THE TYRANT'S FALL AND WHAT FOLLOWED
The portraits in our drawing-room--The Dictator Rosas who was like an
Englishman--The strange face of his wife, Encarnacion--The traitor
Urquiza--The Minister of War, his peacocks, and his son--Home again
from the city--The War deprives us of our playmate--Natalia, our
shepherd's wife--Her son, Medardo--The Alcalde our grand old man--
Battle of Monte Caseros--The defeated army--Demands for fresh horses--
In peril--My father's shining defects--His pleasure in a thunder
storm--A childlike trust in his fellow-men--Soldiers turn upon their
officer--A refugee given up and murdered--Our Alcalde again--On
cutting throats--Ferocity and cynicism--Native blood-lust and its
effect on a boy's mind--Feeling about Rosas--A bird poem or tale--Vain
search for lost poem and story of its authorship--The Dictator's
daughter--Time, the old god.
At the end of the last chapter, when describing my one sight of the
famous jester, Don Eusebio, in his glory, attended by a body-guard
with drawn swords who were ready to cut down any one of the spectators
who failed to remove his hat or laughed at the show, I said it was on
the eve of the fall of the President of the Republic, or Dictator,
"the Tyrant," as he was called by his adversaries when they didn't
call him the "Nero of South America" or the "Tiger of Palermo"--this
being the name of a park on the north side of Buenos Ayres where Rosas
lived in a white stuccoed house called his palace.
At that time the portrait, in colours, of the great man occupied the
post of honour above the mantelpiece in our _sala_, or drawing-room--
the picture of a man with fine clear-cut regular features, light
reddish-brown hair and side-whiskers, and blue eyes; he was sometimes
called "Englishman" on account of his regular features and blonde
complexion. That picture of a stern handsome face, with flags and
cannon and olive-branch--the arms of the republic--in its heavy gold
frame, was one of the principal ornaments of the room, and my father
was proud of it, since he was, for reasons to be stated by and by, a
great admirer of Rosas, an out-and-out Rosista, as the loyal ones were
called. This portrait was flanked by two others; one of Dona
Encarnacion, the wife, long dead, of Rosas; a handsome, proud-looking
young woman with a vast amount of black hair piled up on her head in a
fantastic fashion, surmounted by a large tortoiseshell comb. I
remember that as small children we used to look with a queer, almost
uncanny sort of feeling at this face under its pile of black hair,
because it was handsome but not sweet nor gentle, and because she was
dead and had died long ago; yet it was like the picture of one alive
when we looked at it, and those black unloving eyes gazed straight
back into ours. Why did those eyes, unless they moved, which they
didn't, always look back into ours no matter in what part of the room
we stood?--a perpetual puzzle to our childish uninformed brains.
On the other side was the repellent, truculent countenance of the
Captain-General Urquiza, who was the Dictator's right-hand man, a
ferocious cut-throat if ever there was one, who had upheld his
authority for many years in the rebellious upper provinces, but who
had just now raised the standard of revolt against him and in a little
while, with the aid of a Brazilian army, would succeed in overthrowing
him.
The central portrait inspired us with a kind of awe and reverential
feeling, since even as small children we were made to know that he was
the greatest man in the republic, that he had unlimited power over all
men's lives and fortunes and was terrible in his anger against evil-
doers, especially those who rebelled against his authority.
Two more portraits of the famous men of the republic of that date
adorned the same wall. Next to Urquiza was General Oribe, commander of
the army sent by Rosas against Montevideo, which maintained the siege
of that city for the space of ten years. On the other side, next to
Dona Encarnacion, was the portrait of the Minister of War, a face
which had no attraction for us children, as it was not coloured like
that of the Dictator, nor had any romance or mystery in it like that
of his dead wife; yet it served to bring all these pictured people
into our actual world--to make us realize that they were the
counterfeit presentments of real men and women. For it happened that
this same Minister of War was in a way a neighbour of ours, as he
owned an estancia, which he sometimes visited, about three leagues
from us, on that part of the plain to the east of our place which I
have described in a former chapter as being covered with a dense
growth of the bluish-grey wild artichoke, the _cardo de Castilla_, as
it is called in the vernacular. Like most of the estancia houses of
that day it was a long low building of brick with thatched roof,
surrounded by an enclosed _quinta_, or plantation, with rows of
century-old Lombardy poplars conspicuous at a great distance, and many
old acacia, peach, quince, and cherry trees. It was a cattle and
horse-breeding establishment, but the beasts were of less account to
the owner than his peacocks, a fowl for which he had so great a
predilection that he could not have too many of them; he was always
buying more peacocks to send out to the estate, and they multiplied
until the whole place swarmed with them. And he wanted them all for
himself, so that it was forbidden to sell or give even an egg away.
