The demerits of the West Indies classified--The utter ruin of
St. Pierre--The Empress Josephine--A transplanted
brogue--Vampires--Lost in a virgin forest--Dictator-Presidents
--Castro and Rosas--The mentality of a South American--"The
Liberator"--The Basques and their national game--Love of English
people for foreign words--Yellow fever--Life on an Argentine
_estancia_--How cattle are worked--The lasso and the
"bolas"--Ostriches--Venomous toads--The youthful rough-rider--His
methods--Fuel difficulties--The vast plains--The wonderful bird-life.
Any one desirous of seeing an exceedingly beautiful, and comparatively
unknown, corner of the world, should take the fortnightly
Inter-colonial steamer from Trinidad, and make the voyage "up the
islands." The Lesser Antilles are very lovely, but there is something
rather melancholy about them, for they are obviously decaying in
prosperity; the white planters are abandoning them, and as the
coloured people take their place, externals all begin to assume a
shabby, unkempt appearance. I am speaking of the conditions anterior
to 1914; the great rise in the price of sugar since then may have
resulted in a back-wash of prosperity affecting both the Windward and
the Leeward Islands.
I should always myself classify the West India islands according to
their liability to, or immunity from, the various local drawbacks.
Thus Barbados, though within the hurricane zone, is outside the
earthquake zone, and is free from poisonous snakes. Trinidad, only 200
miles away, is outside the hurricane area, but is most distinctly
inside the earthquake zone, is prolific in venomous snakes and enjoys
the further advantage of being the home of the blood-sucking vampire
bat. Jamaica is liable to both hurricanes and earthquakes, but has no
poisonous snakes. St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Martinique are really
over-full of possibilities, for, in addition to a liability to
earthquakes and hurricanes, they each possess an active volcano, and
Martinique and St. Lucia are the habitat of the dreaded and deadly
Fer-de-Lance snake.
The Administrator of St. Vincent had been good enough to ask me to
dinner by telegram. The steamer reached St. Vincent after dark, and it
was a curious experience landing on an unknown island in a tailcoat
and white tie, driving for two miles, and then tumbling into a
dinner-party of sixteen white people, not one of whom one had ever
seen before, or was ever likely to meet again. It was as though one
had been dropped by an aeroplane into an unknown land, and when the
steamer sailed again before midnight, it was all as though it had
never been. The orchids on that dinner-table were very remarkable, for
orchid-growing was the Administrator's hobby. He grafted his orchids
on to orange trees, and so obtained enormous growths. We measured some
of the flower-sprays, the biggest being nine feet long. As they were
brown and yellow Oncidiums, they were more curious than beautiful.
The appalling desolation of St. Pierre, in the French island of
Martinique, cannot be imagined without having been seen. Of a very
handsome city of 40,000 inhabitants there is absolutely nothing left
except one gable of the cathedral. There is no trace of a town having
ever existed here, for the poisonous manchineel tree has spread itself
over the ruins, and it is difficult to realise that twenty years ago
the pride of the French West Indies stood here. The rich merchants and
planters of St. Pierre had all made their homes in the valley of the
little river Roxelana. After the sides of Mont Pele had gaped apart
and hurled their white-hot whirlwind of fire over the doomed town on
that fatal May 8, 1902--a fiery whirlwind which calcined every human
being and every building in the town in less than one minute--molten
lava poured into the valley of the Roxelana until it filled it up
entirely, burying houses, gardens and plantations alike. There is no
trace even of a valley now, and the stream makes its way underground
to the sea. Napoleon the Great's first wife, Josephine de la Pagerie,
was a native of Martinique and retained all her life the curious
indolence of the Creole. Her gross extravagance and her love of luxury
may also have been due to her Creole blood. Her first husband, of
course, had been the Vicomte de Beauharnais, and her daughter,
Hortense de Beauharnais, married Napoleon's brother, Louis, King of
Holland. This complicated relationships, for Queen Hortense's son,
Louis Napoleon, afterwards Napoleon III., was thus at the same time
nephew and step-grandson of Napoleon I. M. Filon, in his most
interesting study of the Empress Eugenie, points out that Napoleon
III. showed his Creole blood in his constant chilliness. He chose as
his private apartments at the Tuileries a set of small rooms on the
ground floor, as these could be more easily heated up to the
temperature he liked. According to M. Filon, Napoleon III. shortened
his life by persisting in remaining so much in what he describes as
"those over-gilt, over-heated, air-tight little boxes."
The well-known greenhouse climbing plant lapageria, with its waxy
white or crimson trumpets of flowers, owes its name to Josephine de la
Pagerie, for on its first introduction into France it was called La
Pageria in her honour, though with the English pronunciation of the
name the connection is not at first obvious.
It is not so generally known that Madame de Maintenon, as Francoise
d'Aubigne, spent all her girlhood in Martinique.
