CRUZ ALTA

Pasted into an old scrap-book, chiefly filled with newspaper cuttings

from Texan and Mexican newspapers containing accounts of Indian fights,

the prowess of different horses (notably of a celebrated “claybank,”

which carried the mail-rider from El Paso to Oakville, Arizona), and

interspersed with advertisements of strayed animals, pictures of Gauchos,

Indians, Chilians, Brazilians, and Gambusinos, is an old coffee-coloured

business card. On it is set forth, that Francisco Cardozo de Carvallo is

the possessor of a “Grande Armazem de Fazendas, ferragems, drojas,

chapeos, miudezas, e objectos de fantasia e de modas.”

All the above, “Com grande reduccao nos preços.” Then occurs the

significant advertença, “Mas A Dinheiro,” and the address Rua do

Commercio, No. 77.—CRUZ ALTA.

* * * * *

OFTEN on winter nights when all the air is filled with whirling leaves

dashing against the panes, when through the house sweep gusts of wind

making the passages unbearable with cold, the rooms disconsolate, and the

whole place feel eerie and ghostlike as the trees creak, groan and

labour, like a ship at sea, I take the scrap-book down.

In it are many things more interesting by far to me at certain times than

books or papers, or than the conversation of my valued friends; almost as

great a consolation as is tobacco to a bruised mind; and then I turn the

pages over with delight tinged with that melancholy which is the best

part of remembrance.

So amongst tags of poetry as Joaquim Miller’s lines “For those who fail,”

the advertisement for my fox-terrier Jack, the “condemndest little

buffler” the Texans called him, couched in the choicest of Castilian, and

setting forth his attributes, colour and name, and offering five dollars

to any one who would apprehend and take him to the Callejon del Espiritu

Santo, Mexico, curious and striking outsides of match-boxes, one entire

series illustrating the “Promessi Sposi”; of scraps, detailing news of

Indian caciques long since dead, a lottery-ticket of the State of

Louisiana, passes on “busted” railways, and the like, is this same

coffee-coloured card.

I cannot remember that I was a great dealer at the emporium, the glories

of which the card sets forth, except for cigarettes and “Rapadura”; that

is, raw sugar in a little cake done up in maize-leaves, matches, and an

occasional glass of white Brazilian rum.

Still during two long months the place stood to me in lieu of club, and

in it I used to meet occasional German “Fazenderos,” merchants from

Surucaba, and officers on the march from San Paulo to Rio Grande; and

there I used to lounge, waiting for customers to buy a “Caballada” of

some hundred horses, which a friend and I had brought with infinite

labour from the plains of Uruguay. Thinking upon the strange and curious

types I used to meet, clad for the most part in loose black Turkish

trousers, broad-brimmed felt hats kept in their place by a tasselled

string beneath the chin, in real or sham vicuña ponchos, high

patent-leather boots, sewn in patterns with red thread; upon the horses

with silver saddles and reins, securely tied to posts outside the door,

and on the ceaseless rattle of spurs upon the bare brick floors which

made a sort of obligato accompaniment to the monotonous music of the

guitar, full twenty years fall back.

Yet still the flat-roofed town, capital of the district in Rio Grande

known as Encima de la Sierra, the stopping-place for the great droves of

mules which from the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios are driven to the

annual fair at Surucaba; the stodgy Brazilian countrymen so different

from the Gauchos of the River Plate; the negroes at that time slaves; the

curious vegetation, and the feeling of being cut off from all the world,

are fresh as yesterday.

Had but the venture turned out well, no doubt I had forgotten it, but to

have worked for four long months driving the horses all the day through

country quite unknown to me, sitting the most part of each night upon my

horse on guard, or riding slowly round and round the herd, eating jerked

beef, and sleeping, often wet, upon the ground, to lose my money, has

fixed the whole adventure on my memory for life.

Failure alone is interesting.

Successful generals with their hands scarce dry from the blood of

half-armed foes; financiers, politicians; those who rise, authors whose

works run to a dozen editions in a year: the men who go to colonies with

or without the indispensable half-crown and come back rich, to these we

give our greetings in the market-place; we make them knights, marking

their children with the father’s bourgeois brand: we marvel at their

fortune for a brief space, and make them doctors of civil law, exposing

them during the process to be insulted by our undergraduates, then they

drop out of recollection and become uninteresting, as nature formed their

race.

But those who fail after a glorious fashion, Raleigh, Cervantes,

Chatterton, Camoens, Blake, Claverhouse, Lovelace, Alcibiades, Parnell,

and the last unknown deck-hand who, diving overboard after a comrade,

sinks without saving him: these interest us, at least they interest those

who, cursed with imagination, are thereby doomed themselves to the same

failure as their heroes were. The world is to the unimaginative, for

them are honours, titles, rank and ample waistbands; foolish phylacteries

broad as trade union banners; their own esteem and death to sound of

Bible leaves fluttered by sorrowing friends, with the sure hope of waking

up immortal in a new world on the same pattern as the world that they

have left.

After a wretched passage down the coast, we touched at Rio, and in the

Rua Direita, no doubt now called Rio Primero de Mayo or some other

revolutionary date, we saw a Rio Grandense soldier on a fine black horse.

As we were going to the River Plate to make our fortunes, my companion

asked me what such a horse was worth, and where the Brazilian Government

got their remounts. I knew no horses of the kind were bred nearer than

Rio Grande, or in Uruguay, and that a horse such as the trooper rode,

might in the latter country be worth an ounce. We learned in Rio that

his price was eighty dollars, and immediately a golden future rose before

our eyes. What could be easier than in Uruguay, which I knew well and

where I had many friends (now almost to a man dead in the revolutions or

killed by rum), to buy the horses and drive them overland to the

Brazilian capital?

We were so confident of the soundness of our scheme that I believe we

counted every hour till the boat put to sea.

Not all the glories of the Tijuca with its view across the bay straight

into fairyland, the red-roofed town, the myriad islets, the tall

palm-tree avenue of Botafogo, the tropic trees and butterflies, and the

whole wondrous panorama spread at our feet, contented us.

During the voyage to the River Plate we planned the thing well out, and

talked it over with our friends. They, being mostly of our age, found it

well reasoned, and envied us, they being due at banks and

counting-houses, and other places where no chance like ours of making

money, could be found. Arrived in Buenos Ayres, a cursed chance called

us to Bahia Blanca upon business, but though we had a journey of about a

thousand miles to make through territory just wasted by the Indians and

in which at almost every house a man or two lay dead, we counted it as

nothing, for we well knew on our return our fortunes were assured.

And so the autumn days upon the Arroyo de los Huesos seemed more glorious

than autumn days in general, even in that climate perhaps the most

exhilarating of the world. Horses went better, “maté” was hotter in the

mouth, the pulperia caña seemed more tolerable, and the “China” girls

looked more desirable than usual, even to philosophers who had their

fortunes almost as good as made.

Our business in the province of Buenos Ayres done, and by this time I

have forgotten what it was, we sold our horses, some of the best I ever

saw in South America, for whatever they would fetch, and in a week found

ourselves in Durazno, a little town in Uruguay, where in the camps

surrounding, horses and mules were cheap.

About a league outside the town, and in a wooded elbow of the river Yi,

lived our friend Don Guillermo. I myself years before had helped to

build his house; and in and out of season, no matter if I arrived upon a

“pingo” shining with silver gear, or on a “mancaron” with an old saddle

topped by a ragged sheepskin, I was a welcome guest.

Ah! Don Guillermo, you and your brother Don Tomas rise also through the

mist of twenty years.

Catholics, Scotchmen, and gentlemen, kindly and hospitable, bold riders

and yet so religious that, though it must have been a purgatory to them

as horsemen, they used to trudge on foot to mass on Sunday, swimming the

Yi when it was flooded, with their clothes and missals on their heads,

may God have pardoned you.

Not that the sins of either of them could have been great, or of the kind

but that the briefest sojourn in purgatory should not have wiped them

out.

To those rare Catholic families in Scotland an old-world flavour clings.

When Knox and that “lewid monk,” the Regent Murray, all agog for progress

and so-called purer worship, pestered and bothered Scotland into a change

of faith, those few who clung to Catholicism seemed to become

repositories of the traditions of an older world.

Heaven and hell, no resting-place for the weaker souls between, have

rendered Scotland a hard place for the ordinary man who wants his

purgatory, even if by another name. Surely our Scottish theologians had

done well, although they heated up our hell like a glass furnace, to

leave us purgatory; that is if “Glesca” be not purgatory enough even for

those who, like North Britons, have no doubt on any subject either in

heaven above, or in the earth below. So to the house of Don

Guillermo—even the name has now escaped me, though I see it, mud-built

and thatched with “paja,” standing on a little sandy hill, surrounded on

two sides by wood, on the others looking straight out upon the open

“camp”—hot foot we came. Riding upon two strayed horses known as

“ajenos,” bought for a dollar each in Durazno, we arrived, carrying our

scanty property in saddle-bags, rode to the door, called out “Hail,

Mary!” after the fashion of the country and in deference to the religion

of our hosts, which was itself of so sincere a caste that every one

attempted to conform to it, as far as possible, whilst in their house;

received the answer “Without sin conceived”; got off, and straightway

launched into a discussion of our plan.

Assembled in the house were Wycherley, Harrington and Trevelyan, and

other commentators, whose names have slipped my mind. Some were

“estancieros,” that is cattle or sheep farmers; others again were

loafers, all mostly men of education, with the exception of Newfoundland

Jack, a sailor, who had left the navy in a hurry, after some peccadillo,

but who, once in the camp, took a high place amongst men, by his

knowledge of splicing, making turks’ heads, and generally applying all

his acquired sea-lore to saddlery, and from a trick he had of forcing

home his arguments with a short knife, the handle fixed on with a raw

cow’s tail, and which in using he threw from hand to hand, and generally

succeeded in burying deeply in his opponent’s chest. Our friends all

liked the scheme, pronounced it practical and businesslike, and, to show

goodwill, despatched a boy to town to bring a demijohn of caña back at

full speed, instructing him to put it down to our account, not to delay

upon the way, and to be careful no one stole it at the crossing of the

Yi.

Long we sat talking, waiting for the advent of the boy, till at last,

seeing he would not come that night, and a thick mist rising up from the

river having warned us that the night was wearing on, we spread our

saddles on the floor, and went to sleep. At daybreak, cold and

miserable, the boy appeared, bringing the caña in a demijohn, and to our

questions said he had passed the river, hit the “rincon,” and heard the

dogs bark in the mist; but after trying for an hour could never find the

house. Then, thinking that his horse might know the way, laid down the

reins, and the horse took him straight to the other horses, who, being

startled at the sudden apparition of their friend saddled and mounted in

the dead of night, vanished like spectres into the thickest of the fog.

Then tired of riding, after an hour or two, took off his saddle, and had

passed the night, as it appeared at daybreak, not a quarter of a mile

away.

Between the town and Don Guillermo’s house there ran a river called the

Yi; just at the pass a “balsa” plied, drawn over by stout ropes. On

either side the “pass” stood pulperias, that is camp-stores, where gin

and sardines, Vino Carlon, Yerba, and all the necessaries of frontier

life could be procured. Horses and cattle, mules and troops of sheep

passed all the day, and gamblers plied their trade, whilst in some huts

girls, known as “Chinas,” watched the passers-by, loitering in deshabille

before their mare’s hide doors, singing “cielitos,” or the “gato,” to the

accompaniment of a guitar, or merely shouting to the stranger, “Che, si

quieres cosa buena vente por acá.” A half-Arcadian, half-Corinthian

place the crossing was; fights there were frequent, and a “Guapeton,”

that is, a pretty handler of his knife, once kept things lively for a

month or two, challenging all the passers-by to fight, till luckily a

Brazilian, going to the town, put things in order with an iron-handled

whip.