The place was in the charge of a major-domo, a good-natured fellow,
and when he discovered that we liked peacocks' feathers for decorative
purposes in the house, he made it a custom to send us each year at the
moulting-time large bundles, whole armfuls, of feathers.
Another curious thing in the estancia was a large room set apart for
the display of trophies sent from Buenos Ayres by the Minister's
eldest son. I have already given an account of a favourite pastime of
the young gentlemen of the capital--that of giving battle to the
night-watchmen and wresting their staffs and lanterns from them. Our
Minister's heir was a leader in this sport, and from time to time sent
consignments of his trophies to the country place, where the walls of
the room were covered with staffs and festoons of lanterns.
Once or twice as a small boy I had the privilege of meeting this young
gentleman and looked at him with an intense curiosity which has served
to keep his image in my mind till now. His figure was slender and
graceful, his features good, and he had a rather long Spanish face;
his eyes were grey-blue, and his hair and moustache a reddish golden-
brown. It was a handsome face, but with a curiously repelling,
impatient, reckless, almost devilish expression.
I was at home again, back in the plantation among my beloved birds,
glad to escape from the noisy dusty city into the sweet green
silences, with the great green plain glittering with the false water
of the mirage spreading around our shady oasis, and the fact that war,
which for the short period of my own little life and for many long
years before I was born, had not visited our province, thanks to Rosas
the Tyrant, the man of blood and iron, had now come to us did not make
the sunshine less sweet and pleasant to behold. Our elders, it is
true, showed anxious faces, but they were often anxious about matters
which did not affect us children, and therefore didn't matter. But by
and by even we little ones were made to realize that there was a
trouble in the land which touched us too, since it deprived us of the
companionship of the native boy who was our particular friend and
guardian during our early horseback rambles on the plain. This boy,
Medardo, or Dardo, was the fifteen-years-old son--illegitimate of
course--of the native woman our English shepherd had made his wife.
Why he had done so was a perpetual mystery and marvel to every one on
account of her person and temper. The very thought of this poor
Natalia, or Dona Nata as she was called, long dead and turned to dust
in that far pampa, troubles my spirit even now and gives me the
uncomfortable feeling that in putting her portrait on this paper I am
doing a mean thing.
She was an excessively lean creature, careless, and even dirty in her
person, with slippers but no stockings on her feet, an old dirty gown
of a coarse blue cotton stuff and a large coloured cotton handkerchief
or piece of calico wound turban-wise about her head. She was of a
yellowish parchment colour, the skin tight-drawn over the small bony
aquiline features, and it would have seemed like the face of a corpse
or mummy but for the deeply-sunken jet-black eyes burning with a
troubled fire in their sockets. There was a tremor and strangely
pathetic note in her thin high-pitched voice, as of a woman speaking
with effort between half-suppressed sobs, or like the mournful cry of
some wild bird of the marshes. Voice and face were true indications of
her anxious mind. She was in a perpetual state of worry over some
trifling matter, and when a real trouble came, as when our flock "got
mixed" with a neighbour's flock and four or five thousand sheep had to
be parted, sheep by sheep, according to their ear-marks, or when her
husband came home drunk and tumbled off his horse at the door instead
of dismounting in the usual manner, she would be almost out of her
mind and wring her hands and shriek and cry out that such conduct
would not be endured by his long-suffering master, and they would no
longer have a roof over their heads!
