HEALTHY LITTLE URUGUAY
One cold June evening, with more than a hundred days and eight hundred
miles of travel in Chile and the Argentine behind me, I took final leave
of Buenos Aires—not without regret, for all its ostentatious
artificialities. Or it may be that my sorrow was at parting from the
good friends with whom I had been wont to gather toward sunset in the
café across from the consulate for a “cocktail San Martin,” one of whom
now volunteered to see me as far as Montevideo just across the river—a
hundred and twenty miles away. Out the Paseo de Colón the Dársena Sud
was ablaze with the lights of the several competing steamers, equal to
the best on our Great Lakes, which nightly cross the mouth of the Plata.
For the two cities are closely related. In summer _Porteños_ flee to
Montevideo’s beaches; in winter the white lights of Buenos Aires attract
many Uruguayans; the year round business men hurry back and forth.
Aboard the _Viena_ of the Mihanovich Line I watched the South American
metropolis shrink to a thin row of lights strewn unbrokenly for many
miles along the edge of the horizon, like illuminated needle-points
where sea and sky had been sewed together. Wide and shallow, exposed
here to all the raging winds from the south, the Paraná Guazú (“River
like a Sea”) often shows itself worthy of its aboriginal name in this
winter season. I did not wake, however, until the red sun was rising
over Montevideo and her Cerro and we were gliding up to a capacious
wharf.
It was fitting that my sight-seeing should begin with the little rocky
hill surmounted by an old Spanish fortress which is the first and last
landmark of the traveling Uruguayan. To the Cerro, barely five hundred
feet high, yet standing conspicuously above all the rest of the
surrounding world, Montevideo owes both its name and its situation. When
the Portuguese navigator Magalhães, whom we call Magellan, sailed up
what he hoped might prove a passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific,
a sailor on lookout, catching sight of this little eminence, cried out,
“Monte vid’ eu! I see a hill!” On it was built the first fort against
the Charrúa Indians, and its value both as a place of refuge and as a
stone quarry made it natural that the chief town of the region should
have grown up about it. The part the Cerro has since played in Uruguayan
history is out of all keeping with its insignificant size; the poems
that have been written about it are as legion as the legends which hover
over it. It holds chief place in the national coat-of-arms and in the
hearts of homesick sons of Uruguay. Never in all the rebellions and
revolutions since its discovery has the Cerro been taken by force of
arms; never will the people of Montevideo tire of telling haughty
_Porteños_ that Buenos Aires has nothing like it.
From its summit all Montevideo may be seen in picturesque detail and
far-spread entirety, the point where the Plata, deep brown to the last,
for all its sea-like width, meets the Atlantic and flows away with it
over the horizon, then, swinging round the circle, the faintly
undulating plains, broken here and there by low purplish hillocks, of
the “Purple Land.” It is a pity that the Cerro, certainly not
impregnable as a fortress, has not been made a place of residence, or,
better still, transformed into such a park as Santa Lucía of Santiago.
The fashionable section of Montevideo, however, has moved in the other
direction, leaving the famous hill, with its garrison-sheltering old
Spanish fort and its lighthouse, to squatters’ shanties, rubbish heaps,
and capering goats, not to mention the insistent odors of a neighboring
_saladero_ where cattle are reduced to salt beef.
In many ways the Uruguayan capital is the most attractive city of South
America; as a place to live in, contrasted with a place in which to make
a living, it is superior to many American cities. There is a peculiar
quality of restfulness about it unknown to its large and excited rival
across the Plata, something distinctive which easily makes up for the
handicap of being so near a world metropolis as to be overshadowed by
it. For another thing, it is nearer the mouth of the river, making it a
true ocean port and the most nearly a seaside resort of any national
capital in Spanish-America. Built on a series of rocky knolls, roughly
suggesting the fingers of a rude hand, the charm of its location is
enhanced by undulations that recall by contrast the deadly flatness of
Buenos Aires. The old town, all that existed two generations ago, is
crowded compactly together in true Spanish fashion on what might be
called the forefinger, though it had unlimited space to spread landward.
On this rocky peninsula the cross streets are narrow and fall into the
sea at either end, for here it is but eight or ten short blocks from the
Plata to the Atlantic. On one side is an improved harbor with steamers
of many nationalities, on the other is a bay lined with splendid
beaches. Like that of its great neighbor, the harbor of Montevideo
requires frequent dredging, and its problem is quite the contrary of
that in Valparaiso and other bottomless west-coast ports.
[Illustration: Countrymen of southern Chile in May to September garb]
[Illustration: A woman of the Araucanians, the aborigines of southern
Chile]
[Illustration: A monument in the cemetery of Montevideo]
[Illustration: A gentleman of Montevideo depicts in stone his grief at
the loss of his life’s companion]
Along with its seascape, this situation gives the city a very
exhilarating air, especially in the winter season. Then it is often
penetratingly cold, and frequently so windy that not only the most
securely fastened hat but the hair beneath it threatens to abandon the
wearer. On the day of my landing a windstorm caused several deaths and
much property damage. Among other things it took the sheet-iron roof off
a building in which four fishermen had taken refuge and as these ran
away the roof followed and fell upon them. In the third story of the
frame hotel that housed me I often woke from a dream of being rocked in
a ship at sea, and Punta Brava in a far corner of Montevideo’s suburbs
was rightly named indeed on windy days. Fierce thunderstorms also marked
my stay in the capital, some of them accompanied by the mightiest of
flashes and crashes, during which water fell in such torrents that one
could scarcely see across a narrow street—tropical storms they might
have been called, had it not kept right on raining long after it had
done raging.
Uruguay claims 1,400,000 inhabitants, of whom all but the million are
said to live in the capital, though the lack of a definite census makes
guessing a popular pastime. But the city is much larger in extent than
this number would imply. One can ride for hours on the lines of its two
excellent tramway companies without once leaving town. Even in the older
sections Montevideo is substantially and handsomely built, with many
good modern monuments. Only a few old landmarks are left, such as the
purely Spanish cathedral on the Plaza de la Constitución, for Uruguay
seems to consider her first demand for independence in 1808 the
beginning of her history and makes no effort to preserve the memories of
her colonial or pre-colombian days. For all that, the capital has
retained a considerable atmosphere of old Spain, a distinctly
seventeenth-century echo, along with her South American style of
up-to-datedness. The best houses along the fine avenues are generally in
colonial style, an almost Moorish one-story building, with lofty
ceilings and space-devouring patios. Especially in the roomy suburbs do
the dwellings stop abruptly at one story, so abruptly sometimes as to
suggest that ruin, or at least a laborer’s strike, has suddenly befallen
the owner. The real reason is probably because it would be hard to marry
off one’s daughters if their “dragons” had to begin their wooing by
shouting up to the second or third floor windows.
Iron-work grilles are universal, and many house-doors have brass-lined
peepholes through which the resident can see whether the man knocking is
worth admitting. Gardens with subtropical plants are numerous and
promenades under palm-trees by no means unusual. Especially along the
edge of the sea there are over-ornate _quintas_, alternating with
washerwoman shanties; but there is little oppressive poverty in
Montevideo, and at the same time little of the conspicuous plutocracy so
familiar across the river, a lack of contrast which adds, perhaps, to
the monotony of many a street vista. Poor _ranchos_ are by no means rare
in the farther outskirts, but these are open-air and almost clean slums
compared with the congested sections of our own large cities. Out beyond
the older town are park improvements on an extensive scale. The Prado,
with its great Rose Gardens, said to include hundreds of varieties,
though but few were in bloom among the dead leaves of June, is worth
coming far to see. Here real hills break the monotony of the landward
vista and make artificial, over-polished Palermo with its deadly
flatness seem disagreeable by contrast. The tale goes that a group of
wealthy _Porteños_ once set on foot a movement to buy one of Uruguay’s
hills, carry it across the river, and set it up in one of their own
plazas. No doubt they could have reimbursed themselves by charging
admission and rights of ascension, but like many ambitious
Latin-American plans this one died prematurely.
