THE GAUCHO AT HOME.
"We would rather hear the bird sing than the mouse squeak," is a common
saying of that most interesting class of men in South America known to
the world as gauchos, and it is the saying which, better than all others
originating with them, gives an insight into their character as a class.
To this may be added the book definition of their name. Gaucho, in the
Spanish-English lexicon, is a term in architecture "applied to uneven
superficies." The gaucho is the cowboy, the shepherd, and the plainsman
of the prairies and deserts that extend from the Rio Grande do Sul in
Brazil to the Andes and from the Grand Chaco forests of the Argentine to
the Strait of Magellan. He is an out-of-doors citizen of somewhat
"uneven superficies."
My first view of a gaucho was had on Flores Island, the quarantine
station of Uruguay, a place where nearly all the passengers bound on the
English steamers for the River Plate, during the yellow fever season,
are obliged to stop for disinfection and observation. We had been on the
island a little over a day when a steer was butchered to renew the fresh
meat supply. Nearly all the passengers went to see the beast suffer,
among the rest a Brazilian naval officer, en route to a station in the
Missiones. After a little time he came to my room, asked why I had not
been at the killing, and added:
[Illustration: GAUCHOS AT HOME.]
"It is now the best time to go. The killing was nothing--a gaucho put
his knife into his throat and it bled to death--but now the gauchos will
have an _asado_. Did you ever in your life see an _asado_? It is of the
finest of meat. They will roast the ribs of the cow by the fire."
Near the buildings set aside for the use of the third-class passengers
from Brazil we found a number of gauchos preparing to roast the ribs of
beef over a small open fire--a fire so small that the coals and ashes
occupied no more space on the ground than the ribs would have covered.
The rib piece was threaded, so to speak, on a slender but stiff bar of
steel five feet long. The bar was thrust into the ground so that the
beef was inclined like a shelter tent above the blazing fire, and there
it remained for about two hours, being turned occasionally by the
gauchos.
Although this was the first time I had seen beef roasted in just that
fashion, I was much more interested in the gauchos and certain other
things they did than in their roast of beef. Had the officer not told me
the men were gauchos I should very likely have mistaken them for
sailors. The Nantucket whaler, fresh from a three years' cruise in the
Pacific never showed a sweeter roll in his gait, than did these South
American cowboys as they fetched to alongside the fire or veered off in
search of fuel to keep it burning. Nor was the resemblance in the gait
alone, for every man of them wore a belt with a knife, the handle of
which was just where the man's hand would find it in the shortest time.
Then, too, the hats of the gauchos were of the nondescript sort, and
all worn easily on what a sailor would call the northwest corner or some
other corner of the head. The leg-gear, however, was by no means
nautical. Jack always loved flowing trousers, but not flowing as these
were. At first glance the gauchos seemed to have brown zouave trousers
with white leggings at the ankles, but a closer inspection showed that
they wore rather close-fitting cotton drawers in place of trousers, and
that in addition their legs were clothed from the ankles up with a
length--say three yards--of wide brown cotton goods. One end of this
piece of goods was tucked up through the belt and spread out across the
small of the back. Then the other end was brought up between the legs,
tucked up under the belt and spread out across the belly until its edges
touched or even overlapped the edges of the rear end. That is all there
was of it. The stuff bagged down between the legs in a fashion that made
the wearer the most ridiculous looking man, in my judgment, on the
continent. The nearest approach to it in North America can be found in
the trousers with flaps in front, which the good farm wife used to make
for her husband in the old days. It is true that the Yuma Indian of the
Colorado desert wears a short length of cloth in something after the
same fashion, but he draws the ends through the belt until they hang
down before and behind, leaving the middle to fit close to the body, in
which fashion he appears to be wearing a short skirt.
"What do they wear that cloth bagging between the legs for?" said I to
the Brazilian.
"You are to remember," he replied, "the gaucho lives on the plains where
no tailors find themselves in order to make clothes _a la mode_, eh! And
the gaucho cannot himself to make trousers and he cannot himself to put
what you call them--the patches over the holes in the trousers where he
sits in the saddle. But he can to buy cloth and to wear one end between
him and the saddle to-day and the other end to-morrow and another part
to-morrow--past to-morrow. Caramba! The cloth never can to wear out in
much time, but it can to cover the holes behind in his trousers. Is it
not true?"