Poor anxious-minded Nata, who moved us both to pity and repulsion, it
was impossible not to admire her efforts to keep her stolid
inarticulate husband in the right path and her intense wild animal-
like love of her children--the three dirty-faced English-looking
offspring of her strange marriage, and Dardo, her firstborn, the son
of the wind. He, too, was an interesting person; small or short for
his years, he was thick and had a curiously solid mature appearance,
with a round head, wide open, startlingly bright eyes, and aquiline
features which gave him a resemblance to a sparrow-hawk. He was mature
in mind, too, and had all the horse lore of the seasoned gaucho, and
at the same time he was like a child in his love of fun and play, and
wanted nothing better than to serve us as a perpetual playmate. But he
had his work, which was to look after the flock when the shepherd's
services were required elsewhere; an easy task for him on his horse,
especially in summer when for long hours the sheep would stand
motionless on the plain. Dardo, who was teaching us to swim, would
then invite us to go to the river--to one of two streams within half
an hour's ride from home, where there were good bathing-pools! but
always before starting he would have to go and ask his mother's
consent. Mounting my pony I would follow him to the _puesto_ or
shepherd's ranche, only to be denied permission: "No, you are not to
go to-day: you must not think of such a thing. I forbid you to take
the boys to the river this day!"
Then Dardo, turning his horse's head, would exclaim, "Oh, caram-bam-
bam-ba!" And she, seeing him going, would rush out after us,
shrieking, "Don't caram-bam-bam-ba me! You are not to go to the river
this day--I forbid it! I know if you go to the river this day there
will be a terrible calamity! Listen to me, Dardo, rebel, devil that
you are, you shall not go bathing to-day!" And the cries would
continue until, breaking into a gallop, we would quickly be out of
earshot. Then Dardo would say, "Now we'll go back to the house for the
others and go to the river. You see, she made me kneel before the
crucifix and promise never to take you to bathe without asking her
consent. And that's all I've got to do; I never promised to obey her
commands, so it's all right."
These pleasant adventures with Dardo on the plain were suddenly put a
stop to by the war. One morning a number of persons on foot and on
horseback were seen coming to us over the green plain from the
shepherd's ranche, and as they drew nearer we recognized our old
Alcalde on his horse as the leader of the procession, and behind him
walked Dona Nata, holding her son by the hand; then followed others on
foot, and behind them all rode four old gauchos, the Alcalde's
henchmen, wearing their swords.
What matter of tremendous importance had brought this crowd to our
house? The Alcalde, Don Amaro Avalos, was not only the representative
of the "authorities" in our parts--police officer, petty magistrate of
sorts, and several other things besides--but a grand old man in
himself, and he looms large in memory among the old gaucho patriarchs
in our neighbourhood. He was a big man, about six feet high,
exceedingly dignified in manner, his long hair and beard of a silvery
whiteness; he wore the gaucho costume with a great profusion of silver
ornaments, including ponderous silver spurs weighing about four
pounds, and heavy silver whip-handle. As a rule he rode on a big black
horse which admirably suited his figure and the scarlet colour and
silver of his costume.
On arrival Don Amaro was conducted to the drawing-room, followed by
all the others; and when all were seated, including the four old
gauchos wearing swords, the Alcalde addressed my parents and informed
them of the object of the visit. He had received an imperative order
from his superiors, he said, to take at once and send to headquarters
twelve more young men as recruits for the army from his small section
of the district. Now most of the young men had already been taken, or
had disappeared from the neighbourhood in order to avoid service, and
to make up this last twelve he had even to take boys of the age of
this one, and Medardo would have to go. But this woman would not have
her boy taken, and after spending many words in trying to convince her
that she must submit he had at last, to satisfy her, consented to
accompany her to her master's house to discuss the matter again in her
master and mistress's presence.
It was a long speech, pronounced with great dignity; then, almost
before it finished, the distracted mother jumped up and threw herself
on her knees before my parents, and in her wild tremulous voice began
crying to them, imploring them to have compassion on her and help her
to save her boy from such a dreadful destiny. What would he be, she
cried, a boy of his tender years dragged from his home, from his
mother's care, and thrown among a crowd of old hardened soldiers, and
of evil-minded men--murderers, robbers, and criminals of all
descriptions drawn from all the prisons of the land to serve in the
army!