The owner of the “balsa,” one Eduardo Peña, cherished a half-romantic,

half-antagonistic friendship for Don Guillermo, speaking of him as “muy

Catolico,” admiring his fine seat upon a horse, and yet not understanding

in the least the qualities which made him a man of mark in all the

“pagos” from the Porongos to the Arazati. “Catolico,” with Peña, was but

a matter of pure faith, and going to mass a work of supererogation; and

conduct such as the eschewal of the China ladies at the pass, with

abstinence from all excess in square-faced gin, dislike to monté, even

with “Sota en la puerta,” and the adversary with all his money staked

upon another card, seemed to him bigotry; for bigotry is after all not so

much mere excess of faith or want of tolerance, but a neglect to fall

into the vices of our friends. So, mounted on our two “agenos,” one a

jibber, the other a kicker at the stirrup, and extremely hard to mount,

we scoured the land. Gauchos, Brazilians, negroes, troperos,

cattle-farmers, each man in the whole “pago” had at least a horse to

sell. Singly, driven, led, pulled unwillingly along in raw-hide ropes,

and sitting back like lapdogs walking in the park, the horses came. We

bought them all after much bargaining, and then began to hunt about at

farms, estancias, and potreros, and to inquire on every side where horses

could be got. All the “dead beats,” “sancochos,” buck-jumpers, wall-eyed

and broken-backed, we passed in a review. An English sailor rode up to

the place, dressed as a Gaucho, speaking but little English, with a

west-country twang. He, too, had horses, which we bought, and the deal

over, launched into the story of his life.

It seemed that he had left a man-of-war some fifteen years ago, married a

native girl and settled down, and for ten years had never met an

Englishman. In English, still a sailor, but in Spanish, a gentleman,

courteous and civil, and fit to take his place with any one; full of fine

compliments, and yet a horse-coper; selling us three good horses, and

one, that the first time I mounted him kicked like a zebra, although our

friend had warranted him quite free from vice, well bitted, and the one

horse he had which he reserved in general for the saddle of his wife.

In a few days we had collected sixty or seventy, and to make all

complete, a man arrived, saying that specially on our account, thirteen

wild horses, or horses that had run wild, had been enclosed. He offered

them on special terms, and we, saddling at once, rode twelve or thirteen

leagues to see them; and after crossing a river, wading through a swamp,

and winding in and out through a thick wood for several miles, we reached

his house. There, in a strong corral, the horses were, wild-eyed and

furious, tails sweeping to the ground, manes to their knees, sweating

with fear, and trembling if any one came near. One was a piebald dun,

about eight years of age, curly all over like a poodle; one Pampa, that

is, black with a head as if it had been painted white to the ears; behind

them, coal-black down to his feet, which, curiously enough, were all four

white. A third, Overo Azulejo, slate-coloured and white; he was of

special interest, for he had twisted in his mane a large iron spur, and

underneath a lump as large as an apple, where the spur had bumped upon

his neck for years during his gallop through the woods and plains. Each

horse had some peculiarity, most had been tame at one time, and were

therefore more to be dreaded than if they had been never mounted in their

lives.

As it was late when we arrived we tied our horses up and found a ball in

progress at the house. Braulio Islas was the owner’s name, a man of some

position in the land, young and unmarried, and having passed some years

of his life in Monte Video, where, as is usual, he had become a doctor

either of law or medicine; but the life had not allured him, and he had

drifted back to the country, where he lived, half as a Gaucho, half as a

“Dotorcito,” riding a wild horse as he were part of him, and yet having a

few old books, quoting dog Latin, and in the interim studying

international law, after the fashion of the semi-educated in the River

Plate. Fastening our horses to long twisted green-hide ropes, we passed

into the house. “Carne con cuero” (meat cooked with the hide) was

roasting near the front-door on a great fire of bones. Around it men sat

drinking maté, smoking and talking, whilst tame ostriches peered into the

fire and snapped up anything within their reach; dogs without hair,

looking like pigs, ran to and fro, horses were tied to every post,

fire-flies darted about the trees; and, above all, the notes, sung in a

high falsetto voice of a most lamentable Paraguayan “triste,” quavered in

the night air and set the dogs a-barking, when all the company at stated

intervals took up the refrain, and chanted hoarsely or shrilly of the

hardships passed by Lopez in his great camp at Pirayú.

Under the straw-thatched sheds whole cows and sheep were hung up; and

every one, when he felt hungry, cut a collop off and cooked it in the

embers, for in those days meat had no price, and if you came up hungry to

a house a man would say: “There is a lazo, and the cattle are feeding in

a hollow half a league away.”

A harp, two cracked guitars, the strings repaired with strips of hide,

and an accordion, comprised the band. The girls sat in a row, upon

rush-seated chairs, and on the walls were ranged either great bowls of

grease in which wicks floated, or homemade candles fixed on to nails,

which left them free to gutter on the dancers’ heads. The men lounged at

the door, booted and spurred, and now and then one walked up to the

girls, selected one, and silently began to dance a Spanish valse, slowly

and scarcely moving from the place, the hands stretched out in front, and

the girl with her head upon his shoulder, eyes fast closed and looking

like a person in a trance. And as they danced the musicians broke into a

harsh, wild song, the dancers’ spurs rattled and jingled on the floor,

and through the unglazed and open windows a shrill fierce neigh floated

into the room from the wild horses shut in the corral. “Dulces,” that

is, those sweetmeats made from the yolk of eggs, from almonds, and from

nuts, and flavoured with cinnamon and caraways brought by the Moors to

Spain, and taken by the Spaniards to the Indies, with sticky cakes, and

vino seco circulated amongst the female guests. The men drank gin, ate

bread (a delicacy in the far-off “camp”), or sipped their maté, which, in

its little gourds and silver tube, gave them the appearance of smoking

some strange kind of pipe.

“Que bailen los Ingleses,” and we had to acquit ourselves as best we

could, dancing a “pericon,” as we imagined it, waving our handkerchiefs

about to the delight of all the lookers-on. Fashion decreed that, the

dance over, the “cavalier” presented his handkerchief to the girl with

whom he danced. I having a bad cold saw with regret my new silk

handkerchief pass to the hand of a mulatto girl, and having asked her for

her own as a remembrance of her beauty and herself, received a home-made

cotton cloth, stiff as a piece of leather, and with meshes like a sack.

Leaving the dance, as Braulio Islas said, as more “conformable” to

Gauchos than to serious men we started bargaining. After much talking we

agreed to take the horses for three dollars each, upon condition that in

the morning Islas and all his men should help us drive a league or two

upon the road. This settled, and the money duly paid, we went to bed,

that is, lay down upon our saddles under the “galpon.” To early morning

the guitars went on, and rising just about day-break we found the

revellers saddling their horses to depart in peace. We learned with

pleasure there had been no fight, and then after a maté walked down to

the corral. Knowing it was impossible to drive the horses singly, after

much labour we coupled them in twos. I mounted one of them, and to my

surprise, he did not buck, but after three or four plunges went quietly,

and we let the others out. The bars were scarcely down when they all

scattered, and made off into the woods. Luckily all the drivers were at

hand, and after three or four hours’ hard galloping we got them back, all

except one who never reappeared; and late in the evening reached Don

Guillermo’s house and let our horses into a paddock fenced with strong

posts of ñandubay or Tala and bound together with pieces of raw hide.

So for a week or two we passed our lives, collecting horses of every

shade and hue, wild, tame and bagualon, that is, neither quite wild nor

tame, and then, before starting, had to go to “La Justicia” to get a

passport with their attributes and marks.

I found the Alcalde, one Quintin Perez, sitting at his door, softening a

piece of hide by beating on it with a heavy mallet of ñandubay. He could

not read, but was so far advanced towards culture as to be able to sign

his name and rubricate. His rubric was most elaborate, and he informed

me that a signature was good, but that he thought a rubric more

authentic. Though he could not decipher the document I brought for

signature, he scrutinized the horses’ marks, all neatly painted in the

margin, discussed each one of them, and found out instantly some were

from distant “pagos,” and on this account, before the signature or rubric

was appended, in addition to the usual fee, I was obliged to “speak a

little English to him,” which in the River Plate is used to signify the

taking and receiving of that conscience money which causes the affairs of

justice to move pleasantly for all concerned. Meanwhile my partner had

gone to town (Durazno) to arrange about the revision of the passport with

the chief authorities. Nothing moved quickly at that time in Uruguay; so

after waiting one or two days in town, without a word, he quietly let

loose his horse in a by-street at night to save his keep, and casting

about where he should leave his saddle, thought that the cloak-room of

the railway-station might be safe, because the station-master was an

Englishman. The saddle, having silver stirrups and good saddle-cloths

and silver-mounted reins and bit, was worth more than the horse, which,

being a stray, he had bought for a couple of dollars, and was not anxious

to retain.

After a day or two of talk, and “speaking English,” he wanted his saddle,

and going to the station found it gone. Not being up at that time in the

ways of the Republic, he informed the police, waited a day, then two

days, and found nothing done. Luckily, just at that time, I came to town

and asked him if he had offered a reward. Hearing he had not, we went

down to see the Commissary of Police, and found him sitting in his office

training two cocks to fight. A rustle and the slamming of a door just

marked the hurried exit of a lady, who must have been assisting at the

main. Compliments duly passed, cigarettes lighted and maté circulating,

“served” by a negro soldier in a ragged uniform with iron spurs upon his

naked feet who stood attention every time he passed the gourd in which

the maté is contained to either of us, we plunged into our talk.

“Ten dollars, Comissario.”

“No, señor, fifteen, and a slight gratification to the man who brings the

saddle back.”

We settled at thirteen, and then the Commissary winked slowly, and

saying, “This is not Europe,” asked for a little something for himself,

received it, and calling to the negro, said—

“Tio Gancho, get at once to horse, take with you one or two men, and

scour the ‘pago’ till you bring this saddle back. See that you find it,

or I will have your thumbs both broken as your toes are, by San Edovige

and by the Mother of our Lord.”

A look at Tio Gancho showed both his big toes had been broken when a

slave in Brazil, either to stop him walking, or, as the Commissary

thought, to help him to catch the stirrup, for he was a noted rider of a

redomon. {20}

Duly next day the saddle was brought (so said the Commissary) into the

light of justice, and it then appeared one of the silver stirrups had

been lost. The Commissary was much annoyed, reproached his men, being,

as he said he was: “Un hombre muy honrado.” After thinking the case well

out, he returned me two and a half dollars out of the thirteen I had

agreed to pay. Honour no doubt was satisfied upon both sides, and a new

silver stirrup cost ten dollars at the least; but as the saddle was well

worth sixty, we parted friends. That is, we should have parted so had

not the “Hombre muy honrado” had another card to play.

“How long do you want the thief detained?” he asked. And we, thinking to

be magnanimous and to impress him with our liberal ideas, said loftily—

“A month will do.”

“All right,” he answered, “then I must trouble you for thirty dollars

more for the man’s maintenance, and for the gaoler’s fee.” This was a

stopper over all, and I said instantly—

“Being ignorant of your laws, perhaps we have looked at the man’s offence

too hardly, a week will do.” So after paying five dollars down, we

invited the Commissary to drink, and left him well knowing that we should

not be out of sight before the man would be released, and the five

dollars be applied strictly towards the up-keep of “justice” in the

Partido of the Yi. Months afterwards I heard the culprit worked two days

cutting down weeds with a machete in the public square; then, tired of

it, being “un hombre de á caballo,” had volunteered to join the army, was

received into the ranks, and in a few weeks’ time rose to be sergeant,

for he could sign his name.

All being ready, and some men (one a young Frenchman born in the place)

being found with difficulty, the usual revolution having drained off the

able-bodied men, we made all ready for the start. We bid good-bye to Don

Guillermo, and to Don Tomas, giving them as an addition to their library

(which consisted of some lives of saints and an odd volume of “el culto

al Falo,” which was in much request), our only book the “Feathered

Arrow,” either by Aimard or by Gerstaeker, and mounting early in the

morning after some trouble with the wilder of our beasts, we took the

road.

