., grow

luxuriantly. The garden is surrounded by a hedge of cacti or other

kindred plants. The prickly pear tree of that family is one of the

strangest I have seen. On the leaves, which are an inch or more in

thickness, grows the fruit, and I have counted as many as thirteen

pears growing on a single leaf. When ripe they are a deep red color,

and very sweet to the taste. The skin is thick, and covered with

innumerable minute prickles. It is, I believe, a most refreshing and

healthful food.

Meat is very cheap. A fine leg of mutton may be bought for the

equivalent of twelve cents, and good beef at four cents a pound. Their

favorite wine, _Lagrimas de San Juan_ (Tears of Holy John), can be

bought for ten cents a quart.

All cooking is done on braziers--a species of three-legged iron bucket

in which the charcoal fire is kindled. On this the little kettle,

filled from the well in the _patio_, is boiled for the inevitable

_máté_. About this herb I picked up, from various sources, some

interesting information. The _máté_ plant grows chiefly In Paraguay,

and is sent down the river in bags made of hides. From the village of

Tacurti Pucu in that country comes a strange account of the origin of

the _yerba máté_ plant, which runs thus: "God, accompanied by St. John

and St. Peter, came down to the earth and commenced to journey. One

day, after most difficult travel, they arrived at the house of an old

man, father to a virgin young and beautiful. The old man cared so much

for this girl, and was so anxious to keep her ever pure and innocent,

that they had gone to live in the depths of a forest. The man was very,

very poor, but willingly gave his heavenly visitors the best he could,

killing in their honor the only hen he possessed, which served for

supper. Noting this action, God asked St. Peter and St. John, when they

were alone, what they would do if they were Him. They both answered Him

that they would largely reward such an unselfish host. Bringing him to

their presence, God addressed him in these words: 'Thou who art poor

hast been generous, and I will reward thee for it. Thou hast a daughter

who is pure and innocent, and whom thou greatly lovest. I will make her

immortal, and she shall never disappear from earth.' Then God

transformed her into the plant of the yerba máté. Since then the herb

exists, and although it is cut down it springs up again." Other stories

run that the maiden still lives; for God, instead of turning her into

the máté plant, made her mistress of it, and she lives to help all

those who make a compact with her, Many men during "Holy week," if near

a town, visit the churches of Paraguay and formally promise to dedicate

themselves to her worship, to live in the woods and have no other

woman. After this vow they go to the forest, taking a paper on which

the priest has written their name. This they pin with a thorn on the

máté plant, and leave it for her to read. Thus she secures her devotees.

Roman Catholicism is not "_Semper Idem_," but adapts itself to its

surroundings.

Máté is drunk by all, from the babe to the centenarian; by the rich

cattle-owner, who drinks it from a chased silver cup through a golden

_bombilla_, to his servant, who is content with a small gourd, which

everywhere grows wild, and a tin tube. Tea, as we know it, is only to

be bought at the chemist's as a remedy for _nerves_. In other countries

it is said to be bad for nerves.

Each house possesses its private altar, where the saints are kept. That

sacred spot is veiled off when possible--if only by hanging in front of

it a cow's hide--from the rest of the dwelling. It consists, according

to the wealth or piety of the housewife, in expensive crosses, beads,

and pictures of saints decked out with costly care; or, it may be, but

one soiled lithograph surrounded by paper flowers or cheap baubles of

the poorer classes; but all are alike sacred. Everything of value or

beauty is collected and put as an offering to these deities--pieces of

colored paper, birds' eggs, a rosy tomato or pomegranate, or any

colored picture or bright tin. Descending from the ridiculous to the

gruesome, I have known a mother scrape and clean the bones of her dead

daughter in order that _they_ might be given a place on the altar.

Round this venerated spot the goodwife, with her palm-leaf broom,

sweeps with assiduous care, and afterwards carefully dusts her crucifix

and other devotional objects with her brush of ostrich feathers. Here

she kneels in prayer to the different saints. God Himself is never

invoked. Saint Anthony interests himself in finding her lost ring, and

Saint Roque is a wonderful physician in case of sickness. If she be a

maiden Saint Carmen will find her a suitable husband; if a widow, Saint

John will be a husband to her; and if an orphan, the sacred heart of

the Virgin of Carmen gives balsam to the forlorn one. Saint Joseph

protects the artisan, and if a candle is burnt in front of Saint Ramon,

he will most obligingly turn away the tempest or the lightning stroke.

In all cases one candle at least must be promised these mysterious

benefactors, and rash indeed would be the man or woman who failed to

burn the candle; some most terrible vengeance would surely overtake him

or his family.

God, as I have said, is never invoked. Perhaps He is supposed to sit in

solitary grandeur while the saints administer His affairs? These latter

are innumerable, and whatever may be their position in the minds of

Romanists in other lands, in South America they are distinct and

separate gods, and their graven image, picture or carving is worshipped

as such.

When religious questions have not arisen, life in those remote villages

has passed very pleasantly. The people live in great simplicity,

knowing scarcely anything of the outside world and its progress.

At the Feast of St. John the women take sheep and lambs, gaily

decorated with colored ribbons, to church with them. That is an act of

worship, for the priest puts his hand on each lamb and blesses it. A

_velorio_ for the dead, or a dance at a child's death, are generally

the only meetings beside the church; but, as the poet says:

"'Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout

All countries of the Catholic persuasion,

Some weeks before Shrove Tuiesiday comes about,

The people take their fill of recreation,

And buy repentance ere they grow devout,

However high their rank or low their station,

With fiddlling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking,

And other things which may be had for asking."

Carnival is a joyous time, and if for only once in the year the quiet

town then resounds with mirth. Pails of water are carried up to the

flat roofs of the houses, and each unwary pedestrian is in turn

deluged. At other times flour is substituted, and on the last day of

the feast ashes are thrown on all sides. At other seasons of the year

the streets are quiet, and after the rural pursuits of the day are

over, the guitar is brought out, and the evening breeze wafts waves of

music to each listening ear. The guitar is in all South America what

the bag-pipes are to Scotland-the national musical instrument of the

people. The Criollo plays mostly plaintive, broken airs--now so low as

to be almost inaudible, then high and shrill. Here and there he

accompanies the music with snatches of song, telling of an exploit or

describing the dark eyes of some lovely maiden. The airs strike one as

being very strange, and decidedly unlike the rolling songs of British

music.

In those interior towns a very quiet life may be passed, far away from

the whistle of the railway engine. Everything is simplicity itself, and

it might almost be said of some that _time itself seems at a

standstill_. During the heat of the day the streets are entirely

deserted; shops are closed, and all the world is asleep, for that is

the _siesta_ time. "They eat their dinners and go to sleep--and could

they do better?"

After this the barber draws his chair out to the causeway and shaves or

cuts his customer's hair. Women and children sit at their doors

drinking máté and watching the slowly drawn bullock-carts go up and

down the uneven, unmade roads, bordered, not by the familiar maple, but

with huge dust-covered cactus plants, The bullocks all draw with their

horns, and the indolent driver sits on the yoke, urging forward his

sleepy animals with a poke of his cane, on the end of which he has

fastened a sharp nail. The _buey_ is very thick-skinned and would not

heed a whip. The wheels of the cart are often cut from a solid piece of

wood, and are fastened on with great hardwood pins in a most primitive

style. Soon after sunset all retire to their trestle beds.

In early morning the women hurry to mass. The Criollo does not break

his fast until nearly mid-day, so they have no early meal to prepare.

Even before it is quite light it is difficult to pass along the streets

owing to the custom they have of carrying their praying-chairs with

them to mass. The rich lady will be followed by her dark-skinned maid

bearing a sumptuously upholstered chair on her head. The middle classes

carry their own, and the very poor take with them a palm-leaf mat of

their own manufacture. When mass is over religion is over for the day.

After service they make their way down to the river or pond, carrying

on their heads the soiled linen. Standing waist-high in the water, they

wash out the stains with black soap of their own manufacture, beating

each article with hardwood boards made somewhat like a cricketer's bat.

The cloths are then laid on the sand or stones of the shore. The women

gossip and smoke until these are dry and ready to carry home again ere

the heat becomes too intense.

In a description of Argentine village life, I could not possibly omit

the priest, the "all in all" to the native, the temporal and spiritual

king, who bears in his hands the destinies of the living and the dead.

These men are the potentates of the people, who refer everything to

them, from the most trivial matter to the weightier one of the saving

of their souls after death. Bigotry and superstition are extreme.

Renous, the naturalist, tells us that he visited one of these towns and

left some caterpillars with a girl. These she was to feed until his

return, that they might change to butterflies. When this was rumored

through the village, priest and governor consulted together and agreed

that it must be black heresy. When poor Renous returned some time

afterwards he was arrested.

The Argentine village priest is a dangerous enemy to the Protestant.

Many is the time he has insulted me to my face, or, more cowardly,

charged the school-boys to pelt and annoy me. In the larger towns the

priest has defamed me through the press, and when I have answered him

also by that means, he has heaped insult upon injury, excluded me from

society, and made me a pariah and a byword to the superstitious people.

I have been stoned and spat upon, hurled to the ground, had half-wild

dogs set on me, and my horse frightened that he might throw me. I have

been refused police help, or been called to the office to give an

account of myself, all because I was a Protestant, or infidel, as they

prefer to term it. At those times great patience was needed, for at the

least sign of resistance on my part I should have been attacked by the

whole village in one mass. The policeman on the street has looked

expectantly on, eager to see me do this, and on one occasion he

escorted me to the station for snatching a bottle from the hand of a

boy who was in the act of throwing it at my head. Arriving there I was

most severely reprimanded, although, fortunately, not imprisoned.

Women have crossed themselves and run from me in terror to seek the

holy water bottle blessed by the father. Doors have been shut in my

face, and angry voices bade me begone, at the instigation of this

black-robed believer in the Virgin. Congregations of worshippers in the

dark-aisled church have listened to a fabulous description of my

mission and character, until the barber would not cut my hair or the

butcher sell me his meat! Many a mother has hurriedly called her

children in and precipitately shut the door, that my shadow in passing

might not enter and pollute her home. Perhaps a senorita, more

venturesome, with her black hair hanging in two long plaits behind each

shoulder, has run to her iron-barred window to smile at me, and then

penitently fallen before her patron saint imploring forgiveness, or

hurried to confess her sin to the wily _padre_. If the confession was

accompanied by a gift, she has been absolved by him; if she were poor,

her tear-stained face, perhaps resembling that of the suffering Madonna

over the confessional, has moved his heart to tenderness, for well he

knows that

"Maidens, like moths, are ever caught by glare,

And Mammon wins his way where seraphs might despair."

The punishment imposed has only been that she repeat fifty or a hundred

_Ave Marias_ or _Paternosters_. Poor deluded creature! Her sin only

consisted in permitting her black eyes to gaze on me as I passed down

the street.

"These poor creatures often go to confession, not to be forgiven the

wretched past, but to get a new license to commit sin. One woman, to

whom we offered a tract, refused it, and, showing us an indulgence of

three hundred days, said: 'These are the papers I like.'"

A young university man in the capital confessed that he had never read

the New Testament and never would read it, because he knew it was

against the Church of Rome. The mass of the people have not the

slightest notion of goodness, as we count piety, and lying is not

considered wrong. A native will often entreat the help of his favorite

saint to commit a theft.

"To the Protestant the idea of religion without morals is

inconceivable; but in South America Romanism divorces morals and

religion. It is quite possible to break every command of the Decalogue

and yet be a devoted, faithful Romanist." [Footnote: Rev. J. H. La

Fetra, in "Protestant Missions in South America"]

I can only describe Roman Catholicism on the South American continent

as a species of heathenism. The Church, to gain proselytes, accepted

the old gods of the Indians as saints, and we find idolatrous

superstition and Catholic display blended together. The most ignorant

are invariably the most pious. The more civilized the Criollo becomes,

the less he believes in the Church, and the priest in return condemns

him to eternal perdition.

"It is not necessary to detail the multitude of pagan superstitions

with which the religion of South America is encumbered. It is enough to

point out that it does not preach Christ crucified and risen again. It

preaches Mary, whom it proclaims from the lips of thousands of

lecherous priests to be of perpetual virginity. And it is by its

deliberate falsehood and deceit, as well as by its misrepresentation,

that the Roman Catholic Church in South America has not only not taught

Christianity, but has directly fostered deception and untruth of

character." [Footnote: Missions in South America. Robert E. Speer.]

When I desired respectfully to enter a church with bared head and

deferential mien, they have followed me to see that I did not steal the

trinkets from the saints or desecrate the altar. If I have touched the

font of holy water, instead of it purifying me, I have defiled it for

their use; and when I have looked at the images of the saints the

people have seen them frown at me. After my exit the priest would

sprinkle holy water on the spots where I had stood, to drive away "the

evil influence."

In those churches one may see an image, with inscription beneath,

stating that those who kiss it receive an indulgence for sin and a

promise of heaven. When preaching in Parana I inadvertently dropped a

word in disparagement of the worship of the Virgin, when, quick as

thought, a man dashed towards me with gleaming steel. The Criollo's

knife never errs, and one sharp lunge too well completes his task; but

an old Paraguayan friend then with me sprang upon him and dashed the

knife to the ground, thus leaving my heart's blood warm within me, and

not on the pavement. I admired my antagonist for the strength of his

convictions--true loyalty he displayed for his goddess, who, however,

does not, I am sure, teach her devotees to assassinate those who prefer

to put their faith rather in her Divine Son. Had I been killed the

priest would on no account have buried me, and would most willingly

have absolved the assassin and kept him from the "arm of justice." That

arm in those places is very short indeed, for I have myself met dozens

of murderers rejoicing in their freedom. Hell is only for Protestants.

On the door of my lodging I found one morning a written paper, well

pasted on, which read:

MUERA! VIVA LA VIRGEN CON TODOS LOS SANTOS!

"_Die! Live the Virgin and all the Saints!_" That paper I took from the

door and keep as a souvenir of fanaticism.

The Bible is an utterly unknown book, except to the priests, who forbid

its entrance to the houses. It, however, could do little good or harm,

for the masses of the people are utterly unlettered. All Protestant

literature stolen into the town is invariably gathered and burned by

the priest, who would not hesitate also to burn the bringer if he could

without fear of some after-enquiry into the matter.

[Illustration: THE WORLD'S LARGFST ROCKING STONE, TANDIL, ARGENTINA.

This immense stone is so evenly poised that the wind or the slightest

touch of the hand sets it in motion but the storms of the centuries

have failed to dislodge it.]

Rome is to-day just what she always was. Her own claim and motto is:

_Semper idem_ (Always the same). But for this age of enlightenment her

inquisitorial fires would still burn. "Rome's contention is, not that

she does not persecute, but only that she does not persecute _saints_.

She punishes heretics--a very different thing. In the Rhemish New

Testament there is a note on the words, 'drunken with the blood of

saints,' which runs as follows: 'Protestants foolishly expound this of

Rome _because heretics are there put to death_. But _their_ blood is

not called _the blood of saints_, any more than the blood of thieves or

man-killers, or other malefactors; and for the shedding of it no

commonwealth shall give account.'"

During my residence in Argentina a Jesuit priest in Cordoba publicly

stated that if he had his way he would burn to death every Protestant

in the country.

