LIFE ON AN ARGENTINE ESTANCIA.
I verily believe that Britons, whether English, Irish, or Scotch, are all
born to wander, and born colonists. There really seems to be something in
the very air of a new land, be it Australia, America, or the Silver West,
that brings all their very best and noblest qualities to the surface, and
oftentimes makes men--bold, hardy, persevering men--of individuals who,
had they stayed in this old cut-and-dry country, would never have been
anything better than louts or Johnnie Raws. I assure the reader that I
speak from long experience when I make these remarks, and on any Saturday
evening when I happen to be in London, and see poor young fellows coming
home to garrets, perhaps with their pittance in their pockets, I feel for
them from the very depths of my soul. And sometimes I sigh and murmur to
myself----
'Oh dear me!' I say, 'if my purse were only half as big as my heart,
wouldn't I quickly gather together a thousand of these white slaves and
sail merrily off with them to the Land of the Silver West! And men would
learn to laugh there who hardly ever smiled before, and tendons would wax
wiry, and muscles hard, and pale faces grow brown with the tints of
health. And health would mean work, and work would mean wealth, and--but,
heigho! what is the good of dreaming? Only some day--yes, _some_ day--and
what a glorious sunrise it will be for this empire--Government will see
its way to grant free passages to far-off lands, in which there is peace
and plenty, work and food for all, and where the bread one eats is never
damped by falling tears. God send that happy day! And send it soon!
It is the memory of our first months and years of a downright pleasant
life that makes me write like this. We poor lads--my brothers and I--poor,
but determined, found everything so enjoyable at our new home in the
Silver West that oftentimes we could not help wishing that thousands of
toiling mortals from Glasgow and other great overcrowded cities would only
come out somehow and share our posy. For really, to put it in plain and
simple language, next to the delight of enjoying anything oneself, should
it only be an apple, is the pleasure of seeing one's neighbour have a
bite.
Now here is a funny thing, but it is a fact. The air of Mendoza is so
wonderfully dry and strong and bracing that it makes men of boys in a very
short time, and makes old people young again. It might not smooth away
wrinkles from the face, or turn grey hair brown, or even make two hairs
grow where only one grew before; but it does most assuredly rejuvenate the
heart, and shakes all the wrinkles out of that. Out here it is no uncommon
thing for the once rheumatic to learn to dance, while stiff-jointed
individuals who immigrated with crutches under their arms, pitch these
crutches into the irrigation canals, and take to spades and guns instead.
It is something in the air, I think, that works these wondrous changes,
though I am sure I could not say what. It may be oxygen in double doses,
or it may be ozone, or even laughing gas; but there it is, and whosoever
reads these lines and doubts what I say, has only to take flight for the
beautiful province of Mendoza, and he shall remain a sceptic no longer.
Well, as soon as we got over the fatigues of our long journey, and began
to realize the fact that we were no longer children of the desert, no
longer nomads and gipsies, my brothers and I set to work with a hearty
good-will that astonished even ourselves. In preparing our new homes we,
and all the other settlers of this infant colony as well, enjoyed the same
kind of pleasure that Robinson Crusoe must have done when he and his man
Friday set up house for themselves in the island of Juan Fernandez.
Even the labourers or 'hands' whom Moncrieff had imported had their own
dwellings to erect, but instead of looking upon this as a hardship, they
said that this was the fun of the thing, and that it was precisely here
where the laugh came in.
Moreover they worked for themselves out of hours, and I dare say that is
more than any of them would have done in the old country.
Never once was the labour of the _estancia_ neglected, nor the state of
the aqueducts, nor Moncrieff's flocks and herds, nor his fences.
Some of these men had been ploughmen, others shepherds, but every one of
them was an artisan more or less, and it is just such men that do
well--men who know a good deal about country life, and can deftly use the
spade, the hoe, the rake, the fork, as well as the hammer, the axe, the
saw, and the plane. Thanks to the way dear father had brought us up, my
brothers and I were handy with all sorts of tools, and we were rather
proud than otherwise of our handicraft.
I remember that Dugald one day, as we sat at table, after looking at his
hands--they had become awfully brown--suddenly said to Moncrieff,
'Oh, by the by, Brother Moncrieff, there is one thing that I'm ready to
wager you forgot to bring out with you from England.'
'What was that?' said Moncrieff, looking quite serious.
'Why, a supply of kid gloves, white and coloured.'
We all laughed.
'My dear boy,' said this huge brother of ours, 'the sun supplies the kid
gloves, and it strikes me, lad, you've a pair of coloured ones already.'