The coloured women of Martinique have apparently absorbed, thanks to
their two hundred years' association with the French, something of
that innate good taste which seems the birthright of most French
people, and they show this in their very individual and becoming
costumes. The Martinique negress is, as a rule, a handsome
bronze-coloured creature, and she wears a full-skirted, flowing dress
of flowered chintz or cretonne, with a _fichu_ of some
contrasting colour over her breast. She hides her woolly locks under
an ample turban of two shades, one of which will exactly match her
_fichu_, whilst the other will either correspond to or contrast
with the colour of her chintz dress, thus producing what the French
term "une gamme de couleur," most pleasing to the eye, and with never
a false note in it. Beside these comely, amply breasted bronze
statues, the British West Indian negress, with her absurd travesty of
European fashions, and her grotesque hats, cuts, I am bound to say, a
very poor figure indeed.
The flourishing little island of Montserrat has one peculiarity. The
negroes all speak with the strongest of Irish brogues. Cromwell
deported to Montserrat many of the "Malignants" from the West of
Ireland, who acquired negro slaves to cultivate their sugar and
cotton. These negroes naturally learnt English in the fashion in which
their masters spoke it. The white men have gone; the brogue remains. I
was much amused on going ashore in the Administrator's whaleboat, he
being an old acquaintance from the Co. Tyrone, to hear his jet-black
coxswain remark, "'Tis the lee side I will be going, sorr, the way
your Honour will not be getting wet, for them back-seas are mighty
throublesome." This in Montserrat was unexpected.
There is a curious uninhabited rock lying amongst the Virgin Islands.
It is quite square and box-like in shape, and is known as "The Dead
Man's Chest." Before seeing it I had always thought that the eternal
chant of the old pirate at the "Admiral Benbow," in _Treasure Island_:
"Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest,
Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!"
referred literally to a seaman's chest, though reflection might have
shown that one chest would afford rather scanty seating-ground for
fifteen men.
At Nevis, the curious can see in Fig Tree Church the register
attesting the marriage of "Horatio Nelson, Captain of H.M.S.
_Boreas_, to Frances Nisbet, widow," on March 11, 1789. William
IV., at that time Duke of Clarence, was Nelson's best man on that
occasion.
Nevis possesses powerful hot mineral springs, and a hundred years ago
and more was the great health resort of white people in the West
Indies. Here the planters endeavoured to get their torpid livers into
working order again, and the local boast was that for every pearl
necklace and pair of diamond shoe-buckles to be seen at the English
Bath, there were three to be seen in Nevis. To add to its attractions
it was asserted that the drinking, gambling, and duelling in Nevis
left Bath completely in the shade.
Though one was constantly hearing of diminishing trade in the Lesser
Antilles, certain questions kept suggesting themselves to me. For
instance, in islands abounding in water power, why ship copra in bulk
to England or the United States, instead of crushing it locally and
exporting the oil, which would occupy one-tenth of the cargo-space?
Why, in an island producing both oranges and sugar, ship them
separately to Europe to be made into marmalade, instead of
manufacturing it on the spot? The invariable answer to these queries
was "lack of capital"; no one seemed to guess that lack of enterprise
might be a contributory cause as well.
I have alluded to the vampire bat of Trinidad. Six weeks before my
arrival there, the Governor's aide-de-camp had most imprudently slept
without lowering his mosquito curtains. He awoke to find himself
drenched in blood, for a vampire bat had opened a vein, drunk his
fill, and then flown off leaving the wound open. The doctor had to
apply the actual cautery to stop the bleeding, and six weeks
afterwards the unfortunate aide-de-camp was still as white as a sheet
of paper from loss of blood. At Government House, Port-of-Spain, there
is a very lofty entrance-hall, bright with electric light. The
vampires constantly flew in here, to become helpless at once in the
glare of light, when they could be easily killed with a stick. The
vampire is a small, sooty-black bat with a perfectly diabolical little
face. An ordinary mosquito net is quite sufficient protection against
them, or, to persons who do not mind a light in their room, a lamp
burning all night is an absolute safeguard against their attacks.
Every stable in Trinidad has a lighted lamp burning all night in it,
and those who can afford them, drop wire-gauze curtains over their
horses' stalls as a protection against vampires.
The Trinidad negro being naturally an indolent creature, all the
boatmen and cab-drivers in Port-of-Spain are Barbadians. As we know,
the Badians have an inordinate opinion of themselves and of their
island. Whilst I was in Trinidad, General Baden-Powell came there in
the course of his world-tour inspection of Boy Scouts. On the day of
General Baden-Powell's arrival, all the Badian boatmen and cab-drivers
struck work, and the vampire-bitten aide-de-camp, who was in the town,
met serried phalanxes of dark faces hurrying to the landing-stage. On
asking a Badian what the excitement was about, the negro answered with
infinite hauteur.
"You ask me dat, sir? You not know dat our great countryman General
_Badian_-Powell arrive to-day, so we all go welcome him."
Charles Kingsley in _At Last_ goes into rhapsodies over the "High
Woods" of Trinidad. I confess that I was terribly disappointed in
them. They are too trim and well-kept; the Forestry department has
done its work too well. There are broad green rides cut through them,
reminiscent of covers in an English park, but certainly not suggestive
of a virgin forest. One almost expects to hear the beaters' sticks
rattling in them, and I did not think that they could compare with the
splendid virgin forests of Brazil.