The following statements are from authorized documents, laws and

decrees of the Papacy:

"The papacy teaches all her adherents that it is a sacred duty to

exterminate heresy.

"Urban II. issued a decree that the murder of heretics was excusable.

'We do not count them murderers who, burning with the zeal of their

Catholic mother against the excommunicate, may happen to have slain

some of them.'" [Footnote: "Romanism and Reformation."]

In Argentine life the almanac plays an important part; in that each day

is dedicated to the commemoration of some saint, and the child born

must of necessity be named after the saint on whose day he or she

arrives into the world. The first question is, "What name does it

bring?" The baby may have chosen to come at a time when the calendar

shows an undesirable name, still the parents grumble not, for a saint

is a saint, and whatever names they bear must be good. The child is,

therefore, christened "Caraciollo," or "John Baptist," when, instead of

growing up to be a forerunner of Christ, he or she may, with more

likelihood, be a forerunner of the devil. Whatever name a child brings,

however, has Mary tacked on to it.

All names serve equally well for male or female children, as a

concluding "o" or "a" serves to distinguish the sex. Many men bear the

name of Joseph Mary. Numbers, also, both male and female, have been

baptized by the name of "Jesus," "Saviour," or "Redeemer." If I were

asked the old question, "What's in a name?" I should answer, "Very

little," for in South America the most insolent thief will often boast

in the appellation of _Don Justice_, and the lowest girl in the village

may be _Señorita Celestial_. _Don Jesus_ may be found incarcerated for

riotous conduct, and I have known _Don Saviour_ throw his unfortunate

wife and children down a well; _Don Destroyer_ would have been a more

appropriate name for him. _Mrs. Angel_ her husband sometimes finds not

such an angel after all, when she puts poison into his máté cup, a not

infrequent occurrence. Let none be deceived in thinking that the

appellation is any index to a man's character.

Dark, needy people--Rome's true children!

The school-books read: Which is the greatest country? _Ans._, Spain.

Who is the greatest man? _Ans._, The Pope. Why? Because he is

infallible.

It is his wish, and the priest's duty, to keep them in this darkness.

Yet,--One came from God, "a light to lighten the Gentiles," and He

said, "I am the Light of the world." Some day they may hear of Him and

themselves see the Light.

Already the day is breaking, and superstition must prepare to hide

itself. The uneducated native no longer pursues the railway train at

thundering pace to lasso it because the priest raved against its being

built. He even in some cases doubts if it is "an invention of hell," as

he was taught.

The educated native, Alberdi, a publicist and an advocate of freedom,

in the discussion over religious rights of foreigners in the Argentine,

wrote: "Spanish America reduced to Catholicism, with the exclusion of

any other cult, represents a solitary and silent convent of monks. The

dilemma is fatal,--either Catholics and unpopulated, or populated and

prosperous and tolerant in the matter of religion."

CHAPTER IV.

TEE PRAIRIE AND ITS INHABITANTS.

The Pampas, or prairie lands of the Argentine, stretch to the south and

west of Buenos Ayres, and cover some 800,000 square miles. On this vast

level plain, watered by sluggish streams or shallow lakes, boundless as

the ocean, seemingly limitless in extent, there is an exhilarating air

and a rich herbage on which browse countless herds of cattle, horses,

and flocks of sheep. The grass grows tall, and miles upon miles of rich

scarlet, white, or yellow flowers mingle with or overtop it. Beds of

thistles, in which the cattle completely hide themselves, stretch away

for leagues and leagues, and present an almost unbroken sheet of purple

flowers. So vast are these thistle-beds that a day's ride through them

only leaves the traveller with the same purple forest stretching away

to the horizon. The florist would be enchanted to see whole tracts of

land covered by the _Verbena Melindres_, which appears, even long

before you reach it, to be of a bright scarlet. There are also acres

and acres of the many-flowered camomile and numberless other plants;

while large tracts of low-lying land are covered with coarse pampa

grass, affording shelter for numberless deer, and many varieties of

ducks, cranes, flamingoes, swans and turkeys. Wood there is none, with

the exception of a solitary tree here and there at great distances,

generally marking the site of some cattle establishment OP _estancia_.

An _ombú_, or cluster of blue gums, is certain to be planted there.

On this prairie, man, notwithstanding the fact that he is the "lord of

creation," is decidedly in the minority. Millions of four-footed

animals roam the plains, but he may be counted by hundreds. Let us turn

to him, however, in his isolated home, for the _Gaucho_ has been

described as one of the most interesting races on the face of the

earth. A descendant of the old conquerors, who, leaving their fair ones

in the Spanish peninsula, took unto them as wives the unclothed women

of the new world, he inherits the color and habits of the one with the

vices and dignity of the other. Living the wild, free life of the

Indian, and retaining the language of Spain; the finest horseman of the

world, and perhaps the worst assassin; the most open-handed and

hospitable, yet the accomplished purloiner of his neighbor's cattle;

imitating the Spaniard in the beautifully-chased silver trappings of

his horse, and the untutored Indian in his miserable adobe hovel;

spending his whole wealth in heavy gold or silver bell-shaped stirrups,

bridle, or spurs (the rowel of the latter sometimes having a diameter

of six inches), and leaving his home destitute of the veriest

necessities of life--such is the Gaucho. A horn or shell from the

river's bed makes his spoon, gourds provide him with his plates and

dishes; but his knife, with gold or silver handle and sheath, is almost

a little fortune in itself. Content in his dwelling to sit on a

bullock's skull, on horseback his saddle must be mounted in silver. His

own beard and hair he seldom trims, but his horse's mane and tail must

be assiduously tended. The baked-mud floor of his abode is littered

with filth and dirt, while he raves at a speck of mud on his

embroidered silk saddle-cloth.

The Gaucho is a strange contradiction. He has blushed at my good but

plain-looking saddle, yet courteously asked me to take a skull seat. He

may possess five hundred horses, but you search his kitchen in vain for

a plate. If you please him he will present you with his best horse,

waving away your thanks. If you displease him, his long knife will just

as readily find its way to your heart, for he kills his enemies with as

little compunction as he kills the ostrich. "The Gaucho, with his proud

and dissolute air, is the most unique of all South American characters.

He is courageous and cruel, active and tireless. Never more at ease

than when on the wildest horse; on the ground, out of his element. His

politeness is excessive, his nature fierce." The children do not, like

ours, play with toys, but delight the parents' hearts by teasing a cat

or dog. These they will stick with a thorn or pointed bone to hear them

yell, or, later on, lasso and half choke them. "They will put out their

eyes, and such like childish games, innocent little darlings that they

are." Cold-blooded torture is their delight, and they will cheer at the

sight of blood.

To describe the dress of this descendant of Adam I feel myself

incapable. A shirt and a big slouch hat seem to be the only articles of

attire like ours. Coat, trousers or shoes he does not wear. Instead of

the first mentioned, he uses the _poncho_, a long, broad blanket, with

a slit in the centre to admit his head. For trousers he wears very wide

white drawers, richly embroidered with broad needlework and stiffly

starched. Over these he puts a black _chiripá_, which really I cannot

describe other than as similar to the napkins the mother provides for

her child. Below this black and white leg covering come the long boots,

made from one piece of seamless hide. These boots are nothing more than

the skin from the hind legs of an animal--generally a full-grown horse.

The bend of the horse's leg makes the boot's heel. Naturally the toes

protrude, and this is not sewn up, for the Gaucho never puts more than

his big toe in the stirrup, which, like the bit in his horse's mouth,

must be of solid silver. A dandy will beautifully scallop these rawhide

boots around the tops and toes, and keep them soft with an occasional

application of grease. No heel is ever attached. Around the man's

waist, holding up his drawers and chiripa, is wound a long colored

belt, with tasseled ends left hanging over his boot, down the right

side; and over that he invariably wears a broad skin belt, clasped at

the front with silver and adorned all around with gold or silver coins.

In this the long knife is carried.

What shall I say of the domestic life of these people? Unfortunately,

marriage is practically unknown among them. The father gives his son a

few cattle, and the young man, after building himself a house, conducts

thither his chosen one. Unhappily, constancy in either man or woman is

a rare virtue.

Of the superstitious side of the Gancho race I might speak much. In the

saints the female especially implicitly believes. These, her deities,

are all-powerful, and to them she appeals for the satisfaction of her

every desire. Saint Clementina's help is sought by the girl when her

lover betrays her. Another saint will aid her in poisoning him. If the

wife thinks her husband long in bringing the evening meal, she has

informed me, a word with Saint Anthony is sufficient, and she hears the

sound of his horse's hoofs. Saint Anthony seems to be useful on many

occasions of distress. One evening I called at a _rancho_ made of dry

thistle-stalks bound together with hide and thatched with reeds,

Finding the inmates very hospitable, I stayed there two or three hours

to rest. Coming out of the house again, I found to my dismay that

during our animated gossip my horse had broken loose and left me. Now

the loss of a horse is too trivial a matter to interest Anthony the

saint, but a horse having saddle and bridle attached to him makes it

quite a different matter, for these often cost ten times the price of

the horse. One of the saint's especial duties is to find a lost saddled

horse, if the owner or interested one only promises to burn a candle in

his honor. The night was very dark, and no sign of the animal was to be

seen. Mine host laid his ear to the ground and listened, then, leaping

on his horse, he galloped into the darkness, from whence he brought my

lost animal. I did not learn until afterwards that Mrs. Jesus, for such

was the woman's name, had sought the help of Saint Anthony on my

behalf. I am sure she lost her previous good opinion of me when I

thanked her husband but did not offer a special colored candle to her

saint.

Among these strange people I commenced a school, and had the joy of

teaching numbers of them to read the Spanish Bible. Boys and girls came

long distances on horseback, and, although some of them had perhaps

never seen a book before, I found them exceedingly quick to learn. In

four or five months the older ones were able to read any ordinary

chapter. In arithmetic they were inconceivably dull, and after three

months' tuition some of them could not count ten.

I have said the saints are greatly honored among these people. My

Christmas cards generally found their way to adorn their altars. Every

house has its favorite, and some of these are regarded as especially

clever in curing sickness. It being a very unhealthful, low-lying

district where my school was, I contracted malarial fever, and went to

bed very sick. Every day some of the children would come to enquire

after me, but Celestino, one of the larger boys, came one morning with

a very special message from his mother. This communication was to the

effect that they did not wish the school-teacher to die, he being

"rather a nice kind of a man and well liked." Because of this she would

be pleased to let me have her favorite saint. This image I could stand

at the head of my bed, and its very presence would cure me. When I

refused this offer and smiled at its absurdity, the boy thought me very

strange. To be so wise in some respects, and yet so ignorant as to

refuse such a chance, was to him incomprehensible. The saints, I found,

are there often lent out to friends that they may exercise their

healing powers, or rented out to strangers at so much a day, When they

are not thus on duty, but in a quiet corner of the hut, they get

lonely. The woman will then go for a visit, taking her saint with her,

either in her arms or tied to the saddle. This image she will place

with the saint her host owns, and _they will talk together and teach

one another_. A saint is supposed to know only its own particular work,

although one named Santa Rita is said to be a worker of

impossibilities. Some of them are only very rudely carved images,

dressed in tawdry finery. I have sometimes thought that a Parisian doll

of modern make, able to open and close its eyes, etc., would in their

esteem be even competent to raise the dead! [Footnote: Writing of

Spanish American Romanism, Everybody's Magazine says: "To the student

of human nature, which means the study of evil as well as good, this

religious body is of absorbing interest. One would look to find these

enthusiasts righteous and virtuous in their daily life; but, apart from

the annual week of penance, their religion influences them not at all,

and on the whole the members of the Brotherhood constitute a desperate

class, dangerous to society."]

In cases of sickness very simple remedies are used, and not a few

utterly nonsensical. To cure pains in the stomach they tie around them

the skin of the _comadreka_, a small, vile-smelling animal. This they

told me was a sovereign remedy. If the sufferer be a babe, a cross made

on its stomach is sufficient to perfectly cure it. I have seen seven

pieces of the root of the white lily, which there grows wild, tied

around the neck of an infant in order that its teeth might come with

greater promptitude and less pain. A string of dog's teeth serves the

same purpose. To cure a bad wound, the priest will be called in that he

may write around the sore some Latin prayer backwards. Headache is

easily cured by tying around the head the cast-off skin of a snake. Two

puppies are killed and bound one on each side of a broken limb. If a

charm is worn around the neck no poison can be harmful. For a sore

throat it is sufficient to expectorate in the fire three times, making

a cross. Lockjaw is effectually stopped by tying around the sufferer's

jaws the strings from a virgin's skirt; and they say also that powdered

excrement of a dog, taken in a glass of water, cures the smallpox

patient,

As Mrs. Jesus sent her boy to my school, so Mrs. Flower sent her girl.

The latter was perhaps the most deluded woman I have met. Her every act

was bad in itself or characterized by superstitious devotion. She was

one of the Church's favorite worshippers, and while I was in the

neighborhood she sold her cows and horses and presented the priest at

the nearest town with a large and expensive silver cross--the emblem of

suffering purity. Near her lived a person for whom she had an especial

aversion, but that enemy she got rid of in surely the strangest of

ways, which she described to me. Catching a snake, and holding it so

that its poison might not reach her, she passed a threaded needle

through both its eyes. When this was done she let it go again, alive,

and, carefully guarding the needle, approached the person from behind

and made a cross with the thread. The undesired one disappeared, having

probably heard of the enchantment, and being equally superstitious,

or--the charm worked!

Mrs. Flower was a most repulsive-looking creature. Her skin was exactly

the color of an old copper coin. She did not resemble any _flower_ I

have seen in either hemisphere. Far was she from being a rose, but she

certainly possessed the thorn. Her love for the saints was most marked,

and I have known her promise St. Roque that she would walk six miles

carrying his image if he would only grant her a certain prayer. This

petition he granted, and off she trudged with her divine (?) load.

Those acquainted with dwellers on the prairie know that this was indeed

a great task, horses being so cheap and riding so universal. Mrs.

Flower was unaccustomed to walk even the shortest distance. I myself

can bear witness to the fact that even strong men find it hard to walk

a mile after spending years in equestrian travel. The native tells you

that God formed your legs so that you might be able to sit on a horse

rather than to walk with them. A favorite expression with them is, "I

was born on horseback."

Stone not being found on the pampas, these people generally build their

houses of square sods, with a roof of plaited grasses--sometimes I have

observed these beautifully woven together. Two or more holes, according

to the size of the house, are left to serve for door and window. Wood

cannot be obtained, glass has not been introduced, so the holes are

left as open spaces, across which, when the pampa wind blows, a hide is

stretched. No hole is left in the roof for the smoke of the fire to

escape, for this to the native is no inconvenience whatever. When I

have been compelled to fly with racking cough and splitting head, he

has calmly asked the reason. Never could I bear the blinding smoke that

issues from his fire of sheep or cow dung burning on the earthen floor,

though he heeds it not as, sitting on a bullock's skull, he ravenously

eats his evening meal.