For the first few leagues Don Guillermo rode with us, and then, after a

smoke, bade us goodbye and rode away; his tall, lithe figure dressed in

loose black merino trousers tucked into his boots, hat tied beneath his

chin, and Pampa poncho, fading out of sight, and by degrees the motion of

his right arm touching his horse up, Gaucho fashion, at every step, grew

slower, then stood still, and lastly vanished with the swaying figure of

the rider, out of sight. Upon what Pampa he now gallops is to me

unknown, or whether, where he is, horses accompany him; but I would fain

believe it, for a heaven on foot would not be heaven to him; but I still

see him as he disappeared that day swaying to every motion of his horse

as they had been one flesh. “Adios, Don Guillermo,” or perhaps “hasta

luego,” you and your brother Don Tomas, your hospitable shanty, and your

three large cats, “Yanish” and “Yanquetruz,” with one whose name I cannot

now recall, are with me often as I think on times gone by; and still

to-day (if it yet stands), upon the darkest night I could take horse

outside Durazno, cross the Yi, not by the “balsa,” but at the ford below,

and ride without a word to any one straight to your house.

Days followed one another, and nights still caught us upon horseback,

driving or rounding up our horses, and nothing interested us but that “el

Pangare” was lame; “el Gargantillo” looked a little thin, or that “el

Zaino de la hacinda” was missing in the morning from the troop. Rivers

we passed, the Paso de los Toros, where the horses grouped together on a

little beach of stones refused to face the stream. Then sending out a

yoke of oxen to swim first, we pressed on them, and made them plunge, and

kept dead silence, whilst a naked man upon the other bank called to them

and whistled in a minor key; for horses swimming, so the Gauchos say, see

nothing, and head straight for a voice if it calls soothingly. And

whilst they swam, men in canoes lay down the stream to stop them

drifting, and others swimming by their side splashed water in their faces

if they tried to turn. The sun beat on the waste calling out the scent

of flowers; kingfishers fluttered on the water’s edge, herons stood

motionless, great vultures circled overhead, and all went well till, at

the middle of the stream, a favourite grey roan mare put up her head and

snorted, beat the water with her feet, and then sank slowly, standing

quite upright as she disappeared.

Mountains and plains we passed, and rivers fringed with thick, hard

thorny woods; we sweltered in the sun, sat shivering on our horses during

the watches of the night, slept fitfully by turns at the camp fire, ate

“charqui” and drank maté, and by degrees passing the Paso de los

Novillos, San Fructuoso, and the foot-hills of Haedo and the Cuchilla de

Peralta with its twin pulperias, we emerged on to the plain, which,

broken here and there by rivers, slopes toward the southern frontier of

Brazil. But as we had been short-handed from the first, our “caballada”

had got into bad ways. A nothing startled them, and the malign example

of the group of wildlings brought from Braulio Islas, led them astray,

and once or twice they separated and gave us hours of work to bring them

back. Now as a “caballada” which has once bolted is in the future easily

disposed to run, we gave strict orders no one was to get off, though for

a moment, without hobbling his horse.

Camped one cold morning on a river, not far from Brazil, and huddled

round a fire, cooking some sausages, flavoured with Chile pepper, over a

fire of leaves, one of our men who had been on horseback watching all the

night, drew near the fire, and getting off, fastened his reins to a

heavy-handled whip, and squatted on them, as he tried to warm his hands.

My horse, unsaddled, was fastened by a lasso to a heavy stone, and

luckily my partner and the rest all had their horses well secured, for a

“coati” dived with a splash after a fish into the river. In a moment the

horses all took fright, and separating, dashed to the open country with

heads and tails erect, snorting and kicking, and left us looking in

despair, whilst the horse with the whip fastened to the reins joined

them, and mine, tied to the stone, plunged furiously, but gave me time to

catch him, and mounting barebacked, for full five hours we rode, and

about nightfall brought the “caballada” back to the camp, and driving

them into an elbow of the river, lighted great fires across the mouth of

it, and went to sleep, taking it conscientiously in turns to curse the

man who let his horse escape.

Five leagues or so upon the road the frontier lay, and here the Brazilian

Government had guards, but we being business men smuggled our horses over

in the night, led by a noted smuggler, who took us by devious paths,

through a thick wood, to a ford known to him, only just practicable, and

this we passed swimming and wading, and struggling through the mud. The

river wound about through beds of reeds, trees known as “sarandis” grew

thickly on the banks, and as we passed “carpinchos” {26} snorted; great

fish leaped into the air and fell with a resounding crash into the

stream, and in the trees was heard the scream of vultures, as frightened

by our passage they rose and weltered heavily through the thick wood. By

morning we were safe into Brazil, passing a league or more through a

thick cane-brake, where we left several of our best horses, as to pursue

them when they straggled was impossible without running the risk of

losing all the rest. The crossing of the river had brought us to another

world. As at Carlisle and Gretna in the old days, or as at Tuy and

Valenza even to-day, the river had set a barrier between the peoples as

it had been ten miles instead of a few hundred yards in width.

Certainly, on the Banda Oriental, especially in the department of

Tacuarembò, many Brazilians had emigrated and settled there, but living

amongst the Gaucho population, in a measure they had been forced to

conform to the customs of the land. That is, they practised hospitality

after the Gaucho fashion, taking no money from the wayfaring man for a

piece of beef; they lent a horse, usually the worst they had, if one came

to their house with one’s horse tired; their women showed themselves

occasionally; and not being able to hold slaves, they were obliged to

adopt a different tone to men in general than that they practised in the

Empire of Brazil. But in the time of which I write, in their own country

they still carried swords, slaves trotted after the rich “fazendero’s”

horse, the women of the family never sat down to table with the men, and

if a stranger chanced to call on business at their house, they were as

jealously kept from his eyes as they had all been Turks.

The “Fazenda” houses had great iron-studded doors, often a moat, and not

infrequently a rusty cannon, though generally dismounted, and a relic of

bygone time. The traveller fared, as a general rule, much worse than in

the Banda Oriental, for save at the large cattle-farms it was impossible

to buy a piece of meat. Admitted to the house, one rarely passed beyond

the guest-chamber, a room with four bare white-washed walls; having for

furniture a narrow hard-wood table with wrought-iron supports between its

legs; chairs cut apparently out of the solid block, and a tin bucket or a

large gourd in the corner, with drinking-water; so that one’s sojourn at

the place was generally brief, and one’s departure a relief to all

concerned. Still on the frontier the Gaucho influence made itself a

little felt, and people were not so inhospitable as they were further in

the interior of the land. Two or three leagues beyond the pass there was

a little town called “Don Pedrito,” towards which we made; but a

“Pampero,” whistling from the south, forced us to camp upon a stream

known as the “Poncho Verde,” where, in the forties, Garibaldi was

reported to have fought.

Wet to the skin and without food, we saw a fazenda not a mile away, rode

up to it, and for a wonder were asked inside, had dinner in the

guest-chamber, the owner sitting but not eating with us; the black

Brazilian beans and bacon carried in pompously by three or four stalwart

slaves, who puffed and sweated, trod on each other’s naked toes, and

generally behaved as they had been carrying sacks of corn aboard a ship,

only that in this instance no one stood in the gangway with a whip. Much

did the conversation run on politics; upon “A Guerra dos Farapos,” which

it appeared had riven the country in twain what time our host was young.

Farapo means a rag, and the Republicans of fifty years ago in Rio Grande

had adopted the device after the fashion of “Les gueux.” Long did they

fight, and our host said: “Praise to God, infructuously,” for how could

men who wore moustaches and full beards be compared to those who, like

our host himself, wore whiskers carefully trimmed in the style of those

which at the same epoch in our country were the trade-mark of the Iron

Duke? Elective kings, for so the old “conservador” termed presidents,

did not find favour in his eyes; and in religion too the “farapos” were

seriously astray. They held the doctrine that all creeds should be

allowed; which I once held myself, but now incline to the belief that a

religion and a name should be bestowed at baptism, and that it should be

constituted heresy of the worst kind, and punishable by a fine, to change

or palter with either the name or the religion which our fathers have

bestowed.

Politics over, we fell a-talking upon other lands; on Europe and England,

Portugal, and as to whether “Rondon” was larger than Pelotas, or matters

of that sort. Then our host inquired if in “Rondon” we did not use “la

bosa,” and I not taking the thing up, he rose and stretching out his

hands, set them revolving like a saw, and I then saw our supposed

national pastime was what he meant; and told him that it was practised,

held in repute, and marked us out as a people set apart; and that our

greatness was largely founded on the exercise he had endeavoured to

depict. We bade farewell, not having seen a woman, even a negress, about

the place; but as we left, a rustling at the door showed that the

snuff-and-butter-coloured sex had been observing us after the fashion

practised in Morocco and in houses in the East. The hospitable

“conservador” sent down a slave with a great basket full of oranges; and

seated at the camp we ate at least three dozen, whilst the man waited

patiently to take the basket back.

Night caught us in the open “camp,” a south wind blowing, and the drops

congealing as they fell. Three of us muffled in ponchos rode round the

horses, whilst the others crouched at the fire, and midnight come, the

riders rode to the fire, and stretched on the wet mud slept fitfully,

whilst the others took their place. Day came at last; and miserable we

looked, wet, cold, and hungry, the fire black out, matches all damp, and

nothing else to do but march till the sun rose and made life tolerable.

Arrived at a small rancho we got off, and found the owner was a Spaniard

from Navarre, married to a Brazilian woman. In mongrel Portuguese he

bade us welcome; said he was no Brazilian, and that his house was ours,

and hearing Spanish brightened up, and said in broken Spanish, mixed with

Portuguese, that he could never learn that language, though he had passed

a lifetime in the place. The country pleased him, and though he had an

orange garden of some three acres in extent, though palms, mameyes and

bananas grew around his door, he mourned for chestnuts, which he

remembered in his youth, and said he recollected eating them whilst in

Navarre, and that they were better than all the fruit of all Brazil;

thinking, like Naaman, that Abana and Pharpar were better than all the

waters of Israel, or rivers of Damascus; or perhaps moved in some

mysterious way by the remembrance of the chestnut forests, the old grey

stone-roofed houses, and the wind whistling through the pine woods of

some wild valley of Navarre. At the old Spaniard’s house a difficulty

cropped up with our men. I having told a man to catch a horse which

looked a little wild, he answered he was not a horse-breaker, and I might

ride the beast myself. I promptly did so, and asked him if he knew what

a wild horse was, and if it was not true that horses which could be

saddled without tying their hind legs were tame, and the rest laughing at

him, he drew his knife, and running at me, found himself looking down the

barrel of a pistol which my partner with some forethought had produced.

This brought things to a crisis, and they all left us, with a hundred

horses on our hands. Several Brazilians having volunteered, we took

them, bought a tame horse accustomed to carry packs, procured a bullock,

had it killed, and the meat “jerked”; and making bags out of the hide,

filled them with food, for, as the Spaniard said, “in the country you

intend to cross you might as well be amongst Moors, for even money will

not serve to get a piece of beef.” A kindly soul the Spaniard, his name

has long escaped me, still he was interesting as but the truly ignorant

can ever be. The world to him was a great mystery, as it is even to

those who know much more than he; but all the little landmarks of the

narrow boundaries of his life he had by heart; and they sufficed him, as

the great world itself cannot suffice those who, by living in its

current, see its muddiness.

So one day told another, and each night found us on horseback riding

round the drove. Through forest, over baking plain, up mountain paths,

through marshes, splashing to the saddle-flaps, by lone “fazendas,” and

again through herds of cattle dotting the plain for miles, we took our

way. Little straw huts, each with a horse tied day and night before

them, were our fairway marks. Day followed night without adventure but

when a horse suddenly threw its rider and a Brazilian peon uncoiled his

lasso, and with a jangling of spurs against the stirrups, sprang into

life, and in a moment the long snaky rope flew through the air and

settled round the runaway just underneath his ears. Once in a clearing,

as we plodded on, climbing the last barrier of the mountain range, to

emerge upon the district called “Encima de la Sierra,” a deer appeared

jumping into the air, and coming down again on the same spot repeatedly,

the Brazilians said that it was fighting with a snake, for “God has given

such instinct to those beasts that they attack and kill all snakes,

knowing that they are enemies of man.” {32} A scheme of the creation

which, if held in its entirety, shows curious lacunæ in the Creator’s

mind, only to be bridged over by that faith which in itself makes all men

equal, that is, of course, when they experience it and recognize its

charm. So on a day we crossed the hills, rode through a wood, and came

out on a plain at the far end of which a little town appeared.

