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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:06:23 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 19:06:23 -0700 |
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diff --git a/47930-h/47930-h.htm b/47930-h/47930-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..165cb5a --- /dev/null +++ b/47930-h/47930-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,4905 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>Brought Forward, by R. B. Cunninghame Graham</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + P.gutsumm { margin-left: 5%;} + P.poetry {margin-left: 3%; } + .GutSmall { font-size: 0.7em; } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4, H5 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + table { border-collapse: collapse; } +table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + td { vertical-align: top; border: 1px solid black;} + td p { margin: 0.2em; } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: small; + text-align: right; + font-weight: normal; + color: gray; + } + img { border: none; } + img.dc { float: left; width: 50px; height: 50px; } + p.gutindent { margin-left: 2em; } + div.gapspace { height: 0.8em; } + div.gapline { height: 0.8em; width: 100%; border-top: 1px solid;} + div.gapmediumline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + div.gapmediumdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 40%; margin-left:30%; + border-top: 1px solid; border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; + margin-left: 40%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid; } + div.gapdoubleline { height: 0.3em; width: 50%; + margin-left: 25%; border-top: 1px solid; + border-bottom: 1px solid;} + div.gapshortline { height: 0.3em; width: 20%; margin-left:40%; + border-top: 1px solid; } + .citation {vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + img.floatleft { float: left; + margin-right: 1em; + margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.floatright { float: right; + margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; } + img.clearcenter {display: block; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0.5em; + margin-bottom: 0.5em} + --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Brought Forward, by R. B. Cunninghame Graham + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most +other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions +whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of +the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at +www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you'll have +to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook. + + + + +Title: Brought Forward + + +Author: R. B. Cunninghame Graham + + + +Release Date: January 10, 2015 [eBook #47930] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROUGHT FORWARD*** +</pre> +<p>This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler.</p> +<h2><i>BY THE SAME AUTHOR</i></h2> +<p class="gutindent">FAITH.</p> +<p class="gutindent">HOPE.</p> +<p class="gutindent">CHARITY.</p> +<p class="gutindent">SUCCESS.</p> +<p class="gutindent">PROGRESS.</p> +<p class="gutindent">HIS PEOPLE.</p> +<p class="gutindent">A HATCHMENT.</p> +<p class="gutindent">THIRTEEN STORIES.</p> + +<div class="gapshortline"> </div> +<p>MOGREB EL ACKSA: A Journey in Morocco.</p> +<p class="gutindent">(<i>New Edition in Preparation</i>.)</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h1>BROUGHT FORWARD</h1> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br +/> +R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center">LONDON<br /> +DUCKWORTH & CO.<br /> +<span class="GutSmall">3 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN, +W.C.</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. iv</span><i>First Published</i> 1916.<br /> +<i>Second Impression</i> 1917.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>All rights reserved</i>.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pagev"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. v</span><span class="GutSmall">TO</span><br /> +<span class="GutSmall">COMMANDER</span><br /> +CHARLES E. F. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM<br /> +R.N.</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<h2><a name="pagevii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +vii</span>PREFACE</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Luckily</span> the war has made eggs too +expensive for me to fear the public will pelt me off the stage +with them.</p> +<p>Still after years of writing one naturally dreads the cold +potato and the orange-peel.</p> +<p>I once in talking said to a celebrated dancer who was about to +bid farewell to her admirers and retire to private life, +“Perhaps you will take a benefit when you come back from +finishing your last tour.” She answered, “Yes . +. .”; and then added, “or perhaps two.”</p> +<p>That is not my way, for all my life I have loved bread, bread, +and wine, wine, not caring for half-measures, like your true +Scot, of whom it has been said, “If he believes in +Christianity he has no doubts, and if he is a disbeliever he has +none either.”</p> +<p><a name="pageviii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +viii</span>Once in the Sierra Madre, either near the Santa Rosa +Mountains or in the Bolson de Mápimi, I disremember which, +out after horses that had strayed, we came upon a little shelter +made of withies, and covered with one of those striped blankets +woven by the Navajos.</p> +<p>A Texan who was with the party pointed to it, and said, +“That is a wickey-up, I guess.”</p> +<p>The little wigwam, shaped like a gipsy tent, stood close to a +thicket of huisaché trees in flower. Their round and +ball-like blossoms filled the air with a sweet scent. A +stream ran gently tinkling over its pebbly bed, and the tall +prairie grasses flowed up to the lost little hut as if they would +engulf it like a sea.</p> +<p>On every side of the deep valley—for I forgot to say the +hut stood in a valley—towered hills with great, flat, rocky +sides. On some of them the Indian tribes had scratched rude +pictures, records of their race.</p> +<p>In one of them—I remember it just as if now it was +before my eyes—an Indian chief, surrounded by his friends, +was setting free his <a name="pageix"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. ix</span>favourite horse upon the prairies, +either before his death or in reward of faithful services. +The little group of men cut in the stone, most probably with an +obsidian arrow-head, was life-like, though drawn without +perspective, which gave those figures of a vanished race an air +of standing in the clouds.</p> +<p>The chief stood with his bridle in his hand, his feather +war-bonnet upon his head, naked except the breech-clout. +His bow was slung across his shoulders and his quiver hung below +his arm, and with the other hand he kept the sun off from his +face as he gazed upon his horse. All kinds of hunting +scenes were there displayed, and others, such as the burial of a +chief, a dance, and other ceremonials, no doubt as dear to those +who drew them as are the rites in a cathedral to other +faithful. The flat rock bore one more inscription, stating +that Eusebio Leal passed by bearing despatches, and the date, +June the fifteenth, of the year 1687. But to return again +to the lone wickey-up.</p> +<p>We all sat looking at it: Eustaquio Gomez, <a +name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p. x</span>Polibio Medina, +Exaltacion Garcia, the Texan, two Pueblo Indians, and I who write +these lines.</p> +<p>Somehow it had an eerie look about it, standing so desolate, +out in those flowery wilds.</p> +<p>Inside it lay the body of a man, with the skin dry as +parchment, and his arms beside him, a Winchester, a bow and +arrows, and a lance. Eustaquio, taking up an arrow, after +looking at it, said that the dead man was an Apache of the +Mescalero band, and then, looking upon the ground and pointing +out some marks, said, “He had let loose his horse before he +died, just as the chief did in the picture-writing.”</p> +<p>That was his epitaph, for how death overtook him none of us +could conjecture; but I liked the manner of his going off the +stage.</p> +<p>’Tis meet and fitting to set free the horse or pen +before death overtakes you, or before the gentle public turns its +thumbs down and yells, “Away with him.”</p> +<p>Charles Lamb, when some one asked him <a +name="pagexi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. xi</span>something of +his works, answered that they were to be found in the South Sea +House, and that they numbered forty volumes, for he had laboured +many years there, making his bricks with the least possible +modicum of straw,—just like the rest of us.</p> +<p>Mine, if you ask me, are to be found but in the trails I left +in all the years I galloped both on the prairies and the pampas +of America.</p> +<p>Hold it not up to me for egotism, O gentle reader, for I would +have you know that hardly any of the horses that I rode had shoes +on them, and thus the tracks are faint.</p> +<p> <i>Vale</i>.</p> +<p style="text-align: center">R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.</p> +<h2><a name="pagexiii"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +xiii</span>CONTENTS</h2> +<table> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right"> </p> +</td> +<td><p> </p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span +class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">I.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Brought Forward</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page1">1</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">II.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Los Pingos</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page11">11</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">III.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Fidelity</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page30">30</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IV.</p> +</td> +<td><p>“<span class="smcap">Uno dei Mille</span>”</p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page40">40</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">V.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">With the North-East Wind</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page51">51</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Elysium</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page60">60</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Heredity</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page66">66</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">VIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">El Tango Argentino</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page81">81</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">IX.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">In a Backwater</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page97">97</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">X.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Hippomorphous</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page106">106</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XI.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Mudejar</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page120">120</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">A Minor Prophet</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page130">130</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIII.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">El Masgad</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page146">146</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XIV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Feast Day in Santa Maria +Mayor</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page164">164</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +<tr> +<td><p style="text-align: right">XV.</p> +</td> +<td><p><span class="smcap">Bopicuá</span></p> +</td> +<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a +href="#page185">185</a></span></p> +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<h2><a name="page1"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 1</span>I<br /> +BROUGHT FORWARD</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> workshop in Parkhead was not +inspiriting. From one week’s end to another, all +throughout the year, life was the same, almost without an +incident. In the long days of the Scotch summer the men +walked cheerily to work, carrying their dinner in a little +tin. In the dark winter mornings they tramped in the black +fog, coughing and spitting, through the black mud of Glasgow +streets, each with a woollen comforter, looking like a stocking, +round his neck.</p> +<p>Outside the dreary quarter of the town, its rows of dingy, +smoke-grimed streets and the mean houses, the one outstanding +feature was Parkhead Forge, with its tall chimneys belching smoke +into the air all day, and flames by night. Its glowing +furnaces, its giant hammers, its <a name="page2"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 2</span>little railway trucks in which men ran +the blocks of white-hot iron which poured in streams out of the +furnaces, flamed like the mouth of hell.</p> +<p>Inside the workshop the dusty atmosphere made a stranger cough +on entering the door. The benches with the rows of aproned +men all bending at their work, not standing upright, with their +bare, hairy chests exposed, after the fashion of the Vulcans at +the neighbouring forge, gave a half-air of domesticity to the +close, stuffy room.</p> +<p>A semi-sedentary life quickened their intellect; for where men +work together they are bound to talk about the topics of the day, +especially in Scotland, where every man is a born politician and +a controversialist. At meal-times, when they ate their +“piece” and drank their tea that they had carried +with them in tin flasks, each one was certain to draw out a +newspaper from the pocket of his coat, and, after studying it +from the Births, Deaths, and Marriages, down to the +editor’s address on the last page, fall a-disputing upon +politics. “Man, a gran’ speech by Bonar Law +aboot Home Rule. They Irish, set them up, what <a +name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 3</span>do they make +siccan a din aboot? Ca’ ye it Home Rule? I +juist ca’ it Rome Rule. A miserable, priest-ridden +crew, the hale rick-ma-tick o’ them.”</p> +<p>The reader then would pause and, looking round the shop, wait +for the answer that he was sure would not be long in coming from +amongst such a thrawn lot of commentators. Usually one or +other of his mates would fold his paper up, or perhaps point with +an oil-stained finger to an article, and with the head-break in +the voice, characteristic of the Scot about to plunge into an +argument, ejaculate: “Bonar Law, ou aye, I kent him when he +was leader of the South Side Parliament. He always was a +dreary body, sort o’ dreich like; no that I’m saying +the man is pairfectly illiterate, as some are on his side +o’ the Hoose there in Westminister. I read his +speech—the body is na blate, sort o’ quick at +figures, but does na take the pains to verify. Verification +is the soul of mathematics. Bonar Law, eh! Did ye see +how Maister Asquith trippit him handily in his tabulated figures +on the jute business under Free Trade, showing that all he had +advanced about protective tariffs and <a name="page4"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 4</span>the drawback system was fair +redeeklous . . . as well as several errors in the total +sum?”</p> +<p>Then others would cut in and words be bandied to and fro, +impugning the good faith and honour of every section of the House +of Commons, who, by the showing of their own speeches, were held +to be dishonourable rogues aiming at power and place, without a +thought for anything but their own ends.</p> +<p>This charitable view of men and of affairs did not prevent any +of the disputants from firing up if his own party was impugned; +for in their heart of hearts the general denunciation was but a +covert from which to attack the other side.</p> +<p>In such an ambient the war was sure to be discussed; some held +the German Emperor was mad—“a daft-like thing to +challenge the whole world, ye see; maist inconsiderate, and shows +that the man’s intellect is no weel balanced . . . +philosophy is whiles sort of unsettlin’ . . . the +felly’s mad, ye ken.”</p> +<p>Others saw method in his madness, and alleged that it was +envy, “naething but sheer envy that had brought on this +tramplin’ upon natural rights, but for all that he may be +<a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 5</span>thought to +get his own again, with they indemnities.”</p> +<p>Those who had studied economics “were of opinion that +his reasoning was wrong, built on false premises, for there can +never be a royal road to wealth. Labour, ye see, is the +sole creative element of riches.” At once a Tory +would rejoin, “And brains. Man, what an awfu’ +thing to leave out brains. Think of the marvellous +creations of the human genius.” The first would +answer with, “I saw ye coming, man. I’ll no +deny that brains have their due place in the economic state; but +build me one of your Zeppelins and stick it in the middle of +George Square without a crew to manage it, and how far will it +fly? I do not say that brains did not devise it; but, after +all, labour had to carry out the first design.” This +was a subject that opened up enormous vistas for discussion, and +for a time kept them from talking of the war.</p> +<p>Jimmy and Geordie, hammering away in one end of the room, took +little part in the debate. Good workmen both of them, and +friends, perhaps because of the difference of their temperaments, +for Jimmy was the type <a name="page6"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 6</span>of red-haired, blue-eyed, tall, lithe +Scot, he of the <i>perfervidum ingenium</i>, and Geordie was a +thick-set, black-haired, dour and silent man.</p> +<p>Both of them read the war news, and Jimmy, when he read, +commented loudly, bringing down his fist upon the paper, +exclaiming, “Weel done, Gordons!” or “That was +a richt gude charge upon the trenches by the +Sutherlands.” Geordie would answer shortly, +“Aye, no sae bad,” and go on hammering.</p> +<p>One morning, after a reverse, Jimmy did not appear, and +Geordie sat alone working away as usual, but if possible more +dourly and more silently. Towards midday it began to be +whispered in the shop that Jimmy had enlisted, and men turned to +Geordie to ask if he knew anything about it, and the silent +workman, brushing the sweat off his brow with his coat-sleeve, +rejoined: “Aye, ou aye, I went wi’ him yestreen to +the headquarters o’ the Camerons; he’s joined the +kilties richt eneugh. Ye mind he was a sergeant in South +Africa.” Then he bent over to his work and did not +join in the general conversation that ensued.</p> +<p>Days passed, and weeks, and his fellow-workmen, in the way men +will, occasionally <a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +7</span>bantered Geordie, asking him if he was going to enlist, +and whether he did not think shame to let his friend go off alone +to fight. Geordie was silent under abuse and banter, as he +had always been under the injustices of life, and by degrees +withdrew into himself, and when he read his newspaper during the +dinner-hour made no remark, but folded it and put it quietly into +the pocket of his coat.</p> +<p>Weeks passed, weeks of suspense, of flaring headlines in the +Press, of noise of regiments passing down the streets, of +newsboys yelling hypothetic victories, and of the tension of the +nerves of men who know their country’s destiny is hanging +in the scales. Rumours of losses, of defeats, of victories, +of checks and of advances, of naval battles, with hints of +dreadful slaughter filled the air. Women in black were seen +about, pale and with eyelids swollen with weeping, and people +scanned the reports of killed and wounded with dry throats and +hearts constricted as if they had been wrapped in whipcord, only +relaxing when after a second look they had assured themselves the +name they feared to see was absent from the list.</p> +<p>Long strings of Clydesdale horses ridden by <a +name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 8</span>men in ragged +clothes, who sat them uneasily, as if they felt their situation +keenly, perched up in the public view, passed through the +streets. The massive caulkers on their shoes struck fire +occasionally upon the stones, and the great beasts, taught to +rely on man as on a god from the time they gambolled in the +fields, went to their doom unconsciously, the only mitigation of +their fate. Regiments of young recruits, some in plain +clothes and some in hastily-made uniforms, marched with as +martial an air as three weeks’ training gave them, to the +stations to entrain. Pale clerks, the elbows of their +jackets shiny with the slavery of the desk, strode beside men +whose hands were bent and scarred with gripping on the handles of +the plough in February gales or wielding sledges at the +forge.</p> +<p>All of them were young and resolute, and each was confident +that he at least would come back safe to tell the tale. Men +stopped and waved their hats, cheering their passage, and girls +and women stood with flushed cheeks and straining eyes as they +passed on for the first stage that took them towards the +front. Boys ran beside them, hatless and barefooted, <a +name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>shouting out +words that they had caught up on the drill-ground to the men, who +whistled as they marched a slow and grinding tune that sounded +like a hymn.</p> +<p>Traffic was drawn up close to the kerbstone, and from the top +of tram-cars and from carts men cheered, bringing a flush of +pride to many a pale cheek in the ranks. They passed on; +men resumed the business of their lives, few understanding that +the half-trained, pale-faced regiment that had vanished through +the great station gates had gone to make that business possible +and safe.</p> +<p>Then came a time of waiting for the news, of contradictory +paragraphs in newspapers, and then a telegram, the “enemy +is giving ground on the left wing”; and instantly a feeling +of relief that lightened every heart, as if its owner had been +fighting and had stopped to wipe his brow before he started to +pursue the flying enemy.</p> +<p>The workmen in the brassfitters’ shop came to their work +as usual on the day of the good news, and at the dinner-hour read +out the accounts of the great battle, clustering upon each +other’s shoulders in their eagerness. At <a +name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>last one +turned to scan the list of casualties. Cameron, Campbell, +M’Alister, Jardine, they read, as they ran down the list, +checking the names off with a match. The reader stopped, +and looked towards the corner where Geordie still sat working +silently.</p> +<p>All eyes were turned towards him, for the rest seemed to +divine even before they heard the name. “Geordie man, +Jimmy’s killed,” the reader said, and as he spoke +Geordie laid down his hammer, and, reaching for his coat, said, +“Jimmy’s killed, is he? Well, some one’s +got to account for it.”</p> +<p>Then, opening the door, he walked out dourly, as if already he +felt the knapsack on his back and the avenging rifle in his +hand.</p> +<h2><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>II<br +/> +LOS PINGOS</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> amphitheatre of wood enclosed a +bay that ran so far into the land it seemed a lake. The +Uruguay flowed past, but the bay was so land-locked and so well +defended by an island lying at its mouth that the illusion was +complete, and the bay appeared to be cut off from all the +world.</p> +<p>Upon the river twice a day passed steamboats, which at +night-time gave an air as of a section of a town that floated +past the wilderness. Streams of electric light from every +cabin lit up the yellow, turgid river, and the notes of a band +occasionally floated across the water as the vessel passed. +Sometimes a searchlight falling on a herd of cattle, standing as +is their custom after nightfall upon a little hill, made them +stampede into the darkness, <a name="page12"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 12</span>dashing through brushwood or +floundering through a marsh, till they had placed themselves in +safety from this new terror of the night.</p> +<p>Above the bay the ruins of a great building stood. Built +scarcely fifty years ago, and now deserted, the ruins had taken +on an air as of a castle, and from the walls sprang plants, +whilst in the deserted courtyard a tree had grown, amongst whose +branches oven-birds had built their hanging nests of mud. +Cypresses towered above the primeval hard-wood, which grew all +gnarled and horny-looking, and nearly all had kept their Indian +names, as ñandubay, chañar, tala and sarandi, +molle, and many another name as crabbed as the trunks which, +twisted and distorted, looked like the limbs of giants growing +from the ground.</p> +<p>Orange trees had run wild and shot up all unpruned, and apple +trees had reverted back to crabs. The trunks of all the +fruit-trees in the deserted garden round the ruined factory were +rubbed shiny by the cattle, for all the fences had long been +destroyed or fallen into decay.</p> +<p>A group of roofless workmen’s cottages <a +name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>gave an air +of desolation to the valley in which the factory and its +dependencies had stood. They too had been invaded by the +powerful sub-tropical plant life, and creepers covered with +bunches of bright flowers climbed up their walls. A +sluggish stream ran through the valley and joined the Uruguay, +making a little natural harbour. In it basked cat-fish, and +now and then from off the banks a tortoise dropped into the water +like a stone. Right in the middle of what once had been the +square grew a ceiba tree, covered with lilac flowers, hanging in +clusters like gigantic grapes. Here and there stood some +old ombús, their dark metallic leaves affording an +impenetrable shade. Their gnarled and twisted roots, left +half-exposed by the fierce rains, gave an unearthly, prehistoric +look to them that chimed in well with the deserted air of the +whole place. It seemed that man for once had been subdued, +and that victorious nature had resumed her sway over a region +wherein he had endeavoured to intrude, and had been worsted in +the fight.</p> +<p>Nature had so resumed her sway that <a name="page14"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 14</span>buildings, planted trees, and paths +long overgrown with grass, seemed to have been decayed for +centuries, although scarce twenty years had passed since they had +been deserted and had fallen into decay.</p> +<p>They seemed to show the power of the recuperative force of the +primeval forest, and to call attention to the fact that man had +suffered a defeat. Only the grass in the deserted square +was still triumphant, and grew short and green, like an oasis in +the rough natural grasses that flowed nearly up to it, in the +clearings of the woods.</p> +<p>The triumph of the older forces of the world had been so final +and complete that on the ruins there had grown no moss, but +plants and bushes with great tufts of grass had sprung from them, +leaving the stones still fresh as when the houses were first +built. Nature in that part of the New World enters into no +compact with mankind, as she does over here in Europe to touch +his work kindly and almost with a reverent hand, and blend it +into something half compounded of herself. There bread is +bread and wine is wine, with no half-tints to make one body of +the whole. The one <a name="page15"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 15</span>remaining evidence of the aggression +of mankind, which still refused to bow the knee to the +overwhelming genius of the place, was a round bunch of eucalyptus +trees that stood up stark and unblushing, the colour of the +trunks and leaves so harshly different from all around them that +they looked almost vulgar, if such an epithet can be properly +applied to anything but man. Under their exiguous shade +were spread saddles and bridles, and on the ground sat men +smoking and talking, whilst their staked-out horses fed, fastened +to picket-pins by raw-hide ropes. So far away from +everything the place appeared that the group of men looked like a +band of pioneers upon some frontier, to which the ruins only gave +an air of melancholy, but did nothing to dispel the +loneliness.</p> +<p>As they sat idly talking, trying to pass, or, as they would +have said, trying to make time, suddenly in the distance the +whistle of an approaching steamer brought the outside world into +the little, lonely paradise. Oddly enough it sounded, in +the hot, early morning air, already heavy with the scent of the +mimosas in full bloom. Butterflies flitted to and fro <a +name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>or soared +above the scrub, and now and then a wild mare whinnied from the +thickets, breaking the silence of the lone valley through which +the yellow, little stream ran to the Uruguay.</p> +<p>Catching their horses and rolling up the ropes, the men, who +had been sitting underneath the trees, mounted, and following a +little cattle trail, rode to a high bluff looking down the +stream.