water on them with their two hands, as the animals stood nervously
shrinking from each splash, until they were quite wet through and running
down, when they stood quietly, with their tails tucked in between their
legs.
Night came on, as it does in those latitudes, no twilight intervening,
and from the rows of houses came the faint lights of wicks burning in
bowls of grease, whilst from beneath the orange trees was heard the
tinkling of guitars.
Enormous bats soared about noiselessly, and white-dressed couples
lingered about the corners of the streets, and men stood talking, pressed
closely up against the wooden gratings of the windows, to women hidden
inside the room. The air was heavy with the languorous murmur of the
tropic night, and gradually the lights one by one were extinguished, and
the tinkling of the guitars was stilled. The moon came out, serene and
glorious, showing each stone upon the sandy trails as clearly as at
midday. Saddling their horses, the four Correntinos silently struck the
trail to Itapua, and bands of women moved off along the forest tracks
towards their homes, walking in Indian file. Hijinio Rojas, who had
saddled up to put the Correntinos on the right road, emerged into the
moonlit plaza, his shadow outlined so sharply on the grass it seemed it
had been drawn, and then, entering a side street, disappeared into the
night. The shrill neighing of his horse appeared as if it bade farewell
to its companions, now far away upon the Itapua trail. Noises that rise
at night from forests in the tropics sound mysteriously, deep in the
woods. It seemed as if a population silent by day was active and on
foot, and from the underwood a thick white mist arose, shrouding the
sleeping town.
Little by little, just as a rising tide covers a reef of rocks, it
submerged everything in its white, clinging folds. The houses
disappeared, leaving the plaza seething like a lake, and then the church
was swallowed up, the towers struggling, as it were, a little, just as a
wreath of seaweed on a rock appears to fight against the tide. Then they
too disappeared, and the conquering mist enveloped everything. All that
was left above the sea of billowing white were the two topmost tufts of
the tall, feathery palms.
XV
BOPICUÁ
THE great corral at Bopicuá was full of horses. Greys, browns, bays,
blacks, duns, chestnuts, roans (both blue and red), skewbalds and
piebalds, with claybanks, calicos, buckskins, and a hundred shades and
markings, unknown in Europe, but each with its proper name in Uruguay and
Argentina, jostled each other, forming a kaleidoscopic mass.
A thick dust rose from the corral and hung above their heads. Sometimes
the horses stood all huddled up, gazing with wide distended eyes and
nostrils towards a group of men that lounged about the gate. At other
times that panic fear that seizes upon horses when they are crushed
together in large numbers, set them a-galloping. Through the dust-cloud
their footfalls sounded muffled, and they themselves appeared like
phantoms in a mist. When they had circled round a little they stopped,
and those outside the throng, craning their heads down nearly to the
ground, snorted, and then ran back, arching their necks and carrying
their tails like flags. Outside the great corral was set Parodi’s camp,
below some China trees, and formed of corrugated iron and hides, stuck on
short uprights, so that the hides and iron almost came down upon the
ground, in gipsy fashion. Upon the branches of the trees were hung
saddles, bridles, halters, hobbles, lazos, and boleadoras, and underneath
were spread out saddle-cloths to dry. Pieces of meat swung from the low
gables of the hut, and under the low eaves was placed a “catre,” the
canvas scissor-bedstead of Spain and of her colonies in the New World.
Upon the catre was a heap of ponchos, airing in the sun, their bright and
startling colours looking almost dingy in the fierce light of a March
afternoon in Uruguay. Close to the camp stood several bullock-carts,
their poles supported on a crutch, and their reed-covered tilts giving
them an air of huts on wheels. Men sat about on bullocks’ skulls, around
a smouldering fire, whilst the “maté” circulated round from man to man,
after the fashion of a loving-cup. Parodi, the stiff-jointed son of
Italian parents, a gaucho as to clothes and speech, but still
half-European in his lack of comprehension of the ways of a wild horse.