For about ten leagues in circumference the plain stretched out, walled in

with woods, which here and there jutted out into it, forming islands and

peninsulas. The flat-roofed town straggled along three flat and sandy

streets; the little plaza, planted with mameyes and paraiso trees, served

as a lounging-place by day, by night a caravanserai for negroes; in time

of rain the streets were turned to streams, and poured their water into

the plaza, which became a lake. At the west corner of the square was

situated Cardozo’s store, the chief emporium, mart, and meeting-place

(after the barber’s and the chemist’s) of the whole town. Two languid

and yellow, hermaphroditic young Brazilians dressed in alpaca coats,

white trousers, and patent leather boots dispensed the wares, whilst

negroes ran about rolling in casks of flour, hogsheads of sugar, and

bales of black tobacco from Bahia, or from Maranhão. Such exterior

graces did the little town of the High Cross exhibit to us, wearied with

the baking days and freezing nights of the last month’s campaign.

Whether some Jesuit in the days gone by, when missionaries stood up

before their catechumens unsustained by Gatling guns, sheltered but by a

rude cross in their hands and their meek lives, had named the place, in

commemoration of some saving act of grace done by Jehovah in the

conversion of the heathen, none can tell. It may be that the Rood set up

on high was but a landmark, or again to mark a frontier line against the

heathen to the north, or yet it may have been the grave of some Paulista,

who in his foray against the Jesuits in Paraguay died here on his return,

whilst driving on before him a herd of converts to become slaves in far

San Paulo, to the greater glory of the Lord. All these things may have

been, or none of them; but the quiet sleepy place, the forests with their

parrots and macaws, their herds of peccaries, their bands of screaming

monkeys, the bright-striped tiger-cats, the armadillos, coatis,

capibarás, and gorgeous flaming “seibos,” all intertwined by ropes of

living cordage of lianas, and the supreme content of all the dwellers in

the district, with God, themselves, their country, and their lives, still

after twenty years is fresh, and stirs me, as the memory of the Pacific

stirs a reclaimed “beach-comber” over his grog, and makes him say, “I

never should have left them islands, for a man was happy in ’em, living

on the beach.”

To this commercial centre (centro do commercio) we were advised to go,

and there I rode, leaving my partner with the peons riding round the

caballada upon the plains. Dressed as I was in the clothes worn by the

Gauchos of the Banda Oriental, a hat tied underneath the chin with a

black cord, a vicuña poncho, and armed with large resounding silver

spurs, I made a blot of colour in Cardozo’s shop amongst the quietly

dressed Brazilians, who, though they were some of the smartest men in

South America upon a horse, were always clad in sober-coloured raiment,

wore ordinary store-cut trousers, and had their feet endued with all the

graces of a five-dollar elastic-sided boot.

Half-an-hour’s talk with the chief partner shattered all our plans. It

then appeared that to take horses on to Rio was impossible, the country,

after San Paulo, being one dense forest, and even if the horses stood the

change of climate, the trip would take a year, thus running off with any

profit which we might expect. Moreover, it appeared that mules were in

demand throughout Brazil, but horses, till past San Paulo, five hundred

miles ahead, but little valued, and almost as cheap, though much inferior

in breed to those bred on the plains of Uruguay. He further told us to

lose not a day in teaching all the horses to eat salt, for without that

they would not live a month, as once the range of mountains passed

between Cruz Alta and the plains, no horse or mule could live without its

three months’ ration of rock-salt; there being in the pasture some malign

quality which salt alone could cure. Naturally he had the cheapest salt

in the whole town, and as our horses were by this time so thin that it

was quite impossible to take them further without rest, they having been

a month upon the road, we set about to find an enclosed pasture where we

could let them feed.

Xavier Fernandez, a retired slave- and mule-dealer, was the man on whom

by accident we fell. Riding about the plain disconsolately, like Arabs

changing their pastures, and with our horses feeding near a little pond,

we met him. An old straw hat, bed-ticking trousers, and with his naked

feet shoved into slippers of carpindo leather, and an iron spur attached

to one of them and hanging down at least an inch below his heel, mounted

upon a mule saddled with the iron-framed Brazilian saddle, with the

addition of a crupper, a thing strange to our eyes, accustomed to the

wild horses of the plains, he did not look the type of “landed

gentleman,” but such he was, owner of flocks and herds, and, in

particular, of a well-fenced pasture, enclosing about two leagues of

land.

After much talk of things in general, of politics, and of the revolution

in progress in the republic we had left, upon our folly in bringing

horses, which could go no further into the interior, and of the money we

should have made had we brought “bestas,” that is, mules, we agreed to

pay him so much a month for the use of his fenced pasture, and for our

maintenance during the time we stayed. Leaving the horses feeding,

watched by the men, we rode to see the place. Upon the way Xavier

imparted much of history, a good deal of his lore, and curious local

information about Cruz Alta, duly distorted, as befits a reputable man,

through the perspective of his predilections, politics, faith, opinions,

and general view of life.

We learned that once Cruz Alta was a most important place, that

six-and-thirty thousand mules used to be wintered there, and then in

spring moved on to the great fair at Surucuba in the Sertão, that is the

forest district of San Paulo, and then sold to the merchants from the

upper districts of Brazil. But of late years the number had been much

reduced, and then stood at about twelve thousand. This he set down to

the accursed steamboats which took them up the coast, to the continual

fighting in the state of Uruguay, and generally to the degeneration which

he thought he saw in man. In the heyday of the prosperity of the place

“gold flowed from every hand,” so much so, that even “as mulheres da

vida” kept their accounts in ounces; but now money was scarce, and

business done in general by barter, coin being hardly even seen except

for mules, for which it was imperative, as no one parted with “bestas”

except for money down. Passing a little wood we saw a row of stakes

driven into the ground, and he informed us that they were evidently left

by some Birivas, that is people from San Paulo, after having used them to

secure their mules whilst saddling. The Paulistas, we then learned, used

the “sirigote,” that is, the old-fashioned high-peaked saddle brought

from Portugal in times gone by, and not the “recado,” the saddle of the

Gauchos, which is flat, and suited better for galloping upon a plain than

for long marches over mountain passes and through woods. All the points,

qualities, with the shortcomings and the failings of a mule, he did

rehearse. It then appeared a mule should be mouse-coloured, for the

red-coloured mule is of no use, the grey soft-footed, and the black

bad-tempered, the piebald fit “for a German,” which kind of folk he held

in abhorrence mixed with contempt, saying they whined in speaking as it

had been the whining of an armadillo or a sloth. The perfect mule should

be large-headed, not with a little-hammer head like to a horse, but long

and thin, with ears erect, round feet, and upon no account when spurred

ought it to whisk its tail, for that was most unseemly, fit but for

Germans, Negroes, Indians, and generally for all those he counted

senseless people—“gente sem razão”; saying “of course all men are of one

flesh, but some are dog’s flesh, and let them ride mules who whisk about

their tails like cattle in a marsh.” Beguiled by these, and other

stories, we soon reached the gate of the enclosure, and he, dismounting,

drew a key from one of the pockets of his belt and let us in. A short

half-hour brought us up to his house, passing through ground all

overgrown with miamia and other shrubs which did not promise to afford

much pasturage; but he informed us that we must not expect the grasses of

the plains up at Cruz Alta, and thus conversing we arrived before his

house.

Surrounded by a fence enclosing about an acre, the house stood just on

the edge of a thick wood. On one side were the corrals for horses and

for cattle, and on the other the quarters of the slaves. In shape the

houses resembled a flattish haystack thatched with reeds, and with a

verandah rising round it, supported on strong posts. At either end a

kind of baldachino, one used as a stable and the other as a kitchen, and

in the latter a fire continually alight, and squatted by it night and day

a negress, either baking flat, thin girdle-cakes made of maize, shaking

the flour out of her hand upon an iron plate, or else filling a gourd of

maté with hot water, and running to and fro into the house to give it to

her mistress, never apparently thinking it worth while to take the kettle

with her into the house.

The family, not quite so white as Xavier himself, consisted of a mother

always in slippers, dressed in a skirt and shift, which latter garment

always seemed about to fall down to her waist, and two thin, large-eyed,

yellowish girls arrayed in vestments like a pillow-case, with a string

fastening them at the narrowest place. Slave girls of several hues did

nothing and chattered volubly, and their mistress had to stand over them,

a slipper in her hand, when maize was pounded in a rough mortar hewn from

a solid log, in which the slaves hammered with pestles, one down, the

other up, after the fashion of blacksmiths making a horsehoe, but with

groans, and making believe to be extenuated after three minutes’ work,

and stopping instantly the moment that their mistress went into the house

to light her cigarette.

An official in Cruz Alta, known as the Capitão do Matto, holding a status

between a gamekeeper and a parish clerk, kept by the virtue of his office

a whipping-house, to which recalcitrant or idle slaves were theoretically

sent; but in the house of Xavier at least no one took interest enough in

anything, except Xavier himself, to take the trouble; and the slaves

ruled the female part of the establishment, if not exactly with a rod of

iron, still to their perfect satisfaction, cooking and sewing now and

then; sweeping, but fitfully; and washing when they wanted to look smart

and figure at a dance. The Capitão do Matto was supposed to bring back

runaways and keep a leash of bloodhounds, but in the memory of man no one

had seen him sally forth, and for the blood-hounds, they were long dead,

although he drew regular rations for their maintenance. In the interior

of Brazil his office was no sinecure, but in Cruz Alta horses were

plentiful, the country relatively easy, and slaves who ran away, which

happened seldom, timed their escape so as to put a good day’s journey

between them and any possible pursuit, and on the evening of the fifth

day, if all went well, they got across the frontier into Uruguay.

Terms once arranged, we let our horses loose, laid out rock-salt in

lumps, first catching several of the tamest horses, and forcing pieces

into their mouths; they taught the others, and we had nothing more to do.

We paid our peons off, got our clothes washed, rested, and then found

time at first hang heavy on our hands. Hearing an Englishman lived about

ten leagues off, we saddled up and rode to visit him. After losing

ourselves in a thick forest of some kind of pine, we reached his house,

but the _soi-disant_ Briton was from Amsterdam, could speak no English,

was a little drunk, but asked us to get off and dine with him. During

the dinner, which we had all alone, his wife and daughter standing

looking at us (he too drunk to eat), pigs ran into the room, a half-grown

tapir lay in a corner, and two new-caught macaws screamed horribly, so

that, the banquet over, we did not stay, but thanked him in Portuguese,

which he spoke badly, and rode off home, determining to sleep at the

first wood, rather than face a night in such a place.

The evening caught us near to a forest, the trail, sandy and white,

running close to a sort of cove formed in the trees, and here we camped,

taking our saddles off, lighting a fire, and lying down to sleep just in

the opening of the cove, our horses tied inside. All through the night

people appeared to pass along the road. I lay awake half-dozing now and

then, and watched the bats, looked at the fire-flies flitting about the

trees, heard the harsh howling of the monkeys, the tapirs stamp, the

splash made by the lobos and carpinchos as they dashed into the stream,

and then slept soundly, and awoke to find one of the horses gone. The

moon shone brightly, and, waking up my friend, I told him of our loss.

We knew the horse must have a rope attached to him, and that he probably

would try to get back to Cruz Alta, along the road we came. My horse was

difficult to bit, but by the aid of tying up one foot, and covering his

eyes up with a handkerchief, we bitted him, then mounted both of us upon

his back, hiding the other saddle behind some grass, and started on the

road. The sandy trail was full of horses’ tracks, so that we could do

nothing but ride on, hoping to catch him feeding by the way. About a

league we rode, and then, not seeing him, turned slowly back to get the

other saddle, make some coffee, and start home when it was light. To our

astonishment, upon arriving at the cove, the other horse was there, and

neighing wildly, straining on his rope, and it appeared that he had never

gone, but being tied close to the wood had wandered in, and we, thinking

he must have gone, being half-dazed with sleep, had never thought of

looking at his rope.