It was dreadful to see her on her knees wringing her hands, and to
listen to her wild lamentable cries; and again and again while the
matter was being discussed between the old Alcalde and my parents, she
would break out and plead with such passion and despair in her voice
and words, that all the people in the room were affected to tears. She
was like some wild animal trying to save her offspring from the
hunters. Never, exclaimed my mother, when the struggle was over, had
she passed so painful, so terrible, an hour! And the struggle had all
been in vain, and Dardo was taken from us.
One morning, some weeks later, the dull roar from distant big guns
came to our ears, and we were told that a great battle was being
fought, that Rosas himself was at the head of his army--a poor little
force of 25,000 men got together in hot haste to oppose a mixed
Argentine and Brazilian force of about 40,000 men commanded by the
traitor Urquiza. During several hours of that anxious day the dull,
heavy sound of firing continued and was like distant thunder: then in
the evening came the tidings of the overthrow of the defending army,
and of the march of the enemy on Buenos Ayres city! On the following
day, from dawn to dark, we were in the midst of an incessant stream of
the defeated men, flying to the south, in small parties of two or
three to half a dozen men, with some larger bands, all in their
scarlet uniforms and armed with lances and carbines and broadswords,
many of the bands driving large numbers of horses before them.
My father was warned by the neighbours that we were in great danger,
since these men were now lawless and would not hesitate to plunder and
kill in their retreat, and that all riding-horses would certainly be
seized by them. As a precaution he had the horses driven in and
concealed in the plantation, and that was all he would do. "Oh no," he
said, with a laugh, "they won't hurt us," and so we were all out and
about all day with the front gate and all doors and windows standing
open. From time to time a band on tired horses rode to the gate and,
without dismounting, shouted a demand for fresh horses. In every case
he went out and talked to them, always with a smiling, pleasant face,
and after assuring them that he had no horses for them they slowly and
reluctantly took their departure.
About three o'clock in the afternoon, the hottest hour of the day, a
troop of ten men rode up at a gallop, raising a great cloud of dust,
and coming in at the gate drew rein before the verandah. My father as
usual went out to meet them, whereupon they demanded fresh horses in
loud menacing voices.
Indoors we were all gathered in the large sitting-room, waiting the
upshot in a state of intense anxiety, for no preparations had been
made and no means of defence existed in the event of a sudden attack
on the house. We watched the proceedings from the interior, which was
too much in shadow for our dangerous visitors to see that they were
only women and children there and one man, a visitor, who had
withdrawn to the further end of the room and sat leaning back in an
easy chair, trembling and white as a corpse, with a naked sword in his
hand. He explained to us afterwards, when the danger was all over,
that fortunately he was an excellent swordsman, and that having found
the weapon in the room, he had resolved to give a good account of the
ten ruffians if they had made a rush to get in.
My father replied to these men as he had done to the others, assuring
them that he had no horses to give them. Meanwhile we who were indoors
all noticed that one of the ten men was an officer, a beardless young
man of about twenty-one or two, with a singularly engaging face. He
took no part in the proceedings, but sat silent on his horse, watching
the others with a peculiar expression, half contemptuous and half
anxious, on his countenance. And he alone was unarmed, a circumstance
which struck us as very strange. The others were all old veterans,
middle-aged and oldish men with grizzled beards, all in scarlet jacket
and scarlet _chiripa_ and a scarlet cap of the quaint form then worn,
shaped like a boat turned upside down, with a horn-like peak in front,
and beneath the peak a brass plate on which was the number of the
regiment.
The men appeared surprised at the refusal of horses, and stated
plainly that they would not accept it; at which my father shook his
head and smiled. One of the men then asked for water to quench his
thirst. Some one in the house then took out a large jug of cold water,
and my father taking it handed it up to the man; he drank, then passed
the jug on to the other thirsty ones, and after going its rounds the
jug was handed back and the demand for fresh horses renewed in
menacing tones. There was some water left in the jug, and my father
began pouring it out in a thin stream, making little circles and
figures on the dry dusty ground, then once more shook his head and
smiled very pleasantly on them. Then one of the men, fixing his eyes
on my father's face, bent forward and suddenly struck his hand
violently on the hilt of his broadsword and, rattling the weapon, half
drew it from its sheath. This nerve-trying experiment was a complete
failure, its only effect being to make my father smile up at the man
even more pleasantly than before, as if the little practical joke had
greatly amused him.