</p> +<p>Panting and puffing, as she belched out a column of black +smoke, some half a mile away, a tug towing two lighters strove +with the yellow flood. The horsemen stood like statues with +their horses’ heads stretched out above the water thirty +feet below.</p> +<p>Although the feet of several of the horses were but an inch or +two from the sheer limit, the men sat, some of them with one leg +on their horses’ necks; others lit cigarettes, and one, +with his horse sideways to the cliff, leaned sideways, so that +one of his feet was in the air. He pointed to the advancing +tug with a brown finger, and exclaimed, “These are the +lighters with the horses that must have started yesterday from +Gualeguaychú, and ought to have been <a +name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>here last +night.” We had indeed been waiting all the night for +them, sleeping round a fire under the eucalyptus grove, and +rising often in the night to smoke and talk, to see our horses +did not get entangled in their stake ropes, and to listen for the +whistle of the tug.</p> +<p>The tug came on but slowly, fighting her way against the rapid +current, with the lighters towing behind her at some distance, +looking like portions of a pier that had somehow or another got +adrift.</p> +<p>From where we sat upon our horses we could see the surface of +the Uruguay for miles, with its innumerable flat islands buried +in vegetation, cutting the river into channels; for the islands, +having been formed originally by masses of water-weeds and +drift-wood, were but a foot or two above the water, and all were +elongated, forming great ribbons in the stream.</p> +<p>Upon the right bank stretched the green prairies of the State +of Entre-Rios, bounded on either side by the Uruguay and +Paraná. Much flatter than the land upon the +Uruguayan bank, it still was not a sea of level grass as is <a +name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>the State of +Buenos Aires, but undulating, and dotted here and there with +white estancia houses, all buried in great groves of peach trees +and of figs. On the left bank on which we stood, and three +leagues off, we could just see Fray Bentos, its houses dazzlingly +white, buried in vegetation, and in the distance like a thousand +little towns in Southern Italy and Spain, or even in Morocco, for +the tower of the church might in the distance just as well have +been a minaret.</p> +<p>The tug-boat slowed a little, and a canoe was slowly paddled +out to pilot her into the little haven made by the brook that +flowed down through the valley to the Uruguay.</p> +<p>Sticking out like a fishing-rod, over the stem of the canoe +was a long cane, to sound with if it was required.</p> +<p>The group of horsemen on the bluff rode slowly down towards +the river’s edge to watch the evolutions of the tug, and to +hold back the horses when they should be disembarked. By +this time she had got so near that we could see the horses’ +heads looking out wildly from the sparred sides of the great +decked lighters, and hear the thunderous noise their <a +name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>feet made +tramping on the decks. Passing the bay, into which ran the +stream, by about three hundred yards, the tug cast off one of the +lighters she was towing, in a backwater. There it remained, +the current slowly bearing it backwards, turning round upon +itself. In the wild landscape, with ourselves upon our +horses forming the only human element, the gigantic lighter with +its freight of horses looked like the ark, as set forth in some +old-fashioned book on Palestine. Slowly the tug crept in, +the Indian-looking pilot squatted in his canoe sounding +assiduously with his long cane. As the tug drew about six +feet of water and the lighter not much more than three, the +problem was to get the lighter near enough to the bank, so that +when the hawser was cast off she would come in by her own +way. Twice did the tug ground, and with furious shoutings +and with all the crew staving on poles, was she got off +again. At last the pilot found a little deeper channel, and +coming to about some fifty feet away, lying a length or two above +the spot where the stream entered the great river, she paid her +hawser out, and as the lighter drifted shorewards, cast it off, +and the great <a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +20</span>ark, with all its freight, grounded quite gently on the +little sandy beach. The Italian captain of the tug, a +Genoese, with his grey hair as curly as the wool on a +sheep’s back, wearing a pale pink shirt, neatly set off +with yellow horseshoes, and a blue gauze necktie tied in a +flowing bow, pushed off his dirty little boat, rowed by a negro +sailor and a Neapolitan, who dipped their oars into the water +without regard to one another, either as to time or stroke.</p> +<p>The captain stepped ashore, mopping his face with a yellow +pocket-handkerchief, and in the jargon between Spanish and +Italian that men of his sort all affect out in the River Plate, +saluted us, and cursed the river for its sandbanks and its turns, +and then having left it as accursed as the Styx or +Periphlegethon, he doubly cursed the Custom House, which, as he +said, was all composed of thieves, the sons of thieves, who would +be certainly begetters of the same. Then he calmed down a +little, and drawing out a long Virginia cigar, took out the straw +with seriousness and great dexterity, and then allowed about a +quarter of an inch of it to smoulder in a match, lighted it, and +<a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>sending +out a cloud of smoke, sat down upon the grass, and fell +a-cursing, with all the ingenuity of his profession and his race, +the country, the hot weather, and the saints.</p> +<p>This done, and having seen the current was slowly bearing down +the other lighter past the sandy beach, with a last hearty curse +upon God’s mother and her Son, whose birth he hinted not +obscurely was of the nature of a mystery, in which he placed no +credence, got back into his boat, and went back to his tug, +leaving us all amazed, both at his fluency and faith.</p> +<p>When he had gone and grappled with the other lighter which was +slowly drifting down the stream, two or three men came forward in +the lighter that was already in the little river’s mouth, +about a yard or so distant from the edge, and calling to us to be +ready, for the horses had not eaten for sixteen hours at least, +slowly let down the wooden landing-flap. At first the +horses craned their necks and looked out on the grass, but did +not venture to go down the wooden landing-stage; then a big roan, +stepping out gingerly and snorting as he <a +name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>went, +adventured, and when he stood upon the grass, neighed shrilly and +then rolled. In a long string the others followed, the +clattering of their unshod feet upon the wood sounding like +distant thunder.</p> +<p>Byrne, the Porteño, stout and high-coloured, dressed in +great thigh boots and baggy breeches, a black silk handkerchief +tied loosely round his neck, a black felt hat upon his head, and +a great silver watch-chain, with a snaffle-bridle in the middle +of it, contrasting oddly with his broad pistol belt, with its old +silver dollars for a fastening, came ashore, carrying his saddle +on his back. Then followed Doherty, whose name, quite +unpronounceable to men of Latin race, was softened in their +speech to Duarte, making a good Castilian patronymic of it. +He too was a Porteño, <a name="citation22"></a><a +href="#footnote22" class="citation">[22]</a> although of Irish +stock. Tall, dark, and dressed in semi-native clothes, he +yet, like Byrne, always spoke Spanish when no foreigners were +present, and in his English that softening of the consonants and +broadening of the vowels was discernible that makes the speech of +men such as himself have <a name="page23"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 23</span>in it something, as it were, +caressing, strangely at variance with their character. Two +or three peons of the usual Gaucho type came after them, all +carrying saddles, and walking much as an alligator waddles on the +sand, or as the Medes whom Xenophon describes, mincing upon their +toes, in order not to blunt the rowels of their spurs.</p> +<p>Our men, Garcia the innkeeper of Fray Bentos, with Pablo +Suarez, whose negro blood and crispy hair gave him a look as of a +Roman emperor of the degenerate times, with Pancho Arrellano and +Miguel Paralelo, the Gaucho dandy, swaying upon his horse with +his toes just touching his heavy silver stirrups with a crown +underneath them, Velez and El Pampita, an Indian who had been +captured young on the south Pampa, were mounted ready to round +the horses up.</p> +<p>They did not want much care, for they were eating ravenously, +and all we had to do was to drive them a few hundred yards away +to let the others land.</p> +<p>By this time the Italian captain in his tug had gently brought +the other lighter to the beach, and from its side another string +of horses <a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +24</span>came out on to the grass. They too all rolled, +and, seeing the other band, by degrees mixed with it, so that +four hundred horses soon were feeding ravenously on the sweet +grass just at the little river’s mouth that lay between its +banks and the thick belt of wood.</p> +<p>Though it was early, still the sun was hot, and for an hour we +held the horses back, keeping them from the water till they had +eaten well.</p> +<p>The Italian tugmaster, having produced a bottle of trade gin +(the Anchor brand), and having drank our health, solemnly wiped +the neck of the bottle with his grimy hand and passed it round to +us. We also drank to his good health and voyage to the +port, that he pronounced as if it were written “Bono +Airi,” adding, as it was war-time, “Avanti +Savoia” to the toast. He grinned, and with a gesture +of his thick dirty hand, adorned with two or three +coppery-looking rings, as it were, embedded in the flesh, +pronounced an all-embracing curse on the Tedeschi, and went +aboard the tug.</p> +<p>When he had made the lighters fast, he turned down stream, +saluting us with three <a name="page25"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 25</span>shrill blasts upon the whistle, and +left us and our horses thousands of miles away from steam and +smoke, blaspheming skippers, and the noise and push of modern +life.</p> +<p>Humming-birds poised themselves before the purple bunches of +the ceiba <a name="citation25"></a><a href="#footnote25" +class="citation">[25]</a> flowers, their tongues thrust into the +calyx and their iridescent wings whirring so rapidly, you could +see the motion, but not mark the movement, and from the yellow +balls of the mimosas came a scent, heady and comforting.</p> +<p>Flocks of green parroquets flew shrieking over the clearing in +which the horses fed, to their great nests, in which ten or a +dozen seemed to harbour, and hung suspended from them by their +claws, or crawled into the holes. Now and then a few +locusts, wafted by the breeze, passed by upon their way to spread +destruction in the plantations of young poplars and of orange +trees in the green islands in the stream.</p> +<p>An air of peace gave a strange interest to this little corner +of a world plunged into strife and woe. The herders nodded +on their <a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +26</span>horses, who for their part hung down their heads, and +now and then shifted their quarters so as to bring their heads +into the shade. The innkeeper, Garcia, in his town clothes, +and perched upon a tall grey horse, to use his own words, +“sweated blood and water like our Lord” in the fierce +glare of the ascending sun. Suarez and Paralelo pushed the +ends of the red silk handkerchiefs they wore tied loosely round +their necks, with two points like the wings of a great butterfly +hanging upon their shoulders, under their hats, and smoked +innumerable cigarettes, the frontiersman’s specific against +heat or cold. Of all the little company only the Pampa +Indian showed no sign of being incommoded by the heat. When +horses strayed he galloped up to turn them, now striking at the +passing butterflies with his heavy-handled whip, or, letting +himself fall down from the saddle almost to the ground, drew his +brown finger on the dust for a few yards, and with a wriggle like +a snake got back into his saddle with a yell.</p> +<p>The hours passed slowly, till at last the horses, having +filled themselves with grass, stopped eating and looked towards +the river, <a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +27</span>so we allowed them slowly to stream along towards a +shallow inlet on the beach. There they stood drinking +greedily, up to their knees, until at last three or four of the +outermost began to swim.</p> +<p>Only their heads appeared above the water, and occasionally +their backs emerging just as a porpoise comes to the surface in a +tideway, gave them an amphibious air, that linked them somehow or +another with the classics in that unclassic land.</p> +<p>Long did they swim and play, and then, coming out into the +shallow water, drink again, stamping their feet and swishing +their long tails, rise up and strike at one another with their +feet.</p> +<p>As I sat on my horse upon a little knoll, coiling my lazo, +which had got uncoiled by catching in a bush, I heard a voice in +the soft, drawling accents of the inhabitants of Corrientes, say, +“Pucha, Pingos.” <a name="citation27"></a><a +href="#footnote27" class="citation">[27]</a></p> +<p>Turning, I saw the speaker, a Gaucho of about thirty years of +age, dressed all in black in the old style of thirty years +ago. His silver <a name="page28"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 28</span>knife, two feet or more in length, +stuck in his sash, stuck out on both sides of his body like a +lateen.</p> +<p>Where he had come from I had no idea, for he appeared to have +risen from the scrub behind me. “Yes,” he said, +“Puta, Pingos,” giving the phrase in the more +classic, if more unregenerate style, “how well they look, +just like the garden in the plaza at Fray Bentos in the +sun.”</p> +<p>All shades were there, with every variegation and variety of +colour, white, and fern noses, chestnuts with a stocking on one +leg up to the stifle joint, horses with a ring of white right +round their throats, or with a star as clear as if it had been +painted on the hip, and “tuvianos,” that is, brown, +black, and white, a colour justly prized in Uruguay.</p> +<p>Turning half round and offering me a cigarette, the Correntino +spoke again. “It is a paradise for all those pingos +here in this rincón: <a name="citation28"></a><a +href="#footnote28" class="citation">[28]</a> grass, water, +everything that they can want, shade, and shelter from the wind +and sun.”</p> +<p>So it appeared to me—the swiftly flowing <a +name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>river with +its green islands; the Pampas grass along the stream; the ruined +buildings, half-buried in the orange trees run wild; grass, +shade, and water: “Pucha, no . . . Puta, Pingos, +where are they now?”</p> +<h2><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>III<br +/> +FIDELITY</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">My</span> tall host knocked the ashes from +his pipe, and crossing one leg over the other looked into the +fire.</p> +<p>Outside, the wind howled in the trees, and the rain beat upon +the window-panes. The firelight flickered on the grate, +falling upon the polished furniture of the low-roofed, +old-fashioned library, with its high Georgian overmantel, where +in a deep recess there stood a clock, shaped like a cross, with +eighteenth-century cupids carved in ivory fluttering round the +base, and Time with a long scythe standing upon one side.</p> +<p>In the room hung the scent of an old country-house, compounded +of so many samples that it is difficult to enumerate them +all. Beeswax and potpourri of roses, damp, and <a +name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>the scent of +foreign woods in the old cabinets, tobacco and wood smoke, with +the all-pervading smell of age, were some of them. The +result was not unpleasant, and seemed the complement of the +well-bound Georgian books standing demure upon their shelves, the +blackening family portraits, and the skins of red deer and of roe +scattered about the room.</p> +<p>The conversation languished, and we both sat listening to the +storm that seemed to fill the world with noises strange and +unearthly, for the house was far from railways, and the avenues +that lead to it were long and dark. The solitude and the +wild night seemed to have recreated the old world, long lost, and +changed, but still remembered in that district just where the +Highlands and the Lowlands meet.</p> +<p>At such times and in such houses the country really seems +country once again, and not the gardened, game-keepered mixture +of shooting ground and of fat fields tilled by machinery to which +men now and then resort for sport, or to gather in their rents, +with which the whole world is familiar to-day.</p> +<p>My host seemed to be struggling with himself to tell me +something, and as I looked <a name="page32"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 32</span>at him, tall, strong, and upright, +his face all mottled by the weather, his homespun coat, patched +on the shoulders with buckskin that once had been white, but now +was fawn-coloured with wet and from the chafing of his gun, I +felt the parturition of his speech would probably cost him a +shrewd throe. So I said nothing, and he, after having +filled his pipe, ramming the tobacco down with an old silver +Indian seal, made as he told me in Kurachi, and brought home by a +great-uncle fifty years ago, slowly began to speak, not looking +at me, but as it were delivering his thoughts aloud, almost +unconsciously, looking now and then at me as if he felt, rather +than knew, that I was there. As he spoke, the tall, stuffed +hen-harrier; the little Neapolitan shrine in tortoiseshell and +coral, set thick with saints; the flying dragons from Ceylon, +spread out like butterflies in a glazed case; the +“poor’s-box” on the shelf above the books with +its four silver sides adorned with texts; the rows of blue books, +and of Scott’s Novels (the Roxburgh edition), together with +the scent exuding from the Kingwood cabinet; the sprays of white +Scotch rose, outlined against the window blinds; and <a +name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>the sporting +prints and family tree, all neatly framed in oak, created the +impression of being in a world remote, besquired and cut off from +the century in which we live by more than fifty years. Upon +the rug before the fire the sleeping spaniel whined uneasily, as +if, though sleeping, it still scented game, and all the time the +storm roared in the trees and whistled down the passages of the +lone country house. One saw in fancy, deep in the recesses +of the woods, the roe stand sheltering, and the capercailzie +sitting on the branches of the firs, wet and dejected, like +chickens on a roost, and little birds sent fluttering along, +battling for life against the storm. Upon such nights, in +districts such as that in which the gaunt old house was situated, +there is a feeling of compassion for the wild things in the woods +that, stealing over one, bridges the gulf between them and +ourselves in a mysterious way. Their lot and sufferings, +joys, loves, and the epitome of their brief lives, come home to +us with something irresistible, making us feel that our +superiority is an unreal thing, and that in essentials we are +one.</p> +<p>My host went on: “Some time ago I <a +name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>walked up to +the little moor that overlooks the Clyde, from which you see +ships far off lying at the Tail of the Bank, the smoke of +Greenock and Port Glasgow, the estuary itself, though miles away, +looking like a sheet of frosted silver or dark-grey steel, +according to the season, and in the distance the range of hills +called Argyle’s Bowling Green, with the deep gap that marks +the entrance to the Holy Loch. Autumn had just begun to +tinge the trees, birches were golden, and rowans red, the bents +were brown and dry. A few bog asphodels still showed +amongst the heather, and bilberries, dark as black currants, grew +here and there amongst the carpet of green sphagnum and the +stag’s-head moss. The heather was all rusty brown, +but still there was, as it were, a recollection of the summer in +the air. Just the kind of day you feel inclined to sit down +on the lee side of a dry-stone dyke, and smoke and look at some +familiar self-sown birch that marks the flight of time, as you +remember that it was but a year or two ago that it had first shot +up above the grass.</p> +<p>“I remember two or three plants of tall hemp-agrimony +still had their flower heads <a name="page35"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 35</span>withered on the stalk, giving them a +look of wearing wigs, and clumps of ragwort still had a few bees +buzzing about them, rather faintly, with a belated air. I +saw all this—not that I am a botanist, for you know I can +hardly tell the difference between the Cruciferæ and the +Umbelliferæ, but because when you live in the country some +of the common plants seem to obtrude themselves upon you, and you +have got to notice them in spite of you. So I walked on +till I came to a wrecked plantation of spruce and of Scotch +fir. A hurricane had struck it, turning it over almost in +rows, as it was planted. The trees had withered in most +cases, and in the open spaces round their upturned roots hundreds +of rabbits burrowed, and had marked the adjoining field with +little paths, just like the lines outside a railway-station.</p> +<p>“I saw all this, not because I looked at it, for if you +look with the idea of seeing everything, commonly everything +escapes you, but because the lovely afternoon induced a feeling +of well-being and contentment, and everything seemed to fall into +its right proportion, so that you saw first the harmonious whole, +and <a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>then +the salient points most worth the looking at.</p> +<p>“I walked along feeling exhilarated with the autumn air +and the fresh breeze that blew up from the Clyde. I +remember thinking I had hardly ever felt greater content, and as +I walked it seemed impossible the world could be so full of rank +injustice, or that the lot of three-fourths of its population +could really be so hard. A pack of grouse flew past, +skimming above the heather, as a shoal of flying-fish skims just +above the waves. I heard their quacking cries as they +alighted on some stooks of oats, and noticed that the last bird +to settle was an old hen, and that, even when all were down, I +still could see her head, looking out warily above the yellow +grain. Beyond the ruined wood there came the barking of a +shepherd’s dog, faint and subdued, and almost musical.</p> +<p>“I sat so long, smoking and looking at the view, that +when I turned to go the sun was sinking and our long, northern +twilight almost setting in.</p> +<p>“You know it,” said my host, and I, who often had +read by its light in summer and the <a name="page37"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 37</span>early autumn, nodded assent, +wondering to myself what he was going to tell me, and he went +on.</p> +<p>“It has the property of making all things look a little +ghostly, deepening the shadows and altering their values, so that +all that you see seems to acquire an extra significance, not so +much to the eye as to the mind. Slowly I retraced my steps, +walking under the high wall of rough piled stones till it ends, +at the copse of willows, on the north side of the little moor to +which I had seen the pack of grouse fly after it had left the +stooks. I crossed into it, and began to walk towards home, +knee-deep in bent grass and dwarf willows, with here and there a +patch of heather and a patch of bilberries. The softness of +the ground so dulled my footsteps that I appeared to walk as +lightly as a roe upon the spongy surface of the moor. As I +passed through a slight depression in which the grass grew +rankly, I heard a wild cry coming, as it seemed, from just +beneath my feet. Then came a rustling in the grass, and a +large, dark-grey bird sprang out, repeating the wild cry, and ran +off swiftly, trailing a broken wing.</p> +<p><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +38</span>“It paused upon a little hillock fifty yards away, +repeating its strange note, and looking round as if it sought for +something that it was certain was at hand. High in the air +the cry, wilder and shriller, was repeated, and a great grey bird +that I saw was a whaup slowly descended in decreasing circles, +and settled down beside its mate.</p> +<p>“They seemed to talk, and then the wounded bird set off +at a swift run, its fellow circling above its head and uttering +its cry as if it guided it. I watched them disappear, +feeling as if an iron belt was drawn tight round my heart, their +cries growing fainter as the deepening shadows slowly closed upon +the moor.”</p> +<p>My host stopped, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and turning +to me, said:—</p> +<p>“I watched them go to what of course must have been +certain death for one of them, furious, with the feelings of a +murderer towards the man whose thoughtless folly had been the +cause of so much misery. Curse him! I watched them, +impotent to help, for as you know the curlew is perhaps the +wildest of our native birds; and even had I caught the <a +name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>wounded one +to set its wing, it would have pined and died. One thing I +could have done, had I but had a gun and had the light been +better, I might have shot them both, and had I done so I would +have buried them beside each other.</p> +<p>“That’s what I had upon my mind to tell you. +I think the storm and the wild noises of the struggling trees +outside have brought it back to me, although it happened years +ago. Sometimes, when people talk about fidelity, saying it +is not to be found upon the earth, I smile, for I have seen it +with my own eyes, and manifest, out on that little +moor.”</p> +<p>He filled his pipe, and sitting down in an old leather chair, +much worn and rather greasy, silently gazed into the fire.</p> +<p>I, too, was silent, thinking upon the tragedy; then feeling +that something was expected of me, looked up and murmured, +“Yes.”</p> +<h2><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>IV<br +/> +“UNO DEI MILLE”</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">veil</span> of mist, the colour of a +spider’s web, rose from the oily river. It met the +mist that wrapped the palm-trees and the unsubstantial-looking +houses painted in light blue and yellow ochre, as it descended +from the hills. Now and then, through the pall of damp, as +a light air was wafted up the river from the sea, the bright red +earth upon the hills showed like a stain of blood; canoes, +paddled by men who stood up, balancing themselves with a slight +movement of the hips, slipped in and out of sight, now crossing +just before the steamer’s bows and then appearing +underneath her stern in a mysterious way. From the long +line of tin-roofed sheds a ceaseless stream of +snuff-and-butter-coloured men trotted continuously, carrying bags +of coffee to an elevator, which <a name="page41"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 41</span>shot them headlong down the +steamer’s hold. Their naked feet pattered upon the +warm, wet concrete of the dock side, as it were stealthily, with +a sound almost alarming, so like their footfall seemed to that of +a wild animal.</p> +<p>The flat-roofed city, buried in sheets of rain, that spouted +from the eaves of the low houses on the unwary passers-by, was +stirred unwontedly. Men, who as a general rule lounged at +the corners of the streets, pressing their shoulders up against +the houses as if they thought that only by their own +self-sacrifice the walls were kept from falling, now walked up +and down, regardless of the rain.</p> +<p>In the great oblong square, planted with cocoa-palms, in which +the statue of Cabrál stands up in cheap Carrara marble, +looking as if he felt ashamed of his discovery, a sea of wet +umbrellas surged to and fro, forging towards the Italian +Consulate. Squat Genoese and swarthy Neapolitans, with +sinewy Piedmontese, and men from every province of the peninsula, +all had left their work. They all discoursed in the same +tone of voice in which no doubt their ancestors talked in the +Forum, even when Cicero was speaking, until the <a +name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>lictors +forced them to keep silence, for their own eloquence is that +which in all ages has had most charm for them. The reedy +voices of the Brazilian coloured men sounded a mere twittering +compared to their full-bodied tones. “Viva +l’Italia” pealed out from thousands of strong throats +as the crowd streamed from the square and filled the narrow +streets; fireworks that fizzled miserably were shot off in the +mist, the sticks falling upon the umbrellas of the crowd. A +shift of wind cleared the mist off the river for a moment, +leaving an Italian liner full in view. From all her spars +floated the red and white and green, and on her decks and in the +rigging, on bridges and on the rail, men, all with bundles in +their hands, clustered like ants, and cheered incessantly. +An answering cheer rose from the crowd ashore of “Long live +the Reservists! Viva l’Italia,” as the vessel +slowly swung into the stream. From every house excited men +rushed out and flung themselves and their belongings into boats, +and scrambled up the vessel’s sides as she began to +move. Brown hands were stretched down to them as they +climbed on board. From every doorstep in the town women +with <a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +43</span>handkerchiefs about their heads came out, and with the +tears falling from their great, black eyes and running down their +olive cheeks, waved and called out, “Addio Giuseppe; addio +Gian Battista, abbasso gli Tedeschi,” and then turned back +into their homes to weep. On every side Italians stood and +shouted, and still, from railway station and from the river-side, +hundreds poured out and gazed at the departing steamer with its +teeming freight of men.