I was in Brazil just thirty years ago with Patrick Lyon, brother of
the present Lord Strathmore. We were staying at Petropolis, and Lyon,
fired by my accounts of these virgin forests, declared that he must
see one for himself. He had heard that the forests extended to within
three miles of Petropolis, and at once went to hire two horses for us
to ride out there. There were no horses to be had in the place, but so
determined was Lyon to see these untrodden wilds, that he insisted on
our doing the three miles on foot, then and there. It was the height
of the Brazilian summer, and the heat was something appalling. We
struggled over three miles of a glaring white shadeless road, grilled
alive by the sun, but always comforting ourselves by dwelling on the
cool shades awaiting us at the end of our journey. At length we
reached the forest, and wandered into a green twilight under the dense
canopy of leaves, which formed an unbroken roof a hundred feet over
our heads. With "green twilight" the obvious epithet should be "cool";
that is exactly what it was not, for if the green canopy shut out the
sun, it also shut out the air, and the heat in that natural leafy
cathedral was absolutely overpowering. We wandered on and on, till I
began to grow giddy and faint with the heat. I asked Lyon how he was
feeling, and he owned that the heat had affected him too, so we sat
down on a rock to recuperate.
"It is a solemn thought," observed Lyon, after a long silence, "that
we are perhaps the first human beings to have set foot in this forest.
We simply must pull ourselves together, for it might be months before
any one passed here, and you know what that means." I assented
gloomily, as I formed melancholy mental pictures of ourselves as two
mature Babes-in-the-Wood, speculating whether, in the event of our
demise in these untrodden wilds, any Brazilian birds, brilliant of
plumage but kindly of heart, would cover us up with leaves. These
great forest tracts were producing an awe-inspiring effect on us as we
realised our precarious position, when we suddenly heard Toot! toot!
toot! and to our inexpressible amazement we saw a tramcar approaching
us through the trees. The car came within twenty feet of us, for the
track had been quite hidden by some rising ground; we hailed it, and
returned to Petropolis prosaically seated on the front bench of a
tramcar. We afterwards found that the untrodden wilds of our virgin
forest were traversed by a regular hourly service of tramcars; alas
for vanished illusions!
There is a street in Port-of-Spain which used to be known as the
"Calle de los Presidentes," or Presidents' Street, for it was here
that fugitive Presidents of Venezuela were wont to take refuge when
the political atmosphere of that republic grew uncomfortable for them.
Most of these gentlemen thoughtfully brought with them as much of the
national till as they were able to lay their hands on, to comfort them
in their exile. Spanish-American republics seem to produce
Dictator-Presidents very freely. When I was in Venezuela in 1907
Cipriano Castro had grasped supreme power, and governed the country as
an autocrat. Castro, who was an uneducated half-caste, ruled by
corruption and terror; he repudiated all the national obligations,
quarrelled with the United States and with every European Power, and
disposed of his political opponents by the simple expedient of placing
them against a wall with a file of soldiers with loaded rifles in
front of them. For eight years this ignorant, bloodthirsty savage
enjoyed absolute power, until he was forced in 1908 to flee to Europe.
I do not know whether he followed the national custom by taking most
of the exchequer with him. A typical sample of Castro's administrative
powers was to be seen at La Guayra, the wretched, poverty-stricken
seaport of Caracas. Dominating the squalid little place was a huge and
imposing fort with heavy guns, over which the gaudy Venezuelan
tricolour of yellow, blue, and red fluttered bravely. This fort was an
elaborate sham, built of coloured plaster, and the guns were of
painted wood only; but Castro thought that it was calculated to
frighten the foreigner, and it possibly flattered the national vanity
as well.
A most remarkable example of a Dictator-Tyrant was Juan Rosas, who,
for seventeen years, from 1835 to 1852, ruled the Argentine Republic
as an unchallenged despot. Rosas was born in 1793, and began life as a
gaucho. He seized supreme power in 1835, and is credited with having
put twenty-five thousand people to death. The "Nero of South America"
was ably backed-up by his seconds-in-command, Oribe and Urquiza, two
most consummate scoundrels. Whether Rosas "saw red," as others since
his day have done, or whether it was the play on his own name which
pleased him, I cannot say, but he had a perfect mania for the colour
red. He dressed all his troops in scarlet ponchos, and ordered every
male inhabitant of Buenos Ayres who wore a coat at all, to wear a
scarlet waistcoat, whilst all ladies were bidden to wear a knot of
scarlet ribbon and to carry a red fan. In the Dictator's own house at
Palermo all the carpets and stuffs were scarlet. An elderly lady in
Buenos Ayres, who remembered Rosas' dictatorship perfectly, showed me
some of the scarlet fans, specially made in Spain for the Argentine
market after Rosas had promulgated his edict. My friend described to
me how Rosas placed several of his rough police at the doors of every
church, and any lady who did not exhibit the obligatory red bow on her
black dress (in Spanish-speaking countries the women always go to Mass
in black), received a dab of pitch on her cheek, on to which the
policeman clapped a rosette of red paper. She told it all so
graphically that I could almost see the stream of frightened,
black-clad women issuing from the church, whilst their husbands and
lovers stood expectantly below (South American men rarely enter a
church), every man-jack of them with a scarlet waistcoat, like a flock
of swarthy robin redbreasts. I have seen some of these waistcoats; the
young bloods wore scarlet silk, the older men red cloth. Rosas, like a
mediaeval monarch, had his court fool or jester, a dwarf known as Don
Eusebio. Rosas dressed him in scarlet and gave him the rank of a
general, with a scarlet-clad bodyguard, and woe betide any one who
treated the Dictator's fool with scant respect. Rosas was undoubtedly
as mad as Bedlam, but he was an abominably bloodthirsty madman who
successfully exterminated all his opponents. The Dictator was
accessible to every one at his house at Palermo, and the marvel is
that he managed to escape assassination. His enormities became so
intolerable that in 1852 the Brazilians and Uruguayans invaded the
Argentine, and at the critical moment General Urquiza, Rosas' trusted
second-in-command, betrayed him and went over to the enemy, so the
Dictator's power was broken.