In general Uruguayans are well-dressed, and comfortably well-to-do, if
one may judge from appearances; compared with _roto_ Chile the capital
is immaculate. “Beachcombers” are rare in this only important port of
the country and beggars are seldom seen, though there is a plague of
petty vendors. It had been like landing on a hostile shore to make our
way through the amazingly impudent mob of hoarse-voiced cabmen,
newsboys, hotel touts, lottery-ticket vendors, vagrants, pickpockets,
useless policemen, and idle citizens into the tranquil waters of a
Sunday morning in the Uruguayan capital; but this common waterfront
experience did not last long. There is something extremely pleasant
about most of the modest, unpretentious _Fluvenses_, as the people of
Montevideo call themselves, a term we might translate as “rivereens.”
They have, as a rule, a natural politeness, a frank and open simplicity
all but unknown across the river, a leisurely, contemplative philosophy
that will not be broken down even by the material prosperity of a
country that is making perhaps the most intelligent use of its situation
and resources of all the republics of Latin-America. It is said that the
Uruguayan came mainly from the Basque provinces and the Canary Islands,
while the _argentino_ is chiefly of southern Spanish origin; that the
former brought with him and still retains a sturdier, less facile, but
more dependable, more thoroughgoing character. Those of wide commercial
experience in the continent say that the Uruguayan is the most honest
man south of Panama; every foreign resident I questioned rated Uruguay
as the most lovable country in South America—and as a rule foreign
residents do not see the best side first. Personally, I found the
Uruguayan more sincere, less selfish, somewhat more solid and at the
same time more of an impulsive idealist than his materialistic neighbors
across the Plata. His country is far enough south to escape the
indolence of the tropics, far enough north to make life itself seem of
equal importance with making a living. With every natural advantage of
the Argentine, except the doubtful one of size, and a more frugal and
industrious population not greatly modified by recent immigration,
Uruguay is still peopled by a kind of colonial Spaniard, somewhat
improved by the breezy, generous quality of his New World domain.
To those who approach it from the south, where they are almost unknown,
negroes are noticeable in Montevideo and become more so as one proceeds
northward through the country. No doubt they drift down from Brazil and,
finding the wide Plata an obstacle, seldom reach its southern shores.
Yet they are so few, and slavery is so slightly connected with them in
the Uruguayan mind, that there is scarcely a “color-line.” The daughter
of a former Uruguayan minister to Washington told me she had always
informed inquiring Americans that there were no negroes in Uruguay, and
had only discovered her error upon her return with a sharpened color
sense. In Uruguay people are often called by nicknames of color, ample
proof that there is no sensitiveness about the hue of the skin. These
popular terms, usually preceded by the affectionate “Ché” of
southeastern South America, run all the gamut of tints,—“Hola, Ché
morocha.” “Diga, Ché trigueña!” “Cómo va, Ché negrito?” It is a common
experience of visiting Anglo-Saxons to hear themselves addressed by
familiar persons as “Ché rubio,” literally “red-head,” as a
complimentary distinction from the universally black-haired natives. The
latter, particularly the women, are almost always of plump form and
comely face, whatever their color, with few of the cadaverous types so
numerous in the north temperate zone. Uruguayan women, by the way, are
perhaps a trifle more Moorish in their family life than those of Buenos
Aires, but they are not wholly unaware of the “advanced” atmosphere of
their environment.
Buenos Aires has long had the reputation of being the most expensive
city on earth, probably because it is large enough to be famous, for
certainly its neighbor Montevideo is still less of a poor man’s
paradise. For one thing, the difference in basic coins favors the
Uruguayan profiteer. Many things which cost an Argentine peso in Buenos
Aires cost an Uruguayan peso, or two and a half times as much, in
Montevideo. It is highly to the credit of Uruguay, and a constant source
of pride to her citizens, that her dollar is the only one in the world
normally worth more than our own; but it is painful for the visitor to
be forced to purchase at so high a price pesos that will seldom buy what
a quarter should. In hotel charges, public conveyances, laundries,
lottery-tickets, and other necessities of life the Uruguayan dollar
seems to go little farther than that of the Argentine, and certainly it
has nothing like the purchasing power of our own. Not only are there
substantial coins in circulation, instead of more or less ragged scraps
of paper redeemable only in the imagination, or coins so debased that
only a careless speaker would refer to them as silver, but any gold coin
is legal tender in Uruguay. Throw down an English sovereign in the
smallest shop in the most isolated corner of the republic and it is
instantly accepted at a fixed value. An American $10 gold piece passed
without argument as $9.66 Uruguayan, though our dollar bill was rated at
only ninety _centésimos_ before the war. I chanced to be in a _pulpería_
far out in the interior of Uruguay when the shopkeeper asked the large
estate owner of the vicinity to take a hundred pesos to the capital for
him. By and by the _pulpero_ returned from a back room with a small
handful of gold and a bit of paper on which he had figured out the sum
he wished to send. He handed the _estanciero_ several English
sovereigns, some German 20-mark pieces, a Brazilian gold coin, an
American half-eagle, two French napoleons, and the rest of the sum in
Uruguayan paper, silver, and nickel. There was no argument whatever as
to the “exchange” on the foreign coins; each had its fixed value
anywhere in Uruguay. It was something like what a universal coinage will
be when the world grows honest and intelligent enough to establish
one—though of course our bankers would not allow any such system to
become universal, even did the perversity of human nature make it
possible. This ready exchange, and the possibility of turning Uruguayan
paper into gold upon demand, are among the reasons which make the
Uruguayan dollar normally the most valuable in the world.
Down on one of its beaches the city of Montevideo runs a sumptuous hotel
and an official Monte Carlo. Here it brings ambassadors and
“distinguished visitors” for afternoon tea or formal banquets, gives
balls, keeps an immense staff of liveried menials at public expense the
year round, and during the season takes money away from the wealthy
“sports” from across the river with an efficiency not exceeded anywhere
along the Riviera. More than one passing observer has found this an
excellent means of taxing the rich for the benefit of the poor, since
the profits of the Casino go into the municipal treasury. As much can
scarcely be said for the lottery run by the federal government, with its
incessant appeal to the gambling instincts of all classes of the
population. The tickets assert that “the lottery is run for the Hospital
de Caridad and its profits are destined for exclusively beneficent
ends,” but the statement rings as hollow as many similar attempts on the
part of Latin-America to coax itself to believe that there is something
good in an essentially vicious institution.
Music and drama flourish during the winter in Montevideo; uncounted
cinemas perpetrate their piffle in and out of season. An excellent
Italian dramatic company, headed by the emotional actress Lyda Borelli,
sometimes, and probably not unjustly, called the successor of Duse, was
playing at the “Solis” during my visit—and bringing out in pitiless
contrast the insufferable barnstormers usually seen on the South
American stage. The opera season is in August, when that half of stars
and troupe who do not cross to Santiago de Chile are on their way back
from Buenos Aires to New York or Europe. Orchestra seats are then at
least $12 each and boxes from $80 up, but as one _must_ have a box for
the season or be rated a social nonentity, there are sad rumors of
_Fluvense_ families scrimping all the rest of the year in order to buy
their opera tickets. Naturally this makes them somewhat exacting and
capable of giving an unpleasant reception to singers tired out at the
end of a long season. Caruso himself has been roundly hissed in
Montevideo. Plays and the opera begin at twenty-one o’clock. As in Italy
and Brazil, and more recently in the Argentine, the law requires the use
of the excellent twenty-four-hour system in all public buildings, and
many a private timepiece has followed suit. The decree was new and
throughout the city were many pasted-over signs such as:
Museum open from 12 to _16_ o’clock.