Caramba is a Spanish word meaning in the American language "gosh." It is
in common use among South Americans of all classes, a fact worth
mentioning, perhaps, for the reason that the gauchos have no more
forcible word for use even under circumstances that would lead an
American cowboy into the most sulphurous depths of profanity.
Ridiculous as the gaucho appeared when seen on Flores Island surrounded
by houses and people dressed suitably for a summer stroll on Broadway,
he seemed a very different being when I came to meet him in Patagonia. A
hawk mounted on a smooth walnut perch in a city museum does not seem
quite the same bird that it does when it snatches a partridge from under
the jaws of a snarling fox on the edge of a thicket in the Adirondack
wilderness. To see the gaucho at his best, that is where he will be
found most interesting, one must go where he lives utterly free from all
restraint, even the restraint of association. Such a place is Patagonia.
This great southern desert gives perfect freedom to its roving sons. It
is a wondrous solitude. One rides away from the valley of the stream in
which he has left his ship, until the crest of a hill shuts out the view
of the water, and then finds himself alone utterly. Pebbles red and
brown, that have been rounded by the waves, with the gray and yellowish
sand of attrition, are under his feet. On every side are scattered
clumps of stiff, gaunt gray bushes. Further away the land rises in
knolls and ridges. Seeking for a change in the landscape, one rides to
the top of the highest crest in view, only to find that the ridges he
saw before had apparently moved on. At any rate, before him stand ridges
and knolls of precisely the shape he had looked at on first scaling the
mesa. Turning around and looking back, the ridges and knolls just seen
in front are found duplicated. One may ride for hours with never a
change in the landscape which the ordinary eye can detect. It is an
unvarying gray wilderness. It is as silent as it is desolate. The wind
blows strong in the face, but it does not whistle, neither does it make
a rustle in the bushes, unless it be a gale. The brush does not even
bend or sway under its impulse. It is, save to the most observant,
usually a lifeless desert. The faint chirp of a desert sparrow, called
by the Indians, mouse bird, because of its color and its habit of
running over the sand as it dodged behind a bush at the strange sight of
a human being, would not be heard by the ordinary traveller, and unless
the ostrich or the guanaco were stumbled upon by accident, no sign of
life would come to cheer either the ear or the eye.
Nevertheless, when once a man has learned the secrets of the desert and
its savage joys, he returns to it as to the arms of some fierce
sweetheart, finding there a spell, an elation that makes all other kinds
of life seem insipid. Nature has in store many undescribed and
undescribable pleasures for those who can return to live a natural life
in the wilderness.
It is in curious fashion that many of the gauchos of Patagonia have
gone to the wilderness to live on the bounties of nature, and it is a
curious life they lead there. A ship is driven ashore on the Patagonian
coast either by real accident or purposely, that her owners may collect
the insurance. Of her crew, should they escape, at least one will become
a gaucho. They will all reach one of the settlements, where a chance to
take service as sheep herders will be offered them. Several will enter
this service and so learn the simple arts of the plainsman--to ride a
mustang, to roast meat on the steel rod that leans above a fire of small
brush, to throw the lasso and the bolas, to hold the fur robe called a
quillango about the shoulders while galloping across the desert in the
teeth of a gale. The shepherd life seems good for a time, in spite of
the steady diet of mutton, with only an occasional change to guanaco
meat, the ribs of a panther, or the wings of an ostrich. By and by,
however, this life palls. Why should one be tied down to one spot when
the whole wilderness lies before him and nature will there supply every
want? Why should one take orders when he can follow his own free will?
Why mix in the quarrels and envying and strifes of the head station when
silence and safety and peace may be found beyond the range? The shepherd
becomes a wild gaucho.
And then there is the soldier stationed on the frontier. In the old days
he was like a break-water to stop the Indians who in waves came to whelm
the scattered settlements. Now there is peace, but the old forts are
still manned.
"So many officers are martinets," the soldiers will say, "and at best it
is a dog's life in the barracks. Let us be wolves instead." The soldier
turns gaucho, sometimes without waiting for the formality of a
discharge.