If entertaining a stranger, he will press uncut joint after joint of

his _asado_ upon him. This asado is meat roasted over the fire on a

spit; if beef, with the skin and hair still attached. Meat cooked in

this way is a real delicacy. A favorite dish with them (I held a

different opinion) is a half-formed calf, taken before its proper time

of birth. The meat is often dipped in the ashes in lieu of salt. I have

said the Gaucho has no chair. I might add that neither has he a table,

for with his fingers and knife he eats the meat off the fire. Forks he

is without, and a horn or shell spoon conveys the soup to his mouth

direct from the copper pan. So universal is the use of the shell for

this service that the native does not speak of it as _caracol_, the

real word for shell, but calls it _cuchara del agua_, or water spoon.

Of knives he possesses more than enough, and heavy, long, sharp-pointed

ones they are. When his hunger is appeased the knife goes, not to the

kitchen, but to his belt, where, when not in his hand, you may always

see it. With that weapon he kills a sheep, cuts off the head of a

serpent--seemingly, however, not doing it much harm, for it still

wriggles--sticks his horse when in anger, and, alas, as I have said,

sometimes stabs his fellow-man. Being so far isolated from the coast,

he is necessarily entirely uneducated. The forward march of the outer

world concerns him not; indeed he imagines that his native prairie

stretches away to the end of the world. He will gaze with wonder on

your watch, for his only mode of ascertaining the time is by the shadow

the sun casts. As that luminary rises and sets, so he sleeps and wakes.

His only bed is the sheepskin, which when riding he fastens over his

saddle, and the latter article forms his pillow. His coverlet is the

firmament of heaven, the Southern Cross and other constellations,

unseen by dwellers in the Northern Hemisphere, seeming to keep watch

over him; or in the colder season his poncho, which I have already

described. Around his couch flit the fireflies, resembling so many

stars of earth with their strangely radiant lights. The brightness of

one, when held near the face of my watch, made light enough to enable

me to ascertain the hour, even on the darkest night.

The Gaucho with his horse is at home anywhere. When on a journey he

will stop for the evening meal beside the dry bones of some dead

animal. With these and grass he will make a fire and cook the meat he

carries hanging behind him on the saddle. I have known an animal killed

and the meat cooked with its own bones, but this is not usual. Dry

bones burn better, and thistle-stalks better still. He will then lie

down on mother earth with the horse-cloth under him and the saddle for

a pillow. When travelling with these men I have known them, without any

comment, stretch themselves on the ground, even though the rain was

falling, and soon be in dreamland. After having passed a wretched night

myself, I have asked them, "How did you sleep?" _"Muy Bien, Senor"_

(Very good, sir), has been the invariable answer. They would often

growl much, however, over the wet saddle-cloths, for these soon cause a

horse's back to become sore.

Here and there, but sometimes at long distances apart, there is a

_pulperia_ on the road. This is always designated by having a white

flag flying on the end of a long bamboo. At these places cheap spirits

of wine and very bad rum can be bought, along with tobacco, hard

ship-biscuits (very often full of maggots, as I know only too well),

and a few other more necessary things. I have observed in some of these

wayside inns counters made of turf, built in blocks as bricks would be.

Here the natives stop to drink long and deep, and stew their meagre

brains in bad spirits. These draughts result in quarrels and sometimes

in murder.

The Gaucho, like the Indian, cannot drink liquor without becoming

maddened by it. He will then do things which in his sober moments he

would not dream of. I was acquainted with a man who owned a horse of

which he was very fond This animal bore him one evening to a pulperia

some miles distant, and was left tied outside while he imbibed his fill

inside. Coming out at length beastly intoxicated, he mounted his horse

and proceeded homeward. Arriving at a fork in the path, the faithful

horse took the one leading home, but the rider, thinking in his stupor

that the other way was the right one, turned the horse's head. As the

poor creature wanted to get home and have the saddle taken off, it

turned again. This affront was too much for the Gaucho, who is a man of

volcanic passions, so drawing his knife, he stabbed it in the neck, and

they dropped to the ground together. When he realized that he had

killed his favorite horse he cried like a child. I passed this dead

animal several times afterwards and saw the vultures clean its bones.

It served me as a witness to the results of ungoverned passion.

The Gaucho does not, and would not under any consideration, ride a

mare; consequently, for work she is practically valueless. Strain, who

rode across the pampas, says: "In a single year ten million hides were

exported." For one or two dollars each the buyer may purchase any

number; indeed, of such little worth are the mares that they are very

often killed for their hide, or to serve as food for swine. At one

estancia I visited I was informed that one was killed each day for pig

feed. The mare can be driven long distances, even a hundred miles a

day, for several successive days, The Argentine army must surely be the

most mobile of any in the world, for its soldiers, when on the march,

get nothing but mare's flesh and the custom gives them great facility

of movement. The horse has, more or less, its standard value, and costs

four or five times the price of the mare.

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR IN GAUCHO DRESS.]

Sometimes it happens that the native finds a colt which is positively

untamable. On the cheek of such an animal the Gaucho will burn a cross

and then allow it to go free, like the scape-goat mentioned in the book

of Leviticus.

The native horse is rather small, but very wiry and wild. I was once

compelled, through sickness, to make a journey of ninety-seven miles,

being in the saddle for seventeen consecutive hours, and yet my poor

horse was unable to get one mouthful of food on the journey, and the

saddle was not taken off his back for a moment. He was very wild, yet

one evening between five and eight o'clock, he bore me safely a

distance of thirty-six miles, and returned the same distance with me on

the following morning. He had not eaten or drunk anything during the

night, for the locusts had devoured all pasturage and no rain had

fallen for a space of five months.

The horse is not indigenous to America, although Darwin tells us that

South America had a native horse, which lived and disappeared ages ago.

Spanish history informs us that they were first landed in Buenos Ayres

in 1537. We are further told that the Indians flew away in terror at

the sight of a man on horseback, which they took to be one animal of a

strange, two-headed shape. When the colony was for a time deserted

these horses were suffered to run wild. Those animals so multiplied and

spread over such a vast area that they were found, forty-three years

later, even down to the Straits of Magellan, a distance of eleven

hundred miles. With good pasture and a limitless expanse to roam over,

they soon turned from the dozens to thousands, and may now be counted

by millions. The Patagonian "foot" Indians quickly turned into "horse"

Indians, for on those wide prairie lands a man without a horse is

almost comparable to a man without legs. In former years, thousands of

wild horses roamed over these extensive plains, but the struggle of

mankind in the battle of life turned men's attention to them, and they

were captured and branded by whomsoever had the power and cared to take

the trouble. In the more isolated districts, there may still be found

numbers which are born and die without ever feeling the touch of saddle

or bridle. Far away from the crowded busses and perpetually moving

hansoms of the city, they feel not the driver's whip nor the strain of

the wagon, as, with tail trailing on the ground and head erect, they

gallop in freedom of life. Happy they!

In all directions on the prairie ostriches are found. The natives catch

them with _boliadoras_, an old Indian weapon, which is simply three

round stones, incased in bags of hide, tied together by twisted ropes,

also of hide. When the hunters have, by galloping from different

directions, baffled the bird in his flight, they thunder down upon him,

and, throwing the _boliadoras_ round his legs, where they entangle,

effectually stop his flight. I have seen this weapon thrown a distance

of about eighty yards.

The ostrich is a bird with wonderful digestive powers, which I often

have envied him; he eats grass or pebbles, insects or bones, as suits

his varying fancy. If you drop your knife or any other article, he will

stop to examine it, being most inquisitive, and, if possible, he will

swallow it. The flesh of the ostrich is dry and tough, and its feathers

are not to be compared in beauty with those of the African specimen.

Generally a very harmless bird, he is truly formidable during breeding

time. If one of the eggs is so much as touched he will break the whole

number to shivers. Woe to the man whom he savagely attacks at such

times; one kick of his great foot, with its sharp claws, is sufficient

to open the body of man or horse. The Gaucho uses the skin from the

neck of this bird as a tobacco pouch, and the eggs are considered a

great delicacy. One is equal to about sixteen hen's eggs.

As all creation has its enemy, the ostrich finds his in the _iguana_,

or lizard--an unsightly, scaly, long-tailed species of land crocodile.

This animal, when full-grown, attains the length of five feet, and is

of a dark green color. He, when he can procure them, feeds on the

ostrich eggs, which I believe must be a very strengthening diet. The

lizard, after fattening himself upon them during the six hotter months

of the year, is enabled to retire to the recesses of his cave, where he

tranquilly sleeps through the remaining six. The shell of the ostrich's

egg is about the thickness of an antique china cup, but the iguana

finds no difficulty in breaking it open with a slash of his tail This

wily animal is more astute than the bird, which lays its eggs in the

open spaces, for the lizard, with her claws, digs a hole in the ground,

in which hers are dropped to the number of dozens. The lizard does not

provide shells for her eggs, but only covers them with a thick, soft

skin, and they, buried in the soil, eventually hatch themselves.

When the Gaucho cannot obtain a better meal, the tail of the lizard is

not considered such a despicable dish by him, for he is no epicure.

When he has nothing he is also contented. His philosophy is: _"Nunca

tenga hambre cuando no hay que comer"_ (Never be hungry when no food is

to be had).

The estancia, or catile ranch, is a feature of the Argentine prairie.

Some of these establishments are very large, even up to one hundred

square miles in extent. On them hundreds of thousands of cattle, sheep

and horses are herded. "It is not improbable that there are more cattle

in the pampas and llanos of South America than in all the rest of the

world." [Footnote: Dr. Hartwig in "Argentina," 1910] An estancia is

almost invariably called by the name of some saint, as are the

different fields belonging to it. "Holy Mary field" and "Saint Joseph

field" are common names. Notwithstanding the fact that there may be

thousands of cows on a ranch, the visitor may be unable to get a drop

of milk to drink. "Cows are not made to milk, but to eat," they say.

Life on these establishments is rough and the fare generally very

coarse. Even among the wealthy people I have visited you may sit down

to dinner with nothing but meat put before you, without a bite of bread

or any vegetables. All drink water out of an earthenware pitcher of

peculiar shape, which is the centrepiece of the table.

Around the ranches of the people are many mice, which must be of a

ferocious nature, for if one is caught in a trap it will be found next

morning half, if not almost wholly, eaten by its own comrades. Well is

it called "the cannibal mouse."

In times of drought the heat of the sun dries up all vegetation. The

least spark of fire then suffices to create a mighty blaze, especially

if accompanied by the _pampero_ wind, which blows with irresistible

force in its sweep over hundreds of miles of level ground. The fire,

gathering strength as it goes, drives all before it, or wraps

everything in its devouring flames. Casting a lurid light in the

heavens, towards which rise volumes of smoke, it attracts the attention

of the native, who lifts his starting eyes towards heaven in a

speechless prayer to the Holy Virgin. Madly leaping on his fleetest

horse, without saddle, and often without bridle, he wildly gallops down

the wind, as the roaring, crackling fire gains upon him. In this mad

race for life, men, horses, ostriches, deer, bullocks, etc., join,

striving to excel each other in speed. Strange to say, the horse the

native rides, cheered on by the touch of his master, is often the first

to gain the lake or river, where, beneath its waters at least, refuge

may be found. In their wild stampede, vast herds of cattle trample and

fall on one another and are drowned. A more complete destruction could

not overtake the unfortunate traveller than to be caught by this

remorseless foe, for not even his ashes could be found by mourning

friends. The ground thus burnt retains its heat for days. I have had

occasion to cross blackened wastes a week after this most destructive

force in nature had done its work, and my horse has frequently reared

in the air at the touch of the hot soil on his hoofs.

The Gaucho has a strange method of fighting these fires. Several mares

are killed and opened, and they, by means of lassos, are dragged over

the burning grass.

The immensity of the pampas is so great that one may travel many miles

without sighting a single tree or human habitation. The weary traveller

finds his only shade from the sun's pitiless rays under the broad brim

of his sombrero. At times, with ears forward and extended nostrils, the

horse gazes intently at the rippling blue waters of the _mirage_, that

most tantalizingly deceptive phenomenon of nature. May it never be the

lot of my reader to be misled by the illusive mirage as I have been.

How could I mistake vapor for clear, gurgling water? Yet, how many

times was I here deceived! Visions of great lakes and broad rivers rose

up before me, lapping emerald green shores, where I could cool my

parched tongue and lave in their crystal depths; yet to-day those

waters are as far off as ever, and exist only in my hopes of Paradise.

Not until I stand by the "River of Life" shall I behold the reality.

The inhabitant of these treeless, trackless solitudes, which, with

their waving grass, remind one of the bosom of the ocean, develops a

keen sight Where the stranger, after intently gazing, descries nothing,

he will not only inform him that animals are in sight, but will,

moreover, tell him what they are. I am blest with a very clear vision,

but even when, after standing on my horse's back, I have made out

nothing, the Gaucho could tell me that over there was a drove of

cattle, a herd of deer, a troop of horses, or a house.

It is estimated that there are two hundred and forty millions of acres

of wheat land in the Argentine, and of late years the prairie has

developed into one of the largest wheat-producing countries in the

world, and yet only one per cent, of its cultivable area is so far

occupied.

The Gaucho is no farmer, and all his land is given up to cattle

grazing, so _chacras_ are worked generally by foreign settlers. The

province of Entre Rios has been settled largely by Swiss and Italian

farmers from the Piedmont Hills. Baron Hirsch has also planted a colony

of Russian Jews there, and provided them with farm implements. Wheat,

corn, and linseed are the principal crops, but sweet potatoes, tobacco,

and fruit trees do well in this virgin ground, fertilized by the dead

animals of centuries. The soil is rich, and two or three crops can

often be harvested in a year.

No other part of the world has in recent years suffered from such a

plague of locusts as the agricultural districts of Argentina. They come

from the north in clouds that sometimes darken the sun. Some of the

swarms have been estimated to be sixty miles long and from twelve to

fifteen miles wide. Fields which in the morning stand high with waving

corn, are by evening only comparable to ploughed or burnt lands. Even

the roots are eaten up.

In 1907 the Argentine Government organized a bureau for the destruction

of locusts, and in 1908 $4,500,000 was placed by Congress at the

disposal of this commission. An organized service, embracing thousands

of men, is in readiness at any moment to send a force to any place

where danger is reported. Railway trains have been repeatedly stopped,

and literally many tons of them have had to be taken off the track. A

fine of $100 is imposed upon any settler failing to report the presence

of locust swarms or hopper eggs on his land. Various means are adopted

by the land-owner to save what he can from the voracious insects. Men,

women and children mount their horses and drive flocks of sheep to and

fro over the ground to kill them. A squatter with whom I stayed got his

laborers to gallop a troop of mares furiously around his garden to keep

them from settling there. All, however, seemed useless. About midsummer

the locust lays its eggs under an inch or two of soil. Each female will

drop from thirty to fifty eggs, all at the same time, in a mass

resembling a head of wheat. As many as 50,000 eggs have been counted in

a space less than three and a half feet square.

