Paraguay--Journey up the river--A primitive Capital--Dick the
Australian--His polychrome garb--A Paraguayan Race Meeting--Beautiful
figures of native women--The "Falcon" adventurers--a quaint
railway--Patiño Cué--An extraordinary household--The capable
Australian boy--Wild life in the swamps--"Bushed"--A literary
evening--A railway record--The Tigre midnight
swims--Canada--Maddening flies--A grand salmon river--The Canadian
backwoods--Skunks and bears--Different views as to industrial
progress.
As negotiations had commenced in the "'eighties" for a new Treaty,
including an Extradition clause, between the British and Paraguayan
Governments, several minor points connected with it required clearing
up.
I accordingly went up the river to Asuncion, the Paraguayan capital,
five days distant from Buenos Ayres by steamer. A short account of
that primitive little inland Republic in the days before it was
linked up with Argentina by railway may prove of interest, for it was
unlike anything else, with its stately two hundred-year-old relics of
the old Spanish civilisation mixed up with the roughest of modern
makeshifts. The vast majority of the people were Guaranis, of pure
Indian blood and speech. The little State was so isolated from the
rest of the world that the nineteenth century {277} had touched it
very lightly. Since its independence Paraguay had suffered under the
rule of a succession of Dictator Presidents, the worst of whom was
Francisco Lopez, usually known as Tyrant Lopez. This ignorant savage
aspired to be the Napoleon of South America, and in 1864 declared war
simultaneously on Brazil, Uruguay, and the Argentine Republic. The
war continued till 1870, when, fortunately, Lopez was killed, but the
population of Paraguay had diminished from one and a quarter million
to four hundred thousand people, nearly all the males being killed.
In my time there were seven women to every male of the population.
The journey up the mighty Paraná is very uninteresting, for these
huge rivers are too broad for the details on either shore to be seen
clearly. After the steamer had turned up the Paraguay river on the
verge of the tropics, it became less monotonous. The last Argentine
town is Formosa, a little place of thatched shanties clustered under
groves of palms. We arrived there at night, and remained three
hours. I shall never forget the eerie, uncanny effect of seeing for
the first time Paraguayan women, with a white petticoat, and a white
sheet over their heads as their sole garments, flitting noiselessly
along on bare feet under the palms in the brilliant moonlight. They
looked like hooded silent ghosts, and reminded me irresistibly of the
fourth act of "Robert le Diable," when the ghosts of the nuns arise
out of their cloister graves at Bertram's command. They did not
though as {278} in the opera, break into a glittering ballet.
On board the steamer there was a young globe-trotting Australian. He
was a nice, cheery lad, and, like most Australians, absolutely
natural and unaffected. As he spoke no Spanish, he was rather at a
loose end, and we agreed to foregather.
Asuncion was really a curiosity in the way of capitals. Lopez the
Tyrant suffered from megalomania, as others rulers have done since
his day. He began to construct many imposing buildings, but finished
none of them. He had built a huge palace on the model of the
Tuileries on a bluff over the river. It looked very imposing, but
had no roof and no inside. He had also begun a great mausoleum for
members of the Lopez family, but that again had only a façade, and
was already crumbling to ruin. The rest of the town consisted
principally of mud and bamboo shanties, thatched with palm. The
streets were unpaved, and in the main street a strong spring gushed
up. Everyone rode; there was but one wheeled vehicle in Asuncion,
and that was only used for weddings and funerals. The inhabitants
spoke of their one carriage as we should speak of something
absolutely unique of its kind, say the statue of the Venus de Milo,
or of some rare curiosity, such as a great auk's egg, or a twopenny
blue Mauritius postage stamp, or a real live specimen of the dodo.
Nothing could be rougher than the accommodation Howard, the young
Australian, and I found at the hotel. We were shown into a very
dirty brick-paved {279} room containing eight beds. We washed
unabashed at the fountain in the _patio_, as there were no other
facilities for ablutions at all, and the bare-footed, shirtless
waiter addressed us each by our Christian names _tout court_, at
once, omitting the customary "Don." The Spanish forms of Christian
names are more melodious than ours, and Howard failed to recognize
his homely name of "Dick" in "Ricardo."