Last of all there is the lad who is growing to man's size in the
officers' quarters of a frontier post, or in the general store of the
frontier settlement. The desert calls to such boys every day as the sea
calls to the children on Nantucket beach. They have lassoes and bolas as
the Yankee boys have skates and baseballs. They are riding mustangs
before the New York boy is trusted on a tricycle. Meantime the gaucho is
ever before them with his swagger and dash, his hearty laugh, and his
quick anger. Mothers may frighten their children when babes in arms by
saying, "The gaucho will carry you off," and may tell the older boys
that the gaucho is the personification of all that is ribald--the
desperado of the plains--but as the leaders of the _courriers du bois_
of Canada were the sons of French gentlemen, so the chief men of the
gauchos are of what is called good family. I saw one of that kind--an
Englishman by birth. He wore on his shoulders a poncho--a small
squaw-made blanket with a hole in the middle through which he could
thrust his head. On his feet were potro boots, a sort of foot-gear made
of the skin of the legs of a colt. About his waist was a belt that
carried a knife, of which the handle was silver and the blood-stained
blade a foot long. He was unshaved, unwashed, and ungroomed. But he had
on a suit of fine silk underwear, "because, don't you know, I can't get
used to the beastly scratching of furs and flannels."
The outfit of the Patagonian gaucho is simple and not expensive. With
one good horse and three dogs he can start, but a swell gaucho may have
a score of horses and a dozen dogs. To these he must add a good saddle,
with numerous saddle-cloths, which are usually nothing but small
blankets woven by the Tehuelche squaws from guanaco hair and wool,
purchased or stolen at the ranches. Equally necessary are the
quillangos, the great fur robes made by sewing together the skins of
young guanacos. With two or three of these the gaucho can pass the night
comfortably in the lee of a bit of brush even when a blizzard is raging.
The water-proof canvas sleeping-bag lined with fur would be warmer and
lighter, but the gaucho will have none of it because his quillangos
serve as overcoats by day.
The weapons of the gaucho are simple, and with one exception
inexpensive. They are the lasso, the bolas, and the knife. The last,
having a carved silver handle, may cost as much as $25 gold. The lasso
is a horsehair rope. The bolas have been described by every writer who
has visited the River Plate, but it may be worth telling here that the
reader can make them for himself by taking either two or three round
balls of iron an inch and a quarter in diameter, or two or three round
stones of two and a quarter inches in diameter, and securing to each the
end of a stout cord three feet long. Then tie together the other ends of
the cords, making a good big knot in doing so. To use the bolas, grasp
this big knot and one of the bolas, and then after whirling the free
bola or bolas about the head to give them speed, hurl the whole outfit
at any target handy. If the novice does not crack his skull in his
earlier efforts to master the bolas, they quickly become an effective
weapon with a range of twenty yards. After considerable practice a
healthy man can achieve a range of thirty yards, while fifty or sixty
yards may be covered by the man of exceptional skill. The gauchos tell
of ranges up to 100 yards, with a two-ball outfit made of iron. It may
be so.
Having these weapons, the gaucho commonly scorns all others.
"I am astonished to learn that you do not carry a good revolver," said I
to a gaucho who talked English fluently.
"And I am astonished to hear people like yourself think one of any use
to us," he replied.
"But I have heard that you gentlemen of the plains have
misunderstandings with each other, and that you then fight to kill."
"It is true."
"Would not a good revolver be a handy thing to use in self-defence at
such a time?"
"It would indeed. To defend oneself--why, I suppose nothing could be
better for that. But we do not fight so. To think of shooting a man
when--Bah! Pardon me, my friend, but I can see you have never felt a
man's flesh give as you drove your steel home."
The story of the life of the half-wild gaucho on the desert is full of
adventure. The gaucho's day begins with the capture of a horse from his
herd. It is literally a capture, for the plains horse, no matter how
well trained, hates the draw of the cinch. Where a man travels alone one
of his herd must be securely staked out over night, that he may be able
to round up and load the rest, if there be loads. Sometimes the
precaution of staking is of no avail, for there are wild horses all over
Patagonia, and the joy of their lives is to stampede a tame herd,
especially a herd with mares in it. For this reason mares will sell for
a dollar or two each, where stallions or geldings of less strength are
sold for ten or more.
When the horses are packed and attended to, breakfast of coffee,
possibly, and cold meat left from the last repast will serve, but the
usual bill of fare is a cup of _mate_, the tea herb of Paraguay, and a
pipe of tobacco. The morning appetite of everybody in Spanish America
seems to be that of a man who has been on a spree the night before. Some
bitter bracing drink is all that is wanted. Then the _mate_ pot is slung
to the saddle, a last look is cast over the camp ground to see that
nothing is left, the finger tips touch the cinch to see that it is
tight, and then the gaucho swings into the saddle.