During my sojourn in Entre Rios, the province where this insect seems

to come in greatest numbers, a law was passed that every man over the

age of fourteen years, whether native or foreigner, rich or poor, was

compelled to dig out and carry to Government depots, four pounds weight

of locusts' eggs. It was supposed that this energetic measure would

lessen their numbers. Many tons were collected and burnt, but, I assure

the reader, no appreciable difference whatever was made in their

legions. The young _jumpers_ came, eating all before them, and their

numbers seemed infinite. Men dug trenches, kindled fires, and burned

millions of them. Ditches two yards wide and deep and two hundred feet

long were completely filled up by these living waves. But all efforts

were unavailing--the earth remained covered. A Waldensian acquaintance

suffered for several years from this fearful plague. Some seasons he

was not even able to get back so much as the seed he planted. If the

locusts passed him, it so happened that the _pampero_ wind blew with

such terrific force that we have looked in vain even for the straw. The

latter was actually torn up by the roots and whirled away, none knew

whither. At other times large hailstones, for which the country is

noted, have destroyed everything, or tens of thousands of green

paroquets have done their destructive work. When a five-months' drought

was parching everything, I have heard him reverently pray that God

would spare him wheat sufficient to feed his family. This food God gave

him, and he thankfully invited me to share it. I rejoice in being able

to say that he afterwards became rich, and had his favorite saying,

_"Dios no me olvidaé"_ (God will not forget me), abundantly verified.

Notwithstanding natural drawbacks, which every country has, Argentina

can claim to have gone forward as no other country has during the last

ten years. There are many estates worth more than a million dollars.

Dr. W. A. Hirot, in "Argentina," says: "Argentina has more live stock

than any other country of the world. Ten million hides have been

exported in one year, and it is not improbable that there are more

cattle in South America than there are in all the rest of the world

combined." Belgium has 220 people occupying the space one person has in

Argentina, so who can prophesy as to its future?

PART II.

BOLIVIA

[Illustration]

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing

else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets

blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

--_Robert W. Service._

BOLIVIA

Bolivia, having no sea-coast, has been termed the Hermit Republic of

South America. Its territory is over 600,000 square miles in extent,

and within its bounds Nature displays almost every possible panorama,

and all climates. There are burning plains, the home of the emu,

armadillos, and ants; sandy deserts, where the wind drifts the sand

like snow, piling it up in ever-shifting hills about thirty feet in

height. Bolivia, shut in geographically and politically, is a world in

itself--a world of variety, in scenery, climate, products and people.

Its capital city, La Paz, has a population of 70,000, but the vast

interior is almost uninhabited. In the number of inhabitants to the

square mile, Bolivia ranks the lowest of all the nations of the earth.

Perhaps no country of the world has been, and is, so rich in precious

metals as Bolivia. "The mines of Potosi alone have furnished the world

over $1,500,000,000 worth of silver since the Spaniards first took

possession of them." [Footnote: "Protestant Missions in South America."]

Bolivia can lay claim to the most wonderful body of water in the

world--Lake Titicaca. This lake, nearly two and a half miles high in

the air, is literally in the clouds. "Its lonely waters have no outlet

to the sea, but are guarded on their southern shores by gigantic ruins

of a prehistoric empire--palaces, temples, and fortresses--silent,

mysterious monuments of a long-lost golden age." Some of the largest

and most remarkable ruins of the world are found on the shores of Lake

Titicaca, and as this was the centre of the great Incan Dynasty, that

remarkable people have also left wonderful remains, to build which

stones thirty-eight feet long, eighteen feet wide, and six feet thick,

were quarried, carried and elevated. The Temple of the Sun. the most

sacred edifice of the Incas, was one of the richest buildings the sun

has ever shone upon, and it was itself a mine of wealth. From this one

temple, Pizarro, the Spanish conqueror, took 24,000 pounds of gold and

82,000 pounds of silver. "Ninety million dollars' worth of precious

metals was torn from Inca temples alone." The old monarch of the

country, Atahuallpa, gave Pizarro twenty-two million dollars in gold to

buy back his country and his liberty from the Spaniards, but their

first act on receiving the vast ransom was to march him after a

crucifix at the head of a procession, and, because he refused to become

a Roman Catholic, put him to death. Perhaps never in the world's

history was there a baser act of perfidy, but this was urged by the

soldier-priest of the conquerors, Father Valverde, who himself signed

the King's death-warrant. This priest was afterwards made Bishop of

Atahuallpa's capital.

Surely no country of the world has had a darker or a sadder history

than this land of the Incas. The Spaniards arrived when the "Children

of the Sun" were at the height of their prosperity. "The affair of

reducing the country was committed to the hands of irresponsible

individuals, soldiers of fortune, desperate adventurers who entered on

conquest as a game which they had to play in the most unscrupulous

manner, with little care but to win it. The lands, and the persons as

well, of the conquered races were parcelled out and appropriated by the

victors as the legitimate spoils of victory. Every day outrages were

perpetrated, at the contemplation of which humanity shudders. They

suffered the provident arrangements of the Incas to fall into decay.

The poor Indian, without food, now wandered half-starved and naked over

the plateau. Even those who aided the Spaniards fared no better, and

many an Inca noble roamed a mendicant over the fields where he once

held rule; and if driven, perchance, by his necessities to purloin

something from the superfluity of his conquerors, he expiated it by a

miserable death." [Footnote: Prescott's "Conquest of Peru."]

Charles Kingsley says there were "cruelties and miseries unexampled in

the history of Christendom, or perhaps on earth, save in the conquests

of Sennacherib and Zinghis-Khan." Millions perished at the forced labor

of the mines, The Incan Empire had, it is calculated, a population of

twenty millions at the arrival of the Spaniards, In two centuries the

population fell to four millions.

When the groans of these beasts of burden reached the ears of the good

(?) Queen Isabel of Spain, she enacted a law that throughout her new

dominions no Indian, man or woman, should be compelled to carry more

than three hundred pounds' weight at one load! Is it cause for wonder

that the poor, down-trodden natives, seeing the flaunting flag of

Spain, with its stripe of yellow between stripes of red, should regard

it as representing a river of gold between two rivers of blood?

"Not infrequently," said a reliable witness, "I have seen the

Spaniards, long after the Conquest, amuse themselves by hunting down

the natives with blood hounds, for mere sport, or in order to train

their dogs to the game. The most unbounded scope was given to

licentiousness. The young maiden was torn remorselessly from the arms

of her family to gratify the passion of her brutal conqueror. The

sacred houses of the Virgins of the Sun were broken open and violated,

and the cavalier swelled his harem with a troop of Indian girls, making

it seem that the crescent would have been a more fitting emblem for his

banner than the immaculate cross."

With the inexorable conqueror came the more inexorable priest.

"Attendance at Roman Catholic worship was made compulsory. Men and

women with small children were compelled to journey as much as

thirty-six miles to attend mass. Absentees were punished, therefore the

Indian feared to disobey." [Footnote: Neely, "Spanish America."]

As is well known, the ancient inhabitants worshipped the sun and the

moon. The Spanish priest, in order to gain proselytes with greater

facility, did not forbid this worship, but placed the crucifix between

the two. Where the Inca suns and moons were of solid gold and silver,

they were soon replaced by painted wooden ones. The crucifix, with sun

and moon images on each side, is common all over Bolivia to-day.

Now, four hundred years later, see the Indian under priestly rule. The

following is taken from an official report of the Governor of

Chimborazo: "The religious festivals that the Indians celebrate--not of

their own will, but by the inexorable will of the priest--are, through

the manner in which they are kept, worse than those described to us of

the times of Paganism, and of monstrous consequences to morality and

the national welfare ... they may be reckoned as a barbarous mixture of

idolatry and superstition, sustained by infamous avarice. The Indian

who is chosen to make a feast either has to use up in it his little

savings, leaving his family submerged in misery, or he has to rob in

order to invest the products of his crime in paying the fees to the

priest and for church ceremonies. These are simply brutal orgies that

last many days, with a numerous attendance, and in which all manner of

crimes and vices have free license."

"For the idols of the aborigines were substituted the images of the

Virgin Mary and the Roman saints. The Indians gave up their old idols,

but they went on with their image-worship. Image-worship is idolatry,

whether in India, Africa, or anywhere else, and the worship of Roman

images is essentially idolatry as much as the worship of any other kind

of images. Romanism substituted for one set of idols another set. So

the Indians who were idolaters continued to be idolaters, only the new

idols had other names and, possibly, were a little better-looking."

[Footnote: Neely, "South America."]

What has Romanism done for the Indians of Bolivia in its four hundred

years of rule? Compare the people of that peaceful, law-keeping dynasty

which the Spaniards found with the Bolivian Indian of to-day! Now the

traveller can report: "The Indians are killing the whites wherever they

find them, and practising great cruelties, having bored holes in the

heads of their victims and sucked the brains out while they were yet

alive. Sixteen whites are said to have been killed in this way! These

same Indians are those who have been Christianized by the Roman priests

for the past three centuries, but such cruelties as they have been

practising show that as yet not a ray of Christ's love has entered

their darkened minds." How can the priest teach what he is himself

ignorant of?

Where the Indian has been civilized, as well as Romanized, Mr. Milne,

of the American Bible Society, could write:

"Since the Spanish conquest the progress of the Indians has been in the

line of deterioration and moral degradation. They are oppressed by the

Romish clergy, who can never drain contributions enough out of them,

and who make the children render service to pay for masses for deceased

parents and relatives. Tears came to our eyes as Mr. Penzotti and I

watched them practising their heathen rites in the streets of La Paz,

the chief city of Bolivia. They differ from the other Indians in that

they are domesticated, but _they know no more of the Gospel than they

did under the rule of the Incas."_

What is to be the future of these natives? Shall they disappear from

the stage of the world's history like so many other aborigines, victims

of civilization, or will a hand yet be stretched out to help them?

Civilization, after all, is not entirely made up of greed and lust, but

in it there is righteousness and truth. May the day soon dawn when some

of the latter may be extended to them ere they take the long, dark

trail after their fathers, and have hurled the last malediction at

their cursed white oppressors!

"We suffer yet a little space

Until we pass away,

The relics of an ancient race

That ne'er has had its day."

For four hundred years Bolivia has thus been held in chains by Romish

priestcraft. Since its Incan rulers were massacred, its civilization

has been of the lowest. Buildings, irrigation dams, etc., were suffered

to fall into disrepair, and the country went back to pre-Incan days.

The first Christian missionaries to enter the country were imprisoned

and murdered. Now "the morning light is breaking." A law has been

passed granting liberty of worship.

Bolivia, with its vast natural riches, must come to the forefront, and

already strides are being taken forward. She can export over five

million dollars' worth of rubber in one year, and is now spending more

than fifty million dollars on railways. So Bolivia is a country of the

past and the future.

CHAPTER V.

JOURNEY TO "THE UNEXPLORED LAKE."

Since the days when Pizarro's adventurers discovered the hitherto

undreamed-of splendor of the Inca Dynasty, Bolivia has been a land of

surprises and romantic discovery. Strange to say, even yet much of the

eastern portion of this great republic remains practically unexplored.

The following account of exploration in those regions, left for men of

the twentieth century, may not, I am persuaded, be without interest to

the general reader. Bolivia has for many years been seriously

handicapped through having no adequate water outlet to the sea, and the

immense resources of wealth she undoubtedly possesses have, for this

reason, been suffered to go, in a measure, unworked. Now, however, in

the onward progress of nations, Bolivia has stepped forward. In the

year 1900, the Government of that country despatched an expedition to

locate and explore Lake Gaiba, a large sheet of water said to exist in

the far interior of Bolivia and Brazil, on the line dividing the two

republics. The expedition staff consisted of Captain Bolland, an

Englishman; M. Barbiere, a Frenchman; Dr. Perez, Bolivian; M. Gerard

D'Avezsac, French artist and hunter, and the writer of these pages. The

crew of ten men was made up of Paraguayans and Argentines, white men

and colored, one Bolivian, one Italian, and one Brazilian. Strange to

relate, there was no Scotchman, even the ship's engineer being French.

Perhaps the missing Scotch engineer was on his way to the Pole, in

order to be found sitting there on its discovery by----(?)

The object of this costly journey was to ascend the rivers La Plata,

Paraguay and Alto Paraguay, and see if it were possible to establish a

port and town in Bolivian territory on the shores of the lake. After

some months of untiring energy and perseverance, there was discovered

for Bolivia a fine port, with depth of water for any ordinary river

steamer, which will now be known to the world as _Puerto Quijarro_. A

direct fluvial route, therefore, exists between the Atlantic and this

far inland point.

The expedition left Buenos Ayres, the capital of the Argentine

Republic. Sailing up the western bank of the River of Silver, we

entered the Parana River, and after an uneventful voyage of six days,

passed the mouth of the River of Gold, and turned into the Paraguay.

Three hundred miles up the Higher Parana, a mighty stream flowing from

the northeast, which we here left to our right, are the Falls of

Yguasú. These falls have been seen by few white men. The land on each

side of the river is infested by the Bugres Indians, a tribe of

cannibals, of excessively ferocious nature. The Falls of Big Water must

be the largest in the world--and the writer is well acquainted with

Niagara.

The river, over two and a half miles wide, containing almost as much

water as all the rivers of Europe together, rushes between

perpendicular cliffs. With a current of forty miles an hour, and a

volume of water that cannot be less than a million tons a minute, the

mighty torrent rushes with indescribable fury against a rocky island,

which separates it into two branches, so that the total width is about

two miles and a half. The Brazilian arm of the river forms a tremendous

horseshoe here, and plunges with a deafening roar into the abyss two

hundred and thirteen feet below. The Argentine branch spreads out in a

sort of amphitheatre form, and finishes with one grand leap into the

jagged rocks, more than two hundred and twenty-nine feet below, making

the very earth vibrate, while spray, rising in columns, is visible

several miles distant.

"Below the island the two arms unite and flow on into the Parana River.

From the Brazilian bank the spectator, at a height of two hundred and

eighty feet, gazes out over two and a half miles of some of the wildest

and most fantastic water scenery he can ever hope to see. Waters

stream, seethe, leap, bound, froth and foam, 'throwing the sweat of

their agony high in the air, and, writhing, twisting, screaming and

moaning, bear off to the Parana.' Under the blue vault of the sky, this

sea of foam, of pearls, of iridescent dust, bathes the great background

in a shower of beauty that all the more adds to the riot of tropical

hues already there. When a high wind is blowing, the roar of the

cataract can be heard nearly twenty miles away. A rough estimate of the

horse-power represented by the falls is fourteen million."

Proceeding up the Paraguay River, we arrived at Asuncion, the capital

of Paraguay, and anchored in a beautiful bay of the river, opposite the

city. As many necessary preparations had still to be made, the

expedition was detained in Asuncion for fifteen days, after which we

boarded the S.S. _Leda_, for the second stage of our journey.

Steaming up the Alto Paraguay, we passed the orange groves of that

sunny land on the right bank of the river, and on the left saw the

encampments of the Tobas Indians, The dwellings of these people are

only a few branches of trees stuck in the ground. Further on, we saw

the Chamococos Indians, a fine muscular race of men and women, who

cover their bronze-colored bodies with the oil of the alligator, and

think a covering half the size of a pocket-handkerchief quite

sufficient to hide their nakedness. As we stayed to take in wood, I

tried to photograph some of these, our brothers and sisters, but the

camera was nothing but an object of dread to them. One old woman, with

her long, black, oily hair streaming in the breeze, almost withered me

with her flashing eyes and barbarous language, until I blushed as does

a schoolboy when caught in the act of stealing apples. Nevertheless, I

got her photo.