As South American men become moustached and bearded very early in
life, I think that our clean-shaved faces, to which they were not
accustomed, led the people to imagine us both much younger than we
really were, for I was then twenty-seven, and the long-legged Dick
was twenty-one. Never have I known anyone laugh so much as that
light-hearted Australian boy. He was such a happy, merry, careless
creature, brimful of sheer joy at being alive, and if he had never
cultivated his brains much, he atoned for it by being able to do
anything he liked with his hands and feet. He could mend and repair
anything, from a gun to a fence; he could cook, and use a needle and
thread as skilfully as he could a stock-whip. I took a great liking
to this lean, sun-browned, pleasant-faced lad with the merry laugh
and the perfectly natural manner; we got on together as though we had
known each other all our lives, in fact we were addressing one
another by our Christian names on the third day of our acquaintance.
Dick was a most ardent cricketer, and his {280} baggage seemed to
consist principally of a large and varied assortment of blazers of
various Australian athletic clubs. He insisted on wearing one of
these, a quiet little affair of mauve, blue, and pink stripes, and
our first stroll through Asuncion became a sort of triumphal
progress. The inhabitants flocked out of their houses, loud in their
admiration of the "Gringo's" (all foreigners are "Gringos" in South
America) tasteful raiment. So much so that I began to grow jealous,
and returning to the hotel, I borrowed another of Howard's blazers
(if my memory serves me right, that of the "Wonga-Wonga Wallabies"),
an artistic little garment of magenta, orange, and green stripes. We
then sauntered about Asuncion, arm-in-arm, to the delirious joy of
the populace. We soon had half the town at our heels, enthusiastic
over these walking rainbows from the mysterious lands outside
Paraguay. These people were as inquisitive as children, and plied us
with perpetual questions. Since Howard could not speak Spanish, all
the burden of conversation fell on me. As I occupied an official
position, albeit a modest one, I thought it best to sink my identity,
and became temporarily a citizen of the United States, Mr. Dwight P.
Curtis, of Hicksville, Pa., and I gave my hearers the most glowing
and rose-coloured accounts of the enterprise and nascent industries
of this progressive but, I fear, wholly imaginary spot. I can only
trust that no Paraguayan left his native land to seek his fortune in
Hicksville, Pa., for he might {281} have had to search the State of
Pennsylvania for some time before finding it.
I have already recounted, earlier in these reminiscences, how the
Paraguayan Minister for Foreign Affairs received me, and that his
Excellency on that occasion dispensed not only with shoes and
stockings, but with a shirt as well. He was, however, like most
people in Spanish-speaking lands, courtesy itself.
Dick Howard having heard that there was some races in a country town
six miles away, was, like a true Australian, wild to go to them.
Encouraged by our phenomenal success of the previous day, we arrayed
ourselves in two new Australian blazers, and rode out to the races,
Howard imploring me all the way to use my influence to let him have a
mount there.
The races were very peculiar. The course was short, only about three
furlongs, and perfectly straight. Only two horses ran at once, so
the races were virtually a succession of "heats," but the excitement
and betting were tremendous. The jockeys were little Indian boys,
and their "colours" consisted of red, blue, or green bathing drawers.
Otherwise they were stark naked, and, of course, bare-legged. The
jockey's principal preoccupation seemed to be either to kick the
opposing jockey in the face, or to crack him over the head with the
heavy butts of their raw-hide whips. Howard still wanted to ride. I
pointed out to him the impossibility of exhibiting to the public
{282} his six feet of lean young Australian in nothing but a pair of
green bathing drawers. He answered that if he could only get a mount
he would be quite willing to dispense with the drawers even. Howard
also had a few remarks to offer about the Melbourne Cup, and
Flemington Racecourse, and was not wholly complimentary to this
Paraguayan country meeting. The ladies present were nearly all
bare-foot, and clad in the invariable white petticoat and sheet. It
was not in the least like the Royal enclosure at Ascot, yet they had
far more on, and appeared more becomingly dressed than many of the
ladies parading in that sacrosanct spot in this year of grace 1919.
Every single woman, and every child, even infants of the tenderest
age, had a green Paraguayan cigar in their mouths.
These Paraguayan women were as beautifully built as classical
statues; with exquisitely moulded little hands and feet. Their
"attaches," as the French term the wrist and ankles, were equally
delicately formed. They were "tea with plenty of milk in it" colour,
and though their faces were not pretty, they moved with such graceful
dignity that the general impression they left was a very pleasing one.
Our blazers aroused rapturous enthusiasm. I am sure that the members
of the "St. Kilda Wanderers" would have forgiven me for masquerading
in their colours, could they have witnessed the terrific success I
achieved in my tasteful, if brilliant, borrowed plumage.