Defrauded, so to speak, out of our Englishman, and finding that the

horses, after the long journey and the change of water and of grass,

daily grew thinner, making it quite impossible to move them, forwards or

back, and after having vainly tried to sell them, change them for mules,

or sugar, quite without success, no one except some “fazendero” here and

there caring for horses in a land where every one rode mules, we settled

down to loaf. Once certain we had lost our money and our pains, nothing

remained but to wait patiently until the horses got into sufficient state

to sell, for all assured us that every day we went further into the

interior, they would lose flesh, that we should have them bitten by

snakes in the forests, and arrive at Rio, if we ever got there, either on

foot, or with but the horses which we rode.

For a short time we had almost determined to push on, even if we arrived

at Rio with but a horse apiece. Then came reflection, that reflection

which has dressed the world in drab, made cowards of so many heroes, lost

so many generous impulses, spoiled so many poems, and which mankind has

therefore made a god of, and we decided to remain. Then did Cruz Alta

put on a new look. We saw the wondrous vegetation of the woods, felt the

full charm of the old-world quiet life, watched the strange

multi-coloured insects, lay by the streams to mark the birds, listened

for the howlings of the monkeys when night fell; picked the strange

flowers, admired the butterflies floating like little blue and yellow

albatrosses, their wings opened and poised in the still air, or wondered

when a topaz-coloured humming-bird, a red macaw, an orange-and-black

toucan, or a red-crested cardinal flitted across our path. Inside the

wood behind the house were clearings, made partly by the axe and partly

by fire, amongst the tall morosimos, coronillos, and palo santos, and in

the clearings known as “roças” grew beans and maize, with mandioca and

occasionally barley, and round them ran a prickly hedge either of

cactuses or thorny bush, cut down to keep out tapirs and deer, and

usually in a straw hut a negro lay, armed with a flint-lock gun to fire

at parrots, scare off monkeys, and generally to act as guardian of the

place. Orange and lemon trees, with citrons and sweet limes, grew

plentifully, and had run wild amongst the woods; bananas were planted in

the roça; but what we liked the best was a wild fruit called Guavirami,

which grew in patches on the open camp, yellow and round, about the size

of a small plum, low-growing, having three or four small stones, cold as

an icicle to taste upon the hottest day. A little river ran through the

middle of the wood, and in a stream a curious machine was placed for

pounding maize, driven by water-power, and unlike any contrivance of a

similar nature I had ever seen before. An upright block of wood, burned

from the centre of a tree, stood in the stream, hollowed out in the

centre to contain the maize; water ran up a little channel, and released

a pestle, which fell with a heavy thud upon the corn, with the result

that if one left a basket full in the great mortar over-night, by morning

it was pounded, saving that labour which God Himself seems to have

thought not so ennobling after all, as He first instituted it to carry

out a curse.

So one day told, and may, for all I know, have certified another, but we

recked little of them, riding into Cruz Alta now and then and eating

cakes at the confectioner’s, drinking innumerable glasses of sweet

Malaga, laying in stores of cigarettes, frequenting all the dances far

and near, joining in cattle-markings, races, and anything in short which

happened in the place.

Perhaps our greatest friend was one Luis, a slave, born in Angola,

brought over quite “Bozal” (or muzzled, as the Brazilians say of negroes

who can speak no Portuguese), then by degrees became “ladino,” was

baptized, bought by our host Xavier, and had remained with him all the

remainder of his life. Black, and not comely in the least, bowlegged

from constant riding, nose flat, and ears like flappers, a row of teeth

almost as strong as a young shark’s, flat feet, and crisp Angola wool

which grew so thickly on his head that had you thrown a pin on it, it

could not have reached the skin, he yet was honest and faithful to the

verge of folly; but then, if heaven there be, it can be but inhabited by

fools, for wise men, prudent folk, and those who thrive, have their

reward like singers, quickly, and can look for nothing more. He spoke

about himself half-pityingly under the style of “Luis o Captivo,” was

pious, fervent in sacred song, instant in prayer (especially if work was

to be done), not idle either, superstitious and affectionate with all the

virtues of the most excellent Saint Bernard or Newfoundland dog, and with

but little of the imperfections of a man except the power of speech.

Often he had been with his master into Uruguay to purchase cattle, or to

buy mules for the Brazilian market, and when I asked him if he did not

know that he was free the instant that he stepped in Uruguay, said: “Yes,

but here I was brought up when I first came from Africa; they have been

kind to me, it is to me as the querencia {46} is to a horse, and were it

not for that, small fear I should return, to remain here ‘feito captivo’;

but then I love the place, and, as you know, ‘the mangy calf lived all

the winter, and then died in the spring.’” He held the Christian faith

in its entirety, doubting no dogma, being pleased with every saint, but

yet still hankered after fetish, which he remembered as a child, and

seemed to think not incompatible with Christianity, as rendering it more

animistic and familiar, smoothing away its angularities, blotting

whatever share of reason it may have away, and, above all, giving more

scope, if possible, to faith, and thereby opening a larger field of

possibilities to the believer’s mind.

So Luis with others of his kind, as Jango, Jico, and Manduco, became our

friends, looking upon us with that respect mixed with contempt which is

the attitude of those who see that you possess the mysterious arts of

reading and of writing, but cannot see a horse’s footprint on hard

ground; or if you lose yourself, have to avail yourself of what Luis

referred to as “the one-handed watch the sailors use, which points the

way to go.”

Much did Xavier talk of the Indians of the woods, the “Bugres,” as the

Brazilians call them; about the “Botocudos,” who wear a plug stuck in

their lower lip, and shape their ears with heavy weights in youth, so

that they hang upon their shoulders; and much about those “Infidel” who

through a blowpipe direct a little arrow at the travelling “Christians”

in the woods, whose smallest touch is death. It then appeared his father

(fica agora na gloria) was a patriot, that is, ’twas he who extirpated

the last of all the “Infidel” from the forests where they lived. Most

graphically did he tell how the last Indians were hunted down with dogs,

and in a pantomime he showed how they jumped up and fell when they

received the shot, and putting out his tongue and writhing hideously, he

imitated how they wriggled on the ground, explaining that they were worse

to kill than is a tapir, and put his father and the other patriots to

much unnecessary pain. And as he talked, the woods, the fields, the

river and the plain bathed in the sun, which unlike that of Africa does

not seem weary of its task, but shines unwearied, looking as it does on a

new world and life, shimmered and blazed, great lizards drank its rays

flattening themselves upon the stones in ecstasy, humming-birds quivered

at the heart of every flower; above the stream the dragon-flies hung

poised; only some “Infidel” whom the patriots had destroyed seemed

wanting, and the landscape looked incomplete without a knot of them in

their high feather crowns stealthily stealing round a corner of the

woods.

In the uncomprehended future, incomprehensible and strange, and harder

far to guess at than the remotest semi-comprehended past, surely the

Spanish travellers and their writings will have a value quite apart from

that of any other books. For then the world will hold no “Bugres”; not a

“Botocudo” will be left, and those few Indian and Negro tribes who yet

persist will be but mere travesties of the whites: their customs lost,

their lore, such as it was, despised; and we have proved ourselves wiser

than the Creator, who wasted so much time creating beings whom we judged

unfit to live, and then, in mercy to ourselves and Him, destroyed, so

that no evidence of His miscalculated plan should last to shame Him when

He thought of His mistake. So to this end (unknowingly) the missionary

works, and all the Jesuits, those who from Paraguay through the

Chiquitos, and across the Uruguay, in the dark Moxos, and in the forests

of the Andes, gave their lives to bring as they thought life everlasting

to the Indians—all were fools. Better by far instead of Bibles, lives of

saints, water of baptism, crucifixes, and all the tackle of their trade,

that they had brought swords, lances, and a good cross-bow each, and gone

to work in the true scientific way, and recognized that the right way

with savages is to preach heaven to them and then despatch them to it,

for it is barbarous to keep them standing waiting as it were, just at the

portals of eternal bliss.

And as we lingered at Cruz Alta, Christmas drew near, and all the people

began to make “pesebres,” with ox and ass, the three wise men, the star

of Bethlehem, the Redeemer (not of the Botocudos and the Bugres) swaddled

and laid in straw. Herdsmen and negroes dismounted at the door, fastened

their half-wild mules or horses carefully to posts, removed their hats,

drawing them down over their faces furtively, and then walked in on

tiptoe, their heavy iron spurs clanking upon the ground, to see the

Wondrous Child. They lounged about the room, speaking in whispers as he

might awake, and then departed silently, murmuring that it was

“fermosisimo,” and getting on their horses noiselessly were gone, and in

a minute disappeared upon the plain. Then came the Novena with prayer

and carols, the prayers read by Xavier himself out of a tattered book,

all the assembled family joining with unction in the responses, and

beating on their breasts. Luis and all the slaves joined in the carols

lustily, especially in one sung in a minor key long-drawn-out as a

sailor’s shanty, or a forebitter sung in a calm whilst waiting for a

breeze. After each verse there was a kind of chorus calling upon the

sinner to repent, bidding him have no fear but still hold on, and thus

exhorting him—

“Chegai, Chegai, pecador, áo pe da cruz

Fica nosso Senhor.”

Christmas Day found us all at mass in the little church, horses and mules

being tied outside the door to the trees in the plaza, and some left

hobbled, and all waiting as if St. Hubert was about to issue forth and

bless them.

Painfully and long, the preacher dwelt upon the glorious day, the country

people listening as it were new to them, and as if all the events had

happened on the plain hard by. In the evening rockets announced the

joyful news, and the stars shone out over the woods and plains as on the

evening when the bright particular star guided the three sheikhs to some

such place as was the rancho of our host.

Christmas rejoicings over, a month sped past and found us still, so to

speak, wind-bound in the little town. No one would buy our horses, some

of which died bitten by snakes. It was impossible to think of going on,

and to return equally difficult, so that there seemed a probability of

being obliged to pass a lifetime in the place. People began to look at

us half in a kindly, half contemptuous way, as people look in general

upon those who fail, especially when they themselves have never tried to

do anything at all but live, and having done it with considerable success

look upon failure as a sort of minor crime, to be atoned for by humility,

and to be reprobated after the fashion of adultery, with a

half-deprecating laugh. Sometimes we borrowed ancient flint-lock guns

and lay in wait for tapirs, but never saw them, as in the thick woods

they move as silently as moles in sand, and leave as little trace. Luis

told of how, mounted on a half-wild horse, he had long ago lassoed a

tapir, and found himself and horse dragged slowly and invincibly towards

a stream, the horse resisting terrified, the “gran besta” {51} apparently

quite cool, so that at last he had to cut his lasso and escape from what

he called the greatest peril of his life; he thought he was preserved

partly by the interposition of the saints and partly by a “fetiço” which,

in defiance of religion, he luckily had hanging round his neck.

Just when all hope was gone, and we thought seriously of leaving the

horses to their fate, and pushing on with some of the best of them

towards Rio, a man appeared upon the scene, and offered to buy them, half

for money and half “a troco,” that is barter, for it appeared he was a

pawnbroker and had a house full of silver horse-gear, which had never

been redeemed. After much bargaining we closed for three hundred dollars

and a lot of silver bridles, spurs, whips, and other stuff, after

reserving four of the best horses for ourselves to make our journey back.

At the head of so much capital our spirits rose, and we determined to

push on to Paraguay, crossing the Uruguay and Parana, ride through the

Misiones, and at Asuncion, where I had friends, take ship; _aguas abajo_,

for the River Plate. We paid our debts and bid good-bye to Xavier, his

wife and sallow daughters, and to all the slaves; gave Luis a

silver-mounted whip, bought some provisions, put on our silver spurs,

bridles, and as much as possible of the silver gear we had become

possessed of, and at daybreak, mounted upon a cream-and-white piebald,

the “Bayo Overo,” and a red bay known as the “Pateador,” leading a horse

apiece, we passed out of Xavier’s “potrero,” {52} and started on the

road.