The Pilcomayo, which empties its waters into the Paraguay, is one of

the most mysterious of rivers. Rising in Bolivia, its course can be

traced down for some considerable distance, when it loses itself in the

arid wastes, or, as some maintain, flows underground. Its source and

mouth are known, but for many miles of its passage it is invisible.

Numerous attempts to solve its secrets have been made. They have almost

invariably ended disastrously. The Spanish traveller, Ibarete, set out

with high hopes to travel along its banks, but he and seventeen men

perished in the attempt. Two half-famished, prematurely-old, broken men

were all that returned from the unknown wilds. The Pilcomayo, which has

proved itself the river of death to so many brave men, remains to this

day unexplored. The Indians inhabiting these regions are savage in the

extreme, and the French explorer, Creveaux, found them inhuman enough

to leave him and most of his party to die of hunger. The Tobas and the

Angaitaes tribes are personally known to me, and I speak from

experience when I say that more cruel men I have never met. The

Argentine Government, after twenty years of warfare with them, was

compelled, in 1900, to withdraw the troops from their outposts and

leave the savages in undisputed possession. If the following was the

type of civilization offered them, then they are better left to

themselves: "Two hundred Indians who have been made prisoners are

_compelled to be baptized_. The ceremony takes place in the presence of

the Governor and officials of the district, and a great crowd of

spectators. The Indians kneel between two rows of soldiers, an officer

with drawn sword compels each in turn to open his mouth, into which a

second officer throws a handful of salt, amid general laughter at the

wry faces of the Indians. Then a Franciscan padre comes with a pail of

water and besprinkles the prisoners. They are then commanded to rise,

and each receives a piece of paper inscribed with his new name, a

scapulary, and--_a glass of rum_" [Footnote: Report of British and

Foreign Bible Society, 1900.] What countries these for missionary

enterprise!

After sailing for eighteen days up the river, we transhipped into a

smaller steamer going to Bolivia. Sailing up the bay, you pass, on the

south shore, a small Brazilian customs house, which consists of a

square roof of zinc, without walls, supported on four posts, standing

about two meters from the ground. A Brazilian, clothed only in his

black skin, came down the house ladder and stared at us as we passed.

The compliment was returned, although we had become somewhat accustomed

to that style of dress--or undress. A little farther up the bay, a

white stone shone out in the sunlight, marking the Bolivian boundary,

and giving the name of Piedra Blanca to the village. This landmark is

shaded by a giant tamarind tree, and numerous barrel trees, or _palo

boracho_, grow in the vicinity. In my many wanderings in tropical

America, I have seen numerous strange trees, but these are

extraordinarily so. The trunk comes out of the ground with a small

circumference, then gradually widens out to the proportions of an

enormous barrel, and at the top closes up to the two-foot circumference

again. Two branches, like giant arms spread themselves out in a most

weird-looking manner on the top of all. About five leaves grow on each

bough, and, instinctively, you consider them the fingers of the arms.

It was only three leagues to the Bolivian town of Piedra Blanca, but

the "Bahia do Marengo" took three hours to steam the short distance,

for five times we had to stop on the way, owing to the bearings

becoming heated. These the Brazilian engineer cooled with pails of

water.

In the beautiful Bay of Caceres, much of which was grown over with

lotus and Victoria Regia, we finally anchored. This Bolivian village is

about eighteen days' sail up the river from Montevideo on the seacoast.

Chartering the "General Pando," a steamer of 25 h.p. and 70 ft. long,

we there completed our preparations, and finally steamed away up the

Alto Paraguay, proudly flying the Bolivian flag of red, yellow, and

green. As a correct plan of the river had to be drawn, the steamer only

travelled by day, when we were able to admire the grandeur of the

scenery, which daily grew wilder as the mountains vied with each other

in lifting their rugged peaks toward heaven. From time to time we

passed one of the numerous islands the Paraguay is noted for. These are

clothed with such luxuriant vegetation that nothing less than an army

of men with axes could penetrate them. The land is one great, wild,

untidy, luxuriant hot-house, "built by nature for herself." The puma,

jaguar and wildcat are here at home, besides the anaconda and boa

constrictor, which grow to enormous lengths. The Yaci Retá, or Island

of the Moon, is the ideal haunt of the jaguar, and as we passed it a

pair of those royal beasts were playing on the shore like two enormous

cats. As they caught sight of us, one leapt into the mangrove swamp,

out of sight, and the other took a plunge into the river, only to rise

a few yards distant and receive an explosive bullet in his head. The

mangrove tree, with its twisting limbs and bright green foliage, grows

in the warm water and fœtid mud of tropical countries. It is a type of

death, for pestilence hangs round it like a cloud. At early morning

this cloud is a very visible one. The peculiarity of the tree is that

its hanging branches themselves take root, and, nourished by such

putrid exhalations, it quickly spreads.

There were also many floating islands of fantastic shape, on which

birds rested in graceful pose. We saw the _garza blanca_, the aigrets

of which are esteemed by royalty and commoner alike, along with other

birds new and strange. To several on board who had looked for years on

nothing but the flat Argentine pampas, this change of scenery was most

exhilarating, and when one morning the sun rose behind the "Golden

Mountains," and illuminated peak after peak, the effect was glorious.

So startlingly grand were some of the colors that our artist more than

once said he dare not paint them, as the world would think that his

coloring was not true to nature.

Many were the strange sights we saw on the shore. Once we were amused

at the ludicrous spectacle of a large bird of the stork family, which

had built its nest in a tree almost overhanging the river. The nest was

a collection of reeds and feathers, having two holes in the bottom,

through which the legs of the bird were hanging. The feet, suspended

quite a yard below the nest, made one wonder how the bird could rise

from its sitting position.

Every sight the traveller sees, however, is not so amusing. As darkness

creeps over earth and sky, and the pale moonbeams shed a fitful light,

it is most pathetic to see on the shore the dead trunk and limbs of a

tree, in the branches of which has been constructed a rude platform, on

which some dark-minded Indian has reverently lifted the dead body of

his comrade. The night wind, stirring the dry bones and whistling

through the empty skull, makes weird music!

The banks of the stream had gradually come nearer and nearer to us, and

the great river, stretching one hundred and fifty miles in width where

it pours its volume of millions of tons of water into the sea at

Montevideo, was here a silver ribbon, not half a mile across.

Far be it from me to convey the idea that life in those latitudes is

Eden. The mosquitos and other insects almost drive one mad. The country

may truly be called a naturalists' paradise, for butterflies, beetles,

and creeping things are multitudinous, but the climate, with its damp,

sickly heat, is wholly unsuited to the Anglo-Saxon. Day after day the

sun in all his remorseless strength blazes upon the earth, is if

desirous of setting the whole world on fire. The thermometer in the

shade registered 110, 112 and 114 degrees Fahrenheit, and on one or two

memorable days 118 degrees. The heat in our little saloon at times rose

as high as 130 degrees, and the perspiration poured down in streams on

our almost naked bodies. We seemed to be running right into the brazen

sun itself.

One morning the man on the look-out descried deer on the starboard bow,

and arms were quickly brought out, ready for use. Our French hunter was

just taking aim when it struck me that the deer moved in a strange way.

I immediately asked him to desist. Those dark forms in the long grass

seemed, to my somewhat trained eyes, naked Indians, and as we drew

nearer to them so it proved, and the man was thankful he had withheld

his fire.

After steaming for some distance up the river several dug-outs, filled

with Guatos Indians, paddled alongside us. An early traveller in those

head-waters wrotes of these: "Some of the smaller tribes were but a

little removed from the wild brutes of their own jungles. The lowest in

the scale, perhaps, were the Guatos, who dwell to the north of the Rio

Apa. This tribe consisted of less than one hundred persons, and they

were as unapproachable as wild beasts. No other person, Indian or

foreigner, could ever come near but they would fly and hide in

impenetrable jungles. They had no written language of their own, and

lived like unreasoning animals, without laws or religion."

The Guato Indian seems now to be a tame and inoffensive creature, but

well able to strike a bargain in the sale of his dug-out canoes,

home-made guitars and other curios. In the wrobbling canoe they are

very dexterous, as also in the use of their long bows and arrows; the

latter have points of sharpened bone. When hungry, they hunt or fish.

When thirsty, they drink from the river; and if they wish clothing,

wild cotton grows in abundance.

These Indians, living, as they do, along the banks of the river and

streams, have recently been frequently visited by the white man on his

passage along those natural highways. It is, therefore superfluous for

me to add that they are now correspondingly demoralized. It is a most

humiliating fact that just in proportion as the paleface advances into

lands hitherto given up to the Indian so those races sink. This

degeneration showed itself strikingly among the Guatos in their

inordinate desire for _cachaca_, or "firewater." Although extremely

cautious and wary in their exchanges to us, refusing to barter a bow

and arrows for a shirt, yet, for a bottle of cachaca, they would gladly

have given even one of their canoes. These _ketchiveyos_, twenty or

twenty-five feet long by about twenty inches wide, they hollow from the

trunk of the cedar, or _lapacho_ tree. This is done with great labor

and skill; yet, as I have said, they were boisterously eager to

exchange this week's work for that which they knew would lead them to

fight and kill one another.

As a mark of special favor, the chief invited me to their little

village, a few miles distant. Stepping into one of their canoes--a

large, very narrow boat, made of one tree-trunk hollowed out by fire--I

was quickly paddled by three naked Indians up a narrow creek, which was

almost covered with lotus. The savages, standing in the canoe, worked

the paddles with a grace and elegance which the civilized man would

fail to acquire, and the narrow craft shot through the water at great

speed. The chief sat in silence at the stern. I occupied a palm-fibre

mat spread for me amidships. The very few words of Portuguese my

companions spoke or understood rendered conversation difficult, so the

stillness was broken only by the gentle splash of the paddles. On each

side the dense forest seemed absolutely impenetrable, but we at last

arrived at an opening. As we drew ashore I noticed that an Indian path

led directly inland.

Leaving our dug-out moored with a fibre rope to a large mangrove tree,

we started to thread our way through the forest, and finally reached a

clearing. Here we came upon a crowd of almost naked and extremely

dejected-looking women. Many of these, catching sight of me, sped into

the jungle like frightened deer. The chief's wife, however, at a word

from him, received me kindly, and after accepting a brass necklace with

evident pleasure, showed herself very affable. Poor lost Guatos! Their

dejected countenances, miserable grass huts, alive with vermin, and

their extreme poverty, were most touching. Inhabiting, as they do, one

of the hottest and dampest places on the earth's surface, where

mosquitos are numberless, the wonder is that they exist at all. Truly,

man is a strange being, who can adapt himself to equatorial heat or

polar frigidity. The Guatos' chief business in life seemed to consist

in sitting on fibre mats spread on the ground, and driving away the

bloodthirsty mosquitos from their bare backs. For this they use a fan

of their own manufacture, made from wild cotton, which there seems to

abound. Writing of mosquitos, let me say these Indian specimens were a

terror to us all. What numbers we killed! I could write this account in

their blood. It was _my_ blood, though--before they got it! Men who

hunt the tiger in cool bravery boiled with indignation before these

awful pests, which stabbed and stung with marvellous persistency, and

disturbed

the solitude of nature with their incessant humming. I write the

word _incessant_ advisedly, for I learned that there are several kinds

of mosquitos. Some work by day and others by night. Naturalists tell us

that only the female mosquito bites. Did they take a particular liking

to us because we were all males?

Some of the Indians paint their naked bodies in squares, generally with

red and black pigment. Their huts were in some cases large, but very

poorly constructed. When any members of the tribe are taken sick they

are supposed to be "possessed" by a stronger evil power, and the

sickness is "starved out." When the malady flies away the life

generally accompanies it. The dead are buried under the earth inside

the huts, and in some of the dwellings graves are quite numerous. This

custom of interior burial has probably been adopted because the wild

animals of the forest would otherwise eat the corpse. Horrible to

relate, their own half-wild dogs sometimes devour the dead, though an

older member of the tribe is generally left home to mount guard.

Seeing by the numerous gourds scattered around that they were drinking

_chicha_, I solicited some, being anxious to taste the beverage which

had been used so many centuries before by the old Incas. The wife of

the chief immediately tore off a branch of the feather palm growing

beside her, and, certainly within a minute, made a basket, into which

she placed a small gourd. Going to the other side of the clearing, she

commenced, with the agility of a monkey, to ascend a long sapling which

had been laid in a slanting position against a tall palm tree. The

long, graceful leaves of this cabbage palm had been torn open, and the

heart thus left to ferment. From the hollow cabbage the woman filled

the gourd, and lowered it to me by a fibre rope. The liquid I found to

be thick and milky, and the taste not unlike cider.

Prescott tells us that Atahuallpa, the Peruvian monarch, came to see

the conqueror, Pizarro, "quaffing chicha from golden goblets borne by

his attendants." [Footnote: Este Embajador traia servicio de Senor, i

cinco o seis Vasos de Oro fino, con que bebia, i con ellos daba a beber

a los Espanoles de la chicha que traia."--Xerez.] Golden goblets did

not mean much to King Atahuallpa, however, for his palace of five

hundred different apartments is said to have been tiled with beaten

gold.

In these Guato Indians I observed a marked difference to any others I

had visited, in that they permitted the hair to grow on their faces.

The chief was of quite patriarchal aspect, with full beard and mild,

intelligent-looking eyes. The savages inhabiting the Chaco consider

this custom extremely "dirty."

Before leaving these people I procured some of their bows and arrows,

and also several cleverly woven palm mats and cotton fans.

Some liquor our cook gave away had been taken out by the braves to

their women in another encampment. These spirits had so inflamed the

otherwise retiring, modest females that they, with the men, returned to

the steamer, clamoring for more. All the stores, along with some

liquors we carried, were under my care, and I kept them securely locked

up, but in my absence at the Indian camp the store-room had been broken

open, and our men and the Indians--men and women--had drunk long and

deep. A scene like Bedlam, or Dante's "Inferno," was taking place when

I returned. Willing as they were to listen to my counsel and admit that

I was certainly a great white teacher, with superior wisdom, on this

love for liquor and its debasing consequences they would hear no words.

The women and girls, like the men, would clamor for the raw alcohol,

and gulp it down in long draughts. When ardent spirits are more sought

after by women and girls than are beads and looking-glasses it surely

shows a terribly depraved taste. Even the chattering monkeys in the

trees overhead would spurn the poison and eagerly clutch the bright

trinket. Perhaps the looking-glasses I gave the poor females would,

after the orgies were over, serve to show them that their beauty was

not increased by this beastly carousal, and thus be a means of

blessing. It may be asked, Can the savage be possessed of pride and of

self-esteem? I unhesitatingly answer yes, as I have had abundant

opportunity of seeing. They will strut with peacock pride when wearing

a specially gaudy-colored headdress, although that may be their only

article of attire.

Having on board far more salt than we ourselves needed, I was enabled

to generously distribute much of that invaluable commodity among them.

That also, working in a different way, might be a means of restoring

them to a normal soundness of mind after we left.