The gaucho born to the life is of the very best class of riders. Drunk
or sober, asleep or awake, over the smooth mesa or across the broken
ground of a gully, the gaucho sits in his saddle as easily, as securely,
and as comfortably as a New Yorker sits in a cross seat of an elevated
train car that has no other passengers. And yet the gaucho's seat is
apparently insecure, for his legs dangle about in a way that would be
simply shocking to a Central Park riding master, and one has to see the
gaucho's mustang jump sideways and land stiff-legged, while the gaucho's
legs are still dangling, and to see the look of absolute unconcern on
the gaucho's face when the mustang jumps so again and again, to
thoroughly appreciate him as a horseman.
The gaucho once mounted, where will he go and how will he pass the day?
One may as well ask the first question of an Indian or of a guanaco
feeding in a gully. He will go where the whim takes him and stop where
night finds him. He has absolutely no reason for taking thought for the
morrow, and he takes none. He will pass the day galloping easily across
the desert, in the main, with mad dashes this way and that as the dogs
start an ostrich. He will dismount to break the neck and disembowel the
bird when overtaken or when tangled up by the bolas. He will chase a
young guanaco, as well, and when an ostrich has started from under his
horse's feet, so to speak, as often happens at a certain period of the
season, he goes back on its track after killing it, because he knows it
was on a nest when started, and that in finding the eggs he will find a
delicacy of the desert.
The Patagonia ostrich egg is a huge affair, equal in weight to more than
half a dozen hen's eggs. The gaucho breaks a hole in one end to let the
steam escape, and then stands it in the ashes at the edge of the fire
and lets it roast. Of course, it must be turned occasionally. Because
these eggs are a hearty kind of food they are usually eaten at the
gaucho's evening dinner. And the gaucho dinner is a tremendous affair,
so far as quantity is concerned.
Having galloped over the plains all day, with, perhaps, a stop for
luncheon, a cup of _mate_, and a smoke at midday, the gaucho is hungry
when night comes. But, although he may have more meat than any three men
may eat, he will not have enough to satisfy his appetite. This is not
because the gaucho is a glutton, but because a meat diet does not fully
satisfy the demands of the human system. The Indians eat fungus of
various kinds, grass roots and seeds, and berries in the season. The
gaucho will gather the berries because they are everywhere abundant. He
will pick up a handy bit of fungus, but will not go out of his way to
find it. The bunch-grass seed is too small a matter for his
happy-go-lucky soul. So he is always hungry at night, and never
satisfied entirely unless, indeed, he chances to kill a good fat
panther. The fat of the young panther is the most satisfying food of the
desert. To tell just how many pounds of young panther meat a gaucho
will eat would be to throw a doubt over this whole narrative in the
minds of readers not posted on such matters.
However, with his guanaco, his ostrich, and his panther meat, with his
_mate_ cup after, and his pipe after that, the gaucho is contented, if
not entirely satisfied.
Out of the day's captures he will keep the skins of the ostrich, for the
feathers are worth 50 cents gold a pound in the settlements, and he
sells them that he may buy more _mate_, some more silver for decorating
his saddle, and some ribbons and candy to carry to a more or less
attractive squaw. The money left after the purchase of these necessaries
of life is used in buying a jag of the largest size obtainable with the
resources at command. That is to say the gaucho gets drunk whenever he
goes to a settlement. Getting drunk is the one civilized habit to which
he clings to the end of life. In all other respects the Patagonia gaucho
is a picturesque savage, the Arab of the Southern desert, who passes his
days in wandering from oasis to oasis.
These gauchos of Patagonia are only one species of a class. There are
gauchos, as has been intimated, on the cattle and sheep ranches. They
are much more frequently seen by travellers than are the Patagonians,
because they gather at the pampa railroad stations, and may even be
found in certain quarters of Buenos Ayres. They wear their
distinguishing dress everywhere, and so may be recognized readily. As
seen from a railroad train they look like slouching loafers. The
ordinary traveller see the gaucho at his worst. In fact, the gaucho has
seemed to be such a worthless dog to so many travellers, and so many
travellers have written and printed their impressions of the gaucho
that he has in these later years learned that all foreigners regard him
as a pretty hard citizen. Now, the gaucho is above all things a man of
pride, and even of vanity. He wants to appear well, especially before
strangers, and so it has come to pass that to call a gaucho a gaucho is
to insult him.