</p> +<p>Italians from the coffee plantations of São Paulo, from +the mines of Ouro Preto, from Goyaz, and from the far interior, +all young and sun-burnt, the flower of those Italian workmen who +have built the railways of Brazil, and by whose work the strong +foundations of the prosperity of the Republic have been laid, +were out, to turn their backs upon the land in which, for the +first time, most of them had eaten a full meal. Factories +stood idle, the coasting schooners all were left unmanned, and +had the coffee harvest not been gathered in, it would have rotted +on the hills. The Consulate was unapproachable, and round +it throngs of men struggled to enter, all demanding to get +home. No rain could damp their <a name="page44"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 44</span>spirits, and those who, after waiting +hours, came out with tickets, had a look in their eyes as if they +just had won the chief prize in the lottery.</p> +<p>Their friends surrounded them, and strained them to their +hearts, the water from the umbrellas of the crowd trickling in +rivulets upon the embracer and the embraced.</p> +<p>Mulatto policemen cleared the path for carriages to pass, and, +as they came, the gap filled up again as if by magic, till the +next carriage passed. Suddenly a tremor ran through the +crowd, moving it with a shiver like the body of a snake. +All the umbrellas which had seemed to move by their own will, +covering the crowd and hiding it from view, were shut down +suddenly. A mist-dimmed sun shone out, watery, but potent, +and in an instant gaining strength, it dried the streets and made +a hot steam rise up from the crowd. Slouched hats were +raised up on one side, and pocket handkerchiefs wrapped up in +paper were unfolded and knotted loosely round men’s necks, +giving them a look as of domestic bandits as they broke out into +a patriotic song, which ceased with a long drawn-out +“Viva,” <a name="page45"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +45</span>as the strains of an approaching band were heard and the +footsteps of men marching through the streets in military +array.</p> +<p>The coloured policemen rode their horses through the throng, +and the streets, which till then had seemed impassable, were +suddenly left clear. Jangling and crashing out the +Garibaldian hymn, the band debouched into the square, dressed in +a uniform half-German, half-Brazilian, with truncated +pickel-hauben on their heads, in which were stuck a plume of +gaudy feathers, apparently at the discretion of the wearer, +making them look like something in a comic opera; a tall mulatto, +playing on a drum with all the seriousness that only one of his +colour and his race is able to impart to futile actions, +swaggered along beside a jet-black negro playing on the +flute. All the executants wore brass-handled swords of a +kind never seen in Europe for a hundred years. Those who +played the trombone and the ophicleide blew till their thick lips +swelled, and seemed to cover up the mouthpieces. Still they +blew on, the perspiration rolling down their cheeks, and a black +boy or two brought up the rear, clashing the cymbals when it +seemed good to <a name="page46"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +46</span>them, quite irrespective of the rest. The noise +was terrifying, and had it not been for the enthusiasm of the +crowd, the motley band of coloured men, arrayed like popinjays, +would have been ridiculous; but the dense ranks of hot, +perspiring men, all in the flower of youth, and every one of whom +had given up his work to cross the ocean at his country’s +call, had something in them that turned laughter into +tears. The sons of peasants, who had left their homes, +driven out from Apulean plains or Lombard rice-fields by the +pinch of poverty, they now were going back to shed their blood +for the land that had denied them bread in their own homes. +Twice did the band march round the town whilst the procession was +getting ready for a start, and each time that it passed before +the Consulate, the Consul came out on the steps, bare-headed, and +saluted with the flag.</p> +<p>Dressed in white drill, tall, grey-haired, and with the +washed-out look of one who has spent many years in a hot country, +the Consul evidently had been a soldier in his youth. He +stood and watched the people critically, with the appraising look +of the old officer, so like <a name="page47"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 47</span>to that a grazier puts on at a cattle +market as he surveys the beasts. “Good stuff,” +he muttered to himself, and then drawing his hand across his +eyes, as if he felt where most of the “good stuff” +would lie in a few months, he went back to the house.</p> +<p>A cheer at the far corner of the square showed that the ranks +were formed. A policeman on a scraggy horse, with a great +rusty sabre banging at its side, rode slowly down the streets to +clear the way, and once again the parti-coloured band passed by, +playing the Garibaldian hymn. Rank upon rank of men tramped +after it, their friends running beside them for a last embrace, +and women rushing up with children for a farewell kiss. +Their merry faces set with determination, and their shoulders +well thrown back, three or four hundred men briskly stepped +along, trying to imitate the way the Bersaglieri march in +Italy. A shout went up of “Long live the +Reservists,” as a contingent, drawn from every class of the +Italian colony, passed along the street. Dock-labourers and +pale-faced clerks in well-cut clothes and unsubstantial boots +walked side by side. Men burnt the colour <a +name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>of a brick by +working at the harvest rubbed shoulders with Sicilian emigrants +landed a month or two ago, but who now were going off to fight, +as poor as when they left their native land, and dressed in the +same clothes. Neapolitans, gesticulating as they marched, +and putting out their tongues at the Brazilian negroes, chattered +and joked. To them life was a farce, no matter that the +setting of the stage on which they moved was narrow, the fare +hard, and the remuneration small. If things were adverse +they still laughed on, and if the world was kind they jeered at +it and at themselves, disarming both the slings of fortune and +her more dangerous smiles with a grimace.</p> +<p>As they marched on, they now and then sketched out in +pantomime the fate of any German who might fall into their hands, +so vividly that shouts of laughter greeted them, which they +acknowledged by putting out their tongues. +Square-shouldered Liguresi succeeded them, with Lombards, +Sicilians, and men of the strange negroid-looking race from the +Basilicata, almost as dark-skinned as the Brazilian loungers at +the corners of the streets.</p> +<p><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>They +all passed on, laughing, and quite oblivious of what was in store +for most of them—laughing and smoking, and, for the first +time in their lives, the centre of a show. After them came +another band; but this time of Italians, well-dressed, and +playing on well-cared-for instruments. Behind them walked a +little group of men, on whose appearance a hush fell on the +crowd. Two of them wore uniforms, and between them, +supported by silk handkerchiefs wrapped round his arms, there +walked a man who was welcomed with a scream of joy. Frail, +and with trembling footsteps, dressed in a faded old red shirt +and knotted handkerchief, his parchment cheeks lit up with a +faint flush as the Veteran of Marsala passed like a phantom of a +glorious past. With him appeared to march the rest of his +companions who set sail from Genoa to call into existence that +Italy for which the young men all around him were prepared to +sacrifice their lives.</p> +<p>To the excited crowd he typified all that their fathers had +endured to drive the stranger from their land. The two +Cairoli, Nino Bixio, and the heroic figure, wrapped in his +poncho, <a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +50</span>who rides in glory on the Janiculum, visible from every +point of Rome, seemed to march by the old man’s side in the +imagination of the crowd. Women rushed forward, carrying +flowers, and strewed them on the scant grey locks of the old +soldier; and children danced in front of him, like little +Bacchanals. All hats were off as the old man was borne +along, a phantom of himself, a symbol of a heroic past, and still +a beacon, flickering but alight, to show the way towards the goal +which in his youth had seemed impossible to reach.</p> +<p>Slowly the procession rolled along, surging against the houses +as an incoming tide swirls up a river, till it reached the +Consulate. It halted, and the old Garibaldian, drawing +himself up, saluted the Italian colours. The Consul, +bare-headed and with tears running down his cheeks, stood for a +moment, the centre of all eyes, and then, advancing, tore the +flag from off its staff, and, after kissing it, wrapped it round +the frail shoulders of the veteran.</p> +<h2><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>V<br +/> +WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND</h2> +<p>A <span class="smcap">north-east</span> haar had hung the city +with a pall of grey. It gave an air of hardness to the +stone-built houses, blending them with the stone-paved streets, +till you could scarce see where the houses ended and the street +began. A thin grey dust hung in the air. It coloured +everything, and people’s faces all looked pinched with the +first touch of autumn cold. The wind, boisterous and gusty, +whisked the soot-grimed city leaves about in the high suburb at +the foot of a long range of hills, making one think it would be +easy to have done with life on such an uncongenial day. +Tramways were packed with people of the working class, all of +them of the alert, quick-witted type only to be seen in the great +city on the Clyde, in all our Empire, and comparable <a +name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>alone to the +dwellers in Chicago for dry vivacity.</p> +<p>By the air they wore of chastened pleasure, all those who knew +them saw that they were intent upon a funeral. To +serious-minded men such as are they, for all their quickness, +nothing is so soul-filling, for it is of the nature of a fact +that no one can deny. A wedding has its possibilities, for +it may lead to children, or divorce, but funerals are in another +category. At them the Scottish people is at its best, for +never more than then does the deep underlying tenderness peep +through the hardness of the rind. On foot and in the +tramways, but most especially on foot, converged long lines of +men and women, though fewer women, for the national prejudice +that in years gone by thought it not decent for a wife to follow +to the grave her husband’s coffin, still holds a little in +the north. Yet there was something in the crowd that showed +it was to attend no common funeral, that they were +“stepping west.” No one wore black, except a +minister or two, who looked a little like the belated rook you +sometimes see amongst a flock of seagulls, in that vast ocean of +grey tweed.</p> +<p><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>They +tramped along, the whistling north-east wind pinching their +features, making their eyes run, and as they went, almost +unconsciously they fell into procession, for beyond the tramway +line, a country lane that had not quite put on the graces of a +street, though straggling houses were dotted here and there along +it, received the crowd and marshalled it, as it were +mechanically, without volition of its own. Kept in between +the walls, and blocked in front by the hearse and long procession +of the mourning-coaches, the people slowly surged along. +The greater portion of the crowd were townsmen, but there were +miners washed and in their Sunday best. Their faces showed +the blue marks of healed-up scars into which coal dust or +gunpowder had become tattooed, scars gained in the battle of +their lives down in the pits, remembrances of falls of rock or of +occasions when the mine had “fired upon them.”</p> +<p>Many had known Keir Hardie in his youth, had “wrocht +wi’ him out-by,” at Blantyre, at Hamilton, in +Ayrshire, and all of them had heard him speak a hundred +times. Even to those who had not heard him, his name was <a +name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>as a +household word. Miners predominated, but men of every trade +were there. Many were members of that black-coated +proletariat, whose narrow circumstances and daily struggle for +appearances make their life harder to them than is the life of +any working man before he has had to dye his hair. Women +tramped, too, for the dead leader had been a champion of their +sex. They all respected him, loving him with that +half-contemptuous gratitude that women often show to men who make +the “woman question” the object of their lives.</p> +<p>After the Scottish fashion at a funeral, greetings were freely +passed, and Reid, who hadna’ seen his friend Mackinder +since the time of the Mid-Lanark fight, greeted him with +“Ye mind when first Keir Hardie was puttin’ up for +Parliament,” and wrung his hand, hardened in the mine, with +one as hardened, and instantly began to recall elections of the +past.</p> +<p>“Ye mind yon Wishaw meeting?”</p> +<p>“Aye, ou aye; ye mean when a’ they Irish +wouldna’ hear John Ferguson. Man, he almost grat +after the meeting aboot it.”</p> +<p><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +55</span>“Aye, but they gied Hardie himself a maist +respectful hearing . . . aye, ou aye.”</p> +<p>Others remembered him a boy, and others in his home at +Cumnock, but all spoke of him with affection, holding him as +something of their own, apart from other politicians, almost +apart from men.</p> +<p>Old comrades who had been with him either at this election or +that meeting, had helped or had intended to have helped at the +crises of his life, fought their old battles over, as they +tramped along, all shivering in the wind.</p> +<p>The procession reached a long dip in the road, and the head of +it, full half a mile away, could be seen gathered round the +hearse, outside the chapel of the crematorium, whose ominous tall +chimney, through which the ashes, and perchance the souls of +thousands have escaped towards some empyrean or another, towered +up starkly. At last all had arrived, and the small open +space was crowded, the hearse and carriages appearing stuck +amongst the people, like raisins in a cake, so thick they pressed +upon them. The chapel, differing from the ordinary chapel +of the faiths as much as does a motor driver from a cabman, <a +name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>had an air as +of modernity about it, which contrasted strangely with the +ordinary looking crowd, the adjacent hills, the decent mourning +coaches and the black-coated undertakers who bore the coffin up +the steps. Outside, the wind whistled and swayed the +soot-stained trees about; but inside the chapel the heat was +stifling.</p> +<p>When all was duly done, and long exordiums passed upon the man +who in his life had been the target for the abuse of press and +pulpit, the coffin slid away to its appointed place. One +thought one heard the roaring of the flames, and somehow missed +the familiar lowering of the body . . . earth to earth . . . to +which the centuries of use and wont have made us all familiar, +though dust to dust in this case was the more appropriate.</p> +<p>In either case, the book is closed for ever, and the familiar +face is seen no more.</p> +<p>So, standing just outside the chapel in the cold, waiting till +all the usual greetings had been exchanged, I fell a-musing on +the man whom I had known so well. I saw him as he was +thirty years ago, outlined against a bing or standing in a quarry +in some mining village, <a name="page57"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 57</span>and heard his once familiar address +of “Men.” He used no other in those days, to +the immense disgust of legislators and other worthy but +unimaginative men whom he might chance to meet. About him +seemed to stand a shadowy band, most of whom now are dead or lost +to view, or have gone under in the fight.</p> +<p>John Ferguson was there, the old-time Irish leader, the friend +of Davitt and of Butt. Tall and erect he stood, dressed in +his long frock-coat, his roll of papers in one hand, and with the +other stuck into his breast, with all the air of being the last +Roman left alive. Tom Mann, with his black hair, his +flashing eyes, and his tumultuous speech peppered with +expletives. Beside him, Sandy Haddow, of Parkhead, massive +and Doric in his speech, with a grey woollen comforter rolled +round his neck, and hands like panels of a door. Champion, +pale, slight, and interesting, still the artillery officer, in +spite of Socialism. John Burns; and Small, the +miners’ agent, with his close brown beard and taste for +literature. Smillie stood near, he of the seven elections, +and then check-weigher at a pit, either at Cadzow or +Larkhall. There, too, was <a name="page58"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 58</span>silver-tongued Shaw Maxwell and +Chisholm Robertson, looking out darkly on the world through +tinted spectacles; with him Bruce Glasier, girt with a red sash +and with an aureole of fair curly hair around his head, half poet +and half revolutionary.</p> +<p>They were all young and ardent, and as I mused upon them and +their fate, and upon those of them who have gone down into the +oblivion that waits for those who live before their time, I +shivered in the wind.</p> +<p>Had he, too, lived in vain, he whose scant ashes were no doubt +by this time all collected in an urn, and did they really +represent all that remained of him?</p> +<p>Standing amongst the band of shadowy comrades I had known, I +saw him, simple and yet with something of the prophet in his air, +and something of the seer. Effective and yet ineffectual, +something there was about him that attracted little children to +him, and I should think lost dogs. He made mistakes, but +then those who make no mistakes seldom make anything. His +life was one long battle, so it seemed to me that it was fitting +that at his funeral the north-east wind should howl <a +name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>amongst the +trees, tossing and twisting them as he himself was twisted and +storm-tossed in his tempestuous passage through the world.</p> +<p>As the crowd moved away, and in the hearse and +mourning-coaches the spavined horses limped slowly down the road, +a gleam of sunshine, such as had shone too little in his life, +lighted up everything.</p> +<p>The swaying trees and dark, grey houses of the ugly suburb of +the town were all transfigured for a moment. The chapel +door was closed, and from the chimney of the crematorium a faint +blue smoke was issuing, which, by degrees, faded into the +atmosphere, just as the soul, for all I know, may melt into the +air.</p> +<p>When the last stragglers had gone, and bits of paper scurried +uneasily along before the wind, the world seemed empty, with +nothing friendly in it, but the shoulder of Ben Lomond peeping +out shyly over the Kilpatrick Hills.</p> +<h2><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>VI<br +/> +ELYSIUM</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> Triad came into my life as I +walked underneath the arch by which the sentinels sit in Olympian +state upon their rather long-legged chargers, receiving, as is +their due, the silent homage of the passing nurserymaids. The +soldier in the middle was straight back from the front. The +mud of Flanders clung to his boots and clothes. It was +“deeched” into his skin, and round his eyes had left +a stain so dark, it looked as if he had been painted for a +theatrical make-up. Upon his puttees it had dried so +thickly that you could scarcely see the folds. He bore upon +his back his knapsack, carried his rifle in his hand all done up +in a case, which gave it, as it seemed to me, a look of hidden +power, making it more terrible to think of than if it had shone +brightly in the <a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +61</span>sun. His water-bottle and a pack of some kind hung +at his sides, and as he walked kept time to every step. +Under his elbow protruded the shaft of something, perhaps an +entrenching tool of some sort, or perhaps some weapon strange to +civilians accustomed to the use of stick or umbrella as their +only arm. In himself he seemed a walking arsenal, carrying +his weapons and his baggage on his back, after the fashion of a +Roman legionary. The man himself, before the hand of +discipline had fashioned him to number something or another, must +have looked fresh and youthful, not very different from a +thousand others that in time of peace one sees in early morning +going to fulfil one of those avocations without which no State +can possibly endure, and yet are practically unknown to those who +live in the vast stucco hives either of Belgravia or Mayfair.</p> +<p>He may have been some five-and-twenty, and was a Londoner or a +man from the home counties lying round about. His sunburnt +face was yet not sunburnt as is the face of one accustomed to the +weather all his life. Recent exposure had made his skin all +feverish, <a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +62</span>and his blue eyes were fixed, as often are the eyes of +sailors or frontiersmen after a long watch.</p> +<p>The girls on either side of him clung to his arm with pride, +and with an air of evident affection, that left them quite +unconscious of everything but having got the beloved object of +their care safe home again. Upon the right side, holding +fast to the warrior’s arm, and now and then nestling close +to his side, walked his sweetheart, a dark-haired girl, dressed +in the miserable cheap finery our poorer countrywomen wear, +instead of well-made plainer clothes that certainly would cost +them less and set them off a hundredfold the more. Now and +again she pointed out some feature of the town with pride, as +when they climbed the steps under the column on which stands the +statue of the Duke of York. The soldier, without looking, +answered, “I know, Ethel, Dook of York,” and hitched +his pack a little higher on his back.</p> +<p>His sister, hanging on his left arm, never said anything, but +walked along as in a dream; and he, knowing that she was there +and understood, spoke little to her, except to murmur “Good +old Gladys” now and then, and press <a +name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>her to his +side. As they passed by the stunted monument, on which the +crowd of little figures standing round a sledge commemorates the +Franklin Expedition, in a chill Arctic way, the girl upon the +right jerked her head towards it and said, “That’s +Sir John Franklin, George, he as laid down his life to find the +North-West Passage, one of our ’eroes, you remember +’im.” To which he answered, “Oh yes, +Frenklin”; then looking over at the statue of Commander +Scott, added, “’ee done his bit too,” with an +appreciative air. They gazed upon the Athenæum and +the other clubs with that air of detachment that all Englishmen +affect when they behold a building or a monument—taking it, +as it seems to me, as something they have no concern with, just +as if it stood in Petrograd or in Johannesburg.</p> +<p>The homing triad passed into Pall Mall, oblivious of the +world, so lost in happiness that they appeared the only living +people in the street. The sister, who had said so little, +when she saw her brother shift his knapsack, asked him to let her +carry it. He smiled, and knowing what she felt, handed his +rifle to her, <a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +64</span>remarking, “’Old it the right side up, old +girl, or else it will go off.”</p> +<p>And so they took their way through the enchanted streets, not +feeling either the penetrating wind or the fine rain, for these +are but material things, and they were wrapped apart from the +whole world. Officers of all ranks passed by them, some +young and smart, and others paunchy and middle-aged; but they +were non-existent to the soldier, who saw nothing but the +girls. Most of the officers looked straight before them, +with an indulgent air; but two young men with red bands round +their caps were scandalised, and muttering something as to the +discipline of the New Army, drew themselves up stiffly and +strutted off, like angry game-cocks when they eye each other in +the ring.</p> +<p>The triad passed the Rag, and on the steps stood two old +colonels, their faces burnt the colour of a brick, and their +moustaches stiff as the bristles of a brush. They eyed the +passing little show, and looking at each other broke into a +smile. They knew that they would never walk oblivious of +mankind, linked to a woman’s arm; but perhaps memories of +<a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>what they +had done stirred in their hearts, for both of them at the same +moment ejaculated a modulated “Ha!” of +sympathy. All this time I had walked behind the three young +people, unconsciously, as I was going the same road, catching +half phrases now and then, which I was half ashamed to hear.</p> +<p>They reached the corner of St. James’s Square, and our +paths separated. Mine took me to the London Library to +change a book, and theirs led straight to Elysium, for five long +days.</p> +<h2><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>VII<br +/> +HEREDITY</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Right</span> along the frontier between +Uruguay and Rio Grande, the southern province of Brazil, the +Spanish and the Portuguese sit face to face, as they have sat for +ages, looking at, but never understanding, one another, both in +the Old and the New World.</p> +<p>In Tuy and Valenza, Monzon and Salvatierra, at Poncho Verde +and Don Pedrito, Rivera and Santa Ana do Libramento, and far away +above Cruz Alta, where the two clumps of wood that mark old camps +of the two people are called O Matto Castelhano and O Matto +Portuguez, the rivalry of centuries is either actual or at least +commemorated on the map.</p> +<p>The border-line that once made different peoples of the +dwellers at Floriston and <a name="page67"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 67</span>Gretna, still prevails in the little +castellated towns, which snarl at one another across the Minho, +just as they did of old.</p> +<p>“Those people in Valenza would steal the +sacrament,” says the street urchin playing on the steps of +the half fortalice, half church that is the cathedral of Tuy on +the Spanish side.</p> +<p>His fellow in Valenza spits towards Tuy and remarks, +“From Spain come neither good marriages nor the wholesome +winds.”</p> +<p>So on to Salvatierra and Monzon, or any other of the villages +or towns upon the river, and in the current of the native speech +there still remains some saying of the kind, with its sharp edges +still unworn after six centuries of use. Great is the power +of artificial barriers to restrain mankind. No proverb ever +penned is more profound than that which sets out, “Fear +guards the vineyard, not the fence around it.”</p> +<p>So Portuguese and Spaniards in their peninsula have fought and +hated and fought and ridiculed each other after the fashion of +children that have quarrelled over a broken toy. Blood and +an almost common speech, <a name="page68"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 68</span>for both speak one Romance when all +is said, have both been impotent against the custom-house, the +flag, the foolish dynasty, for few countries in the world have +had more foolish kings than Spain and Portugal.</p> +<p>That this should be so in the Old World is natural enough, for +the dead hand still rules, and custom and tradition have more +strength than race and creed; but that the hatred should have +been transplanted to America, and still continue, is a proof that +folly never dies.</p> +<p>In the old towns on either side of the Minho the exterior life +of the two peoples is the same.</p> +<p>In the stone-built, arcaded plazas women still gather round +the fountain and fill their iron-hooped water-barrels through +long tin pipes, shaped like the tin valences used in +wine-stores. Donkeys stand at the doors, carrying charcoal +in esparto baskets, whether in Portugal or Spain, and goats +parade the streets driven by goatherds, wearing shapeless, +thickly-napped felt hats and leather overalls.