Somewhere in South America I met a Dane who contended that a small
country, like a man of modest wealth, is better off than a great nation.
Uruguay bears out the statement. We have been accustomed to speak of the
“A.B.C.” countries of South America as having the only stable and
progressive governments in that continent. Only its slight size, as
compared with its gigantic neighbors, has caused Uruguay to be
overlooked in the formation of that list. As its near neighbor and
relative, Paraguay, is perhaps at the bottom of the scale
governmentally, so Uruguay, by its national spirit, its energetic
character, and its advanced legislation is probably at the top, more
nearly fulfilling the requirements of an independent state than any
other nation south of the United States. Certainly it is superior to
both Chile and Brazil in everything but size, and it is doubtful whether
even the Argentine is governed with more intelligence and general
honesty. Once as troublesome a state as any in Latin-America, Uruguay
has settled down and developed her natural resources until she is noted
for her financial stability, and revolutions are memories of earlier
generations. Were she a large country, instead of being merely a choice
morsel of land smaller than some counties of Texas, there is little
doubt that she would stand at least as high as any of her neighbors—or
would size, always an obstacle to good government in Latin-America,
bring her down from her high level?
Uruguay has not always been a small country, nor for that matter a
country at all. In the olden days the _Banda Oriental_, or “Eastern
Bank,” of the River Uruguay was a province of the viceroyalty of Buenos
Aires. To this day the official name of the country is “La República
Oriental del Uruguay,” and the people still call themselves “Orientals.”
In 1800 the whole “Eastern Bank” had but 40,000 inhabitants, of whom
15,000 lived in Montevideo. When Napoleon overran Spain and the
viceroyalty of Buenos Aires revolted, the _Banda Oriental_ remained
loyal, thus opening the first breach between the two sections of the
colony. Not long afterward the “grito de libertad” sounded in the
interior of the province, and the man who was destined to become the
national hero of Uruguay, the “First Oriental,” the “Protector of the
Oriental Provinces,” soon took the head of the revolt.
José Gervasio Artigas was a mere _estanciero_ of the “Eastern Bank”
until he took up soldiering, some time before the “cry of liberty.” In
1811 he left the Spanish army and fled to Buenos Aires, but soon became
an advocate of complete Uruguayan independence, a patriot or a traitor,
according to the side of the Plata on which the speaker lives. Having
won their freedom from Spain, the _argentinos_ were finally defeated by
the “Oriental” general, Rivera, and Artigas became ruler not only of the
present Uruguay but of the now Argentine provinces of Entre Rios,
Corrientes, Santa Fé, and Córdoba, these having formed the “Federal
League” in opposition to the Buenos Aires Directory. To read Uruguayan
school-books, “the Tucumán congress was secretly working to establish a
monarchy on the Plata, and our five provinces sent no delegates.” One by
one, however, the other provinces returned to the new mother country,
only the “Eastern Bank” persisting in its isolation and demand for
complete autonomy. Meanwhile Artigas was in exile—and at one time was
offered a pension by the United States—but finally, in 1825, a band of
“Orientals” besieged Montevideo and Uruguay declared her full
independence.
The Uruguayan flag remains the same as that of the Argentine, with a
golden sun superimposed. The revolutions of 1863 and 1870, each two
years long, are the only serious disturbances that have occurred in the
“República Oriental” since its independence, and with those exceptions
the country has steadily advanced in health and prosperity. Its
government is more centralized than our own, more like that of the
Argentine, the congress being elected by popular vote in the
departments, but the executives of the latter being appointed by the
federal government. _Argentinos_ speak of Uruguay with a kind of forced
condescension, as of a member of the family temporarily estranged from
the rest, or as a land of no great importance yet one worthy of again
being a province of what they consider the greatest country on the
globe, and they pretend at least to think that the great development of
the Argentine will in time inevitably bring back to the fold this one
lost lamb. But the “Orientals” consider their government superior and
show no tendency to make the change.
Uruguay’s reputation as perhaps the most progressive republic in South
America is largely based on her advanced legislation, most of it
fathered by a recent president. Under his guidance stern minimum wage
and maximum hour laws have been enacted, and many doctrines of the
milder radicals have been put into modified practice. The legislators
forbade bull-fights, cock-fights, and prize-fights in one breath.
Uruguay is the only country in South America with a divorce law, and the
church has been shorn of the militant power it still has in most of
Spanish-America. Montevideo bids fair to become the Reno of the
continent, as well as its only summer-resort capital. Dissatisfied
husbands or wives move over from Buenos Aires; Spanish and Italian
actors look forward to their Uruguayan engagement as an opportunity to
air their conjugal grievances—though they are not “aired” in the
American yellow-journal sense, for here divorce is strictly an affair
between the parties concerned and the judge and lawyers, rarely being so
much as mentioned even in the back pages of a provincial newspaper.
Priests are comparatively rare sights in the _Banda Oriental_; religious
festivals and public processions have been abolished, and the influence
of the church on the government reduced to a minimum. Montevideo is the
seat of an archbishop, but he exists only on paper, for the party in
power is not friendly to the clergy and the papal appointment must be
confirmed by congress. There are, to be sure, many crude superstitions
left, especially among the poorer classes and in the rural districts,
but they give Rome no such income as it derives from similar sources in
the rest of the continent. Several Protestant churches have been built
in Montevideo, and all faiths enjoy a freedom that would seem astounding
on the West Coast. Indeed, comparative indifference to sect lines makes
it an ordinary experience for Protestant ministers traveling in rural
districts to be asked by persons professing themselves devout Catholics
to baptize their children. “For one thing,” as one such rustic put it,
“it is cheaper than when the priest does it.” It may seem a matter of
slight importance to those who have never known the suffering inflicted
by the infernal din of hand-beaten clappers against disguised kettles in
the church towers of the Andes that on the evening of my first day in
Uruguay real church bells, of a musical tone I had almost forgotten,
were ringing in a way that must have been genuine music to the
ocean-battered old windjammer just creeping into the harbor. Far off in
the autumn twilight the sound was still carried softly to my ears by the
wind before which gray clouds were scurrying like a battalion in broken
ranks of defeat, toward the western sky, stained blood-red by the
already dead sun.
Politically the Uruguayans are _blancos_ or _colorados_, “whites” or
“reds.” It is a splendid distinction. For one thing, the parties can
print their arguments and their lists of candidates in posters of their
own color and even the stranger has no difficulty in deciding which side
is speaking. Townsmen can announce their political affiliation by
wearing a red or a white cravat, or a bit of ribbon in their lapels;
countrymen, by the color of their neckerchiefs. There is contrast enough
between the two colors to obscure the lack of any other real difference
between the two parties. In theory the “reds” are “advanced” and the
“whites” more conservative. Evidently there are no neutrals in Uruguayan
politics; everyone is either “red” or “white” from the cradle, not
because Uruguayans take a greater interest in political matters than
average republican societies, but because it is bad form, and lonesome,
to be outside the ranks; and men who do not vote are fined. How an
Uruguayan becomes attached to this or that party is a mystery; almost
none of them can give any real reason for their affiliation. Evidently,
like “Topsy,” they are “jes’ born” in their natural colors.