Strangers should always avoid insulting a gaucho until after they have
got the drop on him with right good guns. The gaucho is the handiest man
with a knife in the world, and his estimate of the value of human life
is as low as that held by any class of men.
"What does it matter? Many beautiful horses die," he will say when he
hears of the death of a friend.
"I was in a gaucho saloon up the river one day last summer," said a
Buenos Ayres man to me, "when a Frenchman looking for a ranch to buy
came in. He wanted to smoke and had cigarettes, but no matches. And what
was very much worse for him, he did not know the etiquette of the
occasion. With cigarettes in hand, he placed one in his mouth, and then
in politest terms asked the favor of a light from a gaucho who was
puffing a cigarette stub, possibly a little more than a quarter inch
long. So far he had done well. The gaucho said, 'with pleasure,' and the
Frenchman was soon puffing his cigarette. Then he made a well-nigh fatal
error. Instead of returning the worthless stub with thanks he dropped it
on the floor, intending, as he said afterwards, to ask the gaucho to do
him the favor of taking a fresh one. But he didn't have time enough to
even open his mouth. Dropping the stub was an insult. It implied that
the gaucho had been smoking a too short stub. Caramba! That Frenchman
was impaled on a twelve-inch blade before he knew what was to happen."
Not only is the gaucho written down as a desperado; he is called the
laziest of men, and in proof of this charge is cited the fact that he
will saddle a horse and ride half a mile rather than walk forty rods.
But the truth is that in his peculiar field he will work down any other
kind of man. Give him horses and set him to branding cattle. He will
begin his day's work by saddling the horse before the peep of the
longest day of the year, and then will drink a cup of coffee, mount, and
go to work. For seven hours he will gallop about the excited herd,
whirling and throwing the heavy rope, downing the cattle with marvellous
precision, and then out of the exuberance of his spirits gallop against
the stronger bulls as they flee from the hands of the marker to send
them rolling over and over in a cloud of dust. At the end of seven hours
or so he will want what he calls breakfast--a few pounds of boiled and
roasted meat will suffice, and if he have a couple of bullet-like loaves
of bread the size of his fist, known there as _galletas_, he counts it a
feast. This eaten, and a cigarette rolled, he mounts and continues the
work for seven hours more. And that is not an extraordinary day, either.
A ride of 100 miles in a day is not counted great by a gaucho, while
seventy-five miles a day for a week, during which three camps will be
made without food or water, is a matter of frequent occurrence. In
short, the gaucho does any work that anybody can do on a horse, and he
does it in a quantity and with a good humor that are astonishing.
Attending to cattle is not hard work in the sense that ditch digging is
hard, but a cowboy's life is not one of ease in either North or South
America.
The home life of the gaucho of the pampas can be duplicated on the
plains of New Mexico. The walls of his house are almost invariably
sun-dried blocks of mud, and the roof is a flat layer of mud over brush,
supported on the crooked trunks of willow trees usually found in the
valleys of streams. For the roof, a thatch of the long pampa grass is
also common. This is much better, because it is tight until it rots. The
mud roof leaks in time of rain so badly that the family moves out of
doors. Fact! The floor is the earth as the builder found it. There may
be two or three rooms, but one usually suffices. Here the gaucho and his
family, and his mother or his wife's mother, and a sister or two pass
their lives. A few skins of cattle and panthers and deer will serve for
a bed when a blanket has been thrown over them. A brazier may sometimes
be found, and on this water is boiled to make _mate_. The food--meat of
various kinds only--will be boiled and roasted over the open fire built
without or under a simple shelter in the wet season. There is often no
table, and chairs are scarce. The food, if served on a table, is simply
heaped up on a platter or dish of some kind, and each one makes a grab
at the heap. As often as otherwise each helps himself from the pot or
the roast as it hangs over the fire. One jabs his fork into a convenient
spot of the roast--forks are common on the pampas--and with a clever
stroke of his big sheath knife cuts off a slab of meat. One end of the
slab is flipped into the mouth when an upward stroke of the knife
divides the slab, leaving a fairly convenient piece in the mouth.