</p> +<p>The water-carrier in both countries calls out +“agua-a-a,” making it sound like Arabic, <a +name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>and long +trains of mules bring brushwood for the baker’s furnace +(even as in Morocco), or great nets of close-chopped straw for +horses’ fodder.</p> +<p>At eventide the girls walk on the plaza, their mothers, aunts, +or servants following them as closely as their shadows on a sunny +afternoon. In quiet streets lovers on both sides of the +river talk from a first-floor balcony to the street, or whisper +through the window-bars on the ground floor. The little +shops under the low arches of the arcaded streets have yellow +flannel drawers for men and petticoats of many colours hanging +close outside their doors, on whose steps sleep yellow dogs.</p> +<p>The jangling bells in the decaying lichen-grown old towers of +the churches jangle and clang in the same key, and as appears +without a touch of <i>odium theologicum</i>. The full bass +voices boom from the choirs, in which the self-same organs in +their walnut cases have the same rows of golden trumpets sticking +out into the aisle.</p> +<p>One faith, one speech, one mode of daily life, the same sharp +“green” wine, the same <a name="page70"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 70</span>bread made of maize and rye, and the +same heaps of red tomatoes and green peppers glistening in the +sun in the same market-places, and yet a rivalry and a difference +as far apart as east from west still separates them.</p> +<p>In both their countries the axles of the bullock-carts, with +solid wheels and wattled hurdle sides, like those upon a Roman +coin, still creak and whine to keep away the wolves.</p> +<p>In the soft landscape the maize fields wave in the rich +hollows on both sides of the Minho.</p> +<p>The pine woods mantle the rocky hills that overhang the +deep-sea lochs that burrow in both countries deep into the +entrails of the land.</p> +<p>The women, with their many-coloured petticoats and +handkerchiefs, chaffer at the same fairs to which their husbands +ride their ponies in their straw cloaks.</p> +<p>At “romerias” the peasantry dance to the bagpipe +and the drum the self-same dances, and both climb the self-same +steep grey steps through the dark lanes, all overhung with gorse +and broom, up to the Calvaries, where the three crosses take on +the self-same growth <a name="page71"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 71</span>of lichen and of moss. Yet the +“boyero” who walks before the placid oxen, with their +cream-coloured flanks and liquid eyes of onyx, feels he is +different, right down to the last molecule of his being, from the +man upon the other side.</p> +<p>So was it once, and perhaps is to-day, with those who dwell in +Liddes or Bewcastle dales. Spaniard and Portuguese, as Scot +and Englishman in older times, can never see one matter from the +same point of view. The Portuguese will say that the +Castilian is a rogue, and the Castilian returns the +compliment. Neither have any reason to support their view, +for who wants reason to support that which he feels is true.</p> +<p>It may be that the Spaniard is a little rougher and the +Portuguese more cunning; but if it is the case or not, the +antipathy remains, and has been taken to America.</p> +<p>From the Laguna de Merin to the Cuareim, that is to say, along +a frontier of two hundred leagues, the self-same feeling rules +upon both sides of the line. There, as in Portugal and +Spain, although the country, whether in Uruguay or in Brazil, is +little different, yet it <a name="page72"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 72</span>has suffered something indefinable by +being occupied by members of the two races so near and yet so +different from one another.</p> +<p>Great rolling seas of waving grass, broken by a few stony +hills, are the chief features of the landscape of the frontiers +in both republics. Estancia houses, dazzlingly white, +buried in peach and fig groves, dot the plains, looking like +islands in the sea of grass. Great herds of cattle roam +about, and men on horseback, galloping like clockwork, sail +across the plains like ships upon a sea. Along the +river-banks grow strips of thorny trees, and as the frontier line +trends northward palm-trees appear, and monkeys chatter in the +woods. Herds of wild asses, shyer than antelopes, gaze at +the passing horsemen, scour off when he approaches, and are lost +into the haze. Stretches of purple borage, known as La Flor +Morada, carpet the ground in spring and early summer, giving +place later on to red verbena; and on the edges of the streams +the tufts of the tall Pampa grass recall the feathers on a Pampa +Indian’s spear.</p> +<p>Bands of grave ostriches feed quietly upon the tops of hills, +and stride away when <a name="page73"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 73</span>frightened, down the wind, with wings +stretched out to catch the breeze.</p> +<p>Clothes are identical, or almost so; the poncho and the loose +trousers stuffed into high patent-leather boots, the hat kept in +its place by a black ribbon with two tassels, are to be seen on +both sides of the frontier. Only in Brazil a sword stuck +through the girth replaces the long knife of Uruguay. +Perhaps in that one item all the differences between the races +manifests itself, for the sword is, as it were, a symbol, for no +one ever saw one drawn or used in any way but as an +ornament. It is, in fact, but a survival of old customs, +which are cherished both by the Portuguese and the Brazilians as +the apple of the eye.</p> +<p>The vast extent of the territory of Brazil, its +inaccessibility, and the enormous distances to be travelled from +the interior to the coast, and the sense of remoteness from the +outer world, have kept alive a type of man not to be found in any +other country where the Christian faith prevails. Risings +of fanatics still are frequent; one is going on to-day in +Paraná, and that of the celebrated Antonio <a +name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>Concelheiro, +twenty years ago, shook the whole country to its core. +Slavery existed in the memory of people still alive. Women +in the remoter towns are still secluded almost as with the +Moors. The men still retain something of the Middle Ages in +their love of show. All in the province of Rio Grande are +great horsemen, and all use silver trappings on a black horse, +and all have horses bitted so as to turn round in the air, just +as a hawk turns on the wing.</p> +<p>The sons of men who have been slaves abound in all the little +frontier towns, and old grey-headed negroes, who have been slaves +themselves, still hang about the great estates. Upon the +other side, in Uruguay, the negro question was solved once and +for all in the Independence Wars, for then the negroes were all +formed into battalions by themselves and set in the forefront of +the battle, to die for liberty in a country where they all were +slaves the month before. War turned them into heroes, and +sent them out to die.</p> +<p>When once their independence was assured, the Uruguayans fell +into line like magic with the modern trend of thought. +Liberty to <a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +75</span>them meant absolute equality, for throughout the land no +snob is found to leave a slug’s trail on the face of man by +his subserviency.</p> +<p>Women were held free, that is, as free as it is possible for +them to be in any Latin-peopled land. Across the line, even +to-day, a man may stay a week in a Brazilian country house and +never see a woman but a mulata girl or an old negro crone. +Still he feels he is watched by eyes he never sees, listens to +voices singing or laughing, and a sense of mystery prevails.</p> +<p>Spaniards and Portuguese in the New World have blended just as +little as they have done at home. Upon the frontier all the +wilder spirits of Brazil and Uruguay have congregated. +There they pursue the life, but little altered, that their +fathers led full fifty years ago. All carry arms, and use +them on small provocation, for if an accident takes place the +frontier shields the slayer, for to pursue him usually entails a +national quarrel, and so the game goes on.</p> +<p>So Jango Chaves, feeling inclined for sport, or, as he might +have said, to “brincar un bocadinho,” saddled up his +horse. He <a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +76</span>mounted, and, as his friends were looking on, ran it +across the plaza of the town, and, turning like a seagull in its +flight, came back to where his friends were standing, and stopped +it with a jerk.</p> +<p>His silver harness jingled, and his heavy spurs, hanging +loosely on his high-heeled boots, clanked like fetters, as his +active little horse bounded into the air and threw the sand up in +a shower.</p> +<p>The rider, sitting him like a statue, with the far-off look +horsemen of every land assume when riding a good horse and when +they know they are observed, slackened his hand and let him fall +into a little measured trot, arching his neck and playing with +the bit, under which hung a silver eagle on a hinge. Waving +his hand towards his friends, Jango rode slowly through the +town. He passed through sandy streets of flat-roofed, +whitewashed houses, before whose doors stood hobbled horses +nodding in the sun.</p> +<p>He rode past orange gardens, surrounded by brown walls of +sun-baked bricks with the straw sticking in them, just as it had +dried. In the waste the castor-oil bushes formed little <a +name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>jungles, out +of which peered cats, exactly as a tiger peers out of a real +jungle in the woods.</p> +<p>The sun poured down, and was reverberated back from the white +houses, and on the great gaunt building, where the +captain-general lived, floated the green-and-yellow flag of the +republic, looking like a bandana handkerchief. He passed +the negro rancheria, without which no such town as Santa Anna do +Libramento is complete, and might have marked, had he not been +too much used to see them, the naked negro children playing in +the sand. Possibly, if he marked them, he referred to them +as “cachorrinhos pretos,” for the old leaven of the +days of slavery is strongly rooted in Brazil. So he rode +on, a slight and graceful figure, bending to each movement of his +horse, his mobile, olive-coloured features looking like a bronze +masque in the fierce downpour of the sun.</p> +<p>As he rode on, his whip, held by a thong and dangling from his +fingers, swung against his horse’s flanks, keeping time +rhythmically to its pace. He crossed the rivulet that flows +between the towns and came out on the little open plain that +separates them. From <a name="page78"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 78</span>habit, or because he felt himself +amongst unfriendly or uncomprehended people, he touched his knife +and his revolvers, hidden beneath his summer poncho, with his +right hand, and with his bridle arm held high, ready for all +eventualities, passed into just such another sandy street as he +had left behind.</p> +<p>Save that all looked a little newer, and that the stores were +better supplied with goods, and that there were no negro huts, +the difference was slight between the towns. True that the +green-and-yellow flag had given place to the barred +blue-and-white of Uruguay. An armed policeman stood at the +corners of the main thoroughfares, and water-carts went up and +down at intervals. The garden in the plaza had a +well-tended flower-garden.</p> +<p>A band was playing in the middle of it, and Jango could not +fail to notice that Rivera was more prosperous than was his +native town.</p> +<p>Whether that influenced him, or whether it was the glass of +caña which he had at the first pulperia, is a moot point, +or whether the old antipathy between the races brought by his +ancestors from the peninsula; anyhow, he left his horse untied, +and with the <a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +79</span>reins thrown down before it as he got off to have his +drink. When he came out, a policeman called to him to +hobble it or tie it up.</p> +<p>Without a word he gathered up his reins, sprang at a bound +upon his horse, and, drawing his mother-of-pearl-handled pistol, +fired at the policeman almost as he sprang. The shot threw +up a shower of sand just in the policeman’s face, and +probably saved Jango’s life. Drawing his pistol, the +man fired back, but Jango, with a shout and pressure of his +heels, was off like lightning, firing as he rode, and zig-zagging +across the street. The policeman’s shot went wide, +and Jango, turning in the saddle, fired again and missed.</p> +<p>By this time men with pistols in their hands stood at the +doors of all the houses; but the Brazilian passed so rapidly, +throwing himself alternately now on the near side, now on the off +side of his horse, hanging by one foot across the croup and +holding with the other to the mane, that he presented no mark for +them to hit.</p> +<p>As he passed by the “jefatura” where the alcalde +and his friends were sitting smoking <a name="page80"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 80</span>just before the door, he fired with +such good aim that a large piece of plaster just above their +heads fell, covering them with dust.</p> +<p>Drawing his second pistol and still firing as he went, he +dashed out of the town, in spite of shots from every side, his +horse bounding like lightning as his great silver spurs ploughed +deep into its sides. When he had crossed the little bit of +neutral ground, and just as a patrol of cavalry appeared, ready +to gallop after him, a band of men from his own town came out to +meet him.</p> +<p>He stopped, and shouting out defiance to the Uruguayans, drew +up his horse, and lit a cigarette. Then, safe beyond the +frontier, trotted on gently to meet his friends, his horse +shaking white foam from off its bit, and little rivulets of blood +dripping down from its sides into the sand.</p> +<h2><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +81</span>VIII<br /> +EL TANGO ARGENTINO</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Motor-cars</span> swept up to the covered +passage of the front door of the hotel, one of those +international caravansaries that pass their clients through a +sort of vulgarising process that blots out every type. It +makes the Argentine, the French, the Englishman, and the American +all alike before the power of wealth.</p> +<p>The cars surged up as silently as snow falls from a fir-tree +in a thaw, and with the same soft swishing noise. Tall, +liveried porters opened the doors (although, of course, each car +was duly furnished with a footman) so nobly that any one of them +would have graced any situation in the State.</p> +<p>The ladies stepped down delicately, showing a fleeting vision +of a leg in a transparent stocking, just for an instant, through +the <a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +82</span>slashing of their skirts. They knew that every +man, their footman, driver, the giant watchers at the gate, and +all who at the time were going into the hotel, saw and were moved +by what they saw just for a moment; but the fact did not trouble +them at all. It rather pleased them, for the most virtuous +feel a pleasurable emotion when they know that they excite. +So it will be for ever, for thus and not by votes alone they show +that they are to the full men’s equals, let the law do its +worst.</p> +<p>Inside the hotel, heated by steam, and with an atmosphere of +scent and flesh that went straight to the head just as the fumes +of whisky set a drinker’s nerves agog, were seated all the +finest flowers of the cosmopolitan society of the French +capital.</p> +<p>Lesbos had sent its legions, and women looked at one another +appreciatively, scanning each item of their neighbours’ +clothes, and with their colour heightening when by chance their +eyes met those of another priestess of their sect.</p> +<p>Rich rastaquaoures, their hats too shiny, and their boots too +tight, their coats fitting too closely, their sticks mounted with +great <a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>gold +knobs, walked about or sat at little tables, all talking strange +varieties of French.</p> +<p>Americans, the men apparently all run out of the same mould, +the women apt as monkeys to imitate all that they saw in dress, +in fashion and in style, and more adaptable than any other women +in the world from lack of all traditions, conversed in their high +nasal tones. Spanish-Americans from every one of the +Republics were well represented, all talking about money: of how +Doña Fulana Perez had given fifteen hundred francs for her +new hat, or Don Fulano had just scored a million on the +Bourse.</p> +<p>Jews and more Jews, and Jewesses and still more Jewesses, were +there, some of them married to Christians and turned Catholic, +but betrayed by their Semitic type, although they talked of +Lourdes and of the Holy Father with the best.</p> +<p>After the “five-o’clock,” turned to a heavy +meal of toast and buns, of Hugel loaf, of sandwiches, and of hot +cake, the scented throng, restored by the refection after the +day’s hard work of shopping, of driving here and there like +souls in purgatory to call on people that they detested, and +other labours of a like <a name="page84"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 84</span>nature, slowly adjourned to a great +hall in which a band was playing. As they walked through +the passages, men pressed close up to women and murmured in their +ears, telling them anecdotes that made them flush and giggle as +they protested in an unprotesting style. Those were the +days of the first advent of the Tango Argentino, the dance that +since has circled the whole world, as it were, in a movement of +the hips. Ladies pronounced it charming as they half closed +their eyes and let a little shiver run across their lips. +Men said it was the only dance that was worth dancing. It +was so Spanish, so unconventional, and combined all the +æsthetic movements of the figures on an Etruscan vase with +the strange grace of the Hungarian gipsies . . . it was so, as +one may say, so . . . as you may say . . . you know.</p> +<p>When all were seated, the band, Hungarians, of +course,—oh, those dear gipsies!—struck out into a +rhythm, half rag-time, half habañera, canaille, but +sensuous, and hands involuntarily, even the most aristocratic +hands—of ladies whose immediate progenitors had been +pork-packers in Chicago, or gambusinos <a name="page85"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 85</span>who had struck it rich in +Zacatecas,—tapped delicately, but usually a little out of +time, upon the backs of chairs.</p> +<p>A tall young man, looking as if he had got a holiday from a +tailor’s fashion plate, his hair sleek, black, and stuck +down to his head with a cosmetic, his trousers so immaculately +creased they seemed cut out of cardboard, led out a girl dressed +in a skirt so tight that she could not have moved in it had it +not been cut open to the knee.</p> +<p>Standing so close that one well-creased trouser leg +disappeared in the tight skirt, he clasped her round the waist, +holding her hand almost before her face. They twirled +about, now bending low, now throwing out a leg, and then again +revolving, all with a movement of the hips that seemed to blend +the well-creased trouser and the half-open skirt into one +inharmonious whole. The music grew more furious and the +steps multiplied, till with a bound the girl threw herself for an +instant into the male dancer’s arms, who put her back again +upon the ground with as much care as if she had been a new-laid +egg, and the pair bowed and disappeared.</p> +<p><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +86</span>Discreet applause broke forth, and exclamations such as +“wonderful,” “what grace,” “Vivent +les Espagnoles,” for the discriminating audience took no +heed of independence days, of mere political changes and the +like, and seemed to think that Buenos Aires was a part of Spain, +never having heard of San Martin, Bolivar, Paez, and their +fellow-liberators.</p> +<p>Paris, London, and New York were to that fashionable crowd the +world, and anything outside—except, of course, the +Hungarian gipsies and the Tango dancers—barbarous and +beyond the pale.</p> +<p>After the Tango came “La Maxixe +Brésilienne,” rather more languorous and more +befitting to the dwellers in the tropics than was its cousin from +the plains. Again the discreet applause broke out, the +audience murmuring “charming,” that universal +adjective that gives an air of being in a perpetual +pastrycook’s when ladies signify delight. Smiles and +sly glances at their friends showed that the dancers’ +efforts at indecency had been appreciated.</p> +<p>Slowly the hall and tea-rooms of the great <a +name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>hotel emptied +themselves, and in the corridors and passages the smell of scent +still lingered, just as stale incense lingers in a church.</p> +<p>Motor-cars took away the ladies and their friends, and +drivers, who had shivered in the cold whilst the crowd inside +sweated in the central heating, exchanged the time of day with +the liveried doorkeepers, one of them asking anxiously, +“Dis, Anatole, as-tu vu mes vaches?”</p> +<p>With the soft closing of a well-hung door the last car took +its perfumed freight away, leaving upon the steps a group of men, +who remained talking over, or, as they would say, undressing, all +the ladies who had gone.</p> +<p>“Argentine Tango, eh?” I thought, after my friends +had left me all alone. Well, well, it has changed +devilishly upon its passage overseas, even discounting the +difference of the setting of the place where first I saw it +danced so many years ago. So, sauntering down, I took a +chair far back upon the terrace of the Café de la Paix, so +that the sellers of <i>La Patrie</i>, and the men who have some +strange new toy, or views of Paris in a long album <a +name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>like a broken +concertina, should not tread upon my toes.</p> +<p>Over a Porto Blanc and a Brazilian cigarette, lulled by the +noise of Paris and the raucous cries of the street-vendors, I +fell into a doze.</p> +<p>Gradually the smell of petrol and of horse-dung, the two most +potent perfumes in our modern life, seemed to be blown +away. Dyed heads and faces scraped till they looked blue as +a baboon’s; young men who looked like girls, with painted +faces and with mincing airs; the raddled women, ragged men, and +hags huddled in knitted shawls, lame horses, and taxi-cab drivers +sitting nodding on their boxes—all faded into space, and +from the nothing that is the past arose another scene.</p> +<p>I saw myself with Witham and his brother, whose name I have +forgotten, Eduardo Peña, Congreve, and Eustaquio Medina, +on a small rancho in an elbow of the great River Yi. The +rancho stood upon a little hill. A quarter of a mile or so +away the dense and thorny monté of hard-wood trees that +fringed the river seemed to roll up towards it like a sea. +The house was built of yellow pine sent from the United +States. The roof was shingled, <a name="page89"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 89</span>and the rancho stood planked down +upon the plain, looking exactly like a box. Some fifty +yards away stood a thatched hut that served as kitchen, and on +its floor the cattle herders used to sleep upon their horse-gear +with their feet towards the fire.</p> +<p>The corrals for horses and for sheep were just a little +farther off, and underneath a shed a horse stood saddled day in, +day out, and perhaps does so yet, if the old rancho still resists +the winds.</p> +<p>Four or five horses, saddled and bridled, stood tied to a +great post, for we were just about to mount to ride a league or +two to a Baile, at the house of Frutos Barragán. +Just after sunset we set out, as the sweet scent that the grasses +of the plains send forth after a long day of heat perfumed the +evening air.</p> +<p>The night was clear and starry, and above our heads was hung +the Southern Cross. So bright the stars shone out that one +could see almost a mile away; but yet all the perspective of the +plains and woods was altered. Hillocks were sometimes +undistinguishable, at other times loomed up like houses. +Woods seemed to sway and heave, and by the sides of streams <a +name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>bunches of +Pampa grass stood stark as sentinels, their feathery tufts +looking like plumes upon an Indian’s lance.</p> +<p>The horses shook their bridles with a clear, ringing sound as +they stepped double, and their riders, swaying lightly in their +seats, seemed to form part and parcel of the animals they +rode.</p> +<p>Now and then little owls flew noiselessly beside us, circling +above our heads, and then dropped noiselessly upon a bush. +Eustaquio Medina, who knew the district as a sailor knows the +seas where he was born, rode in the front of us. As his +horse shied at a shadow on the grass or at the bones of some dead +animal, he swung his whip round ceaselessly, until the moonlight +playing on the silver-mounted stock seemed to transform it to an +aureole that flickered about his head. Now and then +somebody dismounted to tighten up his girth, his horse twisting +and turning round uneasily the while, and, when he raised his +foot towards the stirrup, starting off with a bound.</p> +<p>Time seemed to disappear and space be swallowed in the +intoxicating gallop, so that <a name="page91"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 91</span>when Eustaquio Medina paused for an +instant to strike the crossing of a stream, we felt annoyed with +him, although no hound that follows a hot scent could have gone +truer on his line.</p> +<p>Dogs barking close at hand warned us our ride was almost over, +and as we galloped up a rise Eustaquio Medina pulled up and +turned to us.</p> +<p>“There is the house,” he said, “just at the +bottom of the hollow, only five squares away,” and as we +saw the flicker of the lights, he struck his palm upon his mouth +after the Indian fashion, and raised a piercing cry. Easing +his hand, he drove his spurs into his horse, who started with a +bound into full speed, and as he galloped down the hill we +followed him, all yelling furiously.</p> +<p>Just at the hitching-post we drew up with a jerk, our horses +snorting as they edged off sideways from the black shadow that it +cast upon the ground. Horses stood about everywhere, some +tied and others hobbled, and from the house there came the +strains of an accordion and the tinkling of guitars.</p> +<p>Asking permission to dismount, we hailed <a +name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>the owner of +the house, a tall, old Gaucho, Frutos Barragán, as he +stood waiting by the door, holding a maté in his +hand. He bade us welcome, telling us to tie our horses up, +not too far out of sight, for, as he said, “It is not good +to give facilities to rogues, if they should chance to be +about.”</p> +<p>In the low, straw-thatched rancho, with its eaves blackened by +the smoke, three or four iron bowls, filled with mare’s +fat, and with a cotton wick that needed constant trimming, stuck +upon iron cattle-brands, were burning fitfully.</p> +<p>They cast deep shadows in the corners of the room, and when +they flickered up occasionally the light fell on the dark and +sun-tanned faces of the tall, wiry Gauchos and the light cotton +dresses of the women as they sat with their chairs tilted up +against the wall. Some thick-set Basques, an Englishman or +two in riding breeches, and one or two Italians made up the +company. The floor was earth, stamped hard till it shone +like cement, and as the Gauchos walked upon it, their heavy spurs +clinked with a noise like fetters as they trailed them on the +ground.</p> +<p><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>An old, +blind Paraguayan played on the guitar, and a huge negro +accompanied him on an accordion. Their united efforts +produced a music which certainly was vigorous enough, and now and +then, one or the other of them broke into a song, high-pitched +and melancholy, which, if you listened to it long enough, forced +you to try to imitate its wailing melody and its strange +intervals.</p> +<p>Fumes of tobacco and rum hung in the air, and of a strong and +heady wine from Catalonia, much favoured by the ladies, which +they drank from a tumbler, passing it to one another, after the +fashion of a grace-cup at a City dinner, with great +gravity. At last the singing ceased, and the orchestra +struck up a Tango, slow, marked, and rhythmical.</p> +<p>Men rose, and, taking off their spurs, walked gravely to the +corner of the room where sat the women huddled together as if +they sought protection from each other, and with a compliment led +them out upon the floor. The flowing poncho and the loose +chiripá, which served as trousers, swung about just as the +tartans of a Highlander swing as he dances, giving an air of ease +to all the movements of <a name="page94"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 94</span>the Gauchos as they revolved, their +partners’ heads peeping above their shoulders, and their +hips moving to and fro.</p> +<p>At times they parted, and set to one another gravely, and then +the man, advancing, clasped his partner round the waist and +seemed to push her backwards, with her eyes half-closed and an +expression of beatitude. Gravity was the keynote of the +scene, and though the movements of the dance were as significant +as it was possible for the dancers to achieve, the effect was +graceful, and the soft, gliding motion and the waving of the +parti-coloured clothes, wild and original, in the dim, flickering +light.