Rosas took refuge in the British Legation, and for some reason which I
have never fathomed, he was shipped to England on H.M.S. _Locust_.
He settled down at Swaythling near Southampton, where he died in 1877
after twenty-five years peaceful residence. He was a peculiarly
bloodthirsty scoundrel.
Some of these Spanish-American dictators have been beneficent despots,
such as Jose Francia, who, upon Paraguay proclaiming her independence
in 1811, got elected President, and soon afterwards managed to secure
his nomination as Dictator for life. He ruled Paraguay autocratically
but well until his death in 1840, and the country prospered under him.
Under the iron rule of Porfirio Diaz, from 1877 to 1911, Mexico
enjoyed the only period of comparative calm that turbulent country has
known in recent years, and made continued economic progress.
I think that a Latin-American's only abstract idea of government is a
despotic one. They do not trouble much about the _substance_ as
long as they have the _shadow_, and provided that the national
arms display prominently a "Cap of Liberty," and mottoes of "Libertad
y Progreso" are sufficiently flaunted about, he does not bother much
about the absence of such trifles as trial by jury, or worry his head
over the venality and tyranny of officials, the "faking" of elections,
or the disregard of the President of the day for the constitutional
limitations imposed upon his office. Do not the national arms and
motto proclaim that his country stands in the van of Liberty and
Progress, and what more could any one want? Some of the coats-of-arms
of Spanish-American republics and states would give an official of the
College of Arms an apoplectic fit, for "colour" is unblushingly
displayed on "colour" and "metal" upon "metal" in defiance of every
recognised rule of heraldry.
The first time that I was in Buenos Ayres a very pleasant young
English civil engineer begged me to visit the family with whom he was
boarding, assuring me that I should find the most amusing nest of
cranks there. These people had come originally from the Pacific Coast,
I cannot recall whether from Bolivia or Ecuador. As their
revolutionary tendencies and their constant efforts to overthrow the
Government had rendered their native country too hot to hold them,
they had drifted through Peru to Chili, and had wandered across the
continent to Buenos Ayres, where the details connected with the
running of a boarding-house had left them with but little time for
putting their subversive tendencies into practice. Amongst their
paying guests was an elderly man from the country of their origin, who
twenty-five years earlier had so disapproved of the particular
President elected to rule his native land, that he had shown his
resentment by attempting to assassinate him. Being, however, but an
indifferent shot with a revolver, he had merely wounded the President
in the arm. He had somehow managed to escape from Bolivia, or Ecuador,
and ultimately made his way to Buenos Ayres, where he was warmly
welcomed in revolutionary circles; and his defective marksmanship
being overlooked, the will was taken for the deed, and he was always
alluded to as "El Libertador," or "The Liberator." I accompanied the
young engineer to his boarding-house one evening, where I met the most
extraordinary collection of people. Every one was talking at once, and
all of them at the very top of their voices, so it was impossible to
follow what was being said, but I have no doubt that their opinions
were all sufficiently "enlightened" and "advanced." "The Liberator"
sat apart in an arm-chair, his patriarchal white beard streaming over
his chest, and was treated with immense deference by every one
present. At intervals during the evening glasses of Guinness' bottled
stout were offered to the Liberator (and to no one else), this being a
beverage of which most South Americans are inordinately fond. I was
duly introduced to the Liberator, who received my advances with
affability tempered with haughtiness. I flattered myself that I had
made a very favourable impression on him, but I learnt afterwards that
the old gentleman was deeply offended with me, for, on being
introduced to him, I had assured him that it was a pleasure to meet
"so distinguished a _man_" (un _hombre_ tan distinguido), whereas I
should have said "so distinguished a _gentleman_" (un _caballero_ tan
distinguido), a curious point for so ardent a democrat to boggle over.
No stranger in Buenos Ayres should omit a visit to the Plaza Euskara
on a Sunday.
The Plaza Euskara is the great court where the Basques play their
national game of "pelota." Euskara is the term used by the Basques
themselves for their mysterious language, a language with no affinity
to any European tongue, and so difficult that it is popularly supposed
that the Devil, after spending seven fruitless years in endeavouring
to master it, gave up the attempt in despair. "Pelota" is the father
of racquets and fives, and is an immemorially old game, going back, it
is said, to the times of the Romans. Instead of using a racquet, it is
played with a curved wicker basket strapped on to the right wrist.