During the last few days at Xavier’s we had taught the horses we intended

to take to Paraguay to eat Indian corn, fastening them up without any

other food all day, and putting salt into their mouths. The art once

learnt, we had to stand beside them whilst they ate, to keep off chickens

and pigs who drove them from their food, the horses being too stupid to

help themselves. If I remember rightly, their ration was eight cobs,

which we husked for them in our hands, blistering our fingers in the

process as they had been burned. But now the trouble of the process was

repaid, the horses going strongly all day long. We passed out of the

little plain, skirted a pine-wood, rode up a little hill, and saw the

country stretching towards the Uruguay, a park-like prairie interspersed

with trees. Cruz Alta, a white patch shining against the green-grey

plain encircled with its woods, was just in sight, the church-tower

standing like a needle in the clear air against the sky. Half a league

more and it dropped out of view, closing the door upon a sort of half

Bœotian Arcady, but remaining still a memory after twenty years, with all

the little incidents of the three months’ sojourn in the place fresh, and

yet seeming as they had happened not to myself, but to a person I had

met, and who had told the tale.

By easy stages we journeyed on, descending gradually towards the Uruguay,

passing through country almost unpopulated, so large were the “fazendas,”

and so little stocked. In the last century the Jesuits had here

collected many tribes of Indians, and their history, is it not told in

the pages of Montoya Lozano, Padre Guevara, and the other chroniclers of

the doings of the “Company,” and to be read in the Archivo de Simancas,

in that of Seville, and the uncatalogued “legajos” of the national

library at Madrid? Throughout the country that we passed through, the

fierce Paulistas had raided in times gone by, carrying off the Christian

Indians to be slaves. The Portuguese and Spaniards had often

fought—witness the names “O matto {54a} Portogues, O matto Castelhano,”

and the like, showing where armies had manoeuvred, whilst the poor

Indians waited like sheep, rejoicing when the butchers turned the knife

at one another’s throats. To-day all trace of Jesuits and Missions have

long disappeared, save for a ruined church or two, and here and there a

grassy mound called in the language of the country a “tapera,” {54b}

showing where a settlement had stood.

We camped at lonely ranchos inhabited, in general, by free negroes, or by

the side of woods, choosing, if possible, some little cove in the wood,

in which we tied the horses, building a fire in the mouth, laid down and

slept, after concocting a vile beverage bought in Cruz Alta under the

name of tea, but made I think of birch-leaves, and moistening pieces of

the hard jerked beef in orange-juice to make it palatable.

So after five or six days of steady travelling, meeting, if I remember

rightly, not a living soul upon the way, except a Gaucho from the Banda

Oriental, who one night came to our fire, and seeing the horrible brew of

tea in a tin-pot asked for a little of the “black water,” not knowing

what it was, we reached the Uruguay. The river, nearly half-a-mile in

breadth, flowed sluggishly between primeval woods, great alligators

basked with their backs awash, flamingoes fished among the shallow pools,

herons and cranes sat on dead stumps, vultures innumerable perched on

trees, and in the purple bunches of the “seibos” humming-birds seemed to

nestle, so rapid was their flight, and over all a darkish vapour hung,

blending the trees and water into one, and making the “balsa,” as it

laboured over after repeated calls, look like the barque of Styx. Upon

the other side lay Corrientes, once a vast mission territory, but to-day,

in the narrow upper portion that we traversed, almost a desert, that is a

desert of tall grass with islands of timber dotted here and there, and an

occasional band of ostriches scudding across the plain.

Camped by a wood about a quarter of a league from a lonely rancho, we

were astonished, just at even-fall, by the arrival of the owner of the

house mounted upon a half-wild horse, a spear in his hand, escorted by

his two ragged sons mounted on half-wild ponies, and holding in their

hands long canes to which a broken sheep-shear had been fixed. The

object of his visit, as he said, was to inquire if we had seen a tiger

which had killed some sheep, but his suspicious glance made me think he

thought we had designs upon his cattle, and he had come to reconnoitre

us; but our offer of some of the Cruz Alta tea soon made us friends, and

after drinking almost a quart of it, he said “Muy rico,” and rode back to

his house.

The third day’s riding brought us to the little town of Candelaria, built

on a high bank over the Parana. Founded on Candlemas Day in 1665, it was

the chief town of the Jesuit missions. Here, usually, the “Provincial”

{56a} resided, and here the political business of their enormous

territory was done. Stretching almost from Cruz Alta to within fifty

leagues of Asuncion del Paraguay, and from Yapeyú upon the Uruguay almost

to the “Salto de Guayra” upon the Parana, the territory embraced an area

larger than many a kingdom, and was administered without an army, solely

by about two hundred priests. The best proof of the success of their

administration is that in these days the Indians, now to be numbered by a

few thousand, were estimated at about two hundred thousand, and peopled

all the country now left desolate, or which at least was desolate at the

time of which I write. Even Azara, {56b} a bitter opponent of their

system, writes of the Jesuit rule—“Although the Fathers had supreme

command, they used their power with a gentleness and moderation which one

cannot but admire.” {56c}

I leave to the economists, with all the reverend rabble rout of

politicians, statistic-mongers and philanthropists, whether or not two

hundred thousand living Indians were an asset in the world’s property;

and to the pious I put this question, If, as I suppose, these men had

souls just as immortal as our own, might it not have been better to

preserve their bodies, those earthly envelopes without which no soul can

live, rather than by exposing them to all those influences which the

Jesuits dreaded, to kill them off, and leave their country without

population for a hundred years?

But at the time of which I write neither my partner nor I cared much for

speculations of that kind, but were more occupied with the condition of

our horses, for, by that time, the “Bayo Overo” and the “Pateador” were

become part and parcel of ourselves, and we thought more about their

welfare than that of all the Indians upon earth.

La Candelaria, at the time when we passed through, was fallen from its

proud estate, and had become a little Gaucho country town with sandy

streets and horses tied at every door—a barren sun-burnt plaza, with a

few Japanese ash-trees and Paraisos; the “Commandancia” with the

Argentine blue-and-white barred flag, and trade-mark rising sun, hanging

down listlessly against the post, and for all remnants of the Jesuit

sway, the college turned into a town-hall, and the fine church, which

seemed to mourn over the godless, careless, semi-Gaucho population in the

streets. Here we disposed of our spare horses, bidding them good-bye, as

they had been old friends, and got the “Bayo Overo” and the “Pateador”

shod for the first time in their lives, an operation which took the

united strength of half-a-dozen men to achieve, but was imperative, as

their feet, accustomed to the stone-less plains of Paraguay, had suffered

greatly in the mountain paths. In Candelaria, for the first time for

many months, we sat down to a regular meal, in a building called “El

Hotel Internacional”; drank wine of a suspicious kind, and seemed to have

arrived in Paris, so great the change to the wild camps beside the

forests, or the nights passed in the lone ranchos of the hilly district

of Brazil.

A balsa drawn by a tug-boat took us across the Parana, here more than a

mile broad, to Ytapua, and upon landing we found ourselves in quite

another world. The little Paraguayan town of Ytapua, called by the

Jesuits Encarnacion, lay, with its little port below it (where my friend

Enrico Clerici had his store), upon a plateau hanging above the stream.

The houses, built of canes and thatched with straw, differed extremely

from the white “azotea” houses of the Candelaria on the other side. The

people, dress, the vegetation, and the mode of life, differed still more

in every aspect. The Paraguayan, with his shirt hanging outside his

white duck trousers, bare feet, and cloak made of red cloth or baize, his

broad straw hat and quiet manner, was the complete antithesis of the

high-booted, loose-trousered, poncho-wearing Correntino, with his long

knife and swaggering Gaucho air. The one a horseman of the plains, the

other a footman of the forests; the Correntino brave even to rashness

when taken man for man, but so incapable of discipline as to be

practically useless as a soldier. The other as quiet as a sheep, and

individually patient even to suffering blows, but once gathered together

and instructed in the use of arms, as good a soldier, when well led, as

it is possible to find; active and temperate, brave, and, if rather

unintelligent, eager to risk his life at any time at the command of any

of his chiefs. Such was the material from which Lopez, coward and

grossly incompetent as he was, formed the battalions which for four years

kept both Buenos Ayres and Brazil at bay, and only yielded when he

himself was killed, mounted, as tradition has it, on the last horse of

native breed left in the land.

But if the people and their dwellings were dissimilar, the countries in

themselves were to the full at least as different. All through the upper

part of Corrientes the soil is black, and the country open, park-like

prairie dotted with trees; in Ytapua and the surrounding district, the

earth bright red, and the primeval forest stretches close to the water’s

edge. In Corrientes still the trees of the Pampas are occasionally seen,

Talas and ñandubay with Coronillo and Lapacho; whereas in Paraguay, as by

a bound, you pass to Curupay, {60a} Tatané, {60b} the Tarumá, {60c} the

Ñandipá, {60d} the Jacaranda, and the Paratodo with its bright yellow

flowers; whilst upon every tree lianas cling with orchidaceæ, known to

the natives as “flowers of the air,” and through them all flit great

butterflies, humming-birds dart, and underneath the damp vegetation of

the sub-tropics, emphorbiaceæ, solanaceæ, myrtaceæ, and flowers and

plants to drive a thousand botanists to madness, blossom and die unnamed.

Here, too, the language changed, and Guarani became the dominant tongue,

which, though spoken in Corrientes, is there used but occasionally, but

among Paraguayans is their native speech, only the Alcaldes, officers,

and upper classes as a general rule (at that time) speaking Spanish, and

even then with a strange accent and much mixed with Guarani.

Two days we passed in Ytapua resting our horses, and I renewed my

friendship with Enrico Clerici, an Italian, who had served with

Garibaldi, and who, three years ago, I had met in the same place and

given him a silver ring which he reported galvanized, and was accustomed

to lend as a great favour for a specific against rheumatism. He kept a

pulperia, and being a born fighter, his delight was, when a row occurred

(which he styled “una barulla de Jesu Cristo”), to clear the place by

flinging empty bottles from the bar. A handsome, gentlemanlike man, and

terrible with a bottle in his hand, whether as weapon of offence or for

the purposes of drink; withal well educated, and no doubt by this time

long dead, slain by his favourite weapon, and his place filled by some

fat, double-entry Basque or grasping Catalan, or by some portly emigrant

from Germany.

Not wishing to be confined within a house, a prey to the mosquitoes, we

camped in the chief square, and strolling round about the town, I came on

an old friend.

Not far outside the village a Correntino butcher had his shop, a little

straw-thatched hut, with strings of fresh jerked beef festooning all the

place; the owner stood outside dressed in the costume of a Gaucho of the

southern plains. I did not know him, and we began to talk, when I

perceived, tied underneath a shed, a fine, dark chestnut horse, saddled

and bitted in the most approved of Gaucho style. He somehow seemed

familiar, and the Correntino, seeing me looking at his horse, asked if I

knew the brand, but looking at it I failed to recognize it, when on a

sudden my memory was lighted up. Three years ago, in an “estero” {62}

outside Caapucú, at night, journeying in company with a friend, one

Hermann, whose only means of communication with me was a jargon of

Spanish mixed with “Plaat Deutsch,” we met a Correntino, and as our

horses mutually drowned our approach by splashing with their feet, our

meeting terrified us both. Frightened, he drew his knife, and I a

pistol, and Hermann lugged out a rusty sword, which he wore stuck through

his horse’s girths. But explanations followed, and no blood was shed,

and then we drew aside into a little hillock, called in the language of

the place an “albardon,” sat down and talked, and asking whence he came

was told from Ytapua. Now Ytapua was three days’ journey distant on an

ordinary horse, and I looked carefully at the horse, and wondered why his

owner had ridden him so hard. He, I now saw, was the horse I had seen

that night, and the Correntino recognized me, and laughing said he had

killed a man near Ytapua, and was (as he said) “retreating” when he met

me in the marsh. The horse, no doubt, was one of the best for a long

journey I have ever seen, and after quoting to his owner that “a dark

chestnut horse may die, but cannot tire,” {63a} we separated, and, no

doubt, for years afterwards our meeting was the subject of his talk.