The strange thing was that my father was not playing a part--that it
was his nature to act in just that way. It is a curious thing to say
of any person that his highest or most shining qualities were nothing
but defects, since, apart from these same singular qualities, he was
just an ordinary person with nothing to distinguish him from his
neighbours, excepting perhaps that he was not anxious to get rich and
was more neighbourly or more brotherly towards his fellows than most
men. The sense of danger, the instinct of self-preservation supposed
to be universal, was not in him, and there were occasions when this
extraordinary defect produced the keenest distress in my mother. In
hot summers we were subject to thunderstorms of an amazing violence,
and at such times, when thunder and lightning were nearest together
and most terrifying to everybody else, he would stand out of doors
gazing calmly up at the sky as if the blinding flashes and world-
shaking thunder-crashes had some soothing effect, like music, on his
mind. One day, just before noon, it was reported by one of the men
that the saddle-horses could not be found, and my father, with his
spy-glass in his hand, went out and ran up the wooden stairs to the
_mirador_ or look-out constructed at the top of the big barn-like
building used for storing wool. The _mirador_ was so high that
standing on it one was able to see even over the tops of the tall
plantation trees, and to protect the looker-out there was a high
wooden railing round it, and against this the tall flag-staff was
fastened. When my father went up to the look-out a terribly violent
thunderstorm was just bursting on us. The dazzling, almost continuous
lightning appeared to be not only in the black cloud over the house
but all round us, and crash quickly followed crash, making the doors
and windows rattle in their frames, while there high above us in the
very midst of the awful tumult stood my father calm as ever. Not
satisfied that he was high enough on the floor of the look-out he had
got up on the topmost rail, and standing on it, with his back against
the tall pole, he surveyed the open plain all round through his spy-
glass in search of the lost horses. I remember that indoors my mother
with white terror-stricken face stood gazing out at him, and that the
whole house was in a state of terror, expecting every moment to see
him struck by lightning and hurled down to the earth below.
A second and in its results a more disastrous shining quality was a
childlike trust in the absolute good faith of every person with whom
he came into business relations. Things being what they are this
inevitably led to his ruin.
To return to our unwelcome visitors. On this occasion my father's
perfectly cool smiling demeanour, resulting from his foolhardiness,
served him and the house well: it deceived them, for they could not
believe that he would have acted in that way if they had not been
watched by men with rifles in their hands from the interior who would
open fire on the least hostile movement on their part.
Suddenly the scowling spokesman of the troop, with a shouted "Vamos!"
turned his horse's head and, followed by all the others, rode out and
broke into a gallop. We too then hurried out, and from the screen of
poplar and black acacia trees growing at the side of the moat, watched
their movements, and saw, when they had got away a few hundred yards
from the gate, the young unarmed officer break away from them and
start off at the greatest speed he could get out of his horse. The
others quickly gave chase and at length disappeared from sight in the
direction of the Alcalde's or local petty magistrate's house, about a
mile and a half away. It was a long low thatched ranch without trees,
and could not be seen from our house as it stood behind a marshy lake
overgrown with all bulrushes.
While we were straining our eyes to see the result of the chase, and
after the hunted man and his pursuers had vanished from sight among
the herds of cattle and horses grazing on the plain, the tragedy was
being carried out in exceedingly painful circumstances. The young
officer, whose home was more than a day's journey from our district,
had visited the neighbourhood on a former occasion and remembered that
he had relations in it; and when he broke away from the men, divining
that it was their intention to murder him, he made for the old
Alcalde's house. He succeeded in keeping ahead of his pursuers until
he arrived at the gate, and throwing himself from his horse and
rushing into the house, and finding the old Alcalde surrounded by the
women of the house, addressed him as uncle and claimed his protection.