This basket is not unlike in shape to those wicker-work covers which
in pre-taxi days were placed by London hotel porters over the wheels
of hansom-cabs to protect ladies' dresses in getting in or out of
them. When a back-handed stroke is necessary, the player grasps his
right wrist with his left hand, using his wicker-encased right hand as
a racquet. The court is nearly three times the length of a
racquet-court, and is always open to the air. There is a back wall and
a wall on the left-hand side; the other two sides are open and filled
with spectators. The players are marvellously adroit, and get up balls
which seem quite impossible to return; they are all professionals, for
the game is so difficult that it must be learnt in early boyhood. It
is scored like racquets up to fifteen points, one side invariably
wearing blue "berets" and sashes, the other red. Large red and blue
dials mark the points on the end wall as they are scored.
On Sundays and holidays the Plaza Euskara is a wonderful sight, with
its thousands of spectators, all worked up to a pitch of intense
excitement. The betting is tremendous, and fat wads of dollar bills
are produced from the shabbiest of coats, whose owners one would
hardly associate with such an amount of portable wealth. The three
umpires sit together on a sort of rostrum, each one crowned with the
national Basque "beret." Points are being continually referred to
their decision, amidst the shouts and yells of the excited partisans.
Every time the three umpires stand up, remove their berets, and make
low bows to each other; they then confer in whispers, and having
reached a decision, they again stand up bareheaded, repeat their bows,
and then announce their verdict to the public. Pelota is certainly a
most interesting game to watch, owing to the uncanny skill of the
players. Invariably in the course of the afternoon there is one match
in which the little apprentices take part, either with their masters
as partners, or entirely amongst themselves.
I have used the Spanish word "pelota," but it merely means "ball,"
just as the Russian word "soviet" means nothing in the world but
"council." English people who refuse to take the trouble to learn any
foreign language, seem to love using these words; they have all the
glamour of the unfamiliar and unknown about them. Personally, it
always seemed to me very foolish using the term "Kaiser" to describe
the ex-Emperor William. Certainly any dictionary will tell one that
Kaiser is the German equivalent for Emperor, but as we happen to speak
English I fail to see why we should use the German term. Equally,
Konig is the German for King, and yet I never recollect any one
alluding to the Konig of Saxony. Some people seem to imagine that the
title "Kaiser" was a personal attribute of William of Hohenzollern; it
was nothing of the sort. Should any one have been entitled to the
term, it would have been the Hapsburg Emperor, the lineal descendant
of the "Heiliger Romischer Kaiser," and yet one used to read such
ridiculous headings as "Kaiser meets Austrian Emperor." What did the
writers of this imagine that Franz-Josef was called by his subjects?
The meaningless practice only originated in England with William II.'s
accession; it was unheard of before. If English people had any idea
that "Rey" was the Spanish for King, I am sure that on King Alfonso's
next visit to England we should see flaring headlines announcing the
"Arrival of the Rey in London," and in the extraordinarily unlikely
event of the Queen of Sweden ever wishing to pay a visit to this
country, any one with a Swedish dictionary could really compose a
brilliant headline, "The Drottning drives despondently down Downing
Street," and I confess that neither of them seem one whit more foolish
than for English-speaking people to use the term Kaiser. The label may
be a convenient one, but it is inaccurate, for there was not one
Kaiser but two.
The familiar, when wrapped in all the majesty of a foreign tongue, can
be very imposing. Some little time back a brother of mine laid out a
new rock-garden at his house in the country. The next year a neighbour
wrote saying that he would be very grateful should my brother be able
to supply him with any of his superfluous rock-plants. My brother
answered, regretting his inability to accede to this request, as,
owing to the dry spring, his rock-garden had failed absolutely, in
fact the only growth visible in it consisted of several hundred
specimens of the showy yellow blooms of the "Leo Elegans." Much
impressed with this sonorous appellation, his correspondent begged for
a few roots of "Leo Elegans." My brother, in his reply, pointed out
that the common dandelion was hardly a sufficient rarity to warrant
its being transplanted.
I went out a second time to the Argentine Republic with Patrick Lyon,
to whom I have already alluded, in order to place a young relative of
his as premium-pupil on an English-owned ranche, or estancia, as it is
locally called. We had an extremely unpleasant voyage out, for at Rio
Janeiro we were unfortunate enough to get yellow fever into the ship,
and we had five deaths on board. I myself was attacked by the fever,
but in its very mildest form, and I was the only one to recover; all
the other victims of the yellow scourge died, and I attribute my own
escape to the heroic remedy administered to me with my own consent by
the ship's doctor. Although Buenos Ayres is quite out of the
yellow-fever zone, the disease has occasionally been brought there
from Brazil, and to Argentines the words "yellow fever" are words of
terror, for in the early "seventies" the population of Buenos Ayres
was more than decimated by a fearful epidemic of the scourge. Our ship
was at once ordered back to Brazil, and was not allowed to discharge
one single ounce of her cargo, which must have entailed a very heavy
financial loss on the R.M.S.P. Company. We unfortunate passengers had
to undergo twenty-one days rigorous quarantine, during which we were
allowed no communication whatever with the outside world, and were in
addition mulcted of the exorbitant sum of 3 pounds a day for very
indifferent board and accommodation.