Poor lost creatures! For this draught of the white man's poison, far

more terrible to them than the deadly nightshade of their forests, more

dangerous than the venom of the loathsome serpent gliding across their

path, they are willing to sell body or soul. Soul, did I say? They have

never heard of that. To them, so far as I could ascertain, a future

life is unknown. The explorer has penetrated some little way into their

dark forests in search of rubber, or anything else which it would pay

to exploit, but the missionary of the Cross has never sought to

illumine their darker minds. They live their little day and go out into

the unknown unconscious of the fact that One called Jesus, who was the

Incarnate God, died to redeem them. As a traveller, I have often

wondered why men should be willing to pay me hundreds of dollars to

explore those regions for ultimate worldly gain, and none should ever

offer to employ me in proclaiming the greatest wonder of all the

ages--the story of Calvary--for eternal gain. After all, are the

Indians more blind to the future than we are? Yet, strange to say, we

profess to believe in the teachings of that One who inculcated the

practice of laying up treasure in heaven, while they have not even

heard His name. For love of gain men have been willing to accompany me

through the most deadly fever-breeding morass, or to brave the poisoned

arrows of the lynx-eyed Indian, but few have ever offered to go and

tell of Him whom they profess to serve.

The suffocating atmosphere quite precluded the idea of writing, for a

pen, dipped in ink, would dry before reaching the paper, and the latter

be saturated with perspiration in a few seconds; so these observations

were penned later. So far as I could ascertain, the Romish Church has

never touched the Guatos, and, notwithstanding all I have said about

them, I unhesitatingly affirm that it is better so. Geo. R. Witte,

missionary to Brazil, says: "With one exception, all the priests with

whom I came in contact (when on a journey through Northern Brazil) were

immoral, drunken, and ignorant. The tribes who have come under priestly

care are decidedly inferior in morals, industry, and order to the

tribes who refuse to have anything to do with the whites. The Charentes

and Apinages have been, for years, under the care of Catholic

friars--this is the way I found them: both men and women walk about

naked."

"We heard not one contradiction of the general testimony that the

people who were not under the influence of the Roman Catholic Church as

it is in S. America were better morally than those who were."

[Footnote: Robert E. Speer, "Missions in South America."]

In Christendom organs peal out the anthems of Divine love, and

well-dressed worshippers chant in harmonious unison, "Lord, incline our

hearts to keep Thy law." That law says: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor

as thyself." To the question: "Who is my neighbor?" the Divine voice

answers: "A certain man." May he not be one of these neglected Indians?

CHAPTER VI.

ARRIVAL AT THE LAKE.

"It sleeps among a hundred hills

Where no man ever trod,

And only Nature's music fills

The silences of God."

After going about two thousand three hundred miles up this serpentine

river, we discovered the entrance to the lake. Many had been the

conjectures and counsels of would-be advisers when we started. Some

said that there was no entrance to the lake from the river; others,

that there was not sufficient depth of water for the steamer to pass

through. On our port bow rose frowning rocks of forbidding aspect.

Drawing nearer, we noticed, with mingled feelings of curiosity and

wonder, that the face of these rocks was rudely carved by unmistakably

Indian art. There were portrayed a rising sun, tigers' feet, birds'

feet, etc. Why were they thus carved? Are those rocks the everlasting

recorders of some old history--some deed of Indian daring in days of

old? What these hieroglyphics signify we may never know; the workman is

gone, and his stone hammer is buried with him. To twentieth century

civilization his carving tells nothing. No Indians inhabit the shores

of the lake now, perhaps because of this "writing on the wall."

With the leadsman in his place we slowly and cautiously entered the

unexplored lake, and thus for the first time in the world's history its

waters were ploughed by a steamer's keel.

Soon after our arrival the different guards were told off for the

silent watches. Night shut in upon the lake, and all nature slept. The

only lights on shore were those of the fire-flies as they danced

through the myrtle boughs. The stars in the heavens twinkled above us.

Now and again an alligator thrust his huge, ugly nose out of the water

and yawned, thus disturbing for the moment its placid surface, which

the pale moon illuminated with an ethereal light; otherwise stillness

reigned, or, rather, a calm mysterious peace which was deep and

profound. Somehow, the feeling crept upon us that we had become

detached from the world, though yet we lived. Afterwards, when the

tigers [Footnote: Jaguars are invariably called tigers in South

America.] on shore had scented our presence, sleep was often broken by

angry roars coming from the beach, near which we lay at anchor; but

before dawn our noisy visitors always departed, leaving only their

footprints. Early next morning, while the green moon was still shining

(the color of this heavenly orb perplexed us, it was a pure bottle

green), each one arose to his work. This was no pleasure excursion, and

duties, many and arduous, lay before the explorers. The hunter sallied

forth with his gun, and returned laden with pheasant and mountain hen,

and over his shoulder a fine duck, which, unfortunately, however, had

already begun to smell--the heat was so intense. In his wanderings he

had come upon a huge tapir, half eaten by a tiger, and saw footprints

of that lord of the forest in all directions.

Let me here say, that to our hunter we were indebted for many a good

dish, and when not after game he lured from the depths of the lake many

a fine perch or turbot. Fishing is an art in which I am not very

skilled, but one evening I borrowed his line. After a few moments'

waiting I had a "bite," and commenced to haul in my catch, which

struggled, kicked, and pulled until I shouted for help. My fish was one

of our Paraguayan sailors, who for sport had slipped down into the

water on the other side of the steamer, and, diving to my cord, had

grasped it with both hands. Not every fisher catches a man!

Lake Gaiba is a stretch of water ten miles long, with a narrow mouth

opening into the River Paraguay. The lake is surrounded by mountains,

clad in luxuriant verdure on the Bolivian side, and standing out in

bare, rugged lines on the Brazilian side. The boundary of the two

countries cuts the water into two unequal halves. The most prominent of

the mountains are now marked upon the exhaustive chart drawn out. Their

christening has been a tardy one, for who can tell what ages have

passed since they first came into being? Looking at Mount Ray, the

highest of these peaks, at sunset, the eye is startled by the strange

hues and rich tints there reflected. Frequently we asked ourselves: "Is

that the sun's radiance, or are those rocks the fabled 'Cliffs of Opal'

men have searched for in vain?" We often sat in a wonder of delight

gazing at the scene, until the sun sank out of sight, taking the "opal

cliffs" with it, and leaving us only with the dream.

On the shores of the lake the beach is covered with golden sand and

studded with innumerable little stones, clear as crystal, which

scintillate with all the colors of the rainbow. Among these pebbles I

found several arrowheads of jasper. In other parts the primeval forest

creeps down to the very margin, and the tree-roots bathe in the warm

waters. Looking across the quivering heat-haze, the eye rests upon

palms of many varieties, and giant trees covered with orchids and

parasites, the sight of which would completely intoxicate the

horticulturist. Butterflies, gorgeous in all the colors of the rainbow,

flit from flower to flower; and monkeys, with curiously human faces,

stare at the stranger from the tree-tops. White cotton trees,

tamarinds, and strangely shaped fruits grow everywhere, and round about

all are entwined festoons of trailing creepers, or the loveliest of

_scarlet_ mistletoe, in which humming-birds build their nests. Blue

macaws, parrots, and a thousand other birds fly to and fro, and the

black fire-bird darts across the sky, making lightning with every

flutter of his wings, which, underneath, are painted a bright, vivid

red. Serpents of all colors and sizes creep silently in the

undergrowth, or hang from the branches of the trees, their emerald eyes

ever on the alert; and the broad-winged eagle soars above all,

conscious of his majesty.

Here and there the coast is broken by silent streams flowing into the

lake from the unexplored regions beyond. These _riachos_ are covered

with lotus leaves and flowers, and also the Victoria Regia in all its

gorgeous beauty. Papyrusa, reeds and aquatic plants of all descriptions

grow on the banks of the streams, making a home for the white stork or

whiter _garza_. Looking into the clear warm waters you see little

golden and red fishes, and on the bed of the stream shells of pearl.

On the south side of the Gaiba, at the foot of the mountains, the beach

slopes gently down, and is covered with golden sand, in which crystals

sparkle as though set in fine gold by some cunning workman. A Workman,

yes--but not of earth, for nature is here untouched, unspoilt as yet by

man, and the traveller can look right away from it to its Creator.

During our stay in these regions the courses of several of the larger

streams were traced for some distance. On the Brazilian side there was

a river up which we steamed. Not being acquainted with the channel, we

had the misfortune to stick for two days on a tosca reef, which

extended a distance of sixty-five feet. [Footnote: The finding of tosca

at this point confirms the extent inland of the ancient Pampean

sea.--Colonel Church, in "Proceedings of the Royal Geographical

Society," January, 1902.] During this time, a curious phenomenon

presented itself to our notice. In one day we clearly saw the river

flow for six hours to the north-west, and for another six hours to the

south-east. This, of course, proved to us that the river's course

depends on the wind.

On the bank, right in front of where we lay, was a gnarled old tree,

which seemed to be the home, or parliament house, of all the paroquets

in the neighborhood. Scores of them kept up an incessant chatter the

whole time. In the tree were two or three hanging nests, looking like

large sacks suspended from the boughs. Ten or twenty birds lay in the

same nest, and you might find in them, at the one time, eggs just laid,

birds recently hatched, and others ready to fly. Sitting and rearing go

on concurrently. I procured a tame pair of this lovely breed of

paroquets from the Guatos. Their prevailing color was emerald green,

while the wings and tail were made up of tints of orange, scarlet, and

blue, and around the back of the bird was a golden sheen rarely found

even in equatorial specimens. Whether the bird is known to

ornithologists or not I cannot tell. One night our camp was pitched

near an anthill, inhabited by innumerable millions of those insects.

None of us slept well, for, although our hammocks were slung, as we

thought, away from them, they troubled us much. What was my horror next

morning when the sun, instead of lighting up the rainbow tints of my

birds, showed only a black moving mass of ants! My parrots had

literally been eaten alive by them!

But I am wandering on and the ship is still aground on the reef! After

much hauling and pulling and breaking of cables, she at last was got

off into deep water. We had not proceeded far, however, when another

shock made the vessel quiver. Were we aground again? No, the steamer

had simply pushed a lazy alligator out of its way, and he resented the

insult by a diabolical scowl at us.

Continuing on our way, we entered another body of hitherto unexplored

water, a fairy spot, covered with floating islands of lotus, anchored

with aquatic cables and surrounded by palm groves. On the shallow,

pebbly shore might be seen, here and there, scarlet flamingoes. These

beautiful birds stood on one leg, knee deep, dreaming of their

enchanted home. Truly it is a perfect paradise, but it is almost as

inaccessible as the Paradise which we all seek. What long-lost

civilizations have ruled these now deserted solitudes? Penetrate into

the dark, dank forest, as I have done, and ask the question. The only

answer is the howling of the monkeys and the screaming of the

cockatoos. You may start when you distinctly hear a bell tolling, but

it is no call to worship in some stately old Inca temple with its

golden sun and silver moon as deities. It is the wonderful bell-bird,

which can make itself heard three miles away, but it is found only

where man is not. Ruins of the old Incan and older pre-Incan

civilizations are come across, covered now with dense jungle, but their

builders have disappeared. To have left behind them until this day

ruins which rank with the pyramids for extent, and Karnak for grandeur,

proves their intelligence.

The peculiar rasping noise you now hear in the undergrowth has nothing

to do with busy civilization--'tis only the rattlesnake drawing his

slimy length among the dead leaves or tangled reeds. No, all that is

past, and this is an old new world indeed, and romance must not rob you

of self possession, for the rattle means that in the encounter either

he dies--or you.

Meanwhile the work on shore progressed. Paths were cut in different

directions and the wonders of nature laid bare. The ring of the axe and

the sound of falling trees marked the commencement of civilization in

those far-off regions. Ever and anon a loud report rang out from the

woods, for it might almost be said that the men worked with the axe in

one hand and a rifle in the other. Once they started a giant tapir

taking his afternoon snooze. The beast lazily got up and made off, but

not before he had turned his piercing eyes on the intruders, as though

wondering what new animals they were. Surely this was his first sight

of the "lords of creation," and probably his last, for a bullet quickly

whizzed after him. Another day the men shot a puma searching for its

prey, and numerous were the birds, beasts and reptiles that fell before

our arms. The very venomous _jaracucú_, a snake eight to twelve feet

long, having a double row of teeth in each jaw, is quite common here.

The forests are full of birds and beasts in infinite variety, as also

of those creatures which seem neither bird nor beast. There are large

black howling monkeys, and little black-faced ones with prehensile

tails, by means of which they swing in mid-air or jump from tree to

tree in sheer lightness of heart. There is also the sloth, which, as

its name implies, is painfully deliberate in its motions. Were I a

Scotchman I should say that "I dinna think that in a' nature there is a

mair curiouser cratur." Sidney Smith's summary of this strange animal

is that it moves suspended, rests suspended, sleeps suspended, and

passes its whole life in suspense. This latter state may also aptly

describe the condition of the traveller in those regions; for man,

brave though he may be, does not relish a _vis-á-vis_ with the enormous

anaconda, also to be seen there at most inconvenient times. I was able

to procure the skins of two of these giant serpents.

The leader of the "forest gang," a Paraguayan, wore round his neck a

cotton scapular bought from the priest before he started on the

expedition. This was supposed to save him from all dangers, seen and

unseen. Poor man, he was a good Roman Catholic, and often counted his

beads, but he was an inveterate liar and thief.

Taking into consideration the wild country, and the adventurous mission

which had brought us together, our men were not at all a bad class. One

of them, however, a black Brazilian, used to boast at times that _he

had killed his father while he slept._ In the quiet of the evening hour

he would relate the story with unnatural gusto.

We generally slept on the deck of the steamer, each under a thin

netting, while the millions of mosquitos buzzed outside--and inside

when they could steal a march. Mosquitos? Why _"mosquitos á la Paris"_

was one of the items on our menu one day. The course was not altogether

an imaginary one either. Having the good fortune to possess candles, I

used sometimes to read under my gauzy canopy. This would soon become so

black with insects of all descriptions as to shut out from my sight the

outside world.

After carefully surveying the Bolivian shore, we fixed upon a site for

the future port and town. [Footnote: The latitude of Port Quijarro is

17° 47' 35", and the longitude, west of Greenwich, 57° 44' 38". Height

above the sea, 558 feet.] Planting a hugh palm in the ground, with a

long bamboo nailed to the crown, we then solemnly unfurled the Bolivian

flag. This had been made expressly for the expedition by the hands of

Señora Quijarro, wife of the Bolivian minister residing in Buenos

Ayres. As the sun for the first time shone upon the brilliant colors of

the flag, nature's stillness was broken by a good old English hurrah,

while the hunter and several others discharged their arms in the air,

until the parrots and monkeys in the neighborhood must have wondered

(or is wondering only reserved for civilized man?) what new thing had

come to pass. There we, a small company of men in nature's solitudes,

each signed his name to the _Act of Foundation_ of a town, which in all

probability will mean a new era for Bolivia. We fully demonstrated the

fact that Puerto Quijarro will be an ideal port, through which the

whole commerce of south-eastern Bolivia can to advantage pass.

Next day the Secretary drew out four copies of this _Act_. One was for

His Excellency General Pando, President of the Bolivian Republic;

another for the Mayor of Holy Cross, the nearest Bolivian town, 350

miles distant; a third for Señor Quijarro; while the fourth was

enclosed in a stone bottle and buried at the foot of the flagstaff,

there to await the erection of the first building. Thus a commencement

has been made; the lake and shores are now explored. The work has been

thoroughly done, and the sweat of the brow was not stinted, for the

birds of the air hovered around the theodolite, even on the top of the

highest adjacent mountain. [Footnote: The opening of the country must,

from its geographical situation, be productive of political

consequences of the first magnitude to South America.--Report of the

Royal Geographical Society, January, 1902.]