{283}
Asuncion pleased me. This quaint little capital, stranded in its
backwater in the very heart of the South American Continent, was so
remote from all the interests and movements of the modern world. The
big three-hundred-year cathedral bore the unmistakable dignified
stamp of the old Spanish "Conquistadores." It contained an
altar-piece of solid silver reaching from floor to roof. How Lopez
must have longed to melt that altar-piece down for his own use!
Round the cathedral were some old houses with verandahs supported on
palm trunks, beautifully carved in native patterns by Indians under
the direction of the Jesuits. The Jesuits had also originally
introduced the orange tree into Paraguay, where it had run wild all
over the country, producing delicious fruit, which for some reason
was often green, instead of being of the familiar golden colour.
Everyone envies what they do not possess. On the Continent cafés are
sometimes decorated with pictures of palms and luxuriant tropical
vegetation, in order to give people of the frozen North an illusion
of warmth.
In steaming Asuncion, on the other hand, the fashionable café was
named, "The North Pole." Here an imaginative Italian artist with a
deficient sense of perspective and curious ideas of colour had
decorated the walls with pictures of icebergs, snow, and Polar bears,
thus affording the inhabitants of this stew-pan of a town a delicious
sense of arctic coolness. The "North Pole" was the {284} only place
in Paraguay where ice and iced drinks were to be procured.
Being the height of the summer, the heat was almost unbearable, and
bathing in the river was risky on account of those hateful
biting-fish. There was a spot two miles away, however, where a
stream had been brought to the edge of the cliff overhanging the
river, down which it dropped in a feathery cascade, forming a large
pool below it. Howard and I rode out every morning there to bathe
and luxuriate in the cool water. The river made a great bend here,
forming a bay half a mile wide. This bay was literally choked with
_Victoria regia_, the giant water-lily, with leaves as big as
tea-trays, and great pink flowers the size of cabbages. The lilies
were in full bloom then, quite half a mile of them, and they were
really a splendid sight. I seem somehow in this description of the
_Victoria regia_ to have been plagiarising the immortal Mrs. O'Dowd,
of "Vanity Fair," in her account of the glories of the hot-houses at
her "fawther's" seat of Glenmalony.
Few people now remember a fascinating book of the "'eighties," "The
Cruise of the Falcon," recounting how six amateurs sailed a
twenty-ton yacht from Southampton to Asuncion in Paraguay. Three of
her crew got so bitten with Paraguay that they determined to remain
there. We met one of these adventurers by chance in Asuncion,
Captain Jardine, late of the P. and O. service, an elderly man. He
invited us to visit them at {285} Patiño Cué, the place where they
had settled down, some twenty-five miles from the capital, though he
warned us that we should find things extremely rough there, and that
there was not one single stick of furniture in the house. He asked
us to bring out our own hammocks and blankets, as well as our guns
and saddles, the saddle being in my time an invariable item of a
traveller's baggage.
Dick and I accordingly bought grass-plaited hammocks and blankets,
and started two days later, "humping our swags," as the Australian
picturesquely expressed the act of carrying our own possessions.
That colour-loving youth had donned a different blazer, probably that
of the "Coolgardie Cockatoos." It would have put Joseph's coat of
many colours completely in the shade any day of the week, and
attracted a great deal of flattering attention.
The ambitious Lopez had insisted on having a railway in his State, to
show how progressive he was, so a railway was built. It ran sixty
miles from Asuncion to nowhere in particular, and no one ever wanted
to travel by it; still it was unquestionably a railway. To give a
finishing touch to this, Lopez had constructed a railway station big
enough to accommodate the traffic of Paddington. It was, of course,
not finished, but was quite large enough for its one train a day.
The completed portion was imposing with columns and statues, the rest
tailed off to nothing. Here, to our amazement, we found a train
composed of {286} English rolling-stock, with an ancient engine built
in Manchester, and, more wonderful to say, with an Englishman as
engine-driver. The engine not having been designed for burning wood,
the fire-box was too small, and the driver found it difficult to keep
up steam with wood, as we found out during our journey. We travelled
in a real English first-class carriage of immense antiquity, blue
cloth and all. So decrepit was it that when the speed of the train
exceeded five miles an hour (which was but seldom) the roof and sides
parted company, and gaped inches apart. We seldom got up the
gradients at the first or second try, but of course allowances must
be made for a Paraguayan railway. Lopez had built Patiño Cué, for
which we were bound, as a country-house for himself. He had not, of
course, finished it, but had insisted on his new railway running
within a quarter of a mile of his house, which we found very
convenient.