Having reached the estancia and placed our pupil on it, we liked the
place so well that we made arrangements to stay there for six weeks at
least, thus getting a very good idea of its daily life. The province
of Buenos Ayres is one great featureless, treeless, dead-flat plain,
and being all an alluvial deposit, it contains neither a pebble in the
soil nor a single spring of water. Water is found everywhere at a
depth of six or seven feet, and this great level extends for a
thousand miles. Where its undoubted fascination comes in is hard to
say, yet I defy any one not to respond to it. It is probably due to
the sense of limitless space, and to a feeling of immense freedom, the
latter being physical and not political. The only indigenous tree is
the ombu, and the ombu makes itself conspicuous by its rarity. Nature
must have fashioned this tree with her tongue in cheek, for the wood
is a mere pith, and a walking-stick can be driven right into the tree.
Not only is the wood useless as timber, but it is equally valueless as
fuel, for the pith rots before it can be dried. The leaves are
poisonous, and in spite of its being mere pith, it is one of the
slowest-growing trees known, so that, take it all round, the solitary
indigenous tree of Buenos Ayres is about the most useless arboreal
product that could be imagined. The ombu is a handsome tree to the
eye, not unlike an English walnut in its habit of growth, and it has
the one merit of being a splendid shade-tree. During the last forty
years, poplars, willows and eucalyptus have been lavishly planted
round the estancia houses, so any green or dusky patch of trees
breaking the bare expanse of dun-coloured plain is an unfailing sign
of human habitation.
The manager and the premium-pupils on our estancia all breakfasted
before six, and then went out to the horse-corral to catch their
horses for the day's work. They were obliging enough to catch horses,
too, for myself and Lyon, which we duly found tied up to a tree when
we made our later appearance. Let us suppose an order for fifty
bullocks to have come from Buenos Ayres. The manager with the three
pupils and some ten mounted gauchos would ride off to the selected
enclosure, and run his eye over the "mob" of cattle. Having selected
six beasts, he would point them out to the gauchos, and then pick out
two for himself and his younger brother. Shaking his reins, and
calling out "_Ico! Ico!_" to his horse, he would ride up to the
doomed beast, and endeavour to cut him out from the herd. The horse,
who understood and enjoyed the game as well as the man on his back,
once he had distinguished the bullock they were riding down, needed no
stimulant of whip, but would follow him of his own accord, twisting
and doubling like a retriever after a wounded hare, or a terrier after
a rat. Once the animal was cut out of the herd, the manager would
uncoil his lasso, one end of which was made fast to the cinch-ring of
his girths, and out flew the looped coil of rope with unerring
straightness, catching the bullock round the horns. The intelligent
horse, having played the game many times before, steadied himself for
the shock which experience had taught him to expect when he would feel
the whole weight of the galloping bullock suddenly arrested in his
rush for freedom tugging at his cinch-ring. The gauchos had also
secured their beasts in the same way, and the process was continued
until the fifty bullocks had been securely corralled, blissfully
unconscious that this was the first stage of their ultimate
transformation into roast beef, or _filets de boeuf a la Bordelaise_.
Though Lyon and I never attempted to use the lasso, we often joined in
riding a beast down, and the horses, after they had once identified
the particular beast they were to follow, turned and twisted with such
unexpected suddenness that they nearly shot us both out of the saddle
a dozen times. None of the pupils were yet able to use the lasso with
certainty, though they spent hours in practising at a row of bullocks'
skulls in the corral. In time a foreigner can learn to throw the lasso
with all the skill of a born Argentine, but the use of the "bolas" is
an art that must be acquired in childhood. I used to see some of the
gauchos' children, little fellows of five or six, practising on the
fowls with miniature toy bolas made of string, and they usually hit
their mark. The bolas consist of pieces of raw hide shaped like the
letter Y; at the extremities are two heavy lead balls, whilst at the
base of the Y is a wooden ball which is held in the hand. The operator
whirls the bolas round his head, and sends them flying at the
objective with unfailing certainty, and the animal "emboladoed" drops
as though shot through the head. I have seen these used on "outside
camps," but on a well-managed estancia, such as Espartillar, the use
of the bolas is strictly prohibited, since it tends to break the
animal's leg. The only time I ever saw them employed there, was
against a peculiarly aggressive male ostrich, who attacked all
intruders into his particular domain with the utmost ferocity. The
bird fell like a dead thing, and he assumed a very chastened demeanour
after this lesson. The South American ostrich, the Rhea, though
smaller and less dangerous than his big African cousin, can be most
pugnacious when he is rearing a family of young chicks. I advisedly
say "he," for the hen ostrich, once she has hatched her eggs,
considers all her domestic obligations fulfilled, and disappears to
have a good gossip with her lady friends, leaving to her husband the
task of attending to the young brood. The male bird is really
dangerous at this time, for his forward kick is terrifically powerful.
The ostrich can run faster than any horse, but it is quite easy to
circumvent any charging bird. All that is necessary is to turn one's
horse quickly at right angles; the ostrich has such way on him that he
is unable to pull up, and goes tearing on a hundred yards beyond his
objective before he can change his direction. This manoeuvre repeated
two or three times leaves the bird discomfited; as they would say in
Ireland, "You have him beat." I confess that I have never seen an
ostrich bury his head in the sand to blind himself to any impending
danger, as he is traditionally supposed to do; I fancy that this is a
libel on a fairly sagacious bird, and that in reality the practice is
entirely confined to politicians.