At last, this work over and an exhaustive chart of the lake drawn up,

tools and tents collected, specimens of soil, stones, iron, etc.,

packed and labelled, we prepared for departure.

The weather had been exceptionally warm and we had all suffered much

from the sun's vertical rays, but towards the end of our stay the heat

was sweltering--killing! The sun was not confined to one spot in the

heavens, as in more temperate climes; here he filled all the sky, and

he scorched us pitilessly! Only at early morning, when the eastern sky

blushed with warm gold and rose tints, or at even, when the great

liquid ball of fire dropped behind the distant violet-colored hills,

could you locate him. Does the Indian worship this awful majesty out of

fear, as the Chinaman worships the devil?

Next morning dawned still and portentous. Not a zephyr breeze stirred

the leaves of the trees. The sweltering heat turned to a suffocating

one. As the morning dragged on we found it more and more difficult to

breathe; there seemed to be nothing to inflate our lungs. By afternoon

we stared helplessly at each other and gasped as we lay simmering on

the deck. Were we to be asphyxiated there after all? I had known as

many as two hundred a day to die in one South American city from this

cause. Surely mortal men never went through such awful, airless heat as

this and lived. We had been permitted to discover the lake, and if the

world heard of our death, would that flippant remark be used again, as

with previous explorers, "To make omelettes eggs must be broken"?

However, we were not to _melt_. Towards evening the barometer, which

had been falling all day, went lower and lower. All creation was still.

Not a sound broke the awful quiet; only in our ears there seemed to be

an unnatural singing which was painful, and we closed our eyes in

weariness, for the sun seemed to have blistered the very eyeballs. When

we mustered up sufficient energy to turn our aching eyes to the

heavens, we saw black storm-clouds piling themselves one above another,

and hope, which "springs eternal in the human breast," saw in them our

hope, our salvation.

The fall of the barometer, and the howling of the monkeys on shore

also, warned us of the approaching tempest, so we prepared for

emergencies by securing the vessel fore and aft under the lee of a

rugged _sierra_ before the storm broke--and break it did in all its

might.

Suddenly the wind swept down upon us with irresistible fury, and we

breathed--we lived again. So terrific was the sweep that giant trees,

which had braved a century's storms, fell to the earth with a crash.

The hurricane was truly fearful. Soon the waters of the lake were

lashed into foam. Great drops of rain fell in blinding torrents, and

every fresh roll of thunder seemed to make the mountains tremble, while

the lightning cleft asunder giant trees at one mighty stroke.

[Illustration: VICTORIA REGIA, THE WORLD'S LARGEST FLOWER]

In the old legends of the Inca, read on the "Quipus," we find that

Pachacamac and Viracocha, the highest gods, placed in the heavens

"Nusta," a royal princess, armed with a pitcher of water, which she was

to pour over the earth whenever it was needed. When the rain was

accompanied by thunder, lightning, and wind, the Indians believed that

the maiden's royal brother was teasing her, and trying to wrest the

pitcher from her hand. Nusta must indeed have been fearfully teased

that night, for the lightning of her eyes shot athwart the heavens and

the sky was rent in flame.

Often in those latitudes no rain falls for long months, but when once

the clouds open the earth is deluged! Weeks pass, and the zephyr

breezes scarcely move the leaves of the trees, but in those days of

calm the wind stores up his forces for a mighty storm. On this dark,

fearful night he blew his fiercest blasts. The wild beast was

affrighted from his lair and rushed down with a moan, or the mountain

eagle screamed out a wail, indistinctly heard through the moaning

sounds. During the whole night, which was black as wickedness, the wind

howled in mournful cadence, or went sobbing along the sand. As the

hours wore on we seemed to hear, in every shriek of the blast, the

strange tongue of some long-departed Indian brave, wailing for his

happy hunting-grounds, now invaded by the paleface. Coats and rugs,

that had not for many months been unpacked, were brought out, only in

some cases to be blown from us, for the wind seemed to try his hardest

to impede our departure. The rain soaked us through and through. Mists

rose from the earth, and mists came down from above. Next morning the

whole face of nature was changed.

After the violence of the tempest abated we cast off the ropes and

turned the prow of our little vessel civilizationward. When we entered

the lake the great golden sun gave us a warm welcome, now, at our

farewell, he refused to shine. The rainy season had commenced, but,

fortunately for us, after the work of exploration was done. This

weather continued--day after day clouds and rain. Down the rugged,

time-worn face of the mountains foaming streams rushed and poured, and

this was our last view--a good-bye of copious tears! Thus we saw the

lake in sunshine and storm, in light and darkness. It had been our aim

and ambition to reach it, and we rejoiced in its discovery. Remembering

that "we were the first who ever burst into that silent sea," we seemed

to form part of it, and its varying moods only endeared it to us the

more. In mining parlance, we had staked out our claims there, for--

"O'er no sweeter lake shall morning break,

Or noon cloud sail;

No fairer face than this shall take

The sunset's golden veil."

CHAPTER VII.

_PIEDRA BLANCA_.

In due time we again reached Piedra Blanca, and, notwithstanding our

ragged, thorn-torn garments, felt we were once more joined on to the

world.

The bubonic plague had broken out farther down the country, steamboats

were at a standstill, so we had to wait a passage down the river.

Piedra Blanca is an interesting little spot. One evening a tired mule

brought in the postman from the next town, Holy Joseph. He had been

eight days on the journey. Another evening a string of dusty mules

arrived, bringing loads of rubber and cocoa. They had been five months

on the way.

When the Chiquitana women go down to the bay for water, with their

pitchers poised on their heads, the sight is very picturesque.

Sometimes a little boy will step into one of the giant, traylike leaves

of the Victoria Regia, which, thus transformed into a fairy boat, he

will paddle about the quiet bay.

The village is built on the edge of the virgin forest, where the red

man, with his stone hatchet, wanders in wild freedom. It contains,

perhaps, a hundred inhabitants, chiefly civilized Chiquitanos Indians.

There is here a customs house, and a regular trade in rubber, which is

brought in from the interior on mule-back, a journey which often takes

from three to four months.

One evening during our stay two men were forcibly brought into the

village, having been caught in the act of killing a cow which they had

stolen. These men were immediately thrown into the prison, a small,

dark, palm-built hut. Next morning, ere the sun arose, their feet were

thrust into the stocks, and a man armed with a long hide whip thrashed

them until the blood flowed in streamlets down their bare backs! What

struck us as being delicately thoughtful was that while the whipping

proceeded another official tried his best to drown their piercing

shrieks by blowing an old trumpet at its highest pitch!

The women, although boasting only one loose white garment, walk with

the air and grace of queens, or as though pure Inca blood ran in their

veins. Their only adornment is a necklace of red corals and a few

inches of red or blue ribbon entwined in their long raven-black hair,

which hangs down to the waist in two plaits. Their houses are

palm-walled, with a roof of palm-leaves, through which the rain pours

and the sun shines. Their chairs are logs of wood, and their beds are

string hammocks. Their wants are few, as there are no electric-lighted

store windows to tempt them. Let us leave them in their primitive

simplicity. Their little, delicately-shaped feet are prettier without

shoes and stockings, and their plaited hair without Parisian hats and

European tinsel. They neither read nor write, and therefore cannot

discuss politics. Women's rights they have never heard of. Their

bright-eyed, naked little children play in the mud or dust round the

house, and the sun turns their already bronze-colored bodies into a

darker tint; but the Chiquitana woman has never seen a white baby, and

knows nothing of its beauty, so is more than satisfied with her own.

The Indian child does not suffer from teething, for all have a small

wooden image tied round the neck, and the little one, because of this,

is supposed to be saved from all baby ailments! Their husbands and sons

leave them for months while they go into the interior for rubber or

cocoa, and when one comes back, riding on his bullock or mule, he is

affectionately but silently received. The Chiquitano seldom speaks, and

in this respect he is utterly unlike the Brazilian. The women differ

from our mothers and sisters and wives, for they (the Chiquitanas) have

nothing to say. After all, ours are best, and a headache is often

preferable to companioning with the dumb. I unhesitatingly say, give me

the music, even if I have to suffer the consequences.

The waiting-time was employed by our hunter in his favorite sport. One

day he shot a huge alligator which was disporting itself in the water

some five hundred yards from the shore. Taking a strong rope, we went

out in an Indian dug-out to tow it to land. As my friend was the more

dexterous in the use of the paddle, he managed the canoe, and I, with

much difficulty, fixed the rope by a noose to the monster's tail. When

the towing, however, commenced, the beast seemed to regain his life. He

dived and struggled for freedom until the water was lashed into foam.

He thrust his mighty head out of the water and opened his jaws as

though warning us he could crush the frail dug-out with one snap. Being

anxious to obtain his hide, and momentarily expecting his death, for he

was mortally wounded, I held on to the rope with grim persistency. He

dived under the boat and lifted it high, but as his ugly nose came out

on the other side the canoe regained its position in the water. He then

commenced to tow us, but, refusing to obey the helm, took us to all

points of the compass. After an exciting cruise the alligator gave a

deep dive and the rope broke, giving him his liberty again. On leaving

us he gave what Waterton describes as "a long-suppressed, shuddering

sigh, so loud and so peculiar that it can be heard a mile." The bullet

had entered the alligator's head, but next morning we saw he was still

alive and able to "paddle his own canoe." The reader may be surprised

to learn that these repulsive reptiles lay an egg with a pure white

shell, fair to look upon, and that the egg is no larger than a hen's.

One day I was called to see a dead man for whom a kind of wake was

being held. He was lying in state in a grass-built hovel, and raised up

from the mud floor on two packing-cases of suspiciously British origin.

His hard Indian face was softened in death, but the observant eye could

trace a stoical resignation in the features. Several men and women were

sitting around the corpse counting their beads and drinking native

spirits, with a dim, hazy belief that that was the right thing to do.

They had given up their own heathen customs, and, being civilized,

must, of course, be Roman Catholics. They were "reduced," as Holy

Mother Church calls it, long ago, and, of course, believe that

civilization and Roman Catholicism are synonymous terms. Poor souls!

How they stared and wondered when they that morning heard for the first

time the story of Jesus, who tasted death for us that we might live. To

those in the home lands this is an old story, but do they who preach it

or listen to it realize that to millions it is still the newest thing

under the sun?

Next day the man was quietly carried away to the little forest clearing

reserved for the departed, where a few wooden crosses lift their heads

among the tangled growth. Some of these crosses have four rudely carved

letters on them, which you decipher as I. N. R. I. The Indian cannot

tell you their meaning, but he knows they have something to do with his

new religion.

As far as I could ascertain, the departed had no relatives. One after

another had been taken from him, and now he had gone, for "when he is

forsaken, withered and shaken, what can an old man do but die?"--it is

the end of all flesh. Poor man! Had he been able to retain even a spark

of life until Holy Week, he might then have been saved from purgatory.

Rome teaches that on two days in the year--Holy Thursday and Corpus

Christi--the gates of heaven are unguarded, because, they say, _God is

dead_. All people who die on those days go straight to heaven, however

bad they may have been! At no other time is that gate open, and every

soul must pass through the torments of purgatory.

A missionary in Oruru wrote: "The Thursday and Friday of so-called Holy

Week, when Christ's image lay in a coffin and was carried through the

streets, _God being dead_, was the time for robberies, and some one

came to steal from us, but only got about fifty dollars' worth of

building material. Holy Week terminates with the 'Saturday of Glory,'

when spirits are drunk till there is not a dram left in the

drink-shops, which frequently bear such names as 'The Saviour of the

World,' 'The Grace of God,' 'The Fountain of Our Lady,' etc. The poor

deluded Romanists have a holiday on that day over the tragic end of

Judas. A life-size representation of the betrayer is suspended high in

the air in front of the cafés. At ten a.m. the church bells begin to

ring, and this is the signal for lighting the fuse. Then, with a flash

and a bang, every vestige of the effigy has disappeared! At night, if

the town is large enough to afford a theatre, the crowds wend their way

thither. This place of very questionable amusement will often bear the

high-sounding name, _Theatre of the Holy Ghost!_"

There is no church or priest in the village of Piedra Blanca. Down on

the beach there is a church bell, which the visitor concludes is a

start in that direction, but he is told that it is destined for the

town of Santa Cruz de la Sierra, three hundred miles inland. The bell

was a present to the church by some pious devotee, but the money

donated did not provide for its removal inland. This cost the priests

refuse to pay, and the Chiquitanos equally refuse to transport it free.

There is no resident priest to make them, so there it stays. In the

meantime the bell is slung up on three poles. It was solemnly beaten

with a stick on Christmas Eve to commemorate the time when the "Mother

of Heaven" gave birth to her child Jesus. In one of the principal

houses of the village the scene was most vividly reproduced. A small

arbor was screened off by palm leaves, in which were hung little

colored candles. Angels of paper were suspended from the roof, that

they might appear to be bending over the Virgin, which was a

highly-colored fashion-plate cut from a Parisian journal that somehow

had found its way there. The child Jesus appeared to be a Mellin's

Food-fed infant. Round this fairy scene the youth and beauty of the

place danced and drank liberal potations of chicha, the Bolivian

spirits, until far on into morning, when all retired to their hammocks

to dream of their goddess and her lovely babe.

After this paper Virgin the next most prominent object of worship I saw

in Piedra Blanca was a saint with a dress of vegetable fibre, long hair

that had once adorned a horse's tail, and eyes of pieces of clamshell.

Poor, dark Bolivia! It would be almost an impossible thing to

exaggerate the low state of religion there. A communication from Sucre

reads: "The owners of images of Jesus as a child have been getting

masses said for their figures. A band of music is employed, and from

the church to the house a procession is formed. A scene of intoxication

follows, which only ends when a good number lie drunk before the

image--the greater the number the greater the honor to the image?" The

peddler of chicha carries around a large stone jar, about a yard in

depth. The payment for every drink sold is dropped into the jar of

liquor, so the last customers get the most "tasty" decoction.

Naturally the masses like a religion of license, and are as eager as

the priests to uphold it. Read a tale of the persecution of a

nineteenth century missionary there. Mr. Payne in graphic language

tells the story:

"Excommunication was issued. To attend a meeting was special sin, and

only pardoned by going on the knees to the bishop. Sermons against us

were preached in all the churches. I was accused before the Criminal

Court. It was said I carried with me the 'special presence' of the

devil, and had blasphemed the Blessed Virgin, and everyone passing

should say: 'Maria, Joseph.' One day a crowd collected, and sacristans

mixed with the multitude, urging them on to 'vengeance on the

Protestants.' About two p.m. we heard the roar of furious thousands,

and like a river let loose they rushed down on our house. Paving-stones

were quickly torn up, and before the police arrived windows and doors

were smashed, and about a thousand voices were crying for blood. We

cried to the Lord, not expecting to live much longer. The Chief of

Police and his men were swept away before the mob, and now the door

burst in before the huge stones and force used. There were two parties,

one for murder and one for robbery. I was beaten and dragged about,

while the cry went up, 'Death to the Protestant!' The fire was blazing

outside, as they had lots of kerosene, and with all the forms, chairs,

texts, clothes and books the street was a veritable bonfire. Everything

they could lay hands on was taken. At this moment the cry arose that

the soldiers were coming, and a cavalry regiment charged down the

street, carrying fear into the hearts of the people. A second charge

cleared the street, and several soldiers rode into the _patio_ slashing

with their swords."