I could never have imagined such a curious establishment as the one
at Patiño Cué. The large stone house, for which Jardine paid the
huge rent of £5 per annum, was tumbling to ruin. Three rooms only
were fairly water-tight, but these had gaping holes in their roofs
and sides, and the window frames had long since been removed. The
fittings consisted of a few enamelled iron plates and mugs, and of
one tin basin. Packing cases served as seats and tables, and
hammocks were slung on hooks. Captain Jardine did all the cooking
and ran the establishment; his two companions (Howard {287} and I,
for convenience's sake, simply termed them "the wasters") lay smoking
in their hammocks all day, and did nothing whatever. I may add that
"the wasters" supplied the whole financial backing. Jardine wore
native dress, with bare legs and sandals, a poncho round his waist,
and another over his shoulders. A poncho is merely a fringed brown
blanket with hole cut in it for the head to pass through. With his
long grey beard streaming over his flowing garments, Jardine looked
like a neutral-tinted saint in a stained-glass window. It must be a
matter for congratulation that, owing to the very circumstances of
the case, saints in stained-glass windows are seldom called on to
take violent exercise, otherwise their voluminous draperies would
infallibly all fall off at the second step. Jardine was a highly
educated and an interesting man, with a love for books on metaphysics
and other abstruse subjects. He carried a large library about with
him, all of which lay in untidy heaps on the floor. He was
unquestionably more than a little eccentric. The "wasters" did not
count in any way, unless cheques had to be written. The other
members of the establishment were an old Indian woman who smoked
perpetual cigars, and her grandson, a boy known as Lazarus, from a
physical defect which he shared with a Biblical personage, on the
testimony of the latter's sisters--you could have run a drag with
that boy.
The settlers had started as ranchers; but the {288} "wasters" had
allowed the cattle to break loose and scatter all over the country.
They had been too lazy to collect them, or to repair the broken
fences, so just lay in their hammocks and smoked. There were some
fifty acres of orange groves behind the house. The energetic Jardine
had fenced these in, and, having bought a number of pigs, turned pork
butcher. There was an abundance of fallen fruit for these pigs to
fatten on, and Jardine had built a smoke-house, where he cured his
orange-fed pork, and smoked it with lemon wood. His bacon and hams
were super-excellent, and fetched good prices in Asuncion, where they
were establishing quite a reputation.
Meanwhile, the "wasters" lay in their hammocks in the verandah and
smoked. Jardine told me that one of them had not undressed or
changed his clothes for six weeks, as it was far too much trouble.
Judging from his appearance, he had not made use of soap and water
either during that period.
Dick Howard proved a real "handy man." In two days this lengthy,
lean, sunburnt youth had rounded up and driven home the scattered
cattle, and then set to work to mend and repair all the broken
fences. He caught the horses daily, and milked the cows, an art I
was never able myself to acquire, and made tea for himself in a
"billy."
Patiño Cué was a wonderful site for a house. It stood high up on
rolling open ground, surrounded by intensely green wooded knolls.
The {289} virgin tropical forest extended almost up to the
dilapidated building on one side, whilst in front of it the ground
fell away to a great lake, three miles away. A long range of green
hills rose the other side of the water, and everywhere clear little
brooks gurgled down to the lake.
I liked the place, in spite of its intense heat, and stayed there
over a fortnight, helping with the cattle, and making myself as
useful as I could in repairing what the "wasters" had allowed to go
to ruin. They reposed meanwhile in their hammocks.
It was very pretty country, and had the immense advantage of being
free from mosquitoes. As there are disadvantages everywhere, to make
up for this it crawled with snakes.
Jardine's culinary operations were simplicity itself. He had some
immense earthen jars four feet high, own brothers to those seen on
the stage in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" at pantomime time.
These must have been the identical jars in which the Forty Thieves
concealed themselves, to be smothered with boiling oil by the crafty
Morgiana. By the way, I never could understand until I had seen
fields of growing sesame in India why Ali Baba's brother should have
mistaken the talisman words "Open Sesame" for "Open Barley." The two
grains are very similar in appearance whilst growing, which explains
it.
Jardine placed a layer of beef at the bottom of his jar. On that he
put a layer of mandioca (the {290} root from which tapioca is
prepared), another layer of his own bacon, and a stratum of green
vegetables. Then more beef, and so on till the jar was half full.
In went a handful of salt, two handfuls of red peppers, and two
gallons of water, and then a wood fire was built round the pot, which
simmered away day and night till all its contents were eaten. The
old Indian woman baked delicious bread from the root of the mandioca
mixed with milk and cheese, and that constituted our entire dietary.