</p> +<p>Rum flowed during the intervals. The dancers wiped the +perspiration from their brows, the men with the silk +handkerchiefs they wore about their necks, the women with their +sleeves. Tangos, cielitos, and pericones succeeded one +another, and still the atmosphere grew thicker, and the lights +seemed to flicker through a haze, as the dust rose from the mud +floor. Still the old Paraguayan and the negro kept on +playing with the sweat running down their faces, smoking and +drinking rum in their brief intervals of rest, and when the music +<a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>ceased for +a moment, the wild neighing of a horse tied in the moonlight to a +post, sounded as if he called his master to come out and gallop +home again.</p> +<p>The night wore on, and still the negro and the Paraguayan +stuck at their instruments. Skirts swung and ponchos waved, +whilst maté circulated amongst the older men as they stood +grouped about the door.</p> +<p>Then came a lull, and as men whispered in their +partners’ ears, telling them, after the fashion of the +Gauchos, that they were lovely, their hair like jet, their eyes +bright as “las tres Marias,” and all the compliments +which in their case were stereotyped and handed down for +generations, loud voices rose, and in an instant two Gauchos +bounded out upon the floor.</p> +<p>Long silver-handled knives were in their hands, their ponchos +wrapped round their left arms served them as bucklers, and as +they crouched, like cats about to spring, they poured out +blasphemies.</p> +<p>“Stop this!” cried Frutos Barragán; but +even as he spoke, a knife-thrust planted in the stomach stretched +one upon the floor. Blood gushed out from his mouth, his +belly fell like <a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +96</span>a pricked bladder, and a dark stream of blood trickled +upon the ground as he lay writhing in his death agony.</p> +<p>The iron bowls were overturned, and in the dark girls screamed +and the men crowded to the door. When they emerged into the +moonlight, leaving the dying man upon the floor, the murderer was +gone; and as they looked at one another there came a voice +shouting out, “Adios, Barragán. Thus does +Vicente Castro pay his debts when a man tries to steal his +girl,” and the faint footfalls of an unshod horse galloping +far out upon the plain.</p> +<p>I started, and the waiter standing by my side said, +“Eighty centimes”; and down the boulevard echoed the +harsh cry, “<i>La Patrie</i>, achetez <i>La +Patrie</i>,” and the rolling of the cabs.</p> +<h2><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>IX<br +/> +IN A BACKWATER</h2> +<p>“<span class="smcap">This</span> ’ere war, +now,” said the farmer, in the slow voice that tells of life +passed amongst comfortable surroundings into which haste has +never once intruded, “is a ’orrid +business.”</p> +<p>He leaned upon a half-opened gate, keeping it swaying to and +fro a little with his foot. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, +showing his greasy braces and his checked blue shirt. His +box-cloth gaiters, falling low down upon his high-lows, left a +gap between them and his baggy riding-breeches, just below the +knee. His flat-topped bowler hat was pushed back over the +fringe of straggling grey hair upon his neck. His face was +burned a brick-dust colour with the August sun, and now and then +he mopped his forehead with a red handkerchief.</p> +<p><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>His +little holding, an oasis in the waste of modern scientific +farming, was run in the old-fashioned way, often to be seen in +the home counties, as if old methods linger longest where they +are least expected, just as a hunted fox sometimes takes refuge +in a rectory.</p> +<p>His ideas seemed to have become unsettled with constant +reading of newspapers filled with accounts of horrors, and his +speech, not fluent at the best of times, was slower and more +halting than his wont.</p> +<p>He told how he had just lost his wife, and felt more than a +little put about to get his dairy work done properly without her +help.</p> +<p>“When a man’s lost his wife it leaves him, +somehow, as if he were like a ’orse hitched on one side of +the wagon-pole, a-pullin’ by hisself. Now this +’ere war, comin’ as it does right on the top of my +’ome loss, sets me a-thinkin’, especially when +I’m alone in the ’ouse of night.”</p> +<p>The park-like English landscape, with its hedgerow trees and +its lush fields, that does not look like as if it really were the +country, but seems a series of pleasure-grounds cut off into +convenient squares, was at its time of greatest <a +name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>beauty and +its greatest artificiality. Cows swollen with grass till +they looked like balloons lay in the fields and chewed the +cud. Geese cackled as they strayed upon the common, just as +they appear to cackle in a thousand water-colours. The hum +of bees was in the limes. Dragon-flies hawked swiftly over +the oily waters of the two slow-flowing rivers that made the farm +almost an island in a suburban Mesopotamia, scarce twenty miles +away from Charing Cross. An air of peace and of +contentment, of long well-being and security, was evident in +everything. Trees flourished, though stag-headed, under +which the Roundhead troopers may have camped, or at the least, +veterans from Marlborough’s wars might have sat underneath +their shade, and smoked as they retold their fights.</p> +<p>A one-armed signboard, weathered, and with the lettering +almost illegible, pointed out the bridle-path to Ditchley, now +little used, except by lovers on a Sunday afternoon, but where +the feet of horses for generations in the past had trampled it, +still showing clearly as it wound through the fields.</p> +<p>In the standing corn the horses yoked to <a +name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>the reaping +machine stood resting, now and again shaking the tassels on their +little netted ear-covers. They, too, came of a breed long +used to peace and plenty, good food and treatment, and short +hours of work. The kindly landscape and the settled life of +centuries had formed the kind of man of which the farmer was a +prototype,—slow-footed and slow-tongued, and with his mind +as bowed as were his shoulders with hard work, by the continual +pressure of the hierarchy of wealth and station, that had left +him as much adscript to them as any of his ancestors had been +bound to their glebes. He held the <i>Daily Mail</i>, his +gospel and his <i>vade mecum</i>, crumpled in his hand as if he +feared to open it again to read more details of the war. A +simple soul, most likely just as oppressive to his labourers as +his superiors had always showed themselves to him, he could not +bear to read of violence, as all the tyranny that he had bent +under had been imposed so subtly that he could never see more +than the shadow of the hand that had oppressed him.</p> +<p>It pained him, above all things, to read about the wounded and +dead horses lying in <a name="page101"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 101</span>the corn, especially as he had +“’eard the ’arvest over there in Belgium was +going to be good.” The whirr of the machines reaping +the wheatfield sounded like the hum of some gigantic insect, and +as the binder ranged the sheaves in rows it seemed as if the +golden age had come upon the earth again, bringing with it peace +and plenty, with perhaps slightly stouter nymphs than those who +once followed the sickle-men in Arcady.</p> +<p>A man sat fishing in a punt just where the river broadened +into a backwater edged with willow trees. At times he threw +out ground-bait, and at times raised a stone bottle to his lips, +keeping one eye the while watchfully turned upon his float. +School children strayed along the road, as rosy and as +flaxen-haired as those that Gregory the Great thought fitting to +be angels, though they had never been baptized.</p> +<p>Now and again the farmer stepped into his field to watch the +harvesting, and cast an eye of pride and of affection on his +horses, and then, coming back to the gate, he drew the paper from +his pocket and read its columns, much in the way an Arab reads a +letter, murmuring <a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +102</span>the words aloud until their meaning penetrated to his +brain.</p> +<p>Chewing a straw, and slowly rubbing off the grains of an ear +of wheat into his hand, he gazed over his fields as if he feared +to see in them some of the horrors that he read. Again he +muttered, with a puzzled air, “’Orrible! +’undreds of men and ’orses lying in the corn. +It seems a sad thing to believe, doesn’t it now?” he +said; and as he spoke soldiers on motorcycles hurtled down the +road, leaving a trail of dust that perhaps looked like smoke to +him after his reading in the <i>Daily Mail</i>.</p> +<p>“They tell me,” he remarked, after a vigorous +application of his blue handkerchief to his streaming face, +“that these ’ere motorcycles ’ave a gun +fastened to them, over there in Belgium, where they are +a-goin’ on at it in such a way. The paper says, +‘Ranks upon ranks of ’em is just mowed down like +wheat.’ . . . ’Orrid, I call it, if it’s +true, for now and then I think those chaps only puts that kind of +thing into their papers to ’ave a sale for +them.” He looked about him as if, like Pilate, he was +looking for an elusive truth not to be found on earth, and then +walked down the road till he <a name="page103"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 103</span>came to the backwater where the man +was fishing in his punt. They looked at one another over a +yard or two of muddy water, and asked for news about the war, in +the way that people do from others who they must know are quite +as ignorant as they are themselves. The fisherman +“’ad given up readin’ the war noos; it’s +all a pack of lies,” and pointing to the water, said in a +cautious voice, “Some people says they ’ears. I +ain’t so sure about it; but, anyhow, it’s always best +to be on the safe side.” Then he addressed himself +once more to the business of the day, and in the contemplation of +his float no doubt became as much absorbed into the universal +principle of nature as is an Indian sitting continually with his +eyes turned on his diaphragm.</p> +<p>Men passing down the road, each with a paper in his hand, +looked up and threw the farmer scraps of news, uncensored and +spiced high with details which had never happened, so that in +after years their children will most likely treasure as facts, +which they have received from long-lost parents, the wildest +fairy tales.</p> +<p>The slanting sun and lengthening shadows <a +name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>brought the +farmer no relief of mind; and still men, coming home from work on +shaky bicycles, plied him with horrors as they passed by the +gate, their knee-joints stiff with the labours of the day, +seeming in want of oil. A thin, white mist began to creep +along the backwater. Unmooring his punt, the fisherman came +unwillingly to shore, and as he threw the fragments of his lunch +into the water and gathered up his tackle, looked back upon the +scene of his unfruitful labours with an air as of a man who has +been overthrown by circumstances, but has preserved his honour +and his faith inviolate.</p> +<p>Slinging his basket on his back, he trudged off homewards, and +instantly the fish began to rise. A line of cows was driven +towards the farm, their udders all so full of milk that they +swayed to and fro, just as a man sways wrapped in a Spanish +cloak, and as majestically. The dragon-flies had gone, and +in their place ghost-moths flew here and there across the +meadows, and from the fields sounded the corncrake’s harsh, +metallic note.</p> +<p>The whirring of the reaper ceased, and when the horses were +unyoked the driver led <a name="page105"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 105</span>them slowly from the field. As +they passed by the farmer he looked lovingly towards them, and +muttered to himself, “Dead ’orses and dead soldiers +lying by ’undreds in the standing corn. . . . I +wonder ’ow the folks out there in Belgium will ’ave a +relish for their bread next year. This ’ere +war’s a ’orrid business, coming as it does, too, on +the top of my own loss . . . dead ’orses in the corn. . . +.”</p> +<p>He took the straw out of his mouth, and walking up to one of +his own sleek-sided carthorses, patted it lovingly, as if he +wanted to make sure that it was still alive.</p> +<h2><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>X<br +/> +HIPPOMORPHOUS</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">On</span> the 12th of October 1524, Cortes +left Mexico on his celebrated expedition to Honduras. The +start from Mexico was made to the sound of music, and all the +population of the newly conquered city turned out to escort him +for a few miles upon his way.</p> +<p>The cavalcade must have been a curious spectacle enough. +Cortes himself and his chief officers rode partly dressed in +armour, after the fashion of the time. Then came the +Spanish soldiers, mostly on foot and armed with lances, swords, +and bucklers, though there was a troop of crossbowmen and +harquebusiers to whom “after God” we owed the +Conquest, as an old chronicler has said when speaking of the +Conquest of Peru. In Mexico they did good service also, +although it was the horsemen <a name="page107"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 107</span>that in that conquest played the +greater part. Then came a force of three thousand friendly +Indians from Tlascala, and last of all a herd of swine was driven +slowly in the rear, for at that time neither sheep nor cattle +were known in the New World.</p> +<p>Guatimozin, the captive King of Mexico, graced his +conquerors’ triumphal march; and with the army went two +falconers, Garci Caro and Alvaro Montañes, together with a +band of music, some acrobats, a juggler, and a man “who +vaulted well and played the Moorish pipe.”</p> +<p>Cortes rode the black horse which he had ridden at the siege +of Mexico. Fortune appeared to smile upon him. He had +just added an enormous empire to the Spanish crown, and proved +himself one of the most consummate generals of his age. Yet +he was on the verge of the great misfortune of his life, which at +the same time was to prove him still a finer leader than he had +been, even in Mexico.</p> +<p>His black horse also was about to play the most extraordinary +<i>rôle</i> that ever horse has played in the whole history +of the world.</p> +<p>With varying fortunes, now climbing <a +name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>mountains, +now floundering in swamps, and again passing rivers over which +they had to throw bridges, the expedition came to an open +country, well watered, and the home of countless herds of +deer. Villagutierre, in his <i>History of the Conquest of +the Province of Itza</i> (Madrid, 1701), calls it the country of +the Maçotecas, which name Bernal Diaz del Castillo says +means “deer” in the language of those infidels. +Fresh meat was scarce, and all the Spanish horsemen of those days +were experts with the lance. Instantly Cortes and all his +mounted officers set out to chase the deer. The weather was +extraordinarily hot, hotter, so Diaz says, than they had had it +since they left Mexico. The deer were all so tame that the +horsemen speared them as they chose (<i>los alancearon muy +á su placer</i>), and soon the plain was strewed with +dying animals just as it used to be when the Indians hunted +buffalo thirty or forty years ago.</p> +<p>Diaz says that the reason for the tameness of the deer was +that the Maçotecas (here he applies the word to the +Indians themselves) worshipped them as gods. It appears +that their Chief God had once appeared in the <a +name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>image of a +stag, and told the Indians not to hunt his fellow-gods, or even +frighten them. Little enough the Spaniards cared for any +gods not strong enough to defend themselves, for the deity that +they adored was the same God of Battles whom we adore to-day.</p> +<p>So they continued spearing the god-like beasts, regardless of +the heat and that their horses were in poor condition owing to +their long march. The horse of one Palacios Rubio, a +relation of Cortes, fell dead, overcome with the great heat; the +grease inside him melted, Villagutierre says. The black +horse that was ridden by Cortes also was very ill, although he +did not die—though it perhaps had been better that he +should have died, for Villagutierre thinks “far less harm +would have been done than happened afterwards, as will be seen by +those who read the tale.” After the hunting all was +over, the line of march led over stony hills, and through a pass +that Villagutierre calls “el Paso del Alabastro,” and +Diaz “La Sierra de los Pedernales” (flints). +Here the horse that had been ill, staked itself in a forefoot, +and this, as Villagutierre says, was the real reason that Cortes +left him behind. He <a name="page110"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 110</span>adds, “It does not matter +either way, whether he was left because his grease was melted +with the sun, or that his foot was staked.” This, of +course, is true, and anyhow the horse was reserved for a greater +destiny than ever fell to any of his race.</p> +<p>Cortes, in his fifth letter to the Emperor Charles V., says +simply, “I was obliged to leave my black horse (<i>mi +caballo morzillo</i>) with a splinter in his foot.” +He takes no notice of the melting of the grease. “The +Chief promised to take care of him, but I do not know that he +will succeed or what he will do with him.”</p> +<p>He told the Chief that he would send to fetch the horse, for +he was very fond of him, and prized him very much. The +Chief, no doubt, received the strange and terrible animal with +due respect, and Cortes went on upon his way. That is all +that Cortes says about the matter, and the mist of history closed +upon him and on his horse. Cortes died, worn-out and +broken-hearted, at the white little town of Castilleja de la +Cuesta, not far from Seville; but El Morzillo had a greater +destiny in store. This happened in the year 1525, and +nothing <a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +111</span>more was heard of either the Maçotecas or the +horse, after that passage in the fifth letter of Cortes, till +1697. In that year the Franciscans set out upon the gospel +trail to convert the Indians of Itza, attached to the expedition +that Ursua led, for the interior of Yucatan had never been +subdued. They reached Itza, having come down the River Tipu +in canoes.</p> +<p>This river, Villagutierre informs us, is as large as any river +in all Spain. Moreover, it is endowed with certain +properties, its water being good and clear, so that in some +respects it is superior to the water even of the Tagus. It +is separated into one hundred and ninety channels (neither more +nor less), and every one of these has its right Indian name, that +every Indian knows. Upon its banks grows much sarsaparilla, +and in its sand is gold.</p> +<p>Beyond all this it has a hidden virtue, which is that taken +(fasting) it cures the dropsy, and makes both sick and sound +people eat heartily. Besides this, after eating, when you +have drunk its water you are inclined to eat again.</p> +<p>At midday it is cold, and warm at night, so warm that a steam +rises from it, just as it does when a kettle boils on the +fire. Other <a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +112</span>particularities it has, which though they are not so +remarkable, yet are noteworthy.</p> +<p>Down this amazing river Ursua’s expedition navigated for +twelve days in their canoes till they came to a lake called +Peten-Itza, in which there was an island known as Tayasal. +All unknown to themselves, they had arrived close to the place +where long ago Cortes had left his horse. Of this they were +in ignorance; the circumstance had been long forgotten, and +Cortes himself had become almost a hero of a bygone age even in +Mexico.</p> +<p>Fathers Orbieta and Fuensalida, monks of the Franciscan order, +chosen both for their zeal and for their knowledge of the Maya +language, were all agog to mark new sheep. The Indians +amongst whom they found themselves were “ignorant even of +the knowledge of the true faith.” Moreover, since the +conquest they had had no dealings with Europeans, and were as +primitive as they were at the time when Cortes had passed, more +than a hundred years ago.</p> +<p>One of the Chiefs, a man known as Isquin, when he first saw a +horse, “almost ran mad with joy and with +astonishment. Especially <a name="page113"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 113</span>the evolutions and the leaps it made +into the air moved him to admiration, and going down upon all +fours he leaped about and neighed.” Then, tired with +this practical manifestation of his joy and his astonishment, he +asked the Spanish name of the mysterious animal. When he +learned that it was caballo, he forthwith renounced his name, and +from that day this silly infidel was known as Caballito. +Then when the soul-cleansing water had been poured upon his head, +he took the name of Pedro, and to his dying day all the world +called him “Don Pedro Caballito, for he was born a +Chief.”</p> +<p>This curious and pathetic little circumstance, by means of +which a brand was snatched red-hot from the eternal flames, +lighted for those who have deserved hell-fire by never having +heard of it, might, one would think, have shown the missionaries +that the poor Indians were but children, easier to lead than +drive.</p> +<p>It only fired their zeal, and yet all their solicitude to save +the Indians’ souls was unavailing, and the hard-hearted +savages, dead to the advantages that baptism has ever brought +with it, clave to their images.</p> +<p><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>The +good Franciscans made several more attempts to move the +people’s hearts by preaching ceaselessly. All failed, +and then they went to several islands in the lake, in one of +which Father Orbieta hardly had begun to preach, when, as Lopez +Cogulludo <a name="citation114a"></a><a href="#footnote114a" +class="citation">[114a]</a> tells us, an Indian seized him by the +throat and nearly strangled him, leaving him senseless on the +ground.</p> +<p>At times, seated in church listening to what the Elizabethans +called “a painful preacher,” even the elect have felt +an impulse to seize him by the throat. Still, it is usually +restrained; but these poor savages, undisciplined in body and in +mind, were perhaps to be excused, for the full flavour of a +sermon had never reached them in their Eden by the lake. +Moreover, after he was thus rudely cast from the pulpit to the +ground, Father Fuensalida, nothing daunted by his fate, stepped +forward and took up his parable. He preached to them this +time in their own language, in which he was expert, with fervid +eloquence and great knowledge of the Scriptures, <a +name="citation114b"></a><a href="#footnote114b" +class="citation">[114b]</a> explaining to <a +name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>them the +holy mystery of the incarnation of the eternal Word. <a +name="citation115"></a><a href="#footnote115" +class="citation">[115]</a> The subject was well chosen for +a first attempt upon their hearts; but it, too, proved +unfruitful, and the two friars were forced to re-embark.</p> +<p>As the canoe in which they sat moved from the island and +launched out into the lake, the infidels who stood and watched +them paddling were moved to fury, and, rushing to the edge, +stoned them whole-heartedly till they were out of reach.</p> +<p>It is a wise precaution, and one that the +“conquistadores” usually observed, to have the +spiritual well supported by the secular arm when missionaries, +instinct with zeal and not weighed down with too much common +sense, preach for the first time to the infidel.</p> +<p>This first reverse was but an incident, and by degrees the +friars, this time accompanied by soldiers, explored more of the +islands in the lake. At last they came to one called +Tayasal, which was so full of idols that they took twelve hours +to burn and to destroy them all.</p> +<p>One island still remained to be explored, <a +name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>and in it +was a temple with an idol much reverenced by the Indians. +At last they entered it, and on a platform about the height of a +tall man they saw the figure of a horse rudely carved out of +stone.</p> +<p>The horse was seated on the ground resting upon his quarters, +his hind legs bent and his front feet stretched out. The +barbarous infidels <a name="citation116a"></a><a +href="#footnote116a" class="citation">[116a]</a> adored the +abominable and monstrous beast under the name of Tziunchan, God +of the Thunder and the Lightning, and paid it reverence. +Even the Spaniards, who, as a rule, were not much given to +inquiring into the history of idols, but broke them instantly, +<i>ad majorem Dei gloriam</i>, were interested and amazed. +Little by little they learned the history of the hippomorphous +god, which had been carefully preserved. It appeared that +when Cortes had left his horse, so many years ago, the Indians, +seeing he was ill, took him into a temple to take care of +him. Thinking he was a reasoning animal, <a +name="citation116b"></a><a href="#footnote116b" +class="citation">[116b]</a> they placed before him fruit and +chickens, with the result that the poor beast—who, of +course, was <a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +117</span>reasonable enough in his own way—eventually +died.</p> +<p>The Indians, terrified and fearful that Cortes would take +revenge upon them for the death of the horse that he had left for +them to care for and to minister to all his wants, before they +buried him, carved a rude statue in his likeness and placed it in +a temple in the lake.</p> +<p>The devil, who, as Villagutierre observes, is never slack to +take advantage when he can, seeing the blindness and the +superstition (which was great) of those abominable idolaters, +induced them by degrees to make a God of the graven image they +had made. Their veneration grew with time, just as bad +weeds grow up in corn, as Holy Writ sets forth for our example, +and that abominable statue became the chiefest of their gods, +though they had many others equally horrible.</p> +<p>As the first horses that they saw were ridden by the Spaniards +in the chase of the tame deer, and many shots were fired, the +Indians not unnaturally connected the explosions and the flames +less with the rider than the horse. Thus in the course of +years the evolution of the great god Tziunchan took place, and, +as <a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>the +missionaries said, these heathen steeped in ignorance adored the +work of their own hands.</p> +<p>Father Orbieta, not stopping to reflect that all of us adore +what we have made, but “filled with the spirit of the Lord +and carried off with furious zeal for the honour of our +God,” <a name="citation118"></a><a href="#footnote118" +class="citation">[118]</a> seized a great stone and in an instant +cast the idol down, then with a hammer he broke it into bits.</p> +<p>When Father Orbieta had finished his work and thus destroyed +one of the most curious monuments of the New World, which ought +to have been preserved as carefully as if it had been carved by +Praxiteles, “with the ineffable and holy joy that filled +him, his face shone with a light so spiritual that it was +something to praise God for and to view with +delight.” Most foolish actions usually inspire their +perpetrators with delight, although their faces do not shine with +spiritual joy when they have done them; so when one reads the +folly of this muddle-headed friar, it sets one hoping that +several of the stones went home upon his back as he sat paddling +the canoe.</p> +<p>The Indians broke into lamentations, <a +name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>exclaiming, +“Death to him, he has killed our God”; but were +prevented from avenging his demise by the Spanish soldiers who +prudently had accompanied the friar.</p> +<p>Thus was the mystery of the eternal Word made manifest amongst +the Maçotecas, and a deity destroyed who for a hundred +years and more had done no harm to any one on earth . . . a thing +unusual amongst Gods.</p> +<h2><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +120</span>XI<br /> +MUDEJAR</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">Brown</span>, severe, and wall-girt, the +stubborn city still held out.</p> +<p>Its proud traditions made it impossible for Zaragoza to +capitulate without a siege. As in the days of Soult, when +the heroic maid, the <i>artillera</i>, as her countrymen call her +with pride, when Palafox held up the blood and orange banner in +which float the lions and the castles of Castille, the city +answered shot for shot.</p> +<p>Fire spurted from the Moorish walls, built by the Beni Hud, +who reigned in Zaragoza, when still Sohail poured its protecting +rays upon the land. The bluish wreaths of smoke curled on +the Ebro, running along the water and enveloping the Coso as if +in a mist.</p> +<p>A dropping rifle-fire crackled out from the ramparts, and +above the castle the red flag <a name="page121"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 121</span>of the Intransigent-Republic +shivered and fluttered in the breeze.