It is now fifteen years since the “reds” came to power on the heels of
Uruguay’s last revolution. Possession is nine points, even in so
progressive a corner of Latin-America, and the “whites” have been the
“outs” from that day to this. Yet one often hears _blancos_ speak of
“when we start our new revolution,” for it seems to be taken for granted
that the “whites” will come back some day with bullets, and virtually
every man in the country is prepared to fight on short notice for one
side or the other. Roughly speaking, “big business,” large estate
owners, and the church, in other words the predatory classes, are
“whites,” though neckcloths of that color are by no means rare on the
peons and _gauchos_ of the more backward country districts. The leader
of the “reds,” now a private citizen merely because the constitution
does not permit the same man to be president twice in succession, has
often been described as “a mixture of idealist and predatory
politician,” but he knows the secret of imposing his will upon the
government and is generally credited with most of Uruguay’s progressive
legislation. For all his efforts and many real results, however, there
is still much that is rotten in the Republic of Uruguay. The most
advanced laws are of doubtful use when they are administered by the
bandits in office who still flourish throughout the rural districts. In
contrast with the brave modern theories of government is the practice in
such things as permitting scores of the lowest forms of brothels to
flourish in the very heart of the capital. I cannot recall a more
disgusting public sight in the western hemisphere than the long rows of
female wrecks in scant attire who solicit at the doors of several
streets radiating from the Anglican church, while veritable mobs of men
and youths march back and forth to “look ’em over,” amid laughter,
ribald witticisms, and worse.
Contrary to the usual custom in South America, there is no military
conscription in Uruguay; recruits are enticed by posters covered with
glowing promises. Yet for all the “advanced” principles of equality
reputed to reign in the little republic, its army is largely made up of
the poorer and more ignorant element of the population. It is not a
dangerous military force, but it is very useful to the party in power
not only in preserving law and order but for discouraging “white”
revolutions. Whether or not only “reds” are recruited, or whether those
placed on the government payroll automatically become “reds,” whether
indeed youths in the political-ridden interior do not have redness
thrust upon them, is a question not to be determined during a brief
visit. As to the “national navy” of Uruguay, it consists, if my
semi-official informant is trustworthy, of one gunboat, two cruisers,
four steamers, and a transport, all of which, when they are not absent
on one of the frequent “official missions” that make life in the
Uruguayan navy just one festival after another, may be seen anchored in
the harbor of Montevideo, their eyes turned rather toward the “whites”
on shore than toward foreign foes.
I traveled fifteen hundred miles on the network of the _Ferrocarril
Central_ of Uruguay. This and the equally British “Midland” reach all
towns of importance in the republic, though they still by no means cover
it thoroughly. Railway travel in South America is seldom as luxurious as
in the United States, but in the dwarf republic both cars and service
are, on the whole, excellent; the trains are so much more comfortable
than many of the towns through which they run that it is not strange
that scores of the inhabitants come down to sit in them as long as they
remain. There are few accidents, the trains are seldom late, though not
particularly swift, and while fares are high there are frequent
low-priced excursions, announced on handbills as in our own land. The
English-made cars are on a modified American plan, some of the
first-class coaches having leather-upholstered divans as large as beds,
even second-class boasting little tables between the seats for those who
care to lunch or play cards. Between the two classes at opposite ends of
the train there is usually a compartment with kitchen stove and pantry
that serves as a combination café and dining-car, a generous dinner
costing a _peso_, wine, or “cork rights” from those who bring their
liquor with them, extra. Sleeping-cars, journeying on both lines in
order to find distance enough for an all-night trip, run from Montevideo
to Paysandú and Salto, on the shores of the River Uruguay bounding on
the west the republic of the “Eastern Bank.” Compared with Chile,
railroading in Uruguay is palatial and immaculate, though even here the
only heating arrangements for bitter June days are doormats between the
seats, and the only really serious criticism to be made is against the
bad habit, common throughout South America, of starting the trains at
some unearthly hour in the morning.
I took the shortest line first and, rambling at moderate speed across a
somewhat rolling country more fertile in appearance than the Argentine,
brought up at Minas. A broad stone highway, here and there disintegrated
by the heavy rains, led the mile or more from the station to the town,
an overgrown village in a lap of low rocky hills monotonously like any
other Uruguayan or Argentine town of its size, with a two-towered church
and a few rows of one-story buildings toeing wide, bottomless streets.
As in the Argentine, there are no cities in Uruguay that compare with
the capital; the present department capitals were originally forts
against the Indians and the Portuguese around which people gathered for
protection, and few of them have cause to grow to importance.
The second journey carried me into the northwestern corner of the
country. As far as Las Piedras, a suburban town twenty miles from the
capital, there are a score of daily trains in either direction.
Street-cars come here also, the place being noted for a granite monument
topped by a golden winged Victory commemorating a battle for
independence in 1811, from the terrace of which Montevideo’s
fortress-crowned Cerro still stands conspicuously above all the rest of
the visible world. Then this chief “Oriental” landmark disappears and to
the comparative cosmopolitanism of the federal district succeeds the
bucolic calm of the _campaña_, as the pampa is called in Uruguay. The
absence of trees alone gives this a mournful aspect. The “Oriental” has
tried half-heartedly to make up for the natural lack of woods by
planting imported eucalyptus and poplar, at least about his country
dwellings, but nowhere do these reach the dignity of a forest. Uruguay
has less excuse for poor roads than the Argentine, for if it has as much
rain and even heavier soil, it has an abundance of stone, rare in the
land across the Plata. Yet though several stone highways leave the
capital with the best of intentions, they soon degenerate into sloughs
seldom navigable in the wet winter season. Most Uruguayan roads are
merely strips of open _campaña_, the legal twenty-two meters wide,
flanked by wire fences, or occasionally by cactus hedges. Estates a few
miles off the railroads have no chance of getting produce to market
during a large portion of the year; yet the prosperity of the country
depends almost entirely on the exporting of foodstuffs.
Fertile rolling _lomas_, with now and then a solitary _ombú_ spreading
its arms to the wind on the summit, made up most of the landscape, a
scene not greatly different from, yet infinitely more pleasing than, the
dead flatness of Argentine pampas. The _ombú_ is the national tree of
Uruguay, of majestic size and always standing in striking isolation on
the crest of a _loma_, because, according to the poet, it loves to
overlook and laugh at the silly world, though the botanist explains that
it is planted by birds dropping single seeds in their flight and reaches
maturity only on hillocks out of reach of stagnant water. Beyond Mal
Abrigo, rightly named “Bad Shelter,” granite rocks thrust themselves
here and there through the soil; for long stretches coarse brown
_espartillo_ grass covered the country like a blanket. This and the
abundant thistles often ruin the black loam underneath, but the average
“Oriental” _estanciero_ abhors agriculture, preferring to give his
rather indolent attention to cattle and sheep, for he considers planting
fit only for Indians, peons, and immigrant _chacreros_. Nor is the lot
of these Basque, Spanish, or Italian small farmers always happy, even
though they hold their plots of earth on fairly generous terms, for
locusts have been known to destroy a year’s labor in a few hours. There
were a few riding gang-plows, however, drawn by eight or ten oxen, and
many primitive wooden plows behind a pair or two of them. Sleek cattle,
and horses of better stock than the average in South America, grazed
along the hollows and hillsides; now and then an ostrich of the pampas,
occasionally a whole flock of them, legged it away across the rolling
_campaña_. Though most of the country people lived in thatched huts made
of the rich loam soil, sometimes laid together with a clapboard effect
and oozing streaks of mud at this season, both sexes were well and
cleanly dressed.