Watching a family of eight or ten--men, women, and children--squatting
around a fire, simultaneously flipping the ends of slabs of meat into
their mouths, and with upward strokes of keen-edged knives cutting away
the slabs and leaving the mouth full of the steaming roast, the whole
group talking and laughing continually, meantime--that is one of the
most interesting, if not the most pleasing, experiences of a journey in
the Argentine Republic. The traveller who visits a gaucho family must
needs join in the feast, following the fashion of his host, and it is a
fact that more than one tenderfoot has sliced off the tip of his nose in
an effort to cut off his mouthful of meat only.
In his social and home life the gaucho is, as one would expect from what
has been said, an affectionate husband and father for the most of the
time, with occasional outbursts of temper when he treats those dependent
on him with great cruelty. Dancing is the favorite amusement of the
sexes when together, and the gaucho is then--and at every opportunity,
in fact--a most persistent gallant, and a successful one, too.
Next to an intrigue, the gaucho loves to gamble with cards and play
billiards. He is altogether too excitable to make a gambler fit to
compete with the cold-blooded professional from the Rocky Mountain
mining camps, but he nevertheless acquires great skill in the
manipulation of a deck of cards, and he educates his eyes until he can
detect the slightest marks on the back of a card, and so recognize the
hand of an opponent. Indeed, cheating is counted as a mark of superior
skill in playing any game of cards. The gaucho would be greatly
astonished as well as angered if called a rascal for cheating.
At convenient distances across the pampas, and at every railway
station, will be found the gaucho saloons. They are mud-walled huts, of
course, but larger than the homes of the gauchos. The walls will be
found occupied with various Government ordinances relating to affairs in
the district, and especially to the sale of liquors. With these will be
great, crude lithographs, representing events in the last revolution, or
some other fighting scenes. Mingled with both ordinances and lithographs
are the tiny pictures that come with the packages of cigarettes on sale
everywhere. These cigarette pictures are of a sort to make a North
American, or even a North American manufacturer of cigarettes, gasp.
They contain illustrations of, and conversations between, men and women
that are almost always indecent, and invariably of a sort of wit that
makes the gaucho scream with laughter.
The pampa saloons sell but two kinds of drinks that are reasonably
pure--rum and beer. The beer is made in the suburb of Buenos
Ayres--Quilmes--and Quilmes beer is good. The native rum is consumed in
vast quantities by the gauchos, but it is not popular with ranch owners
simply because it is cheap. One would as soon expect to find Stock
Exchange brokers working the growler after a day's business as to see a
pampa ranch owner bring out a bottle of rum.
The liquor glasses of the pampa saloon are peculiar. They are water
tumblers in shape and outer dimensions, while the capacity is that of
New York whiskey glasses. The amount of glass in one will make it weigh
nearly half a pound. A more compact or better shaped missile for a
saloon fight would be hard to find.
Gaucho etiquette, as already intimated, is a matter demanding the
closest study of the stranger. That the gaucho is hospitable, and in his
way generous, need not be said. The stranger who enters a pampa saloon
will be asked to drink, without fail. If he wishes to drink he should
say so, and when he has swallowed his potion should ask the other fellow
to have something. But if he does not wish to drink he need not do so,
provided he knows how to refuse. The correct form of refusal is to say:
"Many thanks, sir; many thanks. I have had all that I wish to drink, but
will you not give me the pleasure of paying for the drinks for yourself
and the gentlemen, your friends?"
To this the gaucho will reply by declining with thanks, and the matter
is ended comfortably. It is an offence to decline bluntly to drink,
because in the gaucho's mind such a refusal could only come from one who
felt himself very much above the company assembled.
There is one kind of a drink, however, which no one should refuse
without first, as said in another case, getting the drop with a good gun
on the other fellow, and that drink is _mate_. The drinking of _mate_
among the gauchos, and among all Argentines for that matter, is like the
smoking of the calumet among North American Indians. A small gourd is
nearly filled with the powdered herb, and then boiling water is poured
in to fill the cup. This done, a silver tube with a strainer at the
bottom is poked into the decoction, and the drinker sucks the liquid up
through the tube. Now, as soon as the tea has been sucked out the
tea-maker fills the gourd once more with hot water, and passes it to the
next person in the group, and so on. The one gourd and the one tube
must serve for all the company. It will try the stomach of the
inexperienced traveller to take the tube into his mouth wet from the
lips of a drunken gaucho, but he had better do it with thanks and look
happy. It is better to put a vile tube in the mouth than to receive a
keen knife blade in the belly. And those are the horns of the dilemma
often presented to the man who interviews gauchos in their native
haunts. And of all things it is the worst insult possible to wipe off a
mouth-piece before taking it into the mouth.