The Argentine Republic is peculiar in possessing a venomous toad,
equipped like a snake with regular poison-glands and fangs. He is
known in the vernacular as escuerzo, and is rather a handsome
creature, wearing a green black-striped coat. I am told by learned
people that he is not a true toad, that his proper name is
_Ceratophrys ornata_, and that he is a cannibal, feeding on
harmless frogs and toads which he kills with his poison-fangs. There
was a plentiful supply of these creatures at Espartillar, and the
pupils, when they found an escuerzo, loved to tease him with a stick.
He is probably the worse-tempered and most irritable batrachian known,
and when prodded with a stick would puff himself out, and work himself
into a hideous passion. Every one went about high-booted, and possibly
his fangs were not powerful enough to penetrate a boot, but, anyhow,
he never made the attempt; he tried to snap at the hands instead, and
as he could only jump up a foot or so, he continued making a series of
abortive little leaps, each futile attempt at reaching his aggressor's
hands adding to the creature's insane rage. When the escuerzo was
beside himself with fury, the pupil would dip his stick into the oily
residue of his pipe, and hold it out to the toad, who would fasten on
to it like a mad creature, only to die in a few seconds of the
nicotine.
The only other venomous reptile was the _Vibora de la Cruz_, the
"Viper with the Cross," much dreaded by the gauchos.
It is an interesting sight seeing wild young horses being broken-in,
and receiving their first instruction in the service of man. The
rough-rider at Espartillar was a younger brother of the manager's, a
short, sturdy, round-faced, grinning Cornish lad of eighteen, a youth
of large appetite, but of few words, universally known as "The Joven,"
which merely means "the lad." "Joven," by the way, is pronounced
"Hoven," with a slight guttural sound before the "H." The Joven,
having met with no serious accidents during the two years he had
officiated as roughrider, had kept his nerve, and was still young
enough to enjoy his hazardous duties most thoroughly.
He always had a large gallery of spectators, for every one on the
estancia who could manage it trooped to the corral to criticise and to
pass judgment. The sun-browned Joven, who preferred riding without
stirrups, would appear, stripped to his drawers and vest, shod with
canvas _alpargates_, with a _revenque_, or short raw-hide whip, in his
hand. A young horse, who had hitherto run wild, would be let in and
lassoed, with a second lasso thrown over his hind legs. Before
tightening the lassoes the men threw a _recado_, or soft leather saddle
on him, the Joven tugging at the string-girths until the unfortunate
grass-fed animal looked like a wasp. The lassoes were tautened, and the
youngster thrown over on his side. The Joven, grinning cheerfully, then
forced a thong of raw hide into his unwilling pupil's mouth, whilst the
young horse, half-mad with terror, rolled his eyes impotently. The
Joven, standing astride over the fallen animal, half-dancing on his
toes in his canvas shoes, would shout to the men to slacken the heel-
rope, and then to let go the head-rope. As the terrified animal
struggled to his feet, the Joven slipped nimbly on to the _recado_.
Then came a brief pause, as the horse puzzled over the unaccustomed
weight on his back, and those abominable girths that were cutting him
in two, till, with his head between his knees, and his back arched like
a bow, up he went vertically into the air, landing on all four feet.
That irksome weight was still there, and he had received a sharp cut
with some unknown instrument, but it might be worth while trying it
again. So up he went a second time, the Joven grinning from ear to ear,
but sitting like a rock, then, as it was as well to teach a young horse
that bucking entailed punishment, the _revenque_ descended smartly two
or three times, and a _revenque_ hurts. The puzzled youngster did
not like it, and thought that he would try rolling for a change. The
Joven slipped off with the dexterity of an acrobat, and dancing about
on his toes, chose his moment, and was again on the horse's back as he
rose. Then came a real contest and trial of skill between the
four-legged and two-legged youngsters, as the horse began kicking
furiously, and then reared, but do what he would that tiresome weight
was still on his back, and there was an unaccustomed pressure on his
sides. The Joven, his sun-baked round face wreathed in grins, as
though he were having the time of his life, was now using his
_revenque_ in earnest, and the young horse decided that he would
prefer to try a gallop at full speed. Off he went like an arrow from a
bow, the Joven dexterously guiding him through the entrance to the
corral, partly with the thong of raw hide, in part with light strokes
of the _revenque_ on the side of the head, and they disappeared
in a dense cloud of dust over the limitless "camp." A quarter of an
hour later they reappeared, the horse cantering quietly, and the boy,
still grinning like a Cheshire cat, sitting quite loosely, with his
legs dangling, as though he were in an arm-chair. The Joven slid to
the ground, and commenced talking to the horse in Spanish, as he
stroked his head. "_Pingo! Pingo!_" he cried, as he stroked him,
the word _Pingo_ being supposed in the Argentine, for some
unknown reason, to exercise a magically soothing influence over a
horse, and then, removing the raw-hide thong from the youngster's
mouth, he unsaddled him and turned him loose with a resounding smack
on his quarters, leaving him to meditate on the awful things that may
befall a young horse when he attempts to misbehave. The light-hearted
Joven, dripping with perspiration, wiped the sweat from his eyes, and,
with unabated cheerfulness, took stock of the second animal he was to
school, for he was to give three lessons that morning. When they were
over, the youth's own mother would not have known him, so caked with
dust and perspiration was he. He made his way to the swimming-bath,
still cheerful and smiling, determined not to miss the midday meal by
one second, for, like all the heroines of Mr. E. F. Benson's novels,
the eighteen-year-old Joven was afflicted with a perpetual voracious
hunger. When I complimented him at dinner on his very skilful
performance, the Joven, being in a loquacious mood, said, after a
pause for thought, "Oh, yes," beamed with friendliness, and promptly
devoured another plateful of beef. I asked him whether he never
regretted the quiet of his father's Cornish farm, in view of the
strenuous exertions his duties as rough-rider at Espartillar imposed
on him. The Joven knocked out his pipe, lit another, thought for five
minutes, and then said, "No, it's fun," displaying every tooth in his
head as he did so as a proof that his conversational brevity was due
not to a surly disposition, but to the limitations of his vocabulary.