The railroad wound around every _loma_, refusing to take more than the
slightest grades. Now and then we climbed ever so little up the flanks
of such a knoll and discovered to vast depths of haze-blue horizon a
plump, rolling country of purplish hue, dotted with dark little clumps
of eucalyptus, from each of which peered a low farmhouse and
occasionally a Cervantes windmill for the grinding of grain. There were
many such _estancia_ houses, yet they were all far apart in the
immensity of the little Republic of the Eastern Bank. Why most stations
were so far from the towns they served, in this level country, was a
mystery. The towns themselves varied but slightly in appearance,—a
scattered collection of one-story buildings, in most cases covered with
a stucco that had at some time been painted or whitewashed, a
_pulpería_, or general store, sacred chiefly to the dispensing of strong
drink, and, radiating from it, wide roads plowed into knee-deep sloughs
of black earth. A few sulkies and huge two-wheeled carts, an occasional
country wagon with four immense wheels, from which produce was leisurely
being loaded into freight-cars set aside by the local switch engine—to
wit, a yoke of oxen—some real estate and auction signs offering the
chance of a life-time, completed the background of the picture. In the
foreground the inevitable gang of shouting, mud-bespattered hackmen was
almost lost in the throng of wind-and-sun-browned men in bloomer-like
trousers. Peons smoked their eternal cigarettes; _gauchos_ shod in low
_alpargatas_ or high, soft, wrinkled leather boots, a white or a red
kerchief floating about their necks, the short, stocky riding whip known
as a _rebenque_ hanging from a wrist, lounged about the door of the
_pulpería_, to posts before which were tied trail-spattered horses
saddled with several layers of sheepskins. An incredibly motley
collection of dogs; a majestic policeman in full uniform and helmet
above his voluminous _bombachas_, looking essentially peaceful for all
the sword dangling at his side; a few men and youths, bare-legged to the
knee, wading about with cheerful faces, as if the rainy season were at
worst a temporary inconvenience more than offset by the long months of
fine weather, added their picturesque bit to the gathering. Every
movement and gesture showed these people to be of quicker intelligence
than the dwellers in the high Andes. Few women were seen either on
trains or at stations, except at the smaller towns, where there were
sometimes groups of them, wholly white with few exceptions, but wearing
earrings worthy the daughters of African chieftains. At each halt the
station-master in his best clothes, looking busier and more important
than a prime minister on coronation day, stood watch in hand, the
bell-rope in the other, waiting for the time-table to catch up with us;
the town notables looked on, half-anxiously, half-benignly, as if they
considered themselves very indulgent in allowing the train to run
through their bailiwick and felt deeply the responsibility involved;
boys of assorted sizes, barefoot and shod, wormed their way in and out
of the throng staring at everything with wondering eyes; a few comely
girls sauntered about to see and be seen, and friends and relatives took
the hundredth last embrace amid much chatter and mutual thumping of
backs. Then all at once the station-master gives the bell three sharp
taps, as much as to say, “I mean it, and I am not a man to be trifled
with,” and as the train gets slowly under way some town hero grasps the
opportunity to show his fearlessness by catching it on the fly, and
dropping off again half a car-length beyond with a triumphant, sheepish
grin on his sun-browned countenance.
Two days later the sun, rising huge and red over my left shoulder,
painted a brilliant pink the rounded _lomas_ flanking the Y-shaped line
to Treinta y Tres (also written “33”) and to Melo, far to the northeast
of Montevideo, then spread a pale crimson tint over all the gently
rolling world. Fluffy lambs turned tail and fled as we approached, the
watchdog, true to his calling even unto death, charging the train
against all odds and putting it to ignominious flight. Here and there
lay a whitening skeleton, the animal’s skull sometimes stuck up
conspicuously on the top of a fence-post. There is no unsettled
_despoblado_ in Uruguay, no deserts or haunts of wild Indians, but there
is still much land put to little or no use and not a few remains of the
destruction wrought during the civil war that ended in 1852. Rare,
indeed, is the standing structure in the rural districts that was not
built since that time.
At a small station we were joined by a youth of twenty, pure Caucasian
of race, of the class corresponding to our “hired man.” His long, wavy,
jet-black, carefully oiled hair contrasted strangely with his
complexion, very white under the tan; his eyes were light-brown, as was
also the labial eyebrow he now and then affectionately stroked. He wore
a raven black suit, the coat short and tight-fitting, the trousers, or
_bombachas_, huge as grainsacks, disappearing in great folds into
calfskin half-boots. A black felt hat of the squared shape once popular
at our colleges was held in place by a narrow black ribbon tied
coquettishly under his chin. The bit of his speckless shirt that could
be seen was light green; above it was a rubber collar and a
cream-colored cravat adorned with a “gold” scarfpin; on the third finger
of his left hand he wore a plain gold band; about his neck floated a
huge, snow-white, near-silk kerchief, and a foreign gold coin hung from
the long gilded watch-chain looped ostentatiously all the way across his
chest. About his waist he wore a leather belt six inches wide, with
several buttoned pockets or compartments in which he kept money,
tickets, tobacco, and other small possessions, and from the back of
which, barely out of sight, hung his revolver. A poncho of faint
pink-white, as specklessly clean as all the rest of his garments, and
thrown with studied _abandon_ over one shoulder, completed his outfit.
He rode first-class, and having produced his ticket with a millionaire
gesture meant to overawe the modest _guarda_ whose duty it was to gather
it, he strode into the dining-car with great ostentation and called for
a drink. With the same air of unbounded wealth he paid his reckoning,
flung a generous tip to the waiter, who probably got more in a week than
this at best low-salaried farm-hand in a month, and strutted back to his
seat. It was evident that he was not traveling far, or he would have
sneaked into the second-class coach in his old clothes. At each station
he got off to parade haughtily up and down the platform, casting peacock
glances at the dark-tinted _criolla_ girls who embroidered it. I
approached him at one such stop and asked permission to take his
picture. He refused in very decided and startled terms. I felt that his
“no” was not final, however, and scarcely a mile more lay behind us
before he came wandering up with a companion and sat down beside me. Why
did I want his picture? Would it cost anything? How many copies of it
would I give him? Well, if it was true, as I claimed, that they could
not be finished on the spot—and why not?—I could of course send them to
him? Gradually he reached the opposite extreme of begging me to take his
picture. His companion having suggested that it might be published
“_allá en Europa_,” he kept his delight down to becoming _gaucho_
dignity with difficulty, and before we descended to take the picture at
the station where he left the train, after a short and evidently his
only railway journey in months, he was assuring me that I might publish
it “over there in Europe, in ‘Fray Mocho’ of Buenos Aires” (which the
raucous-voiced trainboy incessantly offered for sale) “or anywhere
else.” Only when the train had gone on without him did I discover that
he was a _blanco_ fleeing from arrest in his own department for the
killing of a rural official in some political squabble, a fact that
seemed to be common knowledge among my fellow-passengers and which must
have made a bit startling my sudden request to photograph him.