Arena, the capataz from Entre-Rios, thin, slight, and nervous, a man who
had, as he said, in his youth known how to read and even guide the pen;
but now “things of this world had turned him quite unlettered, and made
him more familiar with the lazo and the spurs.” The mulatto Pablo
Suarez, active and cat-like, a great race-rider and horse-tamer, short
and deep-chested, with eyes like those of a black cat, and toes,
prehensile as a monkey’s, that clutched the stirrup when a wild colt
began to buck, so that it could not touch its flanks. They and Miguel
Paralelo, tall, dark, and handsome, the owner of some property, but drawn
by the excitement of a cowboy’s life to work for wages, so that he could
enjoy the risk of venturing his neck each day on a “baguál,” {187} with
other peons as El Correntino and Venancio Baez, were grouped around the
fire. With them were seated Martin el Madrileño, a Spanish horse-coper,
who had experienced the charm of gaucho life, together with Silvestre
Ayres, a Brazilian, slight and olive-coloured, well-educated, but better
known as a dead pistol-shot than as man of books. They waited for their
turn at maté, or ate great chunks of meat from a roast cooked upon a
spit, over a fire of bones. Most of the men were tall and sinewy, with
that air of taciturnity and self-equilibrium that their isolated lives
and Indian blood so often stamp upon the faces of those centaurs of the
plains. The camp, set on a little hill, dominated the country for miles
on every side. Just underneath it, horses and more horses grazed.
Towards the west it stretched out to the woods that fringe the Uruguay,
which, with its countless islands, flowed between great tracks of forest,
and formed the frontier with the Argentine.
Between the camp and the corrals smouldered a fire of bones and ñandubay,
and by it, leaning up against a rail, were set the branding-irons that
had turned the horses in the corral into the property of the British
Government. All round the herd enclosed, ran horses neighing, seeking
their companions, who were to graze no more at Bopicuá, but be sent off
by train and ship to the battlefields of Europe to die and suffer, for
they knew not what, leaving their pastures and their innocent comradeship
with one another till the judgment day. Then, I am sure, for God must
have some human feeling after all, things will be explained to them,
light come into their semi-darkness, and they will feed in prairies where
the grass fades not, and springs are never dry, freed from the saddle,
and with no cruel spur to urge them on they know not where or why.
For weeks we had been choosing out the doomed five hundred. Riding,
inspecting, and examining from dawn till evening, till it appeared that
not a single equine imperfection could have escaped our eyes. The
gauchos, who all think that they alone know anything about a horse, were
all struck dumb with sheer amazement. It seemed to them astonishing to
take such pains to select horses that for the most part would be killed
in a few months. “These men,” they said, “certainly all are doctors at
the job. They know even the least defect, can tell what a horse thinks
about and why. Still, none of them can ride a horse if he but shakes his
ears. In their bag surely there is a cat shut up of some kind or
another. If not, why do they bother so much in the matter, when all that
is required is something that can carry one into the thickest of the
fight?”
The sun began to slant a little, and we had still three leagues to drive
the horses to the pasture where they had to pass the night for the last
time in freedom, before they were entrained. Our horses stood outside of
the corral, tied to the posts, some saddled with the “recado,” {190} its
heads adorned with silver, some with the English saddle, that out of
England has such a strange, unserviceable look, much like a saucepan on a
horse’s back. Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared, driving a
point of horses, which, he said, “to leave would be a crime against the
sacrament.” “These are all pingos,” he exclaimed, “fit for the saddle of
the Lord on High, all of them are bitted in the Brazilian style, can turn
upon a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can gallop round a
bullock’s head upon the ground, so that the rider can keep his hand upon
it all the time.” The speaker by his accent was a Brazilian. His face
was olive-coloured, his hair had the suspicion of a kink. His horse, a
cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was evidently only half-tamed,
and snorted loudly as it bounded here and there, making its silver
harness jingle and the rider’s poncho flutter in the air. Although time
pressed, the man’s address was so persuasive, his appearance so much in
character with his great silver spurs just hanging from his heel, his
jacket turned up underneath his elbow by the handle of his knife, and, to
speak truth, the horses looked so good and in such high condition that we
determined to examine them, and told their owner to drive them into a
corral.