</p> +<p>The Torre-Nueva sprang from the middle of the town, just as a +palm tree rises from the desert sands. It was built at the +time when Moorish artisans, infidel dogs who yet preserved the +secrets of the East amongst the Christians (may dogs defile their +graves), had spent their science and their love upon it.</p> +<p>Octagonal, and looking as if blown into the air by the +magician’s art, it leaned a little to one side, and, as the +admiring inhabitants averred, drawing their right hands open over +their left arms, laughed at its rival of Bologna and at every +other tower on earth.</p> +<p>No finer specimen of the art known as Mudejar existed in all +Spain. Galleries cut it here and there; and ajimeces, the +little horseshoe windows divided by a marble pillar, loved of the +Moors, which tradition says they took from the rude openings in +their tents of camel’s hair, gave light to the +inside. Stages of inclined planes led to the top, so +gradual in their ascent that once a Queen of Spain had ridden up +them to admire the view over the Sierras upon her palfrey, or her +donkey, for all is one <a name="page122"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 122</span>when treating of a queen, who of a +certainty ennobles the animal she deigns to ride upon. Bold +ajaracas, the patterns proper to the style of architecture, stood +up in high relief upon its sides, and near the balustrade upon +the top a band of bluish tiles relieved the brownness of the +brickwork and sparkled in the sun. Sieges and time and +storms, rain, wind, and snow had spared it; even the neglect of +centuries had left it unimpaired—erect and elegant as a +young Arab maiden carrying water from the well. Architects +said that it inclined a little more each year, and talked about +subsidences; but they were foreigners, unused to the things of +Spain, and no one marked them; and the tower continued to be +loved and prized and to fall into disrepair. On this +occasion riflemen lined the galleries, pouring a hot fire upon +the attacking forces of the Government.</p> +<p>Encamped upon the heights above Torero, the Governmental army +held the banks of the canal that gives an air of Holland to that +part of the adust and calcined landscape of Aragon.</p> +<p>The General’s quarters overlooked the town, and from +them he could see Santa <a name="page123"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 123</span>Engracia, in whose crypt repose the +bodies of the martyrs in an atmosphere of ice, standing alone +upon its little plaza, fringed by a belt of stunted and ill-grown +acacia trees. The great cathedral, with its domes, in which +the shrine of the tutelary Virgin of the Pilar, the Pilarica of +the country folk, glittering with jewels and with silver plate, +is venerated as befits the abiding place on earth of the +miraculous figure sent direct from heaven, towered into the +sky.</p> +<p>Churches and towers and convents, old castellated houses with +their overhanging eaves and coats-of-arms upon the doors, jewels +of architecture, memorials of the past, formed as it were a +jungle wrought in a warm brown stone. Beyond the city +towered the mountains that hang over Huesca of the Bell. +Through them the Aragon has cut its roaring passages towards +Sobrarbe to the south. Northwards they circle Jaca, the +virgin little city that beat off the Moors a thousand years ago, +and still once every year commemorates her prowess outside the +walls, where Moors and Christians fight again the unequal +contest, into which St. James, mounted upon his milk-white <a +name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>charger, +had plunged and thrown the weight of his right arm. The +light was so intense and African that on the mountain sides each +rock was visible, outlined as in a camera-lucida, and as the +artillery played upon the tower the effects of every salvo showed +up distinctly on the crumbling walls. All round the +Government’s encampment stood groups of peasantry who had +been impressed together with their animals to bring +provisions. Wrapped in their brown and white checked +blankets, dressed in tight knee-breeches, short jackets, and grey +stockings, and shod with alpargatas—the canvas, hemp-soled +sandals that are fastened round the ankles with blue +cords—they stood and smoked, stolid as Moors, and as +unfathomable as the deep mysterious corries of their hills.</p> +<p>When the artillery thundered and the breaches in the walls +grew daily more apparent and more ominous, the country people +merely smiled, for they were sure the Pilarica would preserve the +city; and even if she did not, all Governments, republican or +clerical, were the same to them.</p> +<p>All their ambition was to live quietly, each <a +name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>in his +village, which to him was the hub round which the world +revolved.</p> +<p>So one would say, as they stood watching the progress of the +siege: “Chiquio, the sciences advance a bestiality, the +Government in the Madrids can hear each cannon-shot. The +sound goes on those wires that stretch upon the posts we tie our +donkeys to when we come into town. . . .”</p> +<p>Little by little the forces of the Government advanced, +crossing the Ebro at the bridge which spans it in the middle of +the great double promenade called the Coso, and by degrees drew +near the walls.</p> +<p>The stubborn guerrilleros in the town contested every point of +vantage, fighting like wolves, throwing themselves with knives +and scythes stuck upright on long poles upon the troops.</p> +<p>So fought their grandfathers against the French, and so Strabo +describes their ancestors, adding, “The Spaniard is a +taciturn, dark man, usually dressed in black; he fights with a +short sword, and always tries to come to close grips with our +legionaries.”</p> +<p>As happens in all civil wars, when brother <a +name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>finds +himself opposed to brother, the strife was mortal, and he who +fell received no mercy from the conqueror.</p> +<p>The riflemen upon the Torre Nueva poured in their fire, +especially upon the Regiment of Pavia, whose Colonel, Don Luis +Montoro, on several occasions gave orders to the artillerymen at +any cost to spare the tower.</p> +<p>Officer after officer fell by his side, and soldiers in the +ranks cursed audibly, covering the saints with filth, as runs the +phrase in Spanish, and wondering why their Colonel did not +dislodge the riflemen who made such havoc in their files. +Discipline told at last, and all the Intransigents were forced +inside the walls, leaving the moat with but a single plank to +cross it by which to reach the town. Upon the plank the +fire was concentrated from the walls, and the besiegers stood for +a space appalled, sheltering themselves as best they could behind +the trees and inequalities of the ground.</p> +<p>Montoro called for volunteers, and one by one three grizzled +soldiers, who had grown grey in wars against the Moors, stepped +forward and fell pierced with a dozen wounds.</p> +<p><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>After +a pause there was a movement in the ranks, and with a sword in +his right hand, and in his left the colours of Castille, his +brown stuff gown tucked up showing his hairy knees knotted and +muscular, out stepped a friar, and strode towards the +plank. Taking the sword between his teeth he crossed +himself, and beckoning on the men, rushed forward in the thickest +of the fire.</p> +<p>He crossed in safety, and then the regiment, with a hoarse +shout of “Long live God,” dashed on behind him, some +carrying planks and others crossing upon bales of straw, which +they had thrown into the moat. Under the walls they formed +and rushed into the town, only to find each house a fortress and +each street blocked by a barricade. From every window dark +faces peered, and a continual fusillade was poured upon them, +whilst from the house-tops the women showered down tiles.</p> +<p>Smoke filled the narrow streets, and from dark archways groups +of desperate men came rushing, armed with knives, only to fall in +heaps before the troops who, with fixed bayonets, steadily pushed +on.</p> +<p><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>A +shift of wind cleared off the smoke and showed the crimson flag +still floating from the citadel, ragged and torn by shots. +Beyond the town appeared the mountains peeping out shyly through +the smoke, as if they looked down on the follies of mankind with +a contemptuous air.</p> +<p>Dead bodies strewed the streets, in attitudes half tragical, +half ludicrous, some looking like mere bundles of old clothes, +and some distorted with a stiff arm still pointing to the +sky.</p> +<p>Right in the middle of a little square the friar lay shot +through the forehead, his sword beside him, and with the flag +clasped tightly to his breast.</p> +<p>His great brown eyes stared upwards, and as the soldiers +passed him some of them crossed themselves, and an old sergeant +spoke his epitaph: “This friar,” he said, “was +not of those fit only for the Lord; he would have made a soldier, +and a good one; may God have pardoned him.”</p> +<p>Driven into the middle plaza of the town, the Intransigents +fought till the last, selling their lives for more than they were +worth, and dying silently.</p> +<p><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>The +citadel was taken with a rush, and the red flag hauled down.</p> +<p>Bugles rang out from the other angle of the plaza; the General +and his staff rode slowly forward to meet the Regiment of Pavia +as it debouched into the square.</p> +<p>Colonel Montoro halted, and then, saluting, advanced towards +his chief. His General, turning to him, angrily exclaimed, +“Tell me, why did you let those fellows in the tower do so +much damage, when a few shots from the field guns would have soon +finished them?”</p> +<p>Montoro hesitated, and recovering his sword once more saluted +as his horse fretted on the curb, snorting and sidling from the +dead bodies that were strewed upon the ground.</p> +<p>“My General,” he said, “not for all Spain +and half the Indies would I have trained the cannon on the tower; +it is Mudejar of the purest architecture.”</p> +<p>His General smiled at him a little grimly, and saying, +“Well, after all, this is no time to ask accounts from any +man,” touched his horse with the spur and, followed by his +staff, he disappeared into the town.</p> +<h2><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +130</span>XII<br /> +A MINOR PROPHET</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> city sweltered in the August +heat. No breath of air lifted the pall of haze that wrapped +the streets, the houses, and the dark group of Græco-Roman +buildings that stands up like a rock in the dull tide-way of the +brick-built tenements that compose the town.</p> +<p>Bells pealed at intervals, summoning the fractioned faithful +to their various centres of belief.</p> +<p>When they had ceased and all the congregations were assembled +listening to the exhortations of their spiritual advisers, and +were employed fumbling inside their purses, as they listened, for +the destined “threepenny,” that obolus which gives +respectability to alms, the silence was complete. +Whitey-brown paper bags, dropped overnight, just stirred <a +name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +131</span>occasionally as the air swelled their bellies, making +them seem alive, or as alive as is a jelly-fish left stranded by +the tide.</p> +<p>Just as the faithful were assembled in their conventicles +adoring the same Deity, all filled with rancour against one +another because their methods of interpretation of the +Creator’s will were different, so did the politicians and +the cranks of every sort and sect turn out to push their methods +of salvation for mankind. In groups they gathered round the +various speakers who discoursed from chairs and carts and points +of vantage on the streets.</p> +<p>Above the speakers’ heads, banners, held up between two +poles, called on the audiences to vote for Liberal or for Tory, +for Poor Law Reform, for Social Purity, and for Temperance. +Orators, varying from well-dressed and glibly-educated hacks from +party centres, to red-faced working-men, held forth perspiring, +and occasionally bedewing those who listened to them with saliva, +after an emphatic burst.</p> +<p>It seemed so easy after listening to them to redress all +wrongs, smooth out all wrinkles, and instate each citizen in his +own shop where he could sell his sweated goods, with the best <a +name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>advantage +to himself and with the greatest modicum of disadvantage to his +neighbour, that one was left amazed at the dense apathy of those +who did not fall in with the nostrums they had heard. +Again, at other platforms, sleek men in broadcloth, who had never +seen a plough except at Agricultural Exhibitions, nor had got on +closer terms of friendship with a horse than to be bitten by him +as they passed along a street, discoursed upon the land.</p> +<p>“My friends, I say, the land is a fixed quantity, you +can’t increase it, and without it, it’s impossible to +live. ’Ow is it, then, that all the land of England +is in so few hands?” He paused and mopped his face, +and looking round, began again: “Friends—you’ll +allow me to style you Friends, I know, Friends in the sycred +cause of Liberty—the landed aristocracy is our enemy.</p> +<p>“I am not out for confiscation, why should I? I +’ave my ’ome purchased with the fruits of my own +hhonest toil . . .”</p> +<p>Before he could conclude his sentence, a dock labourer, +dressed in his Sunday suit of shoddy serge, check shirt, and +black silk handkerchief knotted loosely round his neck, <a +name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>looked up, +and interjected: “’Ard work, too, mate, that +’ere talkin’ in the sun is, that built your +’ome. Beats coal whippin’.”</p> +<p>Just for an instant the orator was disconcerted as a laugh ran +through the audience; but habit, joined to a natural gift of +public speaking, came to his aid, and he rejoined: “Brother +working-men, I say ditto to what has fallen from our friend +’ere upon my right. We all are working-men. +Some of us, like our friend, work with their ’ands, and +others with their ’eds. In either case, the Land is +what we ’ave to get at as an article of prime +necessity.”</p> +<p>Rapidly he sketched a state of things in which a happy +population, drawn from the slums, but all instinct with +agricultural knowledge, would be settled on the land, each on his +little farm, and all devoted to intensive culture in the most +modern form. Trees would be all cut down, because they only +“’arbour” birds that eat the corn. Hedges +would all be extirpated, for it is known to every one that mice +and rats and animals of every kind live under them, and that they +only serve to shelter game. Each man would own <a +name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>a gun and +be at liberty to kill a “rabbut” or a +“’are”—“animals, as we say at +college, <i>feery naturrey</i>, and placed by Providence upon the +land.”</p> +<p>These noble sentiments evoked applause, which was a little +mitigated by an interjection from a man in gaiters, with a +sunburnt face, of: “Mister, if every one is to have a gun +and shoot, ’ow long will these ’ere ’ares and +rabbuts last?”</p> +<p>A little farther on, as thinly covered by his indecently +transparent veil of reciprocity as a bare-footed dancer in her +Grecian clothes, or a tall ostrich under an inch of sand, and yet +as confident as either of them that the essential is concealed, a +staunch Protectionist discoursed. With copious notes, to +which he turned at intervals, when he appealed to those +statistics which can be made in any question to fit every side, +he talked of loss of trade. “Friends, we must tax the +foreigner. It is this way, you see, our working classes +have to compete with other nations, all of which enjoy protective +duties. I ask you, is it reasonable that we should let a +foreign article come into England?”</p> +<p>Here a dour-looking Scotsman almost spat <a +name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>out the +words: “Man, can ye no juist say Great Britain?” and +received a bow and “Certainly, my friend, I am not here to +wound the sentiments of any man . . . as I was saying, is it +reasonable that goods should come to England . . . I mean Great +Britain, duty free, and yet articles we manufacture have to pay +heavy duties in any foreign port?”</p> +<p>“’Ow about bread?” came from a voice upon +the outskirts of the crowd.</p> +<p>The speaker reddened, and resumed: “My friend, man doth +not live by bread alone; still, I understand the point. A +little dooty upon corn, say five shillings in the quarter, would +not hurt any one. We’ve got to do it. The +foreigner is the enemy. I am a Christian; but yet, +readin’ as I often do the Sermon on the Mount, I never saw +we had to lie down in the dust and let ourselves be trampled +on.</p> +<p>“Who are to be the inheritors of the earth? Our +Lord says, ‘Blessed are the meek; they shall inherit +it.’”</p> +<p>He paused, and was about to clinch his argument, when a tall +Irishman, after expectorating judiciously upon a vacant space +between two listeners, shot in: “Shure, then, <a +name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>the English +are the meekest of the lot, for they have got the greater part of +it.”</p> +<p>At other gatherings Socialists held forth under the red +flag. “That banner, comrades, which ’as braved +a ’undred fights, and the mere sight of which makes the +Capitalistic bloodsucker tremble as he feels the time approach +when Lybor shall come into its inheritance and the Proletariat +shyke off its chaine and join ’ands all the world over, +despizin’ ryce and creed and all the artificial +obstructions that a designin’ Priest-’ood and a +blood-stained Plutocracy ’ave placed between them to +distract their attention from the great cause of Socialism, the +great cause that mykes us comrades . . . ’ere, keep off my +’oof, you blighter, with your ammunition wagons. . . +.”</p> +<p>Religionists of various sects, all with long hair and dressed +in shabby black, the Book either before them on a campaigning +lectern or tucked beneath one arm, called upon Christian men to +dip their hands into the precious blood and drink from the +eternal fountain of pure water that is to be found in the +Apocalypse. “Come to ’Im, come to ’Im, I +say, my friends, come straight; oh, it is <a +name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>joyful to +belong to Jesus. Don’t stop for anything, come to +’Im now like little children. . . . Let us sing a +’ymn. You know it, most of you; but brother +’ere,” and as he spoke he turned towards a pale-faced +youth who held a bag to take the offertory, that sacrament that +makes the whole world kin, “will lead it for +you.”</p> +<p>The acolyte cleared his throat raucously, and to a popular air +struck up the refrain of “Let us jump joyful on the +road.” Flat-breasted girls and pale-faced boys took +up the strain, and as it floated through the heavy air, +reverberating from the pile of public buildings, gradually all +the crowd joined in; shyly at first and then whole-heartedly, and +by degrees the vulgar tune and doggerel verses took on an air of +power and dignity, and when the hymn was finished, the tears +stood in the eyes of grimy-looking women and of red-faced +men. Then, with his bag, the pale-faced hymn-leader went +through the crowd, reaping a plenteous harvest, all in copper, +from those whose hearts had felt, but for a moment, the full +force of sympathy.</p> +<p>Suffragist ladies discussed upon “the <a +name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +138</span>Question,” shocking their hearers as they touched +on prostitution and divorce, and making even stolid policemen, +who stood sweating in their thick blue uniforms, turn their eyes +upon the ground.</p> +<p>After them, Suffragette girls bounded upon the cart, +consigning fathers, brothers, and the whole male section of +mankind straight to perdition as they held forth upon the Vote, +that all-heal of the female politician, who thinks by means of it +to wipe out all those disabilities imposed upon her by an +unreasonable Nature and a male Deity, who must have worked alone +up in the Empyrean without the humanising influence of a +wife.</p> +<p>Little by little the various groups dissolved, the speakers +and their friends forcing their “literatoor” upon the +passers-by, who generally appeared to look into the air a foot or +two above their heads, as they went homewards through the +streets.</p> +<p>The Anarchists were the last to leave, a faithful few still +congregating around a youth in a red necktie who denounced the +other speakers with impartiality, averring that they were +“humbugs every one of them,” and, for <a +name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>his part, +he believed only in dynamite, by means of which he hoped some day +to be able to devote “all the blood-suckers to destruction, +and thus to bring about the reign of brotherhood.”</p> +<p>The little knot of the elect applauded loudly, and the youth, +catching the policeman’s eye fixed on him, descended +hurriedly from off the chair on which he had been perorating, +remarking that “it was time to be going home to have a bit +of dinner, as he was due to speak at Salford in the +evening.”</p> +<p>Slowly the square was emptied, the last group or two of people +disappearing into the mouths of the incoming streets just as a +Roman crowd must have been swallowed up in the vomitoria of an +amphitheatre, after a show of gladiators.</p> +<p>Torn newspapers and ends of cigarettes were the sole result of +all the rhetoric that had been poured out so liberally upon the +assembled thousands in the square.</p> +<p>Two or three street boys in their shirt-sleeves, bare-footed +and bare-headed, their trousers held up by a piece of string, +played about listlessly, after the fashion of their kind <a +name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>on Sunday +in a manufacturing town, when the life of the streets is dead, +and when men’s minds are fixed either upon the mysteries of +the faith or upon beer, things in which children have but little +share.</p> +<p>The usual Sabbath gloom was creeping on the town and +dinner-time approaching, when from a corner of the square +appeared a man advancing rapidly. He glanced about +inquiringly, and for a moment a look of disappointment crossed +his face. Mounting the steps that lead up to the +smoke-coated Areopagus, he stopped just for an instant, as if to +draw his breath and gather his ideas. Decently dressed in +shabby black, his trousers frayed a little above the heels of his +elastic-sided boots, his soft felt hat that covered long but +scanty hair just touched with grey, he had an air as of a plaster +figure set in the middle of a pond, as he stood silhouetted +against the background of the buildings, forlorn yet +resolute.</p> +<p>The urchins, who had gathered round him, had a look upon their +faces as of experienced critics at a play; that look of +expectation and subconscious irony which characterises all their +kind at public spectacles.</p> +<p><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>Their +appearance, although calculated to appal a speaker broken to the +platform business, did not influence the man who stood upon the +steps. Taking off his battered hat, he placed it and his +umbrella carefully upon the ground. A light, as of the +interior fire that burned in the frail tenement of flesh so +fiercely that it illuminated his whole being, shone in his mild +blue eyes. Clearing his throat, and after running his +nervous hands through his thin hair, he pitched his voice well +forward, as if the deserted square had been packed full of people +prepared to hang upon his words. His voice, a little hoarse +and broken during his first sentences, gradually grew clearer, +developing a strength quite incommensurate with the source from +which it came.</p> +<p>“My friends,” he said, causing the boys to grin +and waking up the dozing policeman, “I have a doctrine to +proclaim. Love only rules the world. The Greek word +<i>caritas</i> in the New Testament should have been rendered +love. Love suffereth long. Love is not puffed up; +love beareth all things. That is what the Apostle really +meant to say. Often within this very square I have stood +listening to the <a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +142</span>speeches, and have weighed them in my mind. It is +not for me to criticise, only to advocate my own belief. +Friends . . .”</p> +<p>As his voice had gathered strength, two or three working-men, +attracted by the sight of a man speaking to the air, surrounded +but by the street boys and the nodding policeman on his beat, had +gathered round about. Dressed in their Sunday clothes; well +washed, and with the look as of restraint that freedom from their +accustomed toil often imparts to them on Sunday, they listened +stolidly, with that toleration that accepts all doctrines, from +that of highest Toryism down to Anarchy, and acts on none of +them. The speaker, spurred on by the unwonted sight of +listeners, for several draggled women had drawn near, and an +ice-cream seller had brought his donkey-cart up to the nearest +curb-stone, once more launched into his discourse.</p> +<p>“Friends, when I hear the acerbity of the address of +some; when I hear doctrines setting forth the rights but leaving +out the duties of the working class; when I hear men defend the +sweater and run down the sweated, calling them thriftless, idle, +and intemperate, when <a name="page143"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 143</span>often they are but unfortunate, I +ask myself, what has become of Love? Who sees more clearly +than I do myself what the poor have to suffer? Do I not +live amongst them and share their difficulties? Who can +divine better than one who has imagination—and in that +respect I thank my stars I have not been left quite +unendowed—what are the difficulties of those high placed by +fortune, who yet have got to strive to keep their place?</p> +<p>“Sweaters and sweated, the poor, the rich, men, women, +children, all mankind, suffer from want of Love. I am not +here to say that natural laws will ever cease to operate, or that +there will not be great inequalities, if not of fortune, yet of +endowments, to the end of Time. What the Great Power who +sent us here intended, only He can tell. One thing He +placed within the grasp of every one, capacity to love. +Think, friends, what England might become under the reign of +universal love. The murky fumes that now defile the +landscape, the manufactories in which our thousands toil for +others, the rivers vile with refuse, the knotted bodies and the +faces scarcely human in their abject struggle for their daily +bread, <a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +144</span>would disappear. Bradford and Halifax and Leeds +would once again be fair and clean. The ferns would grow +once more in Shipley Glen, and in the valleys about Sheffield the +scissor-grinders would ply their trade upon streams bright and +sparkling, as they were of yore. In Halifax, the Roman +road, now black with coal-dust and with mud, would shine as +well-defined as it does where now and then it crops out from the +ling upon the moors, just as the Romans left it polished by their +caligulæ. Why, do you ask me? Because all +sordid motives would be gone, and of their superfluity the rich +would give to those less blessed by Providence. The poor +would grudge no one the gifts of fortune, and thus the need for +grinding toil would disappear, as the struggle and the strain for +daily bread would fade into the past.</p> +<p>“Picture to yourselves, my friends, an England once more +green and merry, with the air fresh and not polluted by the smoke +of foetid towns.</p> +<p>“’Tis pleasant, friends, on a spring morning to +hear the village bells calling to church, even although they do +not call you to attend. It <a name="page145"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 145</span>heals the soul to see the +honeysuckle and the eglantine and smell the new-mown hay. . . +.</p> +<p>“Then comes a chill when on your vision rises the +England of the manufacturing town, dark, dreary, and befouled +with smoke. How different it might be in the perpetual May +morning I have sketched for you.</p> +<p>“Love suffereth all things, endureth all things, +createth all things. . . .”</p> +<p>He paused, and, looking round, saw he was all alone. The +boys had stolen away, and the last workman’s sturdy back +could be just seen as it was vanishing towards the +public-house.</p> +<p>The speaker sighed, and wiped the perspiration from his +forehead with a soiled handkerchief.</p> +<p>Then, picking up his hat and his umbrella, a far-off look came +into his blue eyes as he walked homewards almost jauntily, +conscious that the inner fire had got the better of the fleshly +tenement, and that his work was done.</p> +<h2><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +146</span>XIII<br /> +EL MASGAD</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> camp was pitched upon the north +bank of the Wad Nefis, not far from Tamoshlacht. Above it +towered the Atlas, looking like a wall, with scarce a peak to +break its grim monotony. A fringe of garden lands enclosed +the sanctuary, in which the great Sherif lived in patriarchal +style; half saint, half warrior, but wholly a merchant at the +bottom, as are so many Arabs; all his surroundings enjoyed +peculiar sanctity.