The Alcalde was not, strictly speaking, his uncle but was his mother's
first cousin. It was an awful moment: the nine armed ruffians were
already standing outside, shouting to the owner of the place to give
them up their prisoner, and threatening to burn down the house and
kill all the inmates if he refused. The old Alcalde stood in the
middle of the room, surrounded by a crowd of women and children, his
own two handsome daughters, aged about twenty and twenty-two
respectively, among them, fainting with terror and crying for him to
save them, while the young officer on his knees implored him for the
sake of his mother's memory, and of the Mother of God and of all he
held sacred, to refuse to give him up to be slaughtered.
The old man was not equal to the situation: he trembled and sobbed
with anguish, and at last faltered out that he could not protect him--
that he must save his own daughters and the wives and children of his
neighbours who had sought refuge in his house. The men outside,
hearing how the argument was going, came to the door, and finally
seizing the young man by the arm led him out and made him mount his
horse again and ride with them. They rode back the way they had gone
for half a mile towards our house, then pulled him off his horse and
cut his throat.
On the following day a mulatto boy who looked after the flock and went
on errands for the Alcalde, came to me and said that if I would mount
my pony and go with him he would show me something. It was not seldom
this same little fellow came to me to offer to show me something, and
it usually turned out to be a bird's nest, an object which keenly
interested us both. I gladly mounted my pony and followed. The broken
army had ceased passing our way by now, and it was peaceful and safe
once more on the great plain. We rode about a mile, and he then pulled
up his horse and pointed to the turf at our feet, where I saw a great
stain of blood on the short dry grass. Here, he told me, was where
they had cut the young officer's throat: the body had been taken by
the Alcalde to his house, where it had been lying since the evening
before, and it would be taken for burial next day to our nearest
village, about eight miles distant.
The murder was the talk of the place for some days, chiefly on account
of the painful facts of the case--that the old Alcalde, who was
respected and even loved by every one, should have failed in so
pitiful a way to make any attempt at saving his young relation. But
the mere fact that the soldiers had cut the throat of their officer
surprised no one; it was a common thing in the case of a defeat in
those days for the men to turn upon and murder their officers. Nor was
throat-cutting a mere custom or convention: to the old soldier it was
the only satisfactory way of finishing off your adversary, or prisoner
of war, or your officer who had been your tyrant, on the day of
defeat. Their feeling was similar to that of the man who is inspired
by the hunting instinct in its primitive form, as described by Richard
Jefferies. To kill the creatures with bullets at a distance was no
satisfaction to him: he must with his own hands drive the shaft into
the quivering flesh--he must feel its quivering and see the blood gush
up beneath his hand. One smiles at a vision of the gentle Richard
Jefferies slaughtering wild cattle in the palaeolithic way, but that
feeling and desire which he describes with such passion in his _Story
of My Heart_, that survival of the past, is not uncommon in the hearts
of hunters, and if we were ever to drop out of our civilization I
fancy we should return rather joyfully to the primitive method. And so
in those dark times in the Argentine Republic when, during half a
century of civil strife which followed on casting off the Spanish
"yoke," as it was called, the people of the plains had developed an
amazing ferocity, they loved to kill a man not with a bullet but in a
manner to make them know and feel that they were really and truly
killing.