Once again we commenced the work that we had done so many times of
mounting and examining. Once more we fought, trying to explain the
mysteries of red tape to unsophisticated minds, and once again our
“domadores” sprang lightly, barebacked, upon the horses they had never
seen before, with varying results. Some of the Brazilian’s horses bucked
like antelopes, El Correntino and the others of our men sitting them
barebacked as easily as an ordinary man rides over a small fence. To all
our queries why they did not saddle up we got one answer, “To ride with
the recado is but a pastime only fit for boys.” So they went on, pulling
the horses up in three short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails and manes
tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or two from the corral. Then,
slipping off, gave their opinion that the particular “bayo,” “zaino,” or
“gateao” was just the thing to mount a lancer on, and that the speaker
thought he could account for a good tale of Boches if he were over there
in the Great War. This same great war, which they called “barbarous,”
taking a secret pleasure in the fact that it showed Europeans not a whit
more civilised than they themselves, appeared to them something in the
way of a great pastime from which they were debarred.
Most of them, when they sold a horse, looked at him and remarked,
“Pobrecito, you will go to the Great War,” just as a man looks at his son
who is about to go, with feelings of mixed admiration and regret.
After we had examined all the Brazilian’s “Tropilla” so carefully that he
said, “By Satan’s death, your graces know far more about my horses than I
myself, and all I wonder is that you do not ask me if all of them have
not complied with all the duties of the Church,” we found that about
twenty of them were fit for the Great War. Calling upon Parodi and the
capataz of Bopicuá, who all the time had remained seated round the
smouldering fire and drinking maté, to prepare the branding-irons, the
peons led them off, our head man calling out “Artilleria” or
“Caballeria,” according to their size. After the branding, either on the
hip for cavalry and on the neck for the artillery, a peon cut their manes
off, making them as ugly as a mule, as their late owner said, and we were
once more ready for the road, after the payment had been made. This took
a little time, either because the Brazilian could not count, or perhaps
because of his great caution, for he would not take payment except horse
by horse. So, driving out the horses one by one, we placed a roll of
dollars in his hand as each one passed the gate. Even then each roll of
dollars had to be counted separately, for time is what men have the most
at their disposal in places such as Bopicuá.
Two hours of sunset still remained, with three long leagues to cover, for
in those latitudes there is no twilight, night succeeding day, just as
films follow one another in a cinematograph. At last it all was over,
and we were free to mount. Such sort of drives are of the nature of a
sport in South America, and so the Brazilian drove off the horses that we
had rejected, half a mile away, leaving them with a negro boy to herd,
remarking that the rejected were as good or better than those that we had
bought, and after cinching up his horse, prepared to ride with us.
Before we started, a young man rode up, dressed like an exaggerated
gaucho, in loose black trousers, poncho, and a “golilla” {194a} round his
neck, a lazo hanging from the saddle, a pair of boleadoras peeping
beneath his “cojinillo,” {194b} and a long silver knife stuck in his
belt. It seemed he was the son of an estanciero who was studying law in
Buenos Aires, but had returned for his vacation, and hearing of our drive
had come to ride with us and help us in our task. No one on such
occasions is to be despised, so, thanking him for his good intentions, to
which he answered that he was a “partizan of the Allies, lover of liberty
and truth, and was well on in all his studies, especially in
International Law,” we mounted, the gauchos floating almost
imperceptibly, without an effort, to their seats, the European with that
air of escalading a ship’s side that differentiates us from man less
civilised.
During the operations with the Brazilian, the horses had been let out of
the corral to feed, and now were being held back _en pastoreo_, as it is
called in Uruguay, that is to say, watched at a little distance by
mounted men. Nothing remained but to drive out of the corral the horses
bought from the Brazilian, and let them join the larger herd. Out they
came like a string of wild geese, neighing and looking round, and then
instinctively made towards the others that were feeding, and were
swallowed up amongst them. Slowly we rode towards the herd, sending on
several well-mounted men upon its flanks, and with precaution—for of all
living animals tame horses most easily take fright upon the march and
separate—we got them into motion, on a well-marked trail that led towards
the gate of Bopicuá.
At first they moved a little sullenly, and as if surprised. Then the
contagion of emotion that spreads so rapidly amongst animals upon the
march seemed to inspire them, and the whole herd broke into a light trot.