</p> +<p>In the long avenue of cypresses the birds lived safely, for no +one dared to frighten them, much less to fire a shot. His +baraka, that is the grace abounding, that distils from out the +clothes, the person and each action of men such as the Sherif, +who claim descent in apostolic continuity from the Blessed One, +<a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +147</span>Mohammed, Allah’s own messenger, protected +everything. Of a mean presence, like the man who stood upon +the Areopagus and beckoned with his hand, before he cast the +spell of his keen, humoristic speech upon the Greeks, the holy +one was of a middle stature. His face was marked with +smallpox. His clothes were dirty, and his haik he sometimes +mended with a thorn, doubling it, and thrusting one end through a +slit to form a safety-pin. His shoes were never new, his +turban like an old bath towel; yet in his belt he wore a dagger +with a gold hilt, for he was placed so far above the law, by +virtue of his blood, that though the Koran especially enjoins the +faithful not to wear gold, all that he did was good.</p> +<p>Though he drank nothing but pure water, or, for that matter, +lapped it like a camel, clearing the scum off with his fingers if +on a journey, he might have drank champagne or brandy, or mixed +the two of them, for the Arabs are the most logical of men, and +to them such a man as the Sherif is holy, not from anything he +does, but because Allah has ordained it. An attitude of +mind as good as <a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +148</span>any other, and one that, after all, makes a man +tolerant of human frailties.</p> +<p>Allah gives courage, virtue, eloquence, or skill in +horsemanship. He gives or he withholds them for his good +pleasure; what he has written he has written, and therefore he +who is without these gifts is not held blamable. If he +should chance to be a saint, that is a true descendant, in the +male line, from him who answered nobly when his foolish followers +asked him if his young wife, Ayesha, should sit at his right hand +in paradise, “By Allah, not she; but old Kadijah, she who +when all men mocked me, cherished and loved, she shall sit at my +right hand,” that is enough for them.</p> +<p>So the Sherif was honoured, partly because he had great jars +stuffed with gold coin, the produce of his olive yards, and also +of the tribute that the faithful brought him; partly because of +his descent; and perhaps, more than all, on account of his great +store of Arab lore on every subject upon earth. His fame +was great, extending right through the Sus, the Draa, and down to +Tazaûelt, where it met the opposing current of the grace of +Bashir-el-Biruk, Sherif of the Wad-Nun. He liked to talk to +<a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +149</span>Europeans, partly to show his learning, and partly to +hear about the devilries they had invented to complicate their +lives.</p> +<p>So when the evening prayer was called, and all was silent in +his house, the faithful duly prostrate on their faces before +Allah, who seems to take as little heed of them as he does of the +other warring sects, each with its doctrine of damnation for +their brethren outside the pale, the Sherif, who seldom prayed, +knowing that even if he did so he could neither make nor yet +unmake himself in Allah’s sight, called for his mule, and +with two Arabs running by his side set out towards the +unbeliever’s camp.</p> +<p>Though the Sherif paid no attention to it, the scene he rode +through was like fairyland. The moonbeams falling on the +domes of house and mosque and sanctuary lit up the green and +yellow tiles, making them sparkle like enamels. Long +shadows of the cypresses cast great bands of darkness upon the +red sand of the avenue. The croaking of the frogs sounded +metallic, and by degrees resolved itself into a continuous +tinkle, soothing and musical, in the Atlas night. Camels +lay ruminating, their <a name="page150"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 150</span>monstrous packs upon their +backs. As the Sherif passed by them on his mule they +snarled and bubbled, and a faint odour as of a menagerie, mingled +with that of tar, with which the Arabs cure their girth and +saddle galls, floated towards him, although no doubt custom had +made it so familiar that he never heeded it.</p> +<p>From the Arab huts that gather around every sanctuary, their +owners living on the baraka, a high-pitched voice to the +accompaniment of a two-stringed guitar played with a piece of +stiff palmetto leaf, and the monotonous Arab drum, that if you +listen to it long enough invades the soul, blots from the mind +the memory of towns, and makes the hearer long to cast his hat +into the sea and join the dwellers in the tents, blended so +inextricably with the shrill cricket’s note and the vast +orchestra of the insects that were praising Allah on that night, +each after his own fashion, that it was difficult to say where +the voice ended and the insects’ hum began.</p> +<p>Still, in despite of all, the singing Arab, croaking of the +frogs, and the shrill pæans of the insects, the night +seemed calm and silent, for all the voices were attuned so well +to the <a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +151</span>surroundings that the serenity of the whole scene was +unimpaired.</p> +<p>The tents lay in the moonlight like gigantic mushrooms; the +rows of bottles cut in blue cloth with which the Arabs ornament +them stood out upon the canvas as if in high relief. The +first light dew was falling, frosting the canvas as a piece of +ice condenses air upon a glass. In a long line before the +tents stood the pack animals munching their corn placed on a +cloth upon the ground.</p> +<p>A dark-grey horse, still with his saddle on for fear of the +night air, was tied near to the door of the chief tent, well in +his owner’s eye. Now and again he pawed the ground, +looked up, and neighed, straining upon the hobbles that confined +his feet fast to the picket line.</p> +<p>On a camp chair his owner sat and smoked, and now and then +half got up from his seat when the horse plunged or any of the +mules stepped on their shackles and nearly fell upon the +ground.</p> +<p>As the Sherif approached he rose to welcome him, listening to +all the reiterated compliments and inquiries that no +self-respecting Arab ever omits when he may chance to meet a +friend.</p> +<p><a name="page152"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 152</span>A +good address, like mercy, is twice blest, both in the giver and +in the recipient of it; but chiefly it is beneficial to the +giver, for in addition to the pleasure that he gives, he earns +his own respect. Well did both understand this aspect of +the question, and so the compliments stretched out into +perspectives quite unknown in Europe, until the host, taking his +visitor by the hand, led him inside the tent. +“Ambassador,” said the Sherif, although he knew his +friend was but a Consul, “my heart yearned towards thee, so +I have come to talk with thee of many things, because I know that +thou art wise, not only in the learning of thy people, but in +that of our own.”</p> +<p>The Consul, not knowing what the real import of the visit +might portend, so to speak felt his adversary’s blade, +telling him he was welcome, and that at all times his tent and +house were at the disposition of his friend. Clapping his +hands he called for tea, and when it came, the little flowered +and gold-rimmed glasses, set neatly in a row, the red tin box +with two compartments, one for the tea and one for the blocks of +sugar, the whole surrounding the small dome-shaped pewter teapot, +all placed <a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +153</span>in order on the heavy copper tray, he waved the +equipage towards the Sherif, tacitly recognising his superiority +in the art of tea-making. Seated beside each other on a +mattress they drank the sacramental three cups of tea, and then, +after the Consul had lit his cigarette, the Sherif having refused +one with a gesture of his hand and a half-murmured +“Haram”—that is, “It is +prohibited”—they then began to talk.</p> +<p>Much had they got to say about the price of barley and the +drought; of tribal fights; of where our Lord the Sultan was, and +if he had reduced the rebels in the hills,—matters that +constitute the small talk of the tents, just as the weather and +the fashionable divorce figure in drawing-rooms. Knowing +what was expected of him, the Consul touched on European +politics, upon inventions, the progress that the French had made +upon the southern frontier of Algeria; and as he thus unpacked +his news with due prolixity, the Sherif now and again interjected +one or another of those pious phrases, such as “Allah is +merciful,” or “God’s ways are wonderful,” +which at the same time show the interjector’s piety, and +give the man <a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +154</span>who is discoursing time to collect himself, and to +prepare another phrase.</p> +<p>After a little conversation languished, and the two men who +knew each other well sat listlessly, the Consul smoking and the +Sherif passing the beads of a cheap wooden rosary between the +fingers of his right hand, whilst with his left he waved a cotton +pocket handkerchief to keep away the flies.</p> +<p>Looking up at his companion, “Consul,” he said, +for he had now dropped the Ambassador with which he first had +greeted him, “you know us well, you speak our tongue; even +you know Shillah, the language of the accursed Berbers, and have +translated Sidi Hammo into the speech of Nazarenes-I beg your +pardon—of the Rumi,” for he had seen a flush rise on +the Consul’s cheek.</p> +<p>“You like our country, and have lived in it for more +than twenty years. I do not speak to you about our law, for +every man cleaves to his own, but of our daily life. Tell +me now, which of the two makes a man happier, the law of Sidna +Aissa, or that of our Prophet, God’s own +Messenger?”</p> +<p>He stopped and waited courteously, playing <a +name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>with his +naked toes, just as a European plays with his fingers in the +intervals of speech.</p> +<p>The Consul sent a veritable solfatara of tobacco smoke out of +his mouth and nostrils, and laying down his cigarette returned no +answer for a little while.</p> +<p>Perchance his thoughts were wandering towards the cities +brilliant with light—the homes of science and of art. +Cities of vain endeavour in which men pass their lives thinking +of the condition of their poorer brethren, but never making any +move to get down off their backs. He thought of London and +of Paris and New York, the dwelling-places both of law and order, +and the abodes of noise. He pondered on their material +advancement: their tubes that burrow underneath the ground, in +which run railways carrying their thousands all the day and far +into the night; upon their hospitals, their charitable +institutions, their legislative assemblies, and their museums, +with their picture-galleries, their theatres—on the vast +sums bestowed to forward arts and sciences, and on the poor who +shiver in their streets and cower under railway arches in the +dark winter nights.</p> +<p><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>As he +sat with his cigarette smouldering beside him in a little brazen +pan, the night breeze brought the heavy scent of orange blossoms, +for it was spring, and all the gardens of the sanctuary each had +its orange grove. Never had they smelt sweeter, and never +had the croaking of the frogs seemed more melodious, or the +cricket’s chirp more soothing to the soul.</p> +<p>A death’s-head moth whirred through the tent, poising +itself, just as a humming-bird hangs stationary probing the +petals of a flower. The gentle murmur of its wings brought +back the Consul’s mind from its excursus in the regions of +reality, or unreality, for all is one according to the point of +view.</p> +<p>“Sherif,” he said, “what you have asked me I +will answer to the best of my ability.</p> +<p>“Man’s destiny is so precarious that neither your +law nor our own appear to me to influence it, or at the best but +slightly.</p> +<p>“One of your learned Talebs, or our men of science, as +they call themselves, with the due modesty of conscious worth, is +passing down a street, and from a house-top slips a tile and +falls upon his head. There he lies huddled up, an ugly +bundle of old clothes, inert and <a name="page157"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 157</span>shapeless, whilst his immortal soul +leaves his poor mortal body, without which all its divinity is +incomplete; then perhaps after an hour comes back again, and the +man staggering to his feet begins to talk about God’s +attributes, or about carrying a line of railroad along a +precipice.”</p> +<p>The Sherif, who had been listening with the respect that every +well-bred Arab gives to the man who has possession of the word, +said, “It was so written. The man could not have died +or never could have come to life again had it not been +Allah’s will.”</p> +<p>His friend smiled grimly and rejoined, “That is so; but +as Allah never manifests his will, except in action, just as we +act towards a swarm of ants, annihilating some and sparing others +as we pass, it does not matter very much what Allah thinks about, +as it regards ourselves.”</p> +<p>“When I was young,” slowly said the Sherif, +“whilst in the slave trade far away beyond the desert, I +met the pagan tribes.</p> +<p>“They had no God . . . like Christians. . . Pardon +me, I know you know our phrase: nothing but images of wood.</p> +<p><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +158</span>“Those infidels, who, by the way, were just as +apt at a good bargain as if their fathers all had bowed +themselves in Christian temple or in mosque, when they received +no answer to their prayers, would pull their accursed images down +from their shrines, paint them jet black, and hang them from a +nail.</p> +<p>“Heathens they were, ignorant even of the name of God, +finding their heaven and their hell here upon earth, just like +the animals, but . . . sometimes I have thought not quite bereft +of reason, for they had not the difficulties you have about the +will of Allah and the way in which he works.</p> +<p>“They made their gods themselves, just as we do,” +and as he spoke he lowered his voice and peered out of the tent +door; “but wiser than ourselves they kept a tight hand on +them, and made their will, as far as possible, coincide with +their own.</p> +<p>“It is the hour of prayer. . . .</p> +<p>“How pleasantly the time passes away conversing with +one’s friends”; and as he spoke he stood erect, +turning towards Mecca, as mechanically as the needle turns +towards the pole.</p> +<p><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>His +whole appearance altered and his mean presence suffered a subtle +change. With eyes fixed upon space, and hands uplifted, he +testified to the existence of the one God, the Compassionate, the +Merciful, the Bounteous, the Generous One, who alone giveth +victory.</p> +<p>Then, sinking down, he laid his forehead on the ground, +bringing his palms together. Three times he bowed himself, +and then rising again upon his feet recited the confession of his +faith.</p> +<p>The instant he had done he sat him down again; but gravely and +with the air of one who has performed an action, half courteous, +half obligatory, but refreshing to the soul.</p> +<p>The Consul, who well knew his ways, and knew that probably he +seldom prayed at home, and that the prayers he had just seen most +likely were a sort of affirmation of his neutral attitude before +a stranger, yet was interested.</p> +<p>Then, when the conversation was renewed, he said to him, +“Prayer seems to me, Sherif, to be the one great difference +between the animals and man.</p> +<p>“As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat, and +propagate our species, just as they do; <a +name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>but no one +ever heard of any animal who had addressed himself to +God.”</p> +<p>A smile flitted across the pock-marked features of the +descendant of the Prophet, and looking gravely at his +friend,—</p> +<p>“Consul,” he said, “Allah to you has given +many things. He has endowed you with your fertile brains, +that have searched into forces which had remained unknown in +nature since the sons of Adam first trod the surface of the +earth. All that you touch you turn to gold, and as our +saying goes, ‘Gold builds a bridge across the +sea.’</p> +<p>“Ships, aeroplanes, cannons of monstrous size, and +little instruments by which you see minutest specks as if they +were great rocks; all these you have and yet you doubt His +power.</p> +<p>“To us, the Arabs, we who came from the lands of fire in +the Hejaz and Hadramut. We who for centuries have remained +unchanged, driving our camels as our fathers drove them, eating +and drinking as our fathers ate and drank, and living face to +face with God. . . . Consu’, you should not smile, +for do we not live closer to Him than you do, under the stars <a +name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>at night, +out in the sun by day, our lives almost as simple as the lives of +animals? To us He has vouchsafed gifts that He either has +withheld from you, or that you have neglected in your pride.</p> +<p>“Thus we still keep our faith. . . . Faith in the +God who set the planets in their courses, bridled the tides, and +caused the palm to grow beside the river so that the traveller +may rest beneath its shade, and resting, praise His name.</p> +<p>“You ask me, who ever heard of any animal that addressed +himself to God. He in His infinite power . . . be sure of +it . . . is He not merciful and compassionate, wonderful in His +ways, harder to follow than the track that a gazelle leaves in +the desert sands; it cannot be that He could have denied them +access to His ear?</p> +<p>“Did not the lizard, Consul . . ., Hamed el Angri, the +runner, the man who never can rest long in any place, but must be +ever tightening his belt and pulling up his slippers at the heel +to make ready for the road . . ., did he not tell you of El +Hokaitsallah, the little lizard who, being late upon the day when +<a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>Allah +took away speech from all the animals, ran on the beam in the +great mosque at Mecca, and dumbly scratched his +prayer?”</p> +<p>The Consul nodded. “Hamed el Angri,” he +said, “no doubt is still upon the road, by whose side he +will die one day of hunger or of thirst. . . . Yes; he told +me of it, and I wrote it in a book. . . .”</p> +<p>“Write this, then,” the Sherif went on, +“Allah in his compassion, and in case the animals, bereft +of speech, that is in Arabic, for each has his own tongue, should +not be certain of the direction of the Kiblah, has given the +power to a poor insect which we call El Masgad to pray for all of +them. With its head turned to Mecca, as certainly as if he +had the needle of the mariners, he prays at El Magreb.</p> +<p>“All day he sits erect and watches for his prey. +At eventide, just at the hour of El Magreb, when from the +‘alminares’ of the Mosques the muezzin calls upon the +faithful for their prayers, he adds his testimony.</p> +<p>“Consu’, Allah rejects no prayer, however humble, +and that the little creature knows. He knows that Allah +does not answer every prayer; <a name="page163"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 163</span>but yet the prayer remains; it is +not blotted out, and perhaps some day it may fructify, for it is +written in the book.</p> +<p>“Therefore El Masgad prays each night for all the +animals, yet being but a little thing and simple, it has not +strength to testify at all the hours laid down in Mecca by our +Lord Mohammed, he of the even teeth, the curling hair, and the +grave smile, that never left his face after he had communed with +Allah in the cave.”</p> +<p>The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and, stretching +over to his friend, held out his hand to him.</p> +<p>“Sherif,” he said, “maybe El Masgad prays +for you and me, as well as for its kind?”</p> +<p>The answer came: “Consu’, doubt not; it is a +little animal of God, . . . we too are in His hand. . . +.”</p> +<h2><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +164</span>XIV<br /> +FEAST DAY IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> great Capilla, the largest in +the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay, was built round a huge square, +almost a quarter of a mile across.</p> +<p>Upon three sides ran the low, continuous line of houses, like +a “row” in a Scotch mining village or a phalanstery +designed by Prudhon or St. Simon in their treatises; but by the +grace of a kind providence never carried out, either in bricks or +stone.</p> +<p>Each dwelling-place was of the same design and size as all the +rest. Rough tiles made in the Jesuit times, but now +weathered and broken, showing the rafters tied with raw hide in +many places, formed the long roof, that looked a little like the +pent-house of a tennis court.</p> +<p><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>A +deep verandah ran in front, stretching from one end to the other +of the square, supported on great balks of wood, which, after +more than two hundred years and the assaults of weather and the +all-devouring ants, still showed the adze marks where they had +been dressed. The timber was so hard that you could +scarcely drive a nail into it, despite the flight of time since +it was first set up. Rings fixed about six feet from the +ground were screwed into the pillars of the verandah, before +every door, to fasten horses to, exactly as they are in an old +Spanish town.</p> +<p>Against the wall of almost every house, just by the door, was +set a chair or two of heavy wood, with the seat formed by strips +of hide, on which the hair had formerly been left, but long ago +rubbed off by use, or eaten by the ants.</p> +<p>The owner of the house sat with the back of the strong chair +tilted against the wall, dressed in a loose and pleated shirt, +with a high turned-down collar open at the throat, and spotless +white duck trousers, that looked the whiter by their contrast +with his brown, naked feet.</p> +<p>His home-made palm-tree hat was placed <a +name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>upon the +ground beside him, and his cloak of coarse red baize was thrown +back from his shoulders, as he sat smoking a cigarette rolled in +a maize leaf, for in the Jesuit capillas only women smoked +cigars.</p> +<p>At every angle of the square a sandy trail led out, either to +the river or the woods, the little patches planted with mandioca, +or to the maze of paths that, like the points outside a junction, +eventually joined in one main trail, that ran from Itapua on the +Paraná, up to Asuncion.</p> +<p>The church, built of wood cut in the neighbouring forest, had +two tall towers, and followed in its plan the pattern of all the +churches in the New World built by the Jesuits, from California +down to the smallest mission in the south. It filled the +fourth side of the square, and on each side of it there rose two +feathery palms, known as the tallest in the Missions, which +served as landmarks for travellers coming to the place, if they +had missed their road. So large and well-proportioned was +the church, it seemed impossible that it had been constructed +solely by the Indians themselves, under the direction of the +missionaries.</p> +<p><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>The +overhanging porch and flight of steps that ran down to the grassy +sward in the middle of the town gave it an air as of a cathedral +reared to nature in the wilds, for the thick jungle flowed up +behind it and almost touched its walls.</p> +<p>Bells of great size, either cast upon the spot or brought at +vast expense from Spain, hung in the towers. On this, the +feast day of the Blessed Virgin, the special patron of the +settlement, they jangled ceaselessly, the Indians taking turns to +haul upon the dried lianas that served instead of ropes. +Though they pulled vigorously, the bells sounded a little +muffled, as if they strove in vain against the vigorous nature +that rendered any work of man puny and insignificant in the +Paraguayan wilds.</p> +<p>Inside, the fane was dark, the images of saints were dusty, +their paint was cracked, their gilding tarnished, making them +look a little like the figures in a New Zealand pah, as they +loomed through the darkness of the aisle. On the neglected +altar, for at that time priests were a rarity in the Reductions, +the Indians had placed great bunches of red flowers, and now and +then a humming-bird flitted in through <a +name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>the +glassless windows and hung poised above them; then darted out +again, with a soft, whirring sound. Over the whole capilla, +in which at one time several thousand Indians had lived, but now +reduced to seventy or eighty at the most, there hung an air of +desolation. It seemed as if man, in his long protracted +struggle with the forces of the woods, had been defeated, and had +accepted his defeat, content to vegetate, forgotten by the world, +in the vast sea of green.</p> +<p>On this particular day, the annual festival of the Blessed +Virgin, there was an air of animation, for from far and near, +from Jesuit capilla, from straw-thatched huts lost in the +clearings of the primeval forest, from the few cattle ranches +that then existed, and from the little town of Itapua, fifty +miles away, the scanty population had turned out to attend the +festival.</p> +<p>Upon the forest tracks, from earliest dawn, long lines of +white-clad women, barefooted, with their black hair cut square +across the forehead and hanging down their backs, had marched as +silently as ghosts. All of them smoked great, green cigars, +and as they <a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +169</span>marched along, their leader carrying a torch, till the +sun rose and jaguars went back to their lairs, they never talked; +but if a woman in the rear of the long line wished to converse +with any comrade in the front she trotted forward till she +reached her friend and whispered in her ear. When they +arrived at the crossing of the little river they bathed, or, at +the least, washed carefully, and gathering a bunch of flowers, +stuck them into their hair. They crossed the stream, and on +arriving at the plaza they set the baskets, which they had +carried on their heads, upon the ground, and sitting down beside +them on the grass, spread out their merchandise. Oranges +and bread, called “chipa,” made from mandioca flour +and cheese, with vegetables and various homely sweetmeats, ground +nuts, rolls of sugar done up in plaintain leaves, and known as +“rapadura,” were the chief staples of their +trade. Those who had asses let them loose to feed; and if +upon the forest trails the women had been silent, once in the +safety of the town no flight of parrots in a maize field could +have chattered louder than they did as they sat waiting by their +wares. Soon the square filled, and men <a +name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>arriving +tied their horses in the shade, slackening their broad hide +girths, and piling up before them heaps of the leaves of the palm +called “Pindó” in Guarani, till they were cool +enough to eat their corn. Bands of boys, for in those days +most of the men had been killed off in the past war, came +trooping in, accompanied by crowds of women and of girls, who +carried all their belongings, for there were thirteen women to a +man, and the youngest boy was at a premium amongst the Indian +women, who in the villages, where hardly any men were left, +fought for male stragglers like unchained tigresses. A few +old men came riding in on some of the few native horses left, for +almost all the active, little, undersized breed of Paraguay had +been exhausted in the war. They, too, had bands of women +trotting by their sides, all of them anxious to unsaddle, to take +the horses down to bathe, or to perform any small office that the +men required of them. All of them smoked continuously, and +each of them was ready with a fresh cigarette as soon as the old +man or boy whom they accompanied finished the stump he held +between his lips. The women <a name="page171"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 171</span>all were dressed in the long Indian +shirt called a “tupoi,” cut rather low upon the +breast, and edged with coarse black cotton lace, which every +Paraguayan woman wore. Their hair was as black as a +crow’s back, and quite as shiny, and their white teeth so +strong that they could tear the ears of corn out of a maize cob +like a horse munching at his corn.</p> +<p>Then a few Correntino gauchos next appeared, dressed in their +national costume of loose black merino trousers, stuffed into +long boots, whose fronts were all embroidered in red silk. +Their silver spurs, whose rowels were as large as saucers, just +dangled off their heels, only retained in place by a flat chain, +that met upon the instep, clasped with a lion’s head. +Long hair and brown vicuna ponchos, soft black felt hats, and red +silk handkerchiefs tied loosely round their necks marked them as +strangers, though they spoke Guarani.</p> +<p>They sat upon their silver-mounted saddles, with their toes +resting in their bell-shaped stirrups, swaying so easily with +every movement that the word riding somehow or other seemed +inapplicable to men who, like the centaurs, formed one body with +the horse.