There were no fixed meals. Should you require food, you took a hunch
of mandioca bread and a tin dipper, and went to the big earthen jar
simmering amongst its embers in the yard. Should you wish for soup,
you put the dipper in at the top; if you preferred stew, you pushed
it to the bottom. Nothing could be simpler. As a rough and ready
way of feeding a household it had its advantages, though there was
unquestionably a certain element of monotony about it.
As a variation from the eternal beef and mandioca, Jardine begged
Dick and myself to shoot him as many snipe as possible, in the swamps
near the big lake. Those swamps were most attractive, and were
simply alive with snipe and every sort of living creature. Dick was
an excellent shot, and we got from five to fifteen couple of snipe
daily. The tree-crowned hillocks in the swamp were the haunts of
macaws, great gaudy, screaming, winged rainbows of green and scarlet,
and orange and blue, like some of Dick's blazers endowed with
feathers {291} and motion. We had neither of us ever seen wild
macaws before, and I am afraid that we shot a good many for the sheer
pleasure of examining these garish parrots at close quarters, though
they are quite uneatable. I shall carry all my life marks on my left
hand where a macaw bit me to the bone. There were great
brilliant-plumaged toucans too, droll freaks of nature, with huge
horny bills nearly as large as their bodies, given them to crack the
nuts on which they feed. They flashed swiftly pink through the air,
but we never succeeded in getting one. Then there were coypus, the
great web-footed South American water-rat, called "nutria" in
Spanish, and much prized for his fur. That marsh was one of the most
interesting places I have ever been in. The old Indian woman warned
us that we should both infallibly die of fever were we to go into the
swamps at nightfall, but though Dick and I were there every evening
for a fortnight, up to our middles in water, we neither of us took
the smallest harm, probably owing to the temporary absence of
mosquitoes. The teeming hidden wild-life of the place appealed to us
both irresistibly. The water-hog, or capincho, is a quaint beast,
peculiar to South America. They are just like gigantic varnished
glossy-black guinea pigs, with the most idiotically stupid expression
on their faces. They are quite defenceless, and are the constant
prey of alligators and jaguars. Consequently they are very timid.
These creatures live in the water all day, but come out in the
evenings {292} to feed on the reeds and water-herbage. By concealing
ourselves amongst the reeds, and keeping perfectly still, we were
able to see these uncouth, shy things emerging from their day
hiding-places and begin browsing on the marsh plants. To see a very
wary animal at close quarters, knowing that he is unconscious of your
presence, is perfectly fascinating. We never attempted to shoot or
hurt these capinchos; the pleasure of seeing the clumsy gambols of
one of the most timid animals living, in its fancied security, was
quite enough. The capincho if caught very young makes a delightful
pet, for he becomes quite tame, and, being an affectionate animal,
trots everywhere after his master, with a sort of idiotic simper on
his face.
One evening, on our return from the marsh, we were ill-advised enough
to attempt a short cut home through the forest. The swift tropical
night fell as we entered the forest, and in half an hour we were
hopelessly lost, "fairly bushed," as Dick put it. There is a feeling
of complete and utter helplessness in finding oneself on a pitch-dark
night in a virgin tropical forest that is difficult to express in
words. The impenetrable tangles of jungle; the great lianes hanging
from the trees, which trip you up at every step; the masses of thorny
and spiky things that hold you prisoner; and, as regards myself
personally, the knowledge that the forest was full of snakes, all
make one realise that electric-lighted Piccadilly has its distinct
advantages. Dick had the true Australian's indifference to snakes.
He never {293} could understand my openly-avowed terror of these
evil, death-dealing creatures, nor could he explain to himself the
physical repugnance I have to these loathsome reptiles. This
instinctive horror of snakes is, I think, born in some people. It
can hardly be due to atavism, for the episode of the Garden of Eden
is too remote to account of an inherited antipathy to these gliding,
crawling abominations. We settled that we should have to sleep in
the forest till daylight came, though, dripping wet as we both were
from the swamp, it was a fairly direct invitation to malarial fever.
The resourceful Dick got an inspiration, and dragging his
interminable length (he was like Euclid's definition of a straight
line) up a high tree, he took a good look at the familiar stars of
his own Southern hemisphere. Getting his bearings from these, he
also got our direction, and after a little more tree-climbing we
reached our dilapidated temporary home in safety. I fear that I
shall never really conquer my dislike to snakes, sharks, and
earthquakes.
Jardine was a great and an omnivorous reader. Dick too was very fond
of reading. Like the hero of "Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour" he carried
his own library with him. As in Mr. Sponge's case, it consisted of
one book only, but in the place of being "Mogg's Cab Fares," it was a
guide to the Australian Turf, a sort of Southern Cross "Ruff's
Guide," with a number of pedigrees of Australian horses thrown in.