That is the moment that a stampede may happen, and accordingly we pulled
our horses to a walk, whilst the men riding on the flanks forged slowly
to the front, ready for anything that might occur. Gradually the trot
slowed down, and we saw as it were a sea of manes and tails in front of
us, emerging from a cloud of dust, from which shrill neighings and loud
snortings rose. They reached a hollow, in which were several pools, and
stopped to drink, all crowding into the shallow water, where they stood
pawing up the mud and drinking greedily. Time pressed, and as we knew
that there was water in the pasture where they were to sleep, we drove
them back upon the trail, the water dripping from their muzzles and their
tails, and the black mud clinging to the hair upon their fetlocks, and in
drops upon their backs. Again they broke into a trot, but this time, as
they had got into control, we did not check them, for there was still a
mile to reach the gate.
Passing some smaller mud-holes, the body of a horse lay near to one of
them, horribly swollen, and with its stiff legs hoisted a little in the
air by the distension of its flanks. The passing horses edged away from
it in terror, and a young roan snorted and darted like an arrow from the
herd. Quick as was the dart he made, quicker still El Correntino wheeled
his horse on its hind legs and rushed to turn him back. With his whip
whirling round his head he rode to head the truant, who, with tail
floating in the air, had got a start of him of about fifty yards. We
pressed instinctively upon the horses; but not so closely as to frighten
them, though still enough to be able to stop another of them from cutting
out. The Correntino on a half-tamed grey, which he rode with a raw-hide
thong bound round its lower jaw, for it was still unbitted, swaying with
every movement in his saddle, which he hardly seemed to grip, so perfect
was his balance, rode at a slight angle to the runaway and gained at
every stride. His hat blew back and kept in place by a black ribbon
underneath his chin, framed his head like an aureole. The red silk
handkerchief tied loosely round his neck fluttered beneath it, and as he
dashed along, his lazo coiled upon his horse’s croup, rising and falling
with each bound, his eyes fixed on the flying roan, he might have served
a sculptor as the model for a centaur, so much did he and the wild colt
he rode seem indivisible.
In a few seconds, which to us seemed minutes, for we feared the infection
might have spread to the whole “caballada,” the Correntino headed and
turned the roan, who came back at three-quarter speed, craning his neck
out first to one side, then to the other, as if he still thought that a
way lay open for escape.
By this time we had reached the gates of Bopicuá, and still seven miles
lay between us and our camping-ground, with a fast-declining sun. As the
horses passed the gate we counted them, an operation of some difficulty
when time presses and the count is large. Nothing is easier than to miss
animals, that is to say, for Europeans, however practised, but the
lynx-eyed gauchos never are at fault. “Where is the little brown horse
with a white face, and a bit broken out of his near forefoot?” they will
say, and ten to one that horse is missing, for what they do not know
about the appearance of a horse would not fill many books. Only a drove
road lay between Bopicuá and the great pasture, at whose faraway
extremity the horses were to sleep. When the last animal had passed and
the great gates swung to, the young law student rode up to my side, and,
looking at the “great tropilla,” as he called it, said, “_Morituri te
salutant_. This is the last time they will feed in Bopicuá.” We turned
a moment, and the falling sun lit up the undulating plain, gilding the
cottony tufts of the long grasses, falling upon the dark-green leaves of
the low trees around Parodi’s camp, glinting across the belt of wood that
fringed the Uruguay, and striking full upon a white estancia house in
Entre-Rios, making it appear quite close at hand, although four leagues
away.
Two or three hundred yards from the great gateway stood a little native
hut, as unsophisticated, but for a telephone, as were the gaucho’s huts
in Uruguay, as I remember them full thirty years ago. A wooden barrel on
a sledge for bringing water had been left close to the door, at which the
occupant sat drinking maté, tapping with a long knife upon his boot.
Under a straw-thatched shelter stood a saddled horse, and a small boy
upon a pony slowly drove up a flock of sheep. A blue, fine smoke that
rose from a few smouldering logs and bones, blended so completely with
the air that one was not quite sure if it was really smoke or the
reflection of the distant Uruguay against the atmosphere.