No doubt the citizens of Ytapua were scandalized at our not coming to the

town, and the Alcalde came to interview us, but we assured him that in

virtue of a vow we slept outside, and in a moment all his fears were

gone.

Striking right through the then desolated Misiones, passing the river

Aguapey, our horses almost swimming, skirting by forests where red macaws

hovered like hawks and parrots chattered; passing through open plains

grown over here and there with Yatais, {63b} splashing for hours through

wet esteros, missing the road occasionally, as I had travelled it but

once, and then three years ago, and at the time I write of huts were few

and far between, and population scanty, we came, upon the evening of the

second day, near to a place called Ñacuti. This was the point for which

I had been making, for near it was an estancia {63c} called the “Potrero

San Antonio,” the property of Dr. Stewart, a well-known man in Paraguay.

Nature had seemed to work to make the place impregnable. On three sides

of the land, which measured eight or ten miles in length on every side,

forks of a river ran, and at the fourth they came so close together that

a short fence, not half-a-mile in length, closed up the circle, and

cattle once inside were safe but for the tigers, which at that time

abounded, and had grown so fierce by reason of the want of population

that they sometimes killed horses or cows close to the door of the house.

A short “picada,” of about a quarter of a mile in length, cut through the

wood, led to the gate. Through it in times gone by I often rode at night

in terror, with a pistol in my hand, the heavy foliage of the trees

brushing my hat, and thinking every instant that a tiger would jump out.

One night when close up to the bamboo bars I heard a grunt, thought my

last hour had come, fired, and brought something down; approached, and

found it was a peccary; and then, tearing the bars down in a hurry, got

to horse, and galloped nine miles to the house, thinking each moment that

the herd of peccaries was close behind and panting for my blood.

On this occasion all was still; the passage through the orange trees was

dark, their scent oppressive, as the leaves just stirred in the hot north

wind, and fire-flies glistened to and fro amongst the flowers; great bats

flew heavily, and the quarter of a mile seemed mortal, and as if it led

to hell.

Nothing occurred, and coming to the bars we found them on the ground;

putting them up we conscientiously cursed the fool who left them out of

place, and riding out into the moonlight, after a little trouble found

the sandy, deep-banked trail which led up to the house. All the nine

miles we passed by islands of great woods, peninsulas and archipelagos

jutting out into the still plain, and all their bases swathed in white

mists like water: the Yatais looked ghostly standing starkly in the

grass; from the lagoons came the shrill croak of frogs, great moths came

fluttering across our path, and the whole woods seemed filled with noise,

as if the dwellers in them, silent through the day, were keeping holiday

at night. As for the past two days we had eaten nothing but a few

oranges and pieces of jerked beef, moistening them in the muddy water of

the streams, our talk was of the welcome we should get, the supper, and

of the comfortable time we then should pass for a few days to give our

horses rest.

We passed the tiger-trap, a structure built after the fashion of an

enormous mouse-trap, of strong bamboos; skirted along a wood in which an

ominous growling and rustling made our horses start, and then it struck

me as curious that there were no cattle feeding in the plain, no horses,

and that the whole potrero seemed strangely desolate; but the house just

showing at the edge of a small grove of peach-trees drove all these

speculations out of my head: thinking upon the welcome, and the dinner,

for we had eaten nothing since daybreak, and were fasting, as the natives

say, from everything but sin, we reached the door. The house was dark,

no troop of dogs rushed out to bark and seize our horses’ tails; we

shouted, hammered with our whips, fired our revolvers, and nothing

answered us.

Dismounting, we found everything bolted and barred, and going to the

back, on the kitchen-hearth a few red embers, and thus knew that some one

had been lately in the place. Nothing to eat, the woods evidently full

of tigers, and our horses far too tired to start again, we were just

about to unsaddle and lie down and sleep, when a white figure stole out

from the peach-trees, and tried to gain the shelter of the corral some

sixty yards away. Jumping on horseback we gave chase, and coming up with

the fugitive found it to be a Paraguayan woman, who with her little

daughter were the sole inhabitants, her husband having gone to the

nearest village to buy provisions, and left her all alone, warning her

earnestly before he left to keep the doors shut during the night on

account of the tigers, and not to venture near the woods even in daylight

till he should have come back. Finding herself confronted by two armed,

mounted men, dressed in the clothes of Correntinos, who had an evil

reputation in Paraguay, her terror was extreme. Her daughter, a little

girl of eight or nine, crept out from behind a tree, and in a moment we

were friends. Unluckily for us, she had no food of any kind, and but a

little maté, which she prepared for us. She then remembered that the

trees were covered with peaches, and went out and gathered some, but they

were hard as stones; nevertheless we ate a quantity of them, and having

tied our horses close to the house, not twenty paces from the door, in

long lush grass, we lay down in the verandah, and did not wake till it

was almost noon. When we awoke we found the woman had been up betimes

and gone on foot five or six miles away to look for food. She brought

some mandioca, and two or three dozen oranges, and a piece of almost

putrefied jerked beef, all which we ate as heartily as if it had been the

most delicious food on earth.

To my annoyance I found my horse weak and dejected, and several large

clots of dried-up blood under the hair of his mane, and saw at once a

vampire bat had fixed upon him, and no doubt sucked almost a quart of

blood. We washed him in a pond close to the house, and he got better,

and after eating some of the hard and unripe peaches we again lay down to

sleep. By evening the woman’s husband had returned, and proved to be a

little lame and withered-looking man, mounted upon a lean and skinny

horse. He undertook to guide us to Asuncion, remarking that it was

twenty years since he had seen the capital, but that he knew the road as

if he was accustomed to go there every day. With a slight lapsus this

turned out to be the case, and just at daybreak we left the Potrero San

Antonio, where once before I had passed a month roaming about the woods,

waiting for tigers in a tree at night, and never thinking that, in three

years’ time, I should return and find it desolate. It seemed that Dr.

Stewart, not finding the speculation pay, had sold his cattle, and his

manager, one Oliver, a Californian “Forty-niner,” and his Paraguayan

wife, had removed to a place some twenty leagues away, upon the road

towards Asuncion.

There we determined to go and rest our horses, and left the place, our

guide Florencio’s wife impressing on him to be sure and bring her back a

little missal from the capital, and he, just like an Arab or an Indian

leaving home, unmoved, merely observing that the folk in Asuncion were

“muy ladino” (very cunning), and it behoved a Christian to take care.

A day’s long march brought us near Santa Rosa, and our guide here fell

into his first and only error on the road. Pursuing an interminable

palm-wood, we came out upon a little plain, all broken here and there

with stunted Yatais, then to our great disgust the road bifurcated, and

our guide insisted on striking to the left, though I was almost certain

it was wrong. After an hour of heavy ploughing through the sand, I

suddenly saw two immense palm-trees about a league away upon the right,

and luckily remembered that they stood one on each side of the old Jesuit

church at Santa Rosa, and after an hour of scrambling through a stony

wood arrived at the crossing of the little river just outside the place.

Girls carrying water-jars upon their heads, and dressed in long white

shifts, embroidered round the neck with coarse black lace, were going and

coming in a long procession to the stream. A few old men and about

thirty boys composed almost the entire male population of the town.

Women entirely ruled the roost, and managed everything, and, as far as I

can now recall, did it not much more inefficiently than men. The curious

wooden church, dark, and with overhanging eaves, and all the images of

saints still left from Jesuit times in choir and nave, with columns hewn

from the trunks of massive trees, stood in the centre of the village,

which was built after the fashion of a miner’s “row,” or of a St.

Simonian phalanstery, each dwelling at least a hundred feet in length,

and all partitioned off in the inside for ten or fifteen families. The

plaza was overgrown with grass, and on it donkeys played, chasing each

other up and down, and sometimes running up the wooden steps of the great

church, and stumbling down again. Those who had horses led them down to

bathe, cut “pindo” {69} for them, rode them at evening time, and passed

their time in dressing and in combing them to get them into condition for

the Sunday’s running at the ring, which sport introduced by the Jesuits

has continued popular in all the villages of the Misiones up to the

present time. The women flirted with the men, who by their rarity were

at a premium, gave themselves airs, and went about surrounded by a

perpetual and admiring band. The single little shop, which contained

needles, gunpowder, and gin, was kept by an Italian, who, as he told me,

liked the place, lent money, was a professing and quite unabashed

polygamist, and I have no doubt long ere this time has made a fortune,

and retired to live at Genoa in the self-same green velvet suit in which

he left his home.

In this Arcadia we remained some days, and hired several girls to bathe

the horses, which they performed most conscientiously, splashing and

shouting in the stream for hours at a time, and bringing back the horses

clean, and garnished with flowers in their manes. I rode one day to see

a village two or three leagues away, where report said some of the Jesuit

books had been preserved; got lost, and passed the night in a small

clearing, where a fat and well-cared-for-looking handsome roan horse was

tied. On seeing me he broke his picket-rope, ran furiously four or five

times round me in circles, and then advancing put his nostrils close to

the nostrils of my horse, and seemed to talk to him. His owner, an old

Paraguayan, lame from a wound received in jumping from a canoe onto the

deck of a Brazilian ironclad, told me his horse had been with him far

into the interior, and for a year had never seen another horse. But, he

said, “Tata Dios has given every animal its speech after its kind, and he

is glad to see your horse, and is no doubt asking him the news.”

During the night, I cannot say exactly what the two horses talked about,

but the old Paraguayan talked for hours of his adventures in the lately

terminated war. It appeared that he, with seven companions, thinking to

take a Brazilian ironclad anchored in the Paraguay, concealed themselves

in a small canoe, behind some drift-wood, and floating plants called

“camalotes,” drifted down with the stream, and coming to the ship jumped

with a yell aboard. The Brazilians, taken by surprise, all ran below,

and the poor Paraguayans thinking the ship was theirs, sat quietly down

upon the deck to plan what they should do. Seeing them off their guard,

some of the crew turned a gun upon them, and at the first fire killed

six, and wounded my host, who sprang into the stream, and gained the

bank, but most unluckily not on the Paraguayan side. As at that time the

Chaco Indians, who had profited by the war to make invasions upon every

side, killed every Christian, as my host said “sin perdon,” so he

remained half starving for a night and day. On the third morning,

wounded as he was, and seeing he must starve or else be killed if seen by

Indians, he got a fallen tree, and with great difficulty, and

marvellously escaping the fierce fish who come like wolves to the scent

of blood, and unmolested by the alligators, he reached the other side.

There he was found by some women, lying unconscious on the river-bank,

was cured, and though scarred in a dozen places, and lame for life,

escaped, as he informed me, by his devotion to San José, whom he

described under the title of the “husband of the mother of our Lord.”

In the morning he rode a league with me upon the way, and as we parted

his horse neighed shrilly, reared once or twice, and plunged, and when we

separated I looked back and saw the devotee of St. Joseph sitting as

firmly as a centaur, as his horse loped along the sandy

palm-tree-bordered trail. During our stay at Santa Rosa, which was an

offshoot from the more important mission of Santa Maria de Fé, although

they had no priest the people gathered in the church, the Angelus was

rung at evening for the “oracion,” and every one on hearing it took off

his hat and murmured something that he thought apposite. Thus did

ceremony, always much more important than mere faith, continue, and no

doubt blessed the poor people to the full as much as if it had been duly

sanctified by a tonsured priest, and consecrated by a rightly constituted

offertory. We left the place with real regret, and to this day, when in

our hurried life I dream of peace, my thoughts go back to the old

Paraguayan Jesuit “capilla” lost in the woods of Morosimo, Curupay, and

Yba-hai, and with its two tall feathery palm-trees rustling above the

desecrated church; to the long strings of white-robed women carrying

water-jars, and to the old-world life, perhaps by this time altered and

swept away, or yet again not altered, and passing still in the same quiet

fashion as when we were there.