Dick's great intellectual amusement was learning these pedigrees by
heart. I used {294} to hear them for him, and, having a naturally
retentive memory, could in the "'eighties" have passed a very
creditable examination in the pedigrees of the luminaries of the
Australian Turf.
Our evenings at Patiño Cué would have amused a spectator, had there
been one. In the tumble-down, untidy apology for a room, Jardine,
seated on a packing-case under the one wall light, was immersed in
his favourite Herbert Spencer; looking, in his flowing ponchos, long
grey beard, and bare legs, like a bespectacled apostle. He always
seemed to me to require an eagle, or a lion or some other apostolic
adjunct, in order to look complete. I, on another packing-case, was
chuckling loudly over "Monsieur et Madame Cardinal," though Paris
seemed remote from Paraguay. Dick, pulling at a green cigar, a
far-off look in his young eyes, was improving his mind by learning
some further pedigrees of Australian horses, at full length on the
floor, where he found more room for his thin, endless legs; whilst
the two "wasters" dozed placidly in their hammocks on the verandah.
The "wasters," I should imagine, attended church but seldom.
Otherwise they ought to have ejaculated "We have left undone those
things which we ought to have done" with immense fervour, for they
never did anything at all.
"Lotos-eaters" might be a more poetic name than "wasters," for if
ever there was a land "in which it seemed always afternoon," that
land is Paraguay. Could one conceive of the "wasters" displaying
{295} such unwonted energy, it is possible that--
"And all at once they sang 'Our island home
Is far beyond the wave; we will no longer roam'."
They had eaten of the Lotos-fruit abundantly, and in the golden
sunshine of Paraguay, and amidst its waving green palms, they only
wished--
"In the hollow Lotos-land to live and lie reclined."
I should perhaps add that "cafia," or sugar-cane spirit, is distilled
in large quantities in Paraguay, and that one at least of the
Lotos-eaters took a marked interest in this national product.
There were some beautiful nooks in the forest, more especially one
deep blue rocky pool into which a foaming cascade pattered through a
thick encircling fringe of wild orange trees. This little hollow was
brimful of loveliness, with the golden balls of the fruit, and the
brilliant purple tangles of some unknown creeper reflected in the
blue pool. Dick and I spent hours there swimming, and basking _puris
naturalibus_ on the rocks, until the whole place was spoilt for me by
a rustling in the grass, as a hateful ochre-coloured creature
wriggled away in sinuous coils from my bare feet.
I accompanied Jardine once or twice to a little village some five
miles away, where he got the few household stores he required. This
tiny village was a piece of seventeenth-century Spain, dumped bodily
down amid the riotous greenery of Paraguay. Round {296} a tall white
church in the florid Jesuit style, a few beautiful Spanish stone
houses clustered, each with its tangle of tropical garden. There was
not one single modern erection to spoil the place. Here foaming
bowls of chocolate were to be had, and delicious mandioca bread. It
was a picturesque, restful little spot, so utterly unexpected in the
very heart of the South American Continent. I should like to put on
the stage that tall white church tower cutting into the intense blue
of the sky above, with the vivid green of the feathery palms reaching
to its belfry, and the time-worn houses round it peeping out from
thickets of scarlet poinsettias and hibiscus flowers. It would make
a lovely setting for "Cavalleria Rusticana," for instance.
I never regretted my stay at Patiño Cué. It gave one a glimpse of
life brought down to conditions of bed-rock simplicity, and of types
of character I had never come across before.
We travelled back to Asuncion on the engine of the train; I seated in
front on the cow-catcher, Dick, his coat off and his shirt-sleeves
rolled back, on the footplate, officiating as amateur fireman.
This vigorous young Antipodean hurled logs into the fire-box of the
venerable "Vesuvius" as fast as though he were pitching in balls when
practising his bowling at the nets, with the result that the crazy
old engine attained a speed that must have fairly amazed her. When
we stopped at stations, "Vesuvius" had developed such a head of steam
that she nearly blew her safety-valve off, {297} and steam hissed
from twenty places in her leaky joints. One ought never to be
astonished at misplaced affections. I have seen old ladies lavish a
wealth of tenderness on fat, asthmatical, and wholly repellent pugs,
so I ought not to have been surprised at the immense pride the
English driver took in his antique engine. I am bound to say that he
kept her beautifully cleaned and burnished. His face beamed at her
present performance, and he assured me that with a little coaxing he
could knock sixty miles an hour out of "Vesuvius." I fear that this
statement "werged on the poetical," as Mr. Weller senior remarked on
another occasion. I should much like to have known this man's
history, and to have learnt how he had drifted into driving an engine
of this futile, forlorn little Paraguayan railway. I suspect, from
certain expressions he used, that he was a deserter from the Royal
Navy, probably an ex-naval stoker. As Dick had ridden ten miles that
morning to say good-bye to a lady, to whom he imagined himself
devotedly attached, he was still very smart in white polo-breeches,
brown butcher-boots and spurs, an unusual garb for a railway fireman.