Not far off lay the bones of a dead horse, with bits of hide adhering to
them, shrivelled into mere parchment by the sun. All this I saw as in a
camera-lucida, seated a little sideways on my horse, and thinking sadly
that I, too, had looked my last on Bopicuá. It is not given to all men
after a break of years to come back to the scenes of youth, and still
find in them the same zest as of old. To return again to all the cares
of life called civilised, with all its littlenesses, its newspapers all
full of nothing, its sordid aims disguised under high-sounding nicknames,
its hideous riches and its sordid poverty, its want of human sympathy,
and, above all, its barbarous war brought on it by the folly of its
rulers, was not just at that moment an alluring thought, as I felt the
little “malacara” {201} that I rode twitching his bridle, striving to be
off. When I had touched him with the spur he bounded forward and soon
overtook the caballada, and the place which for so many months’ had been
part of my life sank out of sight, just as an island in the Tropics fades
from view as the ship leaves it, as it were, hull down.
When we had passed into the great enclosure of La Pileta, and still four
or five miles remained to go, we pressed the caballada into a long trot,
certain that the danger of a stampede was past. Wonderful and sad it was
to ride behind so many horses, trampling knee-high through the wild
grasses of the Camp, snorting and biting at each other, and all
unconscious that they would never more career across the plains. Strange
and affecting, too, to see how those who had known each other all kept
together in the midst of the great herd, resenting all attempts of their
companions to separate them.
A “tropilla” {202} that we had bought from a Frenchman called Leon,
composed of five brown horses, had ranged itself around its bell mare, a
fine chestnut, like a bodyguard. They fought off any of the other horses
who came near her, and seemed to look at her both with affection and with
pride.
Two little bright bay horses, with white legs and noses, that were
brothers, and what in Uruguay are known as “seguidores,” that is, one
followed the other wherever it might go, ran on the outskirts of the
herd. When either of them stopped to eat, its companion turned its head
and neighed to it, when it came galloping up. Arena, our head man,
riding beside me on a skewbald, looked at them, and, after dashing
forward to turn a runaway, wheeled round his horse almost in the air and
stopped it in a bound, so suddenly that for an instant they stood poised
like an equestrian statue, looked at the “seguidores,” and remarked,
“Patron, I hope one shell will kill them both in the Great War if they
have got to die.” I did not answer, except to curse the Boches with all
the intensity the Spanish tongue commands. The young law-student added
his testimony, and we rode on in silence.
A passing sleeve of locusts almost obscured the declining sun. Some flew
against our faces, reminding me of the fight Cortes had with the Indians
not far from Vera Cruz, which, Bernal Diaz says, was obstructed for a
moment by a flight of locusts that came so thickly that many lost their
lives by the neglect to raise their bucklers against what they thought
were locusts, and in reality were arrows that the Indians shot. The
effect was curious as the insects flew against the horses, some clinging
to their manes, and others making them bob up and down their heads, just
as a man does in a driving shower of hail. We reached a narrow causeway
that formed the passage through a marsh. On it the horses crowded,
making us hold our breath for fear that they would push each other off
into the mud, which had no bottom, upon either side. When we emerged and
cantered up a little hill, a lake lay at the bottom of it, and beyond it
was a wood, close to a railway siding. The evening now was closing in,
but there was still a good half-hour of light. As often happens in South
America just before sundown, the wind dropped to a dead calm, and passing
little clouds of locusts, feeling the night approach, dropped into the
long grass just as a flying-fish drops into the waves, with a harsh
whirring of their gauzy wings.
The horses smelt the water at the bottom of the hill, and the whole five
hundred broke into a gallop, manes flying, tails raised high, and we,
feeling somehow the gallop was the last, raced madly by their side until
within a hundred yards or so of the great lake. They rushed into the
water and all drank greedily, the setting sun falling upon their
many-coloured backs, and giving the whole herd the look of a vast tulip
field. We kept away so as to let them drink their fill, and then,
leading our horses to the margin of the lake, dismounted, and, taking out
their bits, let them drink, with the air of one accomplishing a rite, no
matter if they raised their heads a dozen times and then began again.