Little by little we left the relatively open country of the Misiones

behind, and passing Ibyra-pucú, San Roque, and Ximenes, came to the river

Tebicuary. We passed it in canoes, the horses swimming, with their backs

awash and heads emerging like water-monsters, whilst an impassive Indian

paddled in the stern, and a young girl stood in the bows wielding a

paddle like a water-sprite. The river passed, we got at once into the

forests, and followed winding and narrow paths, worn by the footsteps of

the mules of ages so deeply that our heavy Gaucho spurs almost trailed on

the ground, whilst overhead lianas now and then quite formed a roof, and

in the heavy air winged animals of every kind made life a burden. At

last, leaving the little town of Quiquyó upon the right, we emerged on to

a high and barren plain near Caapucú. On the evening of the second day

from where we crossed the river, we came to Caballero Punta, just

underneath a range of flattish hills, and riding to the door at a sharp

gallop, pulled up short, and found ourselves greeted by the ex-manager of

the Potrero San Antonio, my friend the “Forty-niner,” and for the first

time for four months saw a familiar face. Gentle and kindly, though

quick on the trigger, as befitted one who had crossed the plains in ’48

on foot, and with his whole possessions packed on a bullock, passing the

Rocky Mountains alone, and through the hostile tribes at that time

powerful and savage, John Oliver was one of those strange men who, having

passed their lives in perils and privations, somehow draw from them that

very kindliness which those living in what appear more favourable

surroundings so often lack. Born somewhere in the Yorkshire Dales (these

he remembered well), and as he thought “back somewhere in the twenties,”

he had suffered all his life from the strange fever which impels some men

to search for gold. Not on the Stock Exchange, or any of those places

where it might reasonably be expected to be found, but in Australia,

California, Mexico, in short wherever life was hard, death easy, and

experience to be gathered, he sought with pick and shovel, rocker and pan

and cradle, the “yellow iron,” as the Apaches used to call it, which

sought and found after the fashion of his kind, enriches some one else.

From California he had drifted to Peru, from thence to Chile, but finding

silver-mining too laborious or too lucrative for his conversing, and

hearing of a fertile diggings opened in the Republic of Uruguay, had

migrated there, and arrived somehow in Paraguay to find that the

enchantment of his life was done, and settled down to live. Tall, and

with long grey hair hanging in Western fashion down his back, a careful

horseman after the style of the trappers of the West, his pale blue eyes

looked out upon the world as with an air of doubt; yet he had served in

San Francisco as a “vigilante,” sojourned with Brigham Young in Salt Lake

City, leaving as he confessed two or three wives among the saints, sat in

Judge Lynch’s court a dozen times, most probably had killed a man or two;

still, to my fancy, if the meek are to inherit any portion of the earth,

his share should not be small.

He made us welcome, and his wife waited upon us, never presuming to sit

down and eat, but standing ready with a napkin fringed with lace, to wipe

our hands, pressing the food upon us, and behaving generally as if she

found herself in the presence of some strange beings of an unfamiliar

race. He said he had no children and was glad of it, for he explained

that “Juaneeter was a good woman, but ‘uneddicated,’ and he had never

taken thoroughly to half-caste pups, though he remembered some born of a

Pi-Ute woman, way back somewhere about the fifties, who he supposed by

now were warriors, and had taken many scalps.” His wife stood by, not

understanding any English and but little Spanish, which he himself spoke

badly, and their talk was held in a strange jargon mixed with Guarani,

without a verb, without a particle, and yet sufficient for the two simple

creatures whom a strange fate, or a discerning, ever-watchful Providence,

had thus ordained to meet. No books were in the place, except a Bible,

which he read little of late years, partly from failing sight, and

partly, as he said, because he had detected what seemed to him

“exaggerations,” chiefly in figures and as to the number of the

unbelievers whom the Chosen People slew. Two days or more, for time was

taken no account of in his house, we waited with him, talking late every

night of Salt Lake, Brigham Young, the Mountain-meadows Massacre, Kit

Carson, Cochise and Mangas Coloradas, and matters of that kind which

interested him, and which, when all is said, are just as interesting to

those attuned to them, as is polemical theology, theories of art, systems

of jurisprudence, the origin of the Atoll Islands, or any of the wise

futilities with which men stock their minds. We parted on the third or

fourth, or perhaps the fifth or sixth day, knowing that we should never

meet again, and taking off my silver spurs I gave them to him, and he

presented me with a light summer poncho woven by his wife. Much did he

thank me for my visit, and made me swear never to pass the district

without stopping at his house. This I agreed to do, and if I pass again

either by Caballero Punta or by Caapucú, I will keep faith; but he, I

fear, will have deceived me, and in the churchyard of the “capilla,”

under a palm-tree, with a rough cross above him, I shall find my simple

friend.

Three or four days of jogging steadily, passing by Quindy, and through

the short “estero” of Acaai, which we passed splashing for several hours

up to the girths, brought us to Paraguari, which, with its saddle-shaped

mountain overhanging it, stood out a mark for leagues upon the level

plain. Seldom in any country have I seen a railway so fall into the

landscape as did the line at the little terminus of this the only railway

in all Paraguay. The war had left the country almost in ruins, business

was at a standstill, food was scarce, and but for a bale or two of

tobacco, and a hide-sack or two of yerba, the train went empty to and

fro. But as the people always wanted to go to the capital in search of

work, six or eight empty trucks were always sent with every train. On

them the people (mostly women) swarmed, seated like flies, upon the top

and sides, dangling their legs outside like people sitting on a wharf,

talking incessantly, all dressed in white, and every one, down to the

smallest children, smoking large cigars. Six hours the passage took, if

all went well, the distance being under fifty miles. If aught went

wrong, it took a day or more, and at the bridges the trucks were all

unhooked and taken over separately, so rotten was the state of the whole

line, and in addition every here and there bridges had been blown away

during the war, and roughly rendered serviceable by shoring up with wood.

To meet a train labouring and puffing through the woods, the people

clustering like bees upon the trucks, the engineer seated in

shirt-sleeves, whilst some women stoked the fire, was much the same as it

is to meet a caravan meandering across the sands. If you desired to talk

with any one the train incontinently stopped, the passengers got out,

relit their cigarettes, the women begged, the time of day was passed, and

curiosity thus satisfied you passed on upon the road, and the

“Maquina-guazu,” {78} as it was called, pursued contentedly the jolting

and uneven tenor of its way. We naturally despised it, though the

conductor, scenting business, offered to take us and our horses at almost

any price we chose.

By the Laguna Ypocarai we took our way; skirting along its eastern

shores, then desolate, and the whole district almost depopulated, we

passed by palm-groves and deserted mandioca patches, reed cottages in

ruins, watched the flamingoes fishing in the lake, the alligators lying

motionless, and saw an Indian all alone in a dug-out canoe, casting his

line as placidly as he had lived before the coming of the Spaniards to

the land. A red-blue haze hung on the waters of the lake, reflected from

the bright red earth, peeping between the trees, and on the islands

drifts of mist gave an effect as if the palms were parachutes dropped

from balloons, or perhaps despatched from earth to find out whether in

the skies there could be anything more lovely than this quiet inland sea.

Close to the top end of the lake stands Aregua, once under the Mercenary

friars of Asuncion, who, as Azara says, having made the people of the

place work for them for near two hundred years, began to think they were

indeed their slaves, till an official sent from Spain in 1783 gave them

their liberty, and the Mercenaries (as he says) at once retreated in

disgust. Here we fell in with a compatriot, who at our time of meeting

him was drunk. He told us that he passed his time after the fashion of

the patriarchs in the Old Testament, and on arriving at his house it

seemed he was provided with several wives, but of the flocks and herds,

and other trade-marks of his supposed estate, we saw no trace. Still he

was hospitable, setting the women to cut down pindo for the horses, take

them to water, bathe them, and finally to cook some dinner for ourselves.

His chief complaint was that his wives were Catholics, and now and then

trudged off to mass, and left him without any one to cook his food. I

doubted personally if a change of creed would better things, but held my

peace, seeing the man set store by the faith which he had learnt in youth

and still said he practised, but, as far as I could see, only by cursing

the religion of the people of the place. We left his house without

regret, though he was hospitable and half drunk for nearly all the time

that we were there, and started on our last day’s march considerably

refreshed by meeting one who in a foreign land, far from home ties and

moral influences, yet still pursued the simple practice of the faith

which he had learned at home.

Luque, upon its little hill, the Campo Grande, like a dry lake,

surrounded by thick woods on every side, and then the Recoleta, we

passed, and entering the red sandy road made at the conquest to move

troops upon, we saw the churches of Asuncion only a league away. And yet

we lingered, walking our horses slowly in the deep red sand, passing the

strings of countrywomen with baskets on their heads, driving their

donkeys packed with sugar-cane, and smoking as they went; we lingered,

feeling that the trip was done; not that we minded that our fortunes were

not made, but vaguely felt that for the last five months we had lived a

time which in our lives we should not see again, and fearing rather than

looking forward to all the approaching change. The horses too were fat,

in good condition, had become old friends, knew us so well we never tied

them, but all night in camp left them to feed, being certain that they

would not stray; and thus to leave them at the end of a long trip seemed

as unreasonable as to part from an old friend simply because death calls.

The road grew wider, passed through some scattered houses, buried in

orange and guayaba trees, ran through some open patches where grew wild

indigo and castor-oil plants, with a low palm-scrub, entered a rancheria

just outside the town, and then turned to a sandy street which merged in

a great market, where, as it seemed, innumerable myriads were assembled,

all chattering at once, or so it struck us coming from the open solitary

plains and the dark silent woods. The lowness of the river having

stopped the Brazilian mail-boat from coming down from Corumba, we put up

at the “Casa Horrocks,” the resort of all the waifs and strays

storm-bound in Paraguay. The town buried in vegetation, the sandy

streets, all of them watercourses after a night’s rain, the listless

life, the donkeys straying to and fro, the white-robed women, with their

hair hanging down their backs, and cut square on the forehead after the

style so usual amongst Iceland ponies, the great unfinished palaces, the

squares with grass five or six inches high, and over all the reddish haze

blending the palm-trees, houses, sandy streets, the river and the distant

Chaco into a copper-coloured whole at sunset, rise to my memory like the

reflection of a dream. A dream seen in a convex mirror, opening away

from me as years have passed, the actual things, men, actions, and

occurrences of daily life seem swollen in it at the far end of some

perspective, but the impression of the whole fresh and clear-cut in

memory, standing out as boldly as the last day when on the “Pateador” I

had a farewell gallop on the beach. Adios, “Pateador,” or “till so

long”—horses will be born as good, better, ten thousand times more

valuable, and dogs will eat them, but for myself, and for the owner of

the “Bayo Overo,” not all the coursers of the sun could stir the

reminiscences of youth, of lonely camping-grounds, long nights in

drenching rain, struggles with wind, wild gallops in the dark; the hopes

and fears of the five months when we went fortune-seeking, and by God’s

mercy failed in our search, as the mere mention of those names forgotten

to all the world except ourselves.

Eight or ten days had passed away, and we grew quite familiar with the

chief features of the place, having made acquaintance with the Brazilian

officers of the army and the fleet, the German apothecary, with Dr.

Stewart, the chief European of the place, when news came that the

Brazilian mail-boat had at last arrived. We bade our friends good-bye,

entrusted both our horses to the care of Horrocks, fed them ourselves for

the last time, and went on board the ship; a coppery haze hung over

everything, the heat raising a faint quivering in the air, the thick

yellowish water of the stream lapping against the vessel’s sides like

oil, the boat shoved off, our friends perspiring in the sun raising a

washed-out cheer. The vessel swung into the stream, her paddles turned,

the great green flag with the orange crown imperial flapped at the

jackstaff, and the town dropped rapidly astern.

A quarter of a league and the church towers, tall palm-trees, the

unfinished palaces, and the great theatre began to fade into the haze.

Then sheering a little to the Left bank, the vessel passed a narrow

tongue of land covered with grass, whereon two horses fed. As we drew

nearer I saw they were our own, and jumping on the taffrail shouted

“Adios,” at which they raised their heads, or perhaps raised them but at

the snorting steamer, and as they looked we passed racing down stream,

and by degrees they became dimmer, smaller, less distinct, and at the

last melted and vanished into the reddish haze.