'Yes,' said Dugald, 'black-and-tan.'
'But, dear laddies,' old Jenny put in, 'if ye really wad like mittens,
I'll shortly shank a curn for ye.'
'Just listen to the old braid Scotch tongue o' that mither o'
moine--"shortly shank a curn."[5] Who but an Aberdonian could understand
that?'
But indeed poor old Jenny was a marvel with her 'shank,' as she called her
knitting, and almost every third day she turned off a splendid pair of
rough woollen stockings for one or other of her bairns, as she termed us
generically. And useful weather-defiant articles of hosiery they were too.
When our legs were encased in these, our feet protected by a pair of
double-soled boots, and our ankles further fortified by leather gaiters,
there were few snakes even we were afraid to tackle.
The very word 'snake,' or 'serpent,' makes some people shudder, and it is
as well to say a word or two about these ophidians here, and have done
with them. I have, then, no very wild adventures to record concerning
those we encountered on our _estancias_. Nor were either my brothers or
myself much afraid of them, for a snake--this is my firm belief--will
never strike a human being except in self-defence; and, of all the
thousands killed annually in India itself by ophidians, most of the
victims have been tramping about with naked feet, or naked legs at least.
* * * * *
Independent of the pure, wholesome, bracing air, there appeared to us to
be another peculiarity in the climate which is worthy of note. It is
_calmative_. There is more in that simple sentence than might at first be
imagined, and the effect upon settlers might be best explained by giving
an example: A young man, then, comes to this glorious country fresh from
all the excitement and fever of Europe, where people are, as a rule,
overcrowded and elbowing each other for a share of the bread that is not
sufficient to feed all; he settles down, either to steady work under a
master, or to till his own farm and mind his own flocks. In either case,
while feeling labour to be not only a pleasure, but actually a luxury,
there is no heat of blood and brain; there is no occasion to either chase
or hurry. Life now is not like a game of football on Rugby lines--all
scurry, push, and perspiration. The new-comer's prospects are everything
that could be desired, and--mark this--_he does not live for the future
any more than the present_. There is enough of everything around him
_now_, so that his happiness does not consist in building upon the far-off
_then_, which strugglers in this Britain of ours think so much about. The
settler then, I say, be he young or old, can afford to enjoy himself
to-day, certain in his own mind that to-morrow will provide for itself.
But this calmness of mind, which really is a symptom of glorious health,
never merges into the dreamy laziness and ignoble activity exhibited by
Brazilians in the east and north of him.
My brothers and I were happily saved a good deal of business worry in
connection with the purchase of our _estancia_, so, too, were the new
settlers, for Moncrieff, with that long Scotch head of his, had everything
cut and dry, as he called it, so that the signing of a few papers and the
writing of a cheque or two made us as proud as any Scottish laird in the
old country.
'You must creep before you walk,' Moncrieff told us; 'you mustn't go like
a bull at a gate. Just look before you "loup."'
So we consulted him in everything.
Suppose, for instance, we wanted another mule or horse, we went to
Moncrieff for advice.
'Can you do without it?' he would say. 'Go home and settle that question
between you, and if you find you can't, come and tell me, and I'll let you
have the beast as cheap as you can buy it anywhere.'
Well, we started building our houses. Unlike the pampas, Mendoza _can_
boast of stone and brick, and even wood, though round our district a deal
of this had been planted. The woods that lay on Moncrieff's colony had
been reared more for shelter to the flocks against the storms and tempests
that often sweep over the country.
In the more immediate vicinity of the dwelling-houses, with the exception
of some splendid elms and plane-trees, and the steeple-high solemn-looking
poplar, no great growth of wood was encouraged. For it must be remembered
we were living in what Moncrieff called uncanny times. The Indians[6] were
still a power in the country, and their invasions were looked for
periodically. The State did not then give the protection against this foe
it does now. True, there existed what were called by courtesy frontier
forts; they were supposed to billet soldiers there, too, but as these men
were often destitute of a supply of ammunition, and spent much of their
time playing cards and drinking the cheap wines of the country, the
settlers put but little faith in them, and the wandering pampa Indians
treated them with disdain.
Our houses, then, for safety's sake, were all built pretty close together,
and on high ground, so that we had a good view all over the beautiful
valley. They could thus be more easily defended.
Here and there over the _estancias_, _puestos_, as they were called, were
erected for the convenience of the shepherds. They were mere huts, but,
nevertheless, they were far more comfortable in every way than many a
crofter's cottage in the Scottish Highlands.