As a child those dreadful deeds did not impress me, since I did not
witness them myself, and after looking at that stain of blood on the
grass the subject faded out of my mind. But as time went on and I
heard more about this painful subject I began to realize what it
meant. The full horror of it came only a few years later, when I was
big enough to go about to the native houses and among the gauchos in
their gatherings, at cattle-partings and brandings, races, and on
other occasions. I listened to the conversation of groups of men whose
lives had been mostly spent in the army, as a rule in guerilla
warfare, and the talk turned with surprising frequency to the subject
of cutting throats. Not to waste powder on prisoners was an unwritten
law of the Argentine army at that period, and the veteran gaucho
clever with the knife took delight in obeying it. It always came as a
relief, I heard them say, to have as victim a young man with a good
neck after an experience of tough, scraggy old throats: with a person
of that sort they were in no hurry to finish the business; it was
performed in a leisurely, loving way. Darwin, writing in praise of the
gaucho in his _Voyage of a Naturalist_, says that if a gaucho cuts
your throat he does it like a gentleman: even as a small boy I knew
better--that he did his business rather like a hellish creature
revelling in his cruelty. He would listen to all his captive could say
to soften his heart--all his heartrending prayers and pleadings; and
would reply: "Ah, friend,"--or little friend, or brother--"your words
pierce me to the heart and I would gladly spare you for the sake of
that poor mother of yours who fed you with her milk, and for your own
sake too, since in this short time I have conceived a great friendship
towards you; but your beautiful neck is your undoing, for how could I
possibly deny myself the pleasure of cutting such a throat--so
shapely, so smooth and soft and so white! Think of the sight of warm
red blood gushing from that white column!" And so on, with wavings of
the steel blade before the captive's eyes, until the end.
When I heard them relate such things--and I am quoting their very
words, remembered all these years only too well--laughingly, gloating
over such memories, such a loathing and hatred possessed me that ever
afterwards the very sight of these men was enough to produce a
sensation of nausea, just as when in the dog days one inadvertently
rides too near the putrid carcass of some large beast on the plain.
As I have said, all this feeling about throat-cutting and the power to
realize and visualize it, came to me by degrees long after the sight
of a blood-stain on the turf near our home; and in like manner the
significance of the tyrant's fall and the mighty changes it brought
about in the land only came to me long after the event. People were in
perpetual conflict about the character of the great man. He was
abhorred by many, perhaps by most; others were on his side even for
years after he had vanished from their ken, and among these were most
of the English residents of the country, my father among them. Quite
naturally I followed my father and came to believe that all the
bloodshed during a quarter of a century, all the crimes and cruelties
practised by Rosas, were not like the crimes committed by a private
person, but were all for the good of the country, with the result that
in Buenos Ayres and throughout our province there had been a long
period of peace and prosperity, and that all this ended with his fall
and was succeeded by years of fresh revolutionary outbreaks and
bloodshed and anarchy. Another thing about Rosas which made me ready
to fall in with my father's high opinion of him was the number of
stories about him which appealed to my childish imagination. Many of
these related to his adventures when he would disguise himself as a
person of humble status and prowl about the city by night, especially
in the squalid quarters, where he would make the acquaintance of the
very poor in their hovels. Most of these stories were probably
inventions and need not be told here; but there was one which I must
say something about because it is a bird story and greatly excited my
boyish interest.
I was often asked by our gaucho neighbours when I talked with them
about birds--and they all knew that that subject interested me above
all others--if I had ever heard _el canto_, or _el cuento del Bien-te-
veo_. That is to say, the ballad or tale of the _Bien-te-veo_--a
species of tyrant-bird quite common in the country, with a brown back
and sulphur-yellow under parts, a crest on its head, and face barred
with black and white. It is a little larger than our butcher-bird and,
like it, is partly rapacious in its habits. The barred face and long
kingfisher-like beak give it a peculiarly knowing or cunning look, and
the effect is heightened by the long trisyllabic call constantly
uttered by the bird, from which it derives its name of Bien-te-veo,
which means I-can-see-you. He is always letting you know that he is
there, that he has got his eye on you, so that you had better be
careful about your actions.
The Bien-te-veo, I need hardly say, was one of my feathered
favourites, and I begged my gaucho friends to tell me this _cuento_,
but although I met scores of men who had heard it, not one remembered
it: they could only say that it was very long--very few persons could
remember such a long story; and I further gathered that it was a sort
of history of the bird's life and his adventures among the other
birds; that the Bien-te-veo was always doing clever naughty things and
getting into trouble, but invariably escaping the penalty. From all I
could hear it was a tale of the Reynard the Fox order, or like the
tales told by the gauchos of the armadillo and how that quaint little
beast always managed to fool his fellow-animals, especially the fox,
who regarded himself as the cleverest of all the beasts and who looked
on his honest, dull-witted neighbour the armadillo as a born fool. Old
gauchos used to tell me that twenty or more years ago one often met
with a reciter of ballads who could relate the whole story of the
Bien-te-veo. Good reciters were common enough in my time: at dances it
was always possible to find one or two to amuse the company with long
poems and ballads in the intervals of dancing, and first and last I
questioned many who had this talent, but failed to find one who knew
the famous bird-ballad, and in the end I gave up the quest.