The Cerro lighthouse was still flashing through the dense black night
when, late in June, on the shortest day of the year, I took the
tri-weekly train for Brazil. By the time the edge of darkness was tinted
pink by a cloudless day which gradually spread upward from the horizon,
we were already halting at country stations where thickly wrapped
rustics who had driven miles in their bulky two-wheeled carts, a lantern
set on either side of them in a sort of wooden niche raised aloft on a
stick, were unloading battered cans of milk. Durazno, a good-sized
department capital strewn over a low knoll and terminating in a church,
was so flooded by the River Yi at its feet that its parks, alameda, and
“futbol” field were completely under water and many poor _ranchos_ stood
immersed to their ears. The names of the stations were often
suggestive,—Carda, Sarandí, Molles, all named for indigenous trees, so
striking is one of them in this almost treeless landscape. From Rio
Negro, another of the department capitals which pass in close succession
on this line, the “Midland” railway paralleled our own for a dozen miles
before striking off over the brown lomas toward Paysandú. Well on in the
afternoon the smoothly rolling country broke up into the little rocky
gorge of a small stream lined with bushy trees. It was probably not five
hundred feet anywhere from the bottom of the brook to the top of the
rock-faced hill, but this was such unusual scenery to “Orientals” that I
had been hearing since hours before of the extraordinary beauty of this
natural phenomenon, and all prepared to drink their fill of it from the
windows of the train. It was named Valle Eden, but times seem to have
changed in that ideal spot, for a policeman in mammoth _bombachas_ stood
on the station platform, and of Eve there was not so much as a fig-leaf
to be seen.
I had ridden the sun clear around his short winter half-circle when I
descended at Tacuarembó. The town had a hint of tropical ways,—women
going languidly down to the little sandy river with bundles of clothing
on their heads, the streets running out into grassy lanes scattered with
carelessly built ranchos. Features, which had grown more and more Indian
all day along the way and in the second-class coaches, here sometimes
suggested more aboriginal than Caucasian blood. Here, too, there had
been much rain, and the very bricks had sprouted green on the humid,
unsunned south ends of the houses. The shortness of the days was
emphasized by the discovery that I was back in candle-land again, where
there was nothing to do in the evening but stroll the streets or go to
bed.
[Illustration: A rural railway station in Uruguay]
[Illustration: The fertile Uruguayan plains in the Cerro Chato (Flat
Hills) district]
[Illustration: “Pirirín” and his cowboys at an _estancia_ round-up in
northern Uruguay]
[Illustration: Freighting across the gently rolling plains of the
“Purple Land”]
I had been reading the Uruguayan epic “Tabaré” for hours next morning,
and possessing my soul in such patience as one acquires in
Latin-America, when I learned by chance that a _mucamo_, as they call a
_mozo_ in Uruguay, had been waiting in the hotel patio below and asking
for me every few minutes since the night before, the servants having
been too indolent to bring me word. With the better part of a day lost I
rode away on a stout, gray-white horse of rocking-chair canter. The
muddy or flooded road curved and turned and rose and fell, always
seeking the moderate height of the succeeding ridges and here and there
crossing gently rounded _cuchillas_. The _mucamo_ on his piebald was
outwardly a most unprepossessing creature, but he was a helpful, cheery
fellow, in great contrast to the usual surly workman of southern South
America, and though only sixteen and scarcely able to read, he was by no
means dull-witted. Apparently there was not a bird, a flower, or an
animal which he did not know intimately, and he was supernaturally quick
in catching sight or sound of them. The _hornero_, a little brown bird
that makes its ovenlike nest on fence-posts, the branches of trees, and
the crosspieces of telegraph-poles, was there in force; the _cotorra_, a
species of noisy paroqueet, was almost as numerous. The _chingolo_,
resembling a sparrow, sits on the backs of grazing cattle and lives on
the _garrapatas_, or ticks, that burrow into the animal’s hide. The
_bien-te-veo_ (“I spy you”), a yellow bird with a whistling call
suggesting that of a happy child playing hide-and-seek, frequently
glided past; the startled cry of the _teru-teru_ rose as we advanced,
disturbing it. The latter is called the “sentinel bird” and is so
certain to give warning of anything approaching that even soldiers have
found it a useful ally. Dark-gray with white wings and a slight crest,
it resembles a lapwing with a cry not unlike that of our “killdeer.” The
_bien-te-veo_ and the _teru-teru_ live in perfect immunity because of a
local superstition similar to the one sailors have for the albatross.
The woodpecker of Uruguay is called _carpintero_, because he works in
wood; the _viuda_ (widow), a little white bird with a black head, is so
called, my companion explained to me in all innocence, because she
produces her brood regularly each year without ever being seen with a
male. A little dark-brown bird called the _barranquero_ builds nests
like the homes of our ancient cliff-dwellers, in the sides of
_barrancas_, or sand-banks. Among the many small birds, songsters,
screamers, and disciples of silence, which eddied about us, one of the
most conspicuous was the _cardenal_, gray with white under the wings,
its whole head covered with a bright-red liberty cap. A large bird
resembling the stork my companion called “Juan Grande”; others call it
the _chajá_, because of the jeering half-laugh it is always uttering. It
lives on the edges of swamps, though it cannot swim. A big brown
_carancho_, a hawk-like bird living on carrion, circled above us with
the ordinary South American scavenger buzzard, here called simply
_cuervo_, or crow. There is good shooting of a local partridge in
Uruguay, the open season being from April to September. At plowing time
the gulls come in great numbers to feast on the fat grubs. The dainty
crested Uruguayan sparrow has all but been driven out by the English
variety, introduced, if the local legend can be believed, by an
immigrant who let a cageful of them fly rather than pay duty on them.
Thus we rode hour after hour over the rolling _lomas_ and _cuchillas_.
The ground was here and there speckled with _macachines_, daisy-like
little flowers of a wild plant that produces a species of tiny sweet
potato. The _mucamo_ had never heard of the Castilian tongue; what he
spoke was the “lingua oriental.” It was, to be sure, by no means pure
Spanish, but a Spaniard would have had no difficulty in understanding
him.
At the door of an estancia house with all the comforts reasonably to be
expected in so isolated a location I was met by “Pirirín,” son of a
former minister to London and Washington, and brother of a well-known
Uruguayan writer. His English was as fluent as my own, with just a trace
of something to show that it was not his native tongue. An old woman at
once brought us _mate_, and we sucked alternately at the protruding tube
each time she refilled the gourd with hot water. The sun soon set across
the rich loam country, which was here and there being turned up by
plodding oxen, and threw into relief the three _cerros chatos_,
flat-topped hills that give the region its nickname and which suggest
that the level of the country was once much higher before it was washed
away into the sea by heavy rains that even now gave earth and sky such
striking colors.
The wealth and prosperity of the native _estanciero_ of Uruguay is
rarely indicated by the size or dignity of his _estancia_ house. As in
the Argentine and Chile, many estates are owned by men living in the
capital, if not in Europe, each in charge of a _gerente_, or
overseer-manager. Small as Uruguay is—by South American standards it
seems tiny, even though it is almost as large as New England—many of its
estancias are immense, especially in these northern departments. There
has been much chatter by politicians about limiting the size of estates
and setting up immigrants in the place of absentee owners, but so far it
has chiefly ended in political chatter. The average Uruguayan estancia
house is not particularly well adapted to the climate, at least during
the winter months. A little clump of poplars or eucalyptus, occasionally
a solitary _ombú_, invariably marks the site of the main dwelling. Not a
few men of comparative wealth pig it out on their own immense estates,
scorning modern improvements, cut off by impassable roads from markets
and all the outside world several months a year, refusing to subscribe
to the rural telephone, depending for their news on private postmen
hired by groups of their fellows. A few estate owners, especially those
who have lived abroad, demand moderate comfort, whether for themselves
or their managers, though even “Pirirín” was content with more primitive
conditions than many a small American farmer would endure.