For the first time in the memory of the oldest living inhabitant, the
train reached Asuncion an hour before her time.
The river steamers' cargo in their downstream trip consisted of
cigars, "Yerba mate," and oranges. These last were shipped in bulk,
and I should like a clever artist to have drawn our steamer, with
tons and tons of fruit, golden, {298} lemon-yellow, and green, piled
on her decks. It made a glowing bit of colour. The oranges were the
only things in that steamer that smelt pleasantly.
I can never understand why "Yerba mate," or Paraguayan tea, has never
become popular in England. It is prepared from the leaves of the
ilex, and is strongly aromatic and very stimulating. I am myself
exceedingly fond of it. Its lack of popularity may be due to the
fact that it cannot be drunk in a cup, but must be sucked from a
gourd through a perforated tube. It can (like most other things) be
bought in London, if you know where to go to.
At Buenos Ayres I was quite sorry to part with the laughing, lanky
Australian lad who had been such a pleasant travelling companion, and
who seemed able to do anything he liked with his arms and legs. I
expect that he could have done most things with his brains too, had
he ever given them a chance. Howard's great merit was that he took
things as they came, and never grumbled at the discomforts and minor
hardships one must expect in a primitive country like Paraguay. Our
tastes as regards wild things (with the possible exception of snakes)
rather seemed to coincide, and, neither of us being town-bred, we did
not object to rather elementary conditions.
I will own that I was immensely gratified at receiving an overseas
letter some eight years later from Dick, telling me that he was
married and had a little daughter, and asking {299} me to stand
godfather for his first child.
My blue satin bedroom looked more ridiculously incongruous than ever
after the conditions to which I had been used at Patiño Cué.
The River Plate is over twenty miles broad at Buenos Ayres, and it is
not easy to realise that this great expansive is all fresh water.
The "Great Silver River" is, however, very shallow, except in
mid-channel. Some twenty-five miles from the city it forms on its
southern bank a great archipelago of wooded islands interspersed with
hundreds of winding channels, some of them deep enough to carry
ocean-going steamers. This is known as the Tigre, and its shady
tree-lined waterways are a great resort during the sweltering heat of
an Argentine summer. It is the most ideal place for boating, and
boasts a very flourishing English Rowing Club, with a large fleet of
light Thames-built boats. Here during the summer months I took the
roughest of rough bungalows, with two English friends. The
three-roomed shanty was raised on high piles, out of reach of floods,
and looked exactly like the fishermen's houses one sees lining the
rivers in native villages in the Malay States. During the intense
heat of January the great delight of life at the Tigre was the
midnight swim in the river before turning in. The Tigre is too far
south for the alligators, biting-fish, electric rays (I allude to
fish; not to beams of light), or other water-pests which Nature has
lavished on the tropics in order to counteract their irresistible
charm--and to prevent the whole world from {300} settling down there.
The water of the Tigre was so warm that one could remain in it over
an hour. One mental picture I am always able to conjure up, and I
can at will imagine myself at midnight paddling lazily down-stream on
my back through the milk-warm water, in the scented dusk, looking up
at the pattern formed by the leaves of the overhanging trees against
the night sky; a pattern of black lace-work against the polished
silver of the Southern moonlight, whilst the water lapped gently
against the banks, and an immense joy at being alive filled one's
heart.