The pupils at Espartillar were exceedingly well treated. The house was
most comfortably furnished, and contained a full-sized English
billiard-table, two pianos, a plentiful supply of books, and a barrel-
organ, for this was many years before the birth of the gramophone. It
is the singular custom on most estancias to kill beef for six months
of the year, and mutton for the remaining six, which entails a certain
monotony of diet. We had fallen in for the beef-eating half-year, but
the French wife of the English estancia-carpenter officiated as cook,
and she had all the culinary genius of her countrywomen. Above all she
avoided those twin abominations "Ajo" and "Aji," or garlic and green
chilli, which Argentines cram into every dish, thus making them
hideously unpalatable to Northern Europeans.
In an absolutely treeless land, without any coal measures, fuel is one
of the greatest difficulties of camp life. In my time, in the city of
Buenos Ayres, all the coal came from England, and cost, delivered, 5
pounds a ton. Its cost in the country, hauled for perhaps twenty miles
over the roadless camp, would be prohibitive, and there was no wood to
be had. For this reason, on every estancia there were some ten acres
planted with peach trees. It seems horribly wasteful to cut down peach
trees for fuel, but they grow very rapidly, burn admirably, and whilst
they are standing the owner gets an unlimited supply of peaches for
pickling and preserving. The soil of the Argentine suits peaches, and
both sorts, the pink-fleshed European "free-stone" and the American
yellow-fleshed "cling-stone," do splendidly. In Spanish, the former
are called _melocotones_, the latter _duraznos_. At Espartillar there
were quite twenty acres of peach trees, and when Lyon and I wished to
be of use, the manager frequently asked us to hitch-up the wagon, and
bring him in a few sackfuls of peaches for preserving.
Espartillar boasted a great neglected wilderness of a garden, as
untidy and unkempt as a fashionable pianist's hair, but growing the
most wonderful collection of fruit. Here pears, peaches, lemons,
guavas, and strawberries flourished equally well in the accommodating
Argentine climate, and the pears of South America, the famous _peras
de agua_, must be tasted before their excellence can be imagined.
The garden was traversed by an avenue of fine eucalyptus trees,
amongst whose dusky foliage little screaming green parrakeets darted
in and out all day long, like flashes of vivid emerald light. The
garden was also, unfortunately, the favourite recreation-ground of a
family of lively skunks, and the skunk is an animal whose terrific
offensive powers necessitate extreme caution in approaching him.
Should a young dog unwarily attempt to tackle a skunk, he had to be
rigorously quarantined for a fortnight, for otherwise the
inexpressibly sickening odour was unendurable.
Beyond the garden enclosure, the dun-coloured expanse of treeless
featureless camp stretched its endless flat levels to the horizon, the
wooden posts supporting the wire fences being the only sign that man
had ever invaded these vast solitudes. Our minds are so constituted
that we set bounds to everything, for everything to which we are
accustomed has limits; one had a perpetual feeling that were one only
to ride over the camp long enough, towns and human habitations must be
reached somewhere. A glance at the map showed that this was not so.
Due south one could have ridden hundreds of miles with no variations
whatever to mark the distances achieved. This endless camp had
apparently no beginning and no end; it was as though one had suddenly
come face to face with Eternity.
All my experiences, however, are thirty years old. I believe that now,
within a radius of fifty miles from Buenos Ayres, most of the camp has
been broken up and ploughed. Growing wheat now covers the vast
khaki-coloured plains I recollect dotted with roving herds of cattle.
The picturesque and half-savage Gaucho, who lived entirely on meat,
and would have scorned to have walked even a hundred yards on foot,
has been replaced by the Italian agricultural labourer, who lives on
_polenta_ and macaroni, and will cheerfully trudge any distance
to his work. The great solitudes have gone, for with tillage there
must be roads now, and villages, and together with the solitudes the
wonderful teeming bird-life must have vanished, too.
I prefer to recollect the Espartillar I knew, a place of unending
spaces and glorious sunshine, with air almost as intoxicating as wine,
where innumerable spurred plovers screamed raucously all day long,
where the little ground-owls blinked unceasingly at the edge of their
burrows; where bronze-green ibises flashed through the sunlight, and
rose-coloured spoonbills trailed in pink streaks across the blue sky,
as they flew in single file from one _laguna_ to another. That
marvellous bird-life was worth travelling seven thousand miles to see;
wheatfields can be seen anywhere.