It is quickly evident and freely admitted that the average estancia in
Uruguay is loose of morals. _Estancieros_ frankly state that it is
better if the cook is old and unattractive. It seems to be the rule
rather than the exception, for _estancia_ washerwomen and others of
their class to present the estate with a score of children by members of
the owning family and perhaps by several of the peons as well. Among
this class marriage is unpopular and generally considered superfluous.
There is much noise about Uruguay’s “advanced” theories of social
improvement, yet the law forces, and _costumbre_ expects, no help from
the father in the support of his illegitimate children. If he chooses to
acknowledge them and aid in their up-bringing, he is credited with an
unusually charitable disposition. The woman, on her side, takes her
condition as a matter of course. She will admit with perfect equanimity
that she is not certain just who is father of this child or that and
pointing out one of a half dozen playing about the _estancia_ backyard
she will say laughingly, yet with a hint of seriousness and pride, “Ah,
sí, _el_ tiene papá;” that is, he is one of her children whose father
has recognized him. Yet these women are as punctilious in general
courtesy and the outward forms of behavior as their proud _patrón_ or
the hidalgo-mannered peons.
Next day “Pirirín” and I rode away in the Sunday morning sunshine across
the immense estate, the _teru-terus_ screaming a warning ahead of us
wherever we went. In and about a _bañado_, a swamp full of razor-edged
wild grass that cut the fingers at the slightest touch, we saw specimens
of the three principal indigenous animals of Uruguay,—the _carpincho_,
_nutria_, and _mulita_. The first, large as an Irish terrier, is
grayish-brown in color, with an unattractive face sloping back from nose
to ears, squirrel-like teeth, and legs suggestive of the kangaroo.
Amphibious and sometimes called the river hog, he looks like a cross
between a pig and a rabbit, or as if he had wished to be a deer but had
found the undertaking so difficult that he had given it up and taken to
the water and to rooting instead. On the edges of Uruguayan streams
there are many happy little families of the beaver-like nutria, an
aquatic animal large as a cat, with long thick fur and a rat-like tail.
Playful as a young rabbit, the nutria is quick of hearing and swift of
action, taking to the water at once when disturbed and leaving only its
nostrils above the surface; yet when cornered it is savage, as many a
dog has learned to his sorrow. When the _pulperos_, or country
shopkeepers, of Uruguay found that nutria skins brought a high price
from the furriers of Europe and the United States they set the
countrymen to killing them off regardless of age, sex, or season,
ruining many of the skins by their clumsy handling and all but
exterminating the species. The _mulita_, also called _tatu_, is a timid,
helpless little animal of the iguana family, half-lizard, half-turtle,
with a scaly, shield-like covering that suggests medieval armor, and
which, dug out of its hole and roasted over a fagot-fire, furnishes a
repast fit for kings.
The flora was also striking, for all the absence of forests and large
growths. The _sina-sina_ is a small tree with dozens of trunks growing
from the same root, willow-like leaves, and large thorns that clutch and
tear at anything that ventures within reach of it. A waterside bush
called the _curupí_ contains a poison that the Charrúa Indians formerly
used for tipping their arrows. The _sarandí_, a bush growing on the
banks of streams with its feet always in the water; the _madreselva_, or
honeysuckle; the _chilca_, a thinly scattered bush scarcely two feet
high, and the _guayacán_, a bushy plant with beautiful white flowers in
season, were the most common landscape decorations. Thousands of
_macachines_ covered the ground, white flowers with now and then a touch
of yellow or velvety dark-red.
The gauchos of the estate had been ordered to _rodear_, to round up a
large herd of cattle, and soon we came upon them riding round and round
several hundred on the crest of a hillock. On the backs of some of the
animals _chingolos_ still sat serenely picking away at the _garrapatas_
or the flesh left bare by them. The latter are the chief pest of an
otherwise almost perfect ranching country, for thousands of these
aggressive ticks burrow into the hide of the animals and suck their
blood so incessantly that great numbers of cattle die of anemia or
fever. All but the more backward estates now have a big trough-like bath
through which the cattle are driven several times a year as a protection
against _garrapatas_, but even so it is one peon’s sole duty to ride
over the estate each day to _curear_, or skin the animals that have
died, carry the skin home, and stake it out in the sun to dry.
[Illustration: A _gaucho_ of Uruguay]
[Illustration: A rural Uruguayan in full Sunday regalia]
[Illustration: An ox-driver of southern Brazil, smeared with the
blood-red mud of his native heath]
More than two hours of riding brought us to the _almacén_ or _pulpería_,
the general store that is to be found on or near every large _estancia_
in Uruguay. As the day was Sunday scores of gauchos with that
half-bashful, laconic, yet self-reliant air common to their class,
ranging all the way from half-Indian to pure white in race, with here
and there the African features bequeathed by some Brazilian who had
wandered over the nearby border, silently rode up on their shaggy ponies
one after another out of the treeless immensity and, throwing the reins
of the animal over a fence-post beside many others drowsing in the sun,
stalked noiselessly into the dense shade of the acacia and eucalyptus
trees about the _pulpería_, then into the store itself. Most of them
were in full regalia of _recado_, _pellones_, shapeless felt hat, shaggy
whiskers and poncho. With few exceptions the “Oriental” gaucho still
clings to _bombachas_ or _chiripá_, the ballooning folds of which
disappear in moccasin-like alpargatas, or into the wrinkled calfskin
boots still called _botas de potro_, though the custom that gave them
their name has long since become too expensive to be continued. These
“colt boots” were formerly obtained by killing a colt, unless one could
be found already dead, removing the skin from two legs without cutting
it open, thrusting the gaucho foot into it, and letting it shape itself
to its new wearer. A short leather whip hanging from his leather-brown
wrist, a poncho with a long fringe, immense spurs so cruel that the
ready wit of the pampa has dubbed them “_nazarinas_,” a gay waistcoat,
and last of all a flowing neckcloth, the last word of dandyism in “camp”
life, complete his personal wardrobe. It is against the law to carry
arms in Uruguay, yet every gaucho or peon has his _cuchillo_ in his
belt, or carries a revolver if he considers himself above the knife
stage. Every horseman, too, must have his _recado_, that complication of
gear so astonishing to the foreigner, so efficient in use, with which
the rural South American loads down his mount. An ox-hide covers the
horse from withers to crupper, to keep his sweat from the rider’s gear;
a saddle similar to that used on pack animals, high-peaked fore and aft,
is set astride this, and both hide and saddle are cinched to the horse
by a strong girth fastened by thongs passed through a ringbolt. On the
bridle, saddle, and whip is brightly shining silver, over the
saddle-quilts and blankets are piled one above the other, the top cover
being a saddlecloth of decorated black sheepskin or a hairy _pellón_ of
soft, cool, tough leather, and outside all this is passed a very broad
girth of fine tough webbing to hold it in place. With his _recado_ and
poncho the experienced gaucho has bedding, coverings, sun-awning,
shelter from the heaviest rain, and all the protection needed to keep
him safe and sound on his pampa wanderings.