The story invariably told was that a man convicted of some serious
crime and condemned to suffer the last penalty, and left, as the
custom then was, for long months in the gaol in Buenos Ayres, amused
himself by composing the story of the Bien-te-veo, and thinking well
of it he made a present of the manuscript to the gaoler in
acknowledgment of some kindness he had received from that person. The
condemned man had no money and no friends to interest themselves on
his behalf; but it was not the custom at that time to execute a
criminal as soon as he was condemned. The prison authorities preferred
to wait until there were a dozen or so to execute; these would then be
taken out, ranged against a wall of the prison, opposite a file of
soldiers with muskets in their hands, and shot, the soldiers after the
first discharge reloading their weapons and going up to the fallen men
to finish off those who were still kicking. This was the prospect our
prisoner had to look forward to. Meanwhile his ballad was being
circulated and read with immense delight by various persons in
authority, and one of these who was privileged to approach the
Dictator, thinking it would afford him a little amusement, took the
ballad and read it to him. Rosas was so pleased with it that he
pardoned the condemned man and ordered his liberation.
All this, I conjectured, must have happened at least twenty years
before I was born. I also concluded that the ballad had never been
printed, otherwise I would most probably have found it; but some
copies in writing had evidently been made and it had become a
favourite composition with the reciters at festive gatherings, but had
now gone out and was hopelessly lost.
These, as I have already intimated, were but the little things that
touched a child's fancy; there was another romantic circumstance in
the life of Rosas which appealed to everybody, adult as well as child.
He was the father of Dona Manuela, known by the affectionate
diminutive, Manuelita, throughout the land, and loved and admired by
all, even by her father's enemies, for her compassionate disposition.
Perhaps she was the one being in the world for whom he, a widower and
lonely man, cherished a great tenderness. It is certain that her power
over him was very great and that many lives that would have been taken
for State reasons were saved by her interposition. It was a beautiful
and fearful part that she, a girl, was called on to play on that
dreadful stage; and very naturally it was said that she, who was the
very spirit of mercy incarnate, could not have acted as the loving,
devoted daughter to one who was the monster of cruelty his enemies
proclaimed him to be.
Here, in conclusion to this chapter, I had intended to introduce a few
sober reflections on the character of Rosas--certainly the greatest
and most interesting of all the South America Caudillos, or leaders,
who rose to absolute power during the long stormy period that followed
on the war of independence--reflections which came to me later, in my
teens, when I began to think for myself and form my own judgments.
This I now perceive would be a mistake, if not an impertinence, since
I have not the temper of mind for such exercises and should give too
much importance to certain singular acts on the Dictator's part which
others would perhaps regard as political errors, or due to sudden fits
of passion or petulance rather than as crimes. And some of his acts
are inexplicable, as for instance the public execution in the
interests of religion and morality of a charming young lady of good
family and her lover, the handsome young priest who had captivated the
town with his eloquence. Why he did it will remain a puzzle for ever.
There were many other acts which to foreigners and to those born in
later times might seem the result of insanity, but which were really
the outcome of a peculiar, sardonic, and somewhat primitive sense of
humour on his part which appeals powerfully to the men of the plains,
the gauchos, among whom Rosas lived from boyhood, when he ran away
from his father's house, and by whose aid he eventually rose to
supreme power.
All these things do not much affect the question of Rosas as a ruler
and his place in history. Time, the old god, says the poet, invests
all things with honour, and makes them white. The poet-prophet is not
to be taken literally, but his words so undoubtedly contain a
tremendous truth. And here, then, one may let the question rest. If
after half a century, and more, the old god is still sitting, chin on
hand, revolving this question, it would be as well to give him, say,
another fifty years to make up his mind and pronounce a final
judgment.