I went straight from Buenos Ayres to Canada on a tramp steamer, and a
month after leaving the Plate found myself in the backwoods of the
Province of Quebec, on a short but very famous river running into the
Bay of Chaleurs, probably the finest salmon river in the world, and I
was fortunate enough to hook and to land a 28 lb. salmon before I had
been there one hour. No greater contrast in surroundings can be
imagined. In the place of the dead-flat, treeless levels of Southern
Argentina, there were dense woods of spruce, cedar, and var, climbing
the hills as far as the eye could see. Instead of the superficially
courteous Argentine gaucho, with his air of half-concealed contempt
for the "Gringo," and the ever-ready knife, prepared to leap from his
waist-belt at the slightest provocation, there were the blunt,
outspoken, hearty Canadian canoe-men, all of them lumbermen during
the winter months. The fishing was ideal, and the {301} fish ran
uniformly large and fought like Trojans in the heavy water, but,
unfortunately, every single winged insect on the North American
Continent had arranged for a summer holiday on this same river at the
same time. There they all were in their myriads; black-flies,
sand-flies, and mosquitoes, all enjoying themselves tremendously. By
day one was devoured by black-flies, who drew blood every time they
bit. At nightfall the black-flies very considerately retired to
rest, and the little sand-flies took their place. The mosquitoes
took no rest whatever. These rollicking insects were always ready to
turn night into day, or day into night, indiscriminately, provided
there were some succulent humans to feed on. A net will baffle the
mosquito, but for the sand-flies the only effective remedy was a
"smudge" burning in an iron pail. A "smudge" is a fire of damp fir
bark, which smoulders but does not blaze. It also emits huge volumes
of smoke. We dined every night in an atmosphere denser than a thick
London fog, and the coughing was such that a chance visitor would
have imagined that he had strayed into a sanatorium for tuberculosis.
Things are done expeditiously in Canada. The ground had been
cleared, the wooden house in which we lived erected, and the rough
track through the forest made, all in eight weeks.
No one who has not tried it can have any idea of the intense cold of
the water in these short Canadian rivers. Their course is so short,
and they {302} are so overhung with fir trees, that the fierce rays
of a Canadian summer sun hardly touch them, so the water remains
about ten degrees above freezing point. It would have been
impossible to swim our river. Even a short dip of half a minute left
one with gasping breath and chattering teeth.
I was surprised to find, too, that a Canadian forest is far more
impenetrable than a tropical one. Here, the fallen trees and decay
of countless centuries have formed a thick crust some two or three
feet above the real soil. This moss-grown crust yields to the weight
of a man and lets him through, so walking becomes infinitely
difficult, and practically impossible. To extricate yourself at
every step from three feet of decaying rubbish is very exhausting.
In the tropics, that great forcing-house, this decaying vegetable
matter would have given life to new and exuberant growths; but not so
in Canada, frost-bound for four months of the twelve. Two-foot-wide
tracks had been cut through the forest along the river, and the trees
there were "blazed" (_i.e._, notched, so as to show up white where
the bark had been hacked off), to indicate the direction of the
trails; otherwise it would have been impossible to make one's way
through the _débris_ of a thousand years for more than a few yards.
I never saw such a wealth of wild fruit as on the banks of this
Canadian stream. Wild strawberries and raspberries grew in such
profusion that a bucketful of each could be filled in half an hour.
{303}
There was plenty of animal life too. A certain pretty little black
and white striped beast was quite disagreeably common. This
attractive cat-like little creature was armed with stupendous
offensive powers, as all who have experienced a skunk's unspeakably
disgusting odour will acknowledge. Unless molested, they did not
make use of the terrible possibilities they had at their command.
There were also plenty of wandering black bears. These animals live
for choice on grain and berries, and are not hostile to man without
provocation, but they have enormous strength, and it is a good
working rule to remember that it is unwise ever to vex a bear
unnecessarily, even a mild-tempered black bear.
Our tumbling, roaring Canadian river cutting its way through rounded,
densely-wooded hills was wonderfully pretty, and one could not but
marvel at the infinitely varied beauty with which Providence has
clothed this world of ours, wherever man has not defaced Nature's
perfect craftsmanship.
The point of view of the country-bred differs widely from that of the
town dweller in this respect.
Here is a splendid waterfall, churning itself into whirling cataracts
of foam down the face of a jagged cliff. The townsman cries, "What
tremendous power is running to waste here! Let us harness it
quickly. We will divert the falls into hideous water-pipes, and
bring them to our turbines. We will build a power-house cheaply of
corrugated iron, and in time we shall so develop {304} this sleepy
countryside that no one will recognise it."
Here is a great forest; a joy to the eyes. "The price of timber is
rising; let us quickly raze it to the ground."
"Our expert tells us that under this lovely valley there runs a thick
seam of coal. We will sink shafts, and build blatantly hideous towns
and factories, pollute this clear air with smoke and mephitic
vapours, and then fall down and worship the great god Progress. We
will also pocket fat dividends."
The stupid, unprogressive son of woods and green fields shudders at
such things; the son of asphalte, stuffy streets, tramways, and arc
lights glories in them.
Like many other things, it all depends on the point of view.
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