As they entered the _pulpería_ the newcomers greeted every
fellow-gaucho, though some two score were already gathered, with that
limp handshake peculiar to the rural districts of South America, rarely
speaking more than two or three words, and these so low as to be barely
audible, apparently because of the presence of “Pirirín” and myself. The
rules of caste were amazing in a country supposed to be far advanced in
democracy. Though the gaucho, in common with most of the human family,
considers himself the equal, if not the superior, of any man on earth,
he retains many of the manners of colonial days. “Pirirín” and I, as
lords of the visible universe and representatives of the wealth and
knowledge of the great outside world, had entered the _pulpería_ by the
family door and were given the choicest seats—on the best American
oil-boxes available—behind the counter. The sophisticated-rustic
_pulpero_ greeted us each with a handshake, somewhat weak, to be sure,
because that is the only way his class ever shakes hands, but raising
his hat each time, while we did not so much as touch ours. To have done
so would have been to lower both the _pulpero’s_ and the by-standing
gauchos’ opinion of us. Then he turned and greeted his gaucho customers
with an air nicely balanced between the friendly and the superior,
offering each of them a finger end, they raising their hats and he not
so much as touching his.
Yet these slender, wiry countrymen, carrying themselves like
self-reliant freemen, with a natural ease of bearing and a courtesy in
which simplicity and punctilio are nicely blended, take the stranger
entirely on his merits and give and expect the same courtesy as the
wealthy _estanciero_. If the newcomer shows a friendly spirit, his title
soon advances from “Señor”—or “Mister,” in honor of his foreign origin,
be he French, Spanish, Italian, English, or American—to the use of his
first name, and he will be known as “Don Carlos,” “Don Enrique,” or
whatever it may be, to the end of his stay. Later, if he is well liked,
he may even be addressed as “Ché,” that curious term of familiarity and
affection universally used among friends in Uruguay. It is not a Spanish
word, but seems to have been borrowed from the Guaraní tongue, in which
it means “mine,” and probably by extension “my friend.” To be called
“Ché” by the Uruguayan gaucho is proof of being accepted as a full and
friendly equal.
In theory the _pulpero_ establishes himself out on the campaña only to
sell tobacco, _mate_, strong drink, and tinned goods from abroad; in
practice these country storekeepers have other and far more important
sources of income. They are usurers, speculators in land and stock,
above all exploiters of the gaucho’s gambling instinct. Thanks perhaps
to the greater or less amount of Spanish blood in his veins he will
accept a wager on anything, be it only on the weather, on a child’s
toys, on which way a cow will run, on how far away a bird will alight,
or on whether _sol ó número_ (“sun or number,” corresponding to our
“heads or tails”) will fall uppermost at the flipping of a coin. This
makes him easy prey to the _pulpero_, who is usually a Spaniard, Basque,
Italian, or “Turk,” and an unconscionable rogue without any other ideal
than the amassing of a fortune, yet who somehow grows rich at the
expense of the peons and gauchos, instead of meeting the violent death
from the quick-tempered _hijo del país_ who despises yet fears him.
The gauchos were originally called “gauderios,” that is, lazy,
good-for-nothing rascals. To-day that word is an exaggeration, for they
have a certain merit of industry and simple honesty. There is
considerable vendetta among them, gambling rows and love affairs
especially, much of which goes unpunished, particularly if the
perpetrator is a “red” and his victim a “white.” Punishment for
fence-cutting or sheep-stealing is surer: as in our own West in earlier
days the loss of a man is largely his own affair, while the loss of a
flock of sheep or a drove of cattle is serious. To make matters worse,
the country _comisarios_, or policemen, are often subsidized by certain
_estancieros_ to the disadvantage of others, and the _juez de paz_ is
quite likely to be a rogue, in either of which cases the friends of
“justice” usually get off and their enemies get punished.
According to “Pirirín,” the average gaucho is an incorrigible wanderer.
Paid but ten or fifteen pesos a month “and found,” and satisfied with
quarters which most workmen in civilized lands would refuse with scorn,
he is given to capricious changes of abode and is likely to throw a leg
over his faithful horse at the least provocation. Among these incurable
pampa wanderers there are not a few “poor whites,” often with
considerable Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, its origin lost in their
Spanicized names. Hospitality is the first of the virtues of the
_estanciero_, and any genial horseback tramp who turns up may remain on
the _estancia_ unmolested for a day, a week, or a month, as the spirit
moves him. There was a suggestion of our own cowboys among the group
that finally overflowed the _pulpería_, though the gauchos were less
given to noisy horseplay and had far more dignity and courtesy. Some of
them could read without having to spell out the words, and while
“Orientals” in the mass are not a nation of readers and there is
considerable illiteracy, these countrymen were much more in touch with
the world’s affairs than the same class in the countries of the West
Coast.
The gaucho may still occasionally be heard thrumming a guitar and
wailing his sad, Moorish, genuinely Oriental songs, invariably
sentimental and deeply melancholy, with never a comic touch, like a
lineal descendant of the wandering troubadour of the Middle Ages or the
street-singers of the Mohammedan East. When he is not making music or
love, he is sucking _mate_ and talking horses. He has more than a score
of words for his equine companion, running through every gamut of color,
behavior, and pace. His obsession for this topic of conversation is
natural, for he has an instinctive horror of going on foot and the horse
is to the resident of the pampas what the ship is to the sailor; without
it he is hopelessly stranded. Yet his interest is entirely of a
utilitarian nature. He is racially incapable of any such affection for
his mount as causes other races to spare it unnecessary suffering; if he
coddles it at all it is merely for the selfish motive of his own safety
or convenience. Among the picturesque types of the campaña and the pampa
is the _domador_, the professional horse-breaker. His customary fee is
five pesos a head, “with living,” and his methods are true to his
Spanish blood. Instead of being broken early, the colts are allowed to
run wild until they are four or five years old; then a drove of them is
rounded up in a corral and the victims suddenly lassooed one by one and
thrown to the ground. With half a dozen peons pulling on the rope about
his neck until he is all but strangled, his legs are tied and a halter
is put on and attached to a tree, where the animal is left to strain
until he is exhausted, often hurting himself more or less permanently.
Then his tongue and lower jaw are fastened in a painful noose that
forces him to follow the peon, who rides away, jerking at the rope.
Finally, when the weary and frightened animal is trembling in every
limb, the brave domador mounts him and, with a horseman on either side
to protect him, and pulling savagely at the colt’s sore mouth, the
_potro_ is galloped until he is completely worn out. It used to be
beneath gaucho dignity to ride a mare, and to this day no
self-respecting _domador_ of the old school will consent to tame one.
Sometimes the female of the species draws carts, with her colt running
alongside, but on the larger _estancias_ she is allowed to roam at large
all her days.
In the evening, with the gauchos departed and the _pulpería_ officially
closed to the public, we added our bonfire to the sixteen others in
honor of St. Peter and St. Paul, which we could count around the
horizon, and gathered about the table with the _pulpero’s_ family to
play “lottery,” a two-cent gambling card game. It was long after
midnight when “Pirirín” shook off the combined fascination of this and
the _pulpero’s_ amenable daughter. From my cot behind the _pulpería_
counter I saw the day dawn rosy red, but clouds and a south wind
promised rain before my companion roused himself. We got into an _araña_
(spider), a two-wheeled cart which did somewhat resemble that
web-weaving insect, and rocked and bumped away across the untracked
campaña behind two half-wild young horses. Never was there a let-up from
howling at and lashing the reeking animals all the rest of the morning,
an English education not having cured “Pirirín” of the thoughtless
cruelty bequeathed by his Spanish blood. Through gullies in which we
were showered with mud, up and down hill at top speed we raced, until
the trembling horses were so weary that we were forced to hitch on in
front of them the one the _mucamo_ was riding. In Tacuarembó this owner,
or at least prospective owner, of thousands of acres and cattle went to
the cheapest hotel and slept on an ancient and broken cot in the same
room with two rough and dirty plowmen, while I caught the evening train
for the Brazilian border.