Round the dwellings of the new settlers, which were built in the form of a
square, each square, three in all, having a communication, a rampart and
ditch were constructed. The making of these was mere pastime to these
hardy Scots, and they took great delight in the work, for not only would
it enable them to sleep in peace and safety, but the keeping of it in
thorough decorative repair, as house agents say, would always form a
pleasant occupation for spare time.
The mansion, as Moncrieff's beautiful house came to be called, was
similarly fortified, but as it stood high in its grounds the rampart did
not hide the building. Moreover, the latter was partially decorated inside
with flowers, and the external embankment always kept as green as an
English lawn in June.
The ditches were wide and deep, and were so arranged that in case of
invasion they could be filled with water from a natural lake high up on
the brae lands. For that matter they might have been filled at any time,
or kept filled, but Moncrieff had an idea--and probably he was right--that
too much stagnant, or even semi-stagnant water near a house rendered it
unhealthy.
As soon as we had bought our claims and marked them out, each settler's
distinct from the other, but ours--my brothers' and mine--all in one lot,
we commenced work in earnest. There was room and to spare for us all about
the Moncrieff mansion and farmyard, we--the M'Crimmans--being guests for a
time, and living indoors, the others roughing it as best they could in the
out-houses, some of which were turned into temporary huts.
Nothing could exceed the beauty of Moncrieff's _estancia_. It was miles
and miles in extent, and more like a lovely garden than anything else. The
fields were all square. Round each, in tasteful rows, waved noble trees,
the weird and ghostly poplar, whose topmost branches touched the clouds
apparently, the wide-spreading elm, the shapely chestnut, the dark,
mysterious cypress, the fairy-leaved acacia, the waving willow and sturdy
oak. These trees had been planted with great taste and judgment around the
fields, and between all stretched hedges of laurel, willow, and various
kinds of shrubs. The fields themselves were not without trees; in fact,
trees were dotted over most of them, notably chestnuts, and many species
of fruit trees.
But something else added to the extreme beauty of these fields, namely,
the irrigation canals--I prefer the word canals to ditches. The highest of
all was very deep and wide, and was supplied with water from the distant
hills and river, while in its turn it supplied the whole irrigation system
of the _estancia_. The plan for irrigating the fields was the simplest
that could be thought of, but it was quite as perfect as it was simple.
Add to the beauty of the trees and hedges the brilliancy of trailing
flowers of gorgeous hues and strange, fantastic shapes; let some of those
trees be actually hanging gardens of beauty; let flowers float ever on the
waters around the fields, and the fields themselves be emerald green--then
imagine sunshine, balmy air, and perfume everywhere, and you will have
some idea of the charm spread from end to end of Moncrieff's great
_estancia_.
But there was another kind of beauty about it which I have not yet
mentioned--namely, its flocks and herds and poultry.
A feature of the strath, or valley, occupied by this little Scoto-Welsh
colony was the sandhills or dunes.
'Do you call those sandhills?' I said to Moncrieff one day, shortly after
our arrival. 'Why, they are as green and bonnie as the Broad Hill on the
links of Aberdeen.'
Moncrieff smiled, but looked pleased.
'Man!' he replied, 'did you ever hear of the proverb that speaks about
making mountains of mole-hills? Well, that's what I've done up yonder.
When my partner and I began serious work on these fields of ours, those
bits of hills were a constant trouble and menace to us. They were just as
big then, maybe, as they are now--about fifty feet high at the highest,
perhaps, but they were bare sandy hillocks, constantly changing shape and
even position with every big storm, till a happy thought struck my
partner, and we chose just the right season for acting on it. We got the
Gauchos to gather for us pecks and bushels of all kinds of wild seed,
especially that of the long-rooted grasses, and these we sowed all over
the mole-hills, as we called them, and we planted bushes here and there,
and also in the hollows, and, lo! the mole-hills were changed into fairy
little mountains, and the bits o' glens between into bosky dells.'
'Dear Brother Moncrieff,' I said, 'you are a genius, and I'm so glad I met
you. What would I have been without you?'
'Twaddle, man! nonsensical havers and twaddle! If you hadn't met me you
would have met somebody else; and if you hadn't met him, you would have
foregathered wi' experience; and, man, experience is the best teacher in
a' the wide worruld.'
In laying out and planning our farm, my brothers and I determined,
however, not to wait for experience of our own, but just take advantage of
Moncrieff's. That would sustain us, as the oak sustains the ivy.
-----
[5] 'Shortly shank a curn'--speedily knit a few pairs.
[6] Since then the Indians have been swept far to the south,
and so hemmed in that the provinces north of their
territory are as safe from invasion as England
itself.--G. S.