In this riot the missionary had goods to the value of one thousand

dollars burnt, and was himself hauled before the magistrates and, after

a lengthy trial, condemned to _die_ for heresy!

Baronius, a Roman Catholic writer, says: "The ministry of Peter is

twofold--to feed and to kill; for the Lord said, 'Feed My sheep,' and

he also heard a voice from heaven saying, 'Kill and eat.'" Bellarmine

argues for the necessity of _burning_ heretics. He says: "Experience

teaches that there is no other remedy, for the Church has proceeded by

slow steps, and tried all remedies. First, she only excommunicated.

Then she added a fine of money, and afterwards exile. Lastly she was

compelled to come to the punishment of death. If you threaten a fine of

money, they neither fear God nor regard men, knowing that fools will

not be wanting to believe in them, and by whom they may be sustained.

If you shut them in prison, or send them into exile, they corrupt those

near to them with their words, and those at a distance with their

books. Therefore, the only remedy is to send them betimes into their

own place."

As this mediaeval sentence against Mr. Payne could hardly be carried

out in the nineteenth century, he was liberated, but had to leave the

country. He settled in another part of the Republic. In a letter from

him now before me as I write he says: "The priests are circulating all

manner of lies, telling the people that we keep images of the Virgin in

order to scourge them every night. At Colquechaca we were threatened

with burning, as it was rumored that our object was to do away with the

Roman Catholic religion, which would mean a falling off in the

opportunities for drunkenness." So we see he is still persecuted.

The Rev. A. G. Baker, of the Canadian Baptist Mission, wrote: "The

Bishop of La Paz has sent a letter to the Minister of Public Worship of

which the following is the substance: 'It is necessary for me to call

attention to the Protestant meetings being held in this city, which

cause scandal and alarm throughout the whole district, and which are

contrary to the law of Bolivia. Moreover, it is indispensable that we

prevent the sad results which must follow such teachings, so contrary

to the true religion. On the other hand, if this is not stopped, _we

shall see a repetition of the scenes that recently took place in

Cochabamba_.'" [Footnote: Referring to the sacking and burning of Mr.

Payne's possessions previously referred to.]

Bolivia was one of the last of the Republics to hold out against

"liberty of worship," but in 1907 this was at last declared. Great

efforts were made that this law should not be passed.

In my lectures on this continent I have invariably stated that in South

America the priest is the real ruler of the country. I append a recent

despatch from Washington, which is an account of a massacre of

revolutionary soldiers, under most revolting circumstances, committed

at the instigation of the ecclesiastical authorities: "The Department

of State has been informed by the United States Minister at La Paz,

Bolivia, that Col. Pando sent 120 men to Ayopaya. On arriving at the

town of Mohoza, the commander demanded a loan of two hundred dollars

from the priest of the town, and one hundred dollars from the mayor.

These demands being refused, the priest and the mayor were imprisoned.

Meanwhile, however, the priest had despatched couriers to the Indian

village, asking that the natives attack Pando's men. A large crowd of

Indians came, and, in spite of all measures taken to pacify them, the

arms of the soldiers were taken away, the men subjected to revolting

treatment, and finally locked inside the church for the night. In the

morning the priest, after celebrating the so-called 'mass of agony,'

allowed the Indians to take out the unfortunate victims, two by two,

and 103 were deliberately murdered, each pair by different tortures.

Seventeen escaped death by having departed the day previous on another

mission."

After Gen. Pando was elected President of the Republic of Bolivia,

priestly rule remained as strong as ever. To enter on and retain his

office he must perforce submit to Church authority. When in his employ,

however, I openly declared myself a Protestant missionary; and, because

of exploration work, was made a Bolivian citizen.

In 1897 it was my great joy to preach the gospel in Ensenada. Many and

attentive were the listeners as for the first time in their lives they

were told of the Man of Calvary who died that they might live. With

exclamations of wonder they sometimes said: "What fortunate people we

are to have heard such words!" Four men and five women were born again.

Ensenada, built on a malarial swamp, was reeking with miasma, and the

houses were raised on posts about a yard above the slime. I was in

consequence stricken with malarial fever. One day a man who had

attended the meetings came into my room, and, kneeling down, asked the

Lord not to let me suffer, but to take me quickly. After long weeks of

illness, God, however, raised me up again, and the meetings were

resumed, when the reason of the priest's non-interference was made

known to me. He had been away on a long vacation, and, on his return,

hearing of my services, he ordered the church bells rung furiously. On

my making enquiries why the bells clanged so, I was informed that a

special service was called in the church. At that service a special

text was certainly taken, for I was the text. During the course of the

sermon, the preacher in his fervid eloquence even forbade the people to

look at me. After that my residence in the town was most difficult. The

barber would not cut my hair, nor would the butcher sell me his meat,

and I have gone into stores with the money ostentatiously showing in my

hand only to hear the word, "_Afuera_!" (Get out!) When I appeared on

the street I was pelted with stones by the men, while the women ran

away from me with covered faces! It was now a sin to look at me!

I reopened the little hall, however, for public services. It had been

badly used and was splashed with mud and filth. The first night men

came to the meetings in crowds just to disturb, and one of these shot

at me, but the bullet only pierced the wall behind. A policeman marched

in and bade me accompany him to the police station, and on the way

thither I was severely hurt by missiles which were thrown at me. An

official there severely reprimanded me for thus disturbing the quiet

town, and I was ushered in before the judge. That dignified gentleman

questioned me as to the object of my meetings. Respectfully answering,

I said: "To tell the people how they can be saved from sin." Then, as

briefly as possible, I unfolded my mission. The man's countenance

changed. Surely my words were to him an idle tale--he knew them not.

After cautioning me not to repeat the offence, he gave me my liberty,

but requested me to leave the town. Rev. F. Penzotti, of the B. & F. B.

Society, was imprisoned in a dungeon for eight long months, so I was

grateful for deliverance.

An acquaintance who was eye-witness to the scene, though himself not a

Christian, tells the following sad story:

"Away near the foot of the great Andes, nestling quietly in a fertile

valley, shut away, one would think, from all the world beyond, lay the

village of E---. The inhabitants were a quiet, home-loving people, who

took life as they found it, and as long as they had food for their

mouths and clothes for their backs, cared little for anything else. One

matter, however, had for some little time been troubling them, viz.,

the confession of their sins to a priest. After due consideration, it

was decided to ask Father A., living some seventeen leagues distant, to

state the lowest sum for which he would come to receive their

confessions. 'One hundred dollars,' he replied, 'is the lowest I can

accept, and as soon as you send it I will come.'

"After a great effort, for they were very poor, forty dollars was

raised amongst them, and word was sent to Father A. that they could not

possibly collect any more. Would he take pity on them and accept that

sum? 'What! only forty dollars in the whole of E---,' was his reply,

'and you dare to offer me that! No! I will not come, and, furthermore,

from this day I pronounce a curse on your village, and every living

person and thing there. Your children will all sicken and die, your

cattle all become covered with disease, and you will know no comfort

nor happiness henceforth. I, Father A., have said it, and it will come

to pass.'

"Where was the quiet, peaceful scene of a few weeks before? Gone, and

in its place all terror and confusion. These ignorant people, believing

the words of the priest, gathered together their belongings and fled.

As I saw those poor, simple people leaving the homes which had

sheltered them for years, as well as their ancestors before them, and

with feverish haste hurrying down the valley--every few minutes looking

back, with intense sorrow and regret stamped on their faces--I thought

surely these people need some one to tell them of Jesus, for, little as

I know about Him, I am convinced that He does not wish them to be

treated thus."

The priest is satisfied with nothing less than the most complete

submission of the mind and body of his flock. A woman must often give

her last money for masses, and a man toil for months on the

well-stocked land of the divine father to save his soul. If he fail to

do this, or any other sentence the priest may impose, he is condemned

to eternal perdition.

Mr. Patrick, of the R. B. M. U., has described to me how, soon after he

landed in Trujilla, he attended service at a Jesuit church. He had

introduced some gospels into the city, and a special sermon was

preached against the Bible. During the service the priest produced one

of the gospels, and, holding it by the covers, solemnly put the leaves

into the burning candle by his side, and then stamped on the ashes on

the pulpit floor. The same priest, however, Ricardo Gonzales by name,

thought it no wrong to have seventeen children to various mothers, and

his daughters were leaders in society. "Men love darkness rather than

light because their deeds are evil." In Trujilla, right opposite my

friend's house, there lived, at the same time, a highly respected

priest, who had, with his own hands, lit the fire that burnt alive a

young woman who had embraced Christianity through missionary preaching.

Bear in mind, reader, I am not writing of the dark ages, but of what

occurred just outside Trujilla during my residence in the country. Even

in 1910, Missionary Chapman writes of a convert having his feet put in

the stocks for daring to distribute God's Word. [Footnote: I never saw

greater darkness excepting in Central Africa. I visited 70 of the

largest cathedrals, and, after diligent enquiry, found only one Bible,

and that a Protestant Bible about to be burned--Dr. Robert E. Speer, in

"Missionary Review of the World," August, 1911.]

Up to four years ago, the statute was in force that "Every one who

directly or through any act conspires to establish in Bolivia any other

religion than that which the republic professes, namely, that of the

Roman Catholic Apostolic Church, is a traitor, and shall suffer the

penalty of death."

After a week's stay in Piedra Blanca, during which I had ample time for

such comparisons as these I have penned, quarantine lifted, and the

expedition staff separated. I departed on horseback to inspect a tract

of land on another frontier of Bolivia 1,300 miles distant.

PART III.

PARAGUAY

[Illustration: AN INDIAN AND HIS GOD NANDEYARA]

"I need not follow the beaten path;

I do not hunt for any path;

I will go where there is no path,

And leave a trail."

PARAGUAY

Paraguay, though one of the most isolated republics of South America,

is one of the oldest. A hundred years before the "Mayflower" sailed

from old Plymouth there was a permanent settlement of Spaniards near

the present capital. The country has 98,000 square miles of territory,

but a population of only 800,000. Paraguay may almost be called an

Indian republic, for the traveller hears nothing but the soft Guarani

language spoken all over the country. It is in this republic that the

yerba máté grows. That is the chief article of commerce, for at least

fifteen millions of South Americans drink this tea, already frequently

referred to. Thousands of tons of the best oranges are grown, and its

orange groves are world-famed.

The old capital, founded in 1537, was built without regularity of plan,

but the present city, owing to the despotic sway of Francia, is most

symmetrical. That South American Nero issued orders for all houses that

were out of his lines to be demolished by their owners. "One poor man

applied to know what remuneration he was to have, and the dictator's

answer was: 'A lodgment gratis in the public prison.' Another asked

where he was to go, and the answer was, 'To a state dungeon.' Both

culprits were forthwith lodged in their respective new residences, and

their houses were levelled to the ground."

"Such was the terror inspired by the man that the news that he was out

would clear the streets. A white Paraguayan dared not utter his name.

During his lifetime he was 'El Supremo,' and after he was dead for

generations he was referred to simply as 'El Difunto.'" [Footnote:

Robertson's "Reign of Terror."]

Paraguay, of all countries, has been most under the teaching of the

Jesuit priest, and the people in consequence are found to be the most

superstitious. Being an inland republic, its nearest point a thousand

miles from the sea-coast, it has been held in undisputed possession.

Here was waged between 1862 and 1870 what history describes as the most

annihilating war since Carthage fell. The little republic, standing out

for five and a half years against five other republics, fought with

true Indian bravery and recklessness, until for every man in the

country there could be numbered nine women (some authorities say

eleven); and this notwithstanding the fact that the women in thousands

carried arms and fought side by side with the men. The dictator Lopez,

who had with such determination of purpose held out so long, was

finally killed, and his last words, "_Muero con la patria_" (I die with

the country) were truly prophetic, for the country has never risen

since.

Travellers agree in affirming that of all South Americans the

Paraguayans are the most mild-mannered and lethargic; yet when these

people are once aroused they fight with tigerish pertinacity. The pages

of history may be searched in vain for examples of warfare waged at

such odds; but the result is invariably the same, the weaker nation,

whether right or wrong, goes under. Although the national mottoes vary

with the different flags, yet the Chilian is the most universally

followed in South America, as elsewhere: "_Por la razon ó la fuerza_"

(By right or by might). The Paraguayans contended heroically for what

they considered their rights, and such bloody battles were fought that

at Curupaitá alone 5,000 dead and dying were left on the field! Added

to the carnage of battle was disease on every hand. The worst epidemic

of smallpox ever known in the annals of history was when the Brazilians

lost 43,000 men, while this war was being waged against Paraguay. One

hundred thousand bodies were left unburied, and on them the wild

animals and vultures gorged themselves. The saying now is a household

word, that the jaguar of those lands is the most to be dreaded, through

having tasted so much human blood.

"Lopez, the cause of all this sacrifice and misery, has gone to his

final account, his soul stained with the blood of seven hundred

thousand of his people, the victims of his ambition and cruelty."

Towns which flourished before the outbreak of hostilities were sacked

by the emboldened Indians from the Chaco and wiped off the map, San

Salvador (Holy Saviour) being a striking example. I visited the ruins

of this town, where formerly dwelt about 8,000 souls. Now the streets

are grass-grown, and the forest is creeping around church and barracks,

threatening to bury them. I rode my horse through the high portal of

the cannon-battered church, while the stillness of the scene reminded

me of a city of the dead. City of the dead, truly--men and women and

children who have passed on! My horse nibbled the grass growing among

the broken tiles of the floor, while I, in imagination, listened to the

"passing bell" in the tower above me, and under whose shade I sought

repose. A traveller, describing this site, says: "It is a place of

which the atmosphere is one great mass of malaria, and the heat

suffocating--where the surrounding country is an uninterrupted

marsh--where venomous insects and reptiles abound." San Salvador as a

busy mart has ceased to exist, and the nearest approach to "the human

form divine," found occasionally within its walls, is the howling

monkey. Such are the consequences of war! During the last ten years

Paraguay has been slowly recovering from the terrible effects of this

war, but a republic composed mostly of women is severely handicapped.

[Footnote: Would the suffragettes disagree with the writer here?]

Paraguay is a poor land; the value of its paper currency, like that of

most South American countries, fluctuates almost daily. In 1899 the

dollar was worth only twelve cents, and for five gold dollars I have

received in exchange as many as forty-six of theirs. Yet there is a

great future for Paraguay. It has been called the Paradise of South

America, and although the writer has visited sixteen different

countries of the world, he thinks of Paraguay with tender longing. It

is perhaps the richest land on earth naturally, and produces so much

máte that one year's production would make a cup of tea for every man,

woman and child on the globe. Oranges and bananas can be bought at six

cents a hundred, two millions of cattle fatten on its rich pasture

lands; but, of all the countries the writer has travelled in, Mexico

comes first as a land of beggars, and poor Paraguay comes second.