Though ignorant of books, the gaucho is a keen observer of nature. He is
a thinker, bright, too, if not a deep one. His terms and sayings ought
to be gathered into a book for the instruction, as well as the amusement
of his fellow-man. He calls the chase of the ostrich the wild mirth of
the desert. The panther is "the friend of man," because it has been
known to defend men from the attack of the more vicious jaguar, and
because it often comes to purr about solitary travellers on the pampas,
as a tame cat might do. The rattlesnake, a species not known in
Patagonia, however, is the bell snake. The dragon fly is "the son of the
southwest gale," because that wind often brings clouds of these insects.
There is a huge and fierce spider on the hotter pampas that does not
hesitate to attack man--a most repulsive and fearsome being. The gauchos
have a weird song in which they tell of an army of these that came to
attack a city, and although the men of the town fought bravely, all were
routed and overwhelmed by the terrible foe.
They say that horses know an Indian camp by its smell when many leagues
down the wind from it, and are stampeded by the odor, because in the
old days the Indians were predatory. They say that pampa deer kill a
venomous snake by running around it and exhaling an odor from the leg
glands that eventually suffocates the reptile. Many people affect not to
believe any of this class of gaucho stories. But ever since there were
gauchos, they have been drying the stomachs of ostriches, and after
powdering the stuff have been taking it for disorders of the stomach,
while it is only within late years that pepsin has been on sale among
civilized people as a remedy for dyspepsia.
The worst feature, all things considered, of the character of the gaucho
is his cruelty to animals. Cattle herding or growing on the range is
naturally and inevitably blunting to the finer feelings of the herders.
In the States, as in the Argentine, it is made a cruel business by law.
The law provides that range cattle must be branded, and branding is
infamously cruel. From branding cattle to deliberately torturing them
for the pleasure of seeing their sufferings is but a step. I have known
an Oxford graduate to skin a fox alive--so great is the degrading
influence of cowboy life. But the gaucho does not become degraded in
this respect; he is born so. Of the gaucho's religion, a sentence will
suffice. He would be insulted were one to tell him he was not a
Christian--meaning a Catholic--but he has never heard of the Sermon on
the Mount, and is as incapable of appreciating its doctrines as is a
Yankee preacher who believes in the foreordained damnation of human
souls.
Compared with North American cowboys, we find that there are more rough
riders among the gauchos. They do not practise so many fancy tricks,
such as riding in quadrilles, but they can hang over the side of a
horse to escape a bullet, or still hang on to the horse when dead. They
know not the glories of a Stetson hat, with its band of gold braid, but
solid silver saddle horns and stirrups and plaitings on saddle flaps are
their delight. They have not that provident ambition which turns cowboys
into bankers and statesmen, but they have a hearty contempt for a
shallow pate, they hate a horse thief and lynch him with fierce glee,
and they despise the man who kills with a bullet as one who is a coward
and who misses the most ecstatic thrill of delight that comes to a man
hunter--the delight of feeling the thrust of the knife that cleaves the
victim's heart. They may be savages, but they are not animals. They
laugh and sing, dance and flirt, gamble and drink, race and fight, work
and endure, and so long as they do not lose their horses--so long, to
use their own figurative expression, as they do not lose their feet,
they never see a dull day and rarely feel a sorrow worth the mention.
Among the great variety of books in South America now accessible to
readers of English the majority refer in one way or another to the
Argentine Republic partly because it is a leading nation there, but
chiefly because Buenos Ayres is, as its people say, "the Athens of South
America." Nearly all these books have been written by Englishmen, and it
is to English writers that Americans commonly look with confidence for
information about many other things, and in many other matters, than
those of geography. Because of this tendency and trustfulness of
American readers I think I cannot do better, in concluding this sketch
of Argentine gauchos, than to quote a sentence from a work entitled
_Argentine, Patagonian, and Chilian Sketches_, by Mr. C. E. Akers. He
says (page 115): "The native gaucho, too, is not a very highly
interesting individual."