</p> +<p><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>As +they drew near the plaza they raised their hands and touched +their horses with the spur, and, rushing like a whirlwind right +to the middle of the square, drew up so suddenly that their +horses seemed to have turned to statues for a moment, and then at +a slow trot, that made their silver trappings jingle as they +went, slowly rode off into the shade.</p> +<p>The plaza filled up imperceptibly, and the short grass was +covered by a white-clad throng of Indians. The heat +increased, and all the time the bells rang out, pulled vigorously +by relays of Indians, and at a given signal the people turned and +trooped towards the church, all carrying flowers in their +hands.</p> +<p>As there was no one to sing Mass, and as the organ long had +been neglected, the congregation listened to some prayers, read +from a book of Hours by an old Indian, who pronounced the Latin, +of which most likely he did not understand a word, as if it had +been Guarani. They sang “Las Flores á +Maria” all in unison, but keeping such good time that at a +little distance from the church it sounded like waves breaking on +a beach after a summer storm.</p> +<p><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>In +the neglected church, where no priest ministered or clergy +prayed, where all the stoops of holy water had for years been +dry, and where the Mass had been well-nigh forgotten as a whole, +the spirit lingered, and if it quickeneth upon that feast day in +the Paraguayan missions, that simple congregation were as +uplifted by it as if the sacrifice had duly been fulfilled with +candles, incense, and the pomp and ceremony of Holy Mother Church +upon the Seven Hills.</p> +<p>As every one except the Correntinos went barefooted, the exit +of the congregation made no noise except the sound of naked feet, +slapping a little on the wooden steps, and so the people silently +once again filled the plaza, where a high wooden arch had been +erected in the middle, for the sport of running at the ring.</p> +<p>The vegetable sellers had now removed from the middle of the +square, taking all their wares under the long verandah, and +several pedlars had set up their booths and retailed cheap +European trifles such as no one in the world but a Paraguayan +Indian could possibly require. Razors that would not cut, +and little looking-glasses in pewter frames made in <a +name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>Thuringia, +cheap clocks that human ingenuity was powerless to repair when +they had run their course of six months’ intermittent +ticking, and gaudy pictures representing saints who had ascended +to the empyrean, as it appeared, with the clothes that they had +worn in life, and all bald-headed, as befits a saint, were set +out side by side with handkerchiefs of the best China silk. +Sales were concluded after long-continued chaffering—that +higgling of the market dear to old-time economists, for no one +would have bought the smallest article, even below cost price, +had it been offered to him at the price the seller originally +asked.</p> +<p>Enrique Clerici, from Itapua, had transported all his pulperia +bodily for the occasion of the feast. It had not wanted +more than a small wagon to contain his stock-in-trade. Two +or three dozen bottles of square-faced gin of the Anchor brand, a +dozen of heady red wine from Catalonia, a pile of sardine boxes, +sweet biscuits, raisins from Malaga, esparto baskets full of +figs, and sundry pecks of apricots dried in the sun and cut into +the shape of ears, and hence called “orejones,” +completed all his store. He himself, tall and <a +name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>sunburnt, +stood dressed in riding-boots and a broad hat, with his revolver +in his belt, beside a pile of empty bottles, which he had always +ready, to hurl at customers if there should be any attempt either +at cheating or to rush his wares. He spoke the curious +lingo, half-Spanish, half-Italian, that so many of his countrymen +use in the River Plate; and all his conversation ran upon +Garibaldi, with whom he had campaigned in youth, upon Italia +Irredenta, and on the time when anarchy should sanctify mankind +by blood, as he said, and bring about the reign of universal +brotherhood.</p> +<p>He did a roaring trade, despite the competition of a native +Paraguayan, who had brought three demi-johns of Caña, for +men prefer the imported article the whole world over, though it +is vile, to native manufactures, even when cheap and good.</p> +<p>Just about twelve o’clock, when the sun almost burned a +hole into one’s head, the band got ready in the church +porch, playing upon old instruments, some of which may have +survived from Jesuit times, or, at the least, been copied in the +place, as the originals decayed.</p> +<p><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +176</span>Sackbuts and psalteries and shawms were there, with +serpents, gigantic clarionets, and curiously twisted oboes, and +drums, whose canvas all hung slack and gave a muffled sound when +they were beaten, and little fifes, ear-piercing and devilish, +were represented in that band. It banged and crashed +“La Palomita,” that tune of evil-sounding omen, for +to its strains prisoners were always ushered out to execution in +the times of Lopez, and as it played the players slowly walked +down the steps.</p> +<p>Behind them followed the alcalde, an aged Indian, dressed in +long cotton drawers, that at the knees were split into a fringe +that hung down to his ankles, a spotless shirt much pleated, and +a red cloak of fine merino cloth. In his right hand he +carried a long cane with a silver head—his badge of +office. Walking up to the door of his own house, by which +was set a table covered with glasses and with homemade cakes, he +gave the signal for the running at the ring.</p> +<p>The Correntino gauchos, two or three Paraguayans, and a German +married to a Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the <a +name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +177</span>sport. The band struck up, and a young Paraguayan +started the first course. Gripping his stirrups tightly +between his naked toes, and seated on an old “recao,” +surmounted by a sheepskin, he spurred his horse, a wall-eyed +skewbald, with his great iron spurs, tied to his bare insteps +with thin strips of hide. The skewbald, only half-tamed, +reared once or twice and bounded off, switching its ragged tail, +which had been half-eaten off by cows. The people yelled, a +“mosqueador!”—that is, a +“fly-flapper,” a grave fault in a horse in the eyes +of Spanish Americans—as the Paraguayan steered the skewbald +with the reins held high in his left hand, carrying the other +just above the level of his eyes, armed with a piece of cane +about a foot in length.</p> +<p>As he approached the arch, in which the ring dangled from a +string, his horse, either frightened by the shouting of the crowd +or by the arch itself, swerved and plunged violently, carrying +its rider through the thickest of the people, who separated like +a flock of sheep when a dog runs through it, cursing him +volubly. The German came the next, dressed in his Sunday +clothes, a slop-made suit of shoddy <a name="page178"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 178</span>cloth, riding a horse that all his +spurring could not get into full speed. The rider’s +round, fair face was burned a brick-dust colour, and as he +spurred and plied his whip, made out of solid tapir hide, the +sweat ran down in streams upon his coat. So intent was he +on flogging, that as he neared the ring he dropped his piece of +cane, and his horse, stopping suddenly just underneath the arch, +would have unseated him had he not clasped it round the +neck. Shouts of delight greeted this feat of horsemanship, +and one tall Correntino, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, +said to his fellow sitting next to him upon his horse, “The +very animals themselves despise the gringos. See how that +little white-nosed brute that he was riding knew that he was a +‘maturango,’ and nearly had him off.”</p> +<p>Next came Hijinio Rojas, a Paraguayan of the better classes, +sallow and Indian looking, dressed in clothes bought in Asuncion, +his trousers tucked into his riding-boots. His small black +hat, with the brim flattened up against his head by the wind +caused by the fury of the gallop of his active little roan with +four white feet, was kept upon his head by a <a +name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>black +ribbon knotted underneath his chin. As he neared the arch +his horse stepped double several times and fly jumped; but that +did not disturb him in the least, and, aiming well he touched the +ring, making it fly into the air. A shout went up, partly +in Spanish, partly in Guarani, from the assembled people, and +Rojas, reining in his horse, stopped him in a few bounds, so +sharply, that his unshod feet cut up the turf of the green plaza +as a skate cuts the ice. He turned and trotted gently to +the arch, and then, putting his horse to its top speed, stopped +it again beside the other riders, amid the “Vivas” of +the crowd. Then came the turn of the four Correntinos, who +rode good horses from their native province, had silver +horse-gear and huge silver spurs, that dangled from their +heels. They were all gauchos, born, as the saying goes, +“amongst the animals.” A dun with fiery eyes +and a black stripe right down his back, and with black markings +on both hocks, a chestnut skewbald, a “doradillo,” +and a horse of that strange mealy bay with a fern-coloured +muzzle, that the gauchos call a “Pangaré,” +carried them just as if their will and that of those who <a +name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>rode them +were identical. Without a signal, visible at least to any +but themselves, their horses started at full speed, reaching +occasionally at the bit, then dropping it again and bridling so +easy that one could ride them with a thread drawn from a +spider’s web. Their riders sat up easily, not riding +as a European rides, with his eyes fixed upon each movement of +his horse, but, as it were, divining them as soon as they were +made. Each of them took the ring, and all of them checked +their horses, as it were, by their volition, rather than the bit, +making the silver horse-gear rattle and their great silver spurs +jingle upon their feet. Each waited for the other at the +far side of the arch, and then turning in a line they started +with a shout, and as they passed right through the middle of the +square at a wild gallop, they swung down sideways from their +saddles and dragged their hands upon the ground. Swinging +up, apparently without an effort, back into their seats, when +they arrived at the point from where they had first started, they +reined up suddenly, making their horses plunge and rear, and then +by a light signal on the reins stand quietly in line, tossing the +foam <a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +181</span>into the air. Hijinio Rojas and the four centaurs +all received a prize, and the alcalde, pouring out wineglasses +full of gin, handed them to the riders, who, with a compliment or +two as to the order of their drinking, emptied them solemnly.</p> +<p>No other runners having come forward to compete, for in those +days horses were scarce throughout the Paraguayan Missions, the +sports were over, and the perspiring crowd went off to breakfast +at tables spread under the long verandahs, and silence fell upon +the square.</p> +<p>The long, hot hours during the middle of the day were passed +in sleeping. Some lay face downwards in the shade. +Others swung in white cotton hammocks, keeping them in perpetual +motion, till they fell asleep, by pushing with a naked toe upon +the ground. At last the sun, the enemy, as the Arabs call +him, slowly declined, and white-robed women, with their +“tupois” slipping half off their necks, began to come +out into the verandahs, slack and perspiring after the midday +struggle with the heat.</p> +<p>Then bands of girls sauntered down to the <a +name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>river, from +whence soon came the sound of merry laughter as they splashed +about and bathed.</p> +<p>The Correntinos rode down to a pool and washed their horses, +throwing the water on them with their two hands, as the animals +stood nervously shrinking from each splash, until they were quite +wet through and running down, when they stood quietly, with their +tails tucked in between their legs.</p> +<p>Night came on, as it does in those latitudes, no twilight +intervening, and from the rows of houses came the faint lights of +wicks burning in bowls of grease, whilst from beneath the orange +trees was heard the tinkling of guitars.</p> +<p>Enormous bats soared about noiselessly, and white-dressed +couples lingered about the corners of the streets, and men stood +talking, pressed closely up against the wooden gratings of the +windows, to women hidden inside the room. The air was heavy +with the languorous murmur of the tropic night, and gradually the +lights one by one were extinguished, and the tinkling of the +guitars was stilled. The moon came out, serene and +glorious, showing <a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +183</span>each stone upon the sandy trails as clearly as at +midday. Saddling their horses, the four Correntinos +silently struck the trail to Itapua, and bands of women moved off +along the forest tracks towards their homes, walking in Indian +file. Hijinio Rojas, who had saddled up to put the +Correntinos on the right road, emerged into the moonlit plaza, +his shadow outlined so sharply on the grass it seemed it had been +drawn, and then, entering a side street, disappeared into the +night. The shrill neighing of his horse appeared as if it +bade farewell to its companions, now far away upon the Itapua +trail. Noises that rise at night from forests in the +tropics sound mysteriously, deep in the woods. It seemed as +if a population silent by day was active and on foot, and from +the underwood a thick white mist arose, shrouding the sleeping +town.</p> +<p>Little by little, just as a rising tide covers a reef of +rocks, it submerged everything in its white, clinging +folds. The houses disappeared, leaving the plaza seething +like a lake, and then the church was swallowed up, the towers +struggling, as it were, a little, just as a wreath of seaweed on +a rock appears to fight against <a name="page184"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 184</span>the tide. Then they too +disappeared, and the conquering mist enveloped everything. +All that was left above the sea of billowing white were the two +topmost tufts of the tall, feathery palms.</p> +<h2><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +185</span>XV<br /> +BOPICUÁ</h2> +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> great corral at Bopicuá +was full of horses. Greys, browns, bays, blacks, duns, +chestnuts, roans (both blue and red), skewbalds and piebalds, +with claybanks, calicos, buckskins, and a hundred shades and +markings, unknown in Europe, but each with its proper name in +Uruguay and Argentina, jostled each other, forming a +kaleidoscopic mass.</p> +<p>A thick dust rose from the corral and hung above their +heads. Sometimes the horses stood all huddled up, gazing +with wide distended eyes and nostrils towards a group of men that +lounged about the gate. At other times that panic fear that +seizes upon horses when they are crushed together in large +numbers, set them a-galloping. Through the dust-cloud their +footfalls sounded muffled, <a name="page186"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 186</span>and they themselves appeared like +phantoms in a mist. When they had circled round a little +they stopped, and those outside the throng, craning their heads +down nearly to the ground, snorted, and then ran back, arching +their necks and carrying their tails like flags. Outside +the great corral was set Parodi’s camp, below some China +trees, and formed of corrugated iron and hides, stuck on short +uprights, so that the hides and iron almost came down upon the +ground, in gipsy fashion. Upon the branches of the trees +were hung saddles, bridles, halters, hobbles, lazos, and +boleadoras, and underneath were spread out saddle-cloths to +dry. Pieces of meat swung from the low gables of the hut, +and under the low eaves was placed a “catre,” the +canvas scissor-bedstead of Spain and of her colonies in the New +World. Upon the catre was a heap of ponchos, airing in the +sun, their bright and startling colours looking almost dingy in +the fierce light of a March afternoon in Uruguay. Close to +the camp stood several bullock-carts, their poles supported on a +crutch, and their reed-covered tilts giving them an air of huts +on wheels. <a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +187</span>Men sat about on bullocks’ skulls, around a +smouldering fire, whilst the “maté” circulated +round from man to man, after the fashion of a loving-cup. +Parodi, the stiff-jointed son of Italian parents, a gaucho as to +clothes and speech, but still half-European in his lack of +comprehension of the ways of a wild horse. Arena, the +capataz from Entre-Rios, thin, slight, and nervous, a man who +had, as he said, in his youth known how to read and even guide +the pen; but now “things of this world had turned him quite +unlettered, and made him more familiar with the lazo and the +spurs.” The mulatto Pablo Suarez, active and +cat-like, a great race-rider and horse-tamer, short and +deep-chested, with eyes like those of a black cat, and toes, +prehensile as a monkey’s, that clutched the stirrup when a +wild colt began to buck, so that it could not touch its +flanks. They and Miguel Paralelo, tall, dark, and handsome, +the owner of some property, but drawn by the excitement of a +cowboy’s life to work for wages, so that he could enjoy the +risk of venturing his neck each day on a +“baguál,” <a name="citation187"></a><a +href="#footnote187" class="citation">[187]</a> with other peons +as <a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>El +Correntino and Venancio Baez, were grouped around the fire. +With them were seated Martin el Madrileño, a Spanish +horse-coper, who had experienced the charm of gaucho life, +together with Silvestre Ayres, a Brazilian, slight and +olive-coloured, well-educated, but better known as a dead +pistol-shot than as man of books. They waited for their +turn at maté, or ate great chunks of meat from a roast +cooked upon a spit, over a fire of bones. Most of the men +were tall and sinewy, with that air of taciturnity and +self-equilibrium that their isolated lives and Indian blood so +often stamp upon the faces of those centaurs of the plains. +The camp, set on a little hill, dominated the country for miles +on every side. Just underneath it, horses and more horses +grazed. Towards the west it stretched out to the woods that +fringe the Uruguay, which, with its countless islands, flowed +between great tracks of forest, and formed the frontier with the +Argentine.</p> +<p>Between the camp and the corrals smouldered a fire of bones +and ñandubay, and by it, leaning up against a rail, were +set the branding-irons that had turned the horses in the corral +<a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 189</span>into the +property of the British Government. All round the herd +enclosed, ran horses neighing, seeking their companions, who were +to graze no more at Bopicuá, but be sent off by train and +ship to the battlefields of Europe to die and suffer, for they +knew not what, leaving their pastures and their innocent +comradeship with one another till the judgment day. Then, I +am sure, for God must have some human feeling after all, things +will be explained to them, light come into their semi-darkness, +and they will feed in prairies where the grass fades not, and +springs are never dry, freed from the saddle, and with no cruel +spur to urge them on they know not where or why.</p> +<p>For weeks we had been choosing out the doomed five +hundred. Riding, inspecting, and examining from dawn till +evening, till it appeared that not a single equine imperfection +could have escaped our eyes. The gauchos, who all think +that they alone know anything about a horse, were all struck dumb +with sheer amazement. It seemed to them astonishing to take +such pains to select horses that for the most part would be +killed in a few months. <a name="page190"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 190</span>“These men,” they said, +“certainly all are doctors at the job. They know even +the least defect, can tell what a horse thinks about and +why. Still, none of them can ride a horse if he but shakes +his ears. In their bag surely there is a cat shut up of +some kind or another. If not, why do they bother so much in +the matter, when all that is required is something that can carry +one into the thickest of the fight?”</p> +<p>The sun began to slant a little, and we had still three +leagues to drive the horses to the pasture where they had to pass +the night for the last time in freedom, before they were +entrained. Our horses stood outside of the corral, tied to +the posts, some saddled with the “recado,” <a +name="citation190"></a><a href="#footnote190" +class="citation">[190]</a> its heads adorned with silver, some +with the English saddle, that out of England has such a strange, +unserviceable look, much like a saucepan on a horse’s +back. Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared, +driving a point of horses, which, he said, “to leave would +be a crime against the sacrament.” “These are +all pingos,” he exclaimed, “fit for the saddle of the +Lord on High, all of them <a name="page191"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 191</span>are bitted in the Brazilian style, +can turn upon a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can +gallop round a bullock’s head upon the ground, so that the +rider can keep his hand upon it all the time.” The +speaker by his accent was a Brazilian. His face was +olive-coloured, his hair had the suspicion of a kink. His +horse, a cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was evidently +only half-tamed, and snorted loudly as it bounded here and there, +making its silver harness jingle and the rider’s poncho +flutter in the air. Although time pressed, the man’s +address was so persuasive, his appearance so much in character +with his great silver spurs just hanging from his heel, his +jacket turned up underneath his elbow by the handle of his knife, +and, to speak truth, the horses looked so good and in such high +condition that we determined to examine them, and told their +owner to drive them into a corral.</p> +<p>Once again we commenced the work that we had done so many +times of mounting and examining. Once more we fought, +trying to explain the mysteries of red tape to unsophisticated +minds, and once again our “domadores” sprang lightly, +barebacked, upon the horses <a name="page192"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 192</span>they had never seen before, with +varying results. Some of the Brazilian’s horses +bucked like antelopes, El Correntino and the others of our men +sitting them barebacked as easily as an ordinary man rides over a +small fence. To all our queries why they did not saddle up +we got one answer, “To ride with the recado is but a +pastime only fit for boys.” So they went on, pulling +the horses up in three short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails +and manes tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or two from the +corral. Then, slipping off, gave their opinion that the +particular “bayo,” “zaino,” or +“gateao” was just the thing to mount a lancer on, and +that the speaker thought he could account for a good tale of +Boches if he were over there in the Great War. This same +great war, which they called “barbarous,” taking a +secret pleasure in the fact that it showed Europeans not a whit +more civilised than they themselves, appeared to them something +in the way of a great pastime from which they were debarred.</p> +<p>Most of them, when they sold a horse, looked at him and +remarked, “Pobrecito, you will go to the Great War,” +just as a man looks <a name="page193"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 193</span>at his son who is about to go, with +feelings of mixed admiration and regret.</p> +<p>After we had examined all the Brazilian’s +“Tropilla” so carefully that he said, “By +Satan’s death, your graces know far more about my horses +than I myself, and all I wonder is that you do not ask me if all +of them have not complied with all the duties of the +Church,” we found that about twenty of them were fit for +the Great War. Calling upon Parodi and the capataz of +Bopicuá, who all the time had remained seated round the +smouldering fire and drinking maté, to prepare the +branding-irons, the peons led them off, our head man calling out +“Artilleria” or “Caballeria,” according +to their size. After the branding, either on the hip for +cavalry and on the neck for the artillery, a peon cut their manes +off, making them as ugly as a mule, as their late owner said, and +we were once more ready for the road, after the payment had been +made. This took a little time, either because the Brazilian +could not count, or perhaps because of his great caution, for he +would not take payment except horse by horse. So, driving +out the horses one by one, <a name="page194"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 194</span>we placed a roll of dollars in his +hand as each one passed the gate. Even then each roll of +dollars had to be counted separately, for time is what men have +the most at their disposal in places such as Bopicuá.</p> +<p>Two hours of sunset still remained, with three long leagues to +cover, for in those latitudes there is no twilight, night +succeeding day, just as films follow one another in a +cinematograph. At last it all was over, and we were free to +mount. Such sort of drives are of the nature of a sport in +South America, and so the Brazilian drove off the horses that we +had rejected, half a mile away, leaving them with a negro boy to +herd, remarking that the rejected were as good or better than +those that we had bought, and after cinching up his horse, +prepared to ride with us. Before we started, a young man +rode up, dressed like an exaggerated gaucho, in loose black +trousers, poncho, and a “golilla” <a +name="citation194a"></a><a href="#footnote194a" +class="citation">[194a]</a> round his neck, a lazo hanging from +the saddle, a pair of boleadoras peeping beneath his +“cojinillo,” <a name="citation194b"></a><a +href="#footnote194b" class="citation">[194b]</a> and a long +silver knife stuck in his belt. It seemed <a +name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>he was the +son of an estanciero who was studying law in Buenos Aires, but +had returned for his vacation, and hearing of our drive had come +to ride with us and help us in our task. No one on such +occasions is to be despised, so, thanking him for his good +intentions, to which he answered that he was a “partizan of +the Allies, lover of liberty and truth, and was well on in all +his studies, especially in International Law,” we mounted, +the gauchos floating almost imperceptibly, without an effort, to +their seats, the European with that air of escalading a +ship’s side that differentiates us from man less +civilised.</p> +<p>During the operations with the Brazilian, the horses had been +let out of the corral to feed, and now were being held back <i>en +pastoreo</i>, as it is called in Uruguay, that is to say, watched +at a little distance by mounted men. Nothing remained but +to drive out of the corral the horses bought from the Brazilian, +and let them join the larger herd. Out they came like a +string of wild geese, neighing and looking round, and then +instinctively made towards the others that were feeding, and were +swallowed up amongst them. Slowly we rode <a +name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>towards the +herd, sending on several well-mounted men upon its flanks, and +with precaution—for of all living animals tame horses most +easily take fright upon the march and separate—we got them +into motion, on a well-marked trail that led towards the gate of +Bopicuá.</p> +<p>At first they moved a little sullenly, and as if +surprised. Then the contagion of emotion that spreads so +rapidly amongst animals upon the march seemed to inspire them, +and the whole herd broke into a light trot. That is the +moment that a stampede may happen, and accordingly we pulled our +horses to a walk, whilst the men riding on the flanks forged +slowly to the front, ready for anything that might occur. +Gradually the trot slowed down, and we saw as it were a sea of +manes and tails in front of us, emerging from a cloud of dust, +from which shrill neighings and loud snortings rose. They +reached a hollow, in which were several pools, and stopped to +drink, all crowding into the shallow water, where they stood +pawing up the mud and drinking greedily. Time pressed, and +as we knew that there was water in the pasture where they were to +sleep, we <a name="page197"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +197</span>drove them back upon the trail, the water dripping from +their muzzles and their tails, and the black mud clinging to the +hair upon their fetlocks, and in drops upon their backs. +Again they broke into a trot, but this time, as they had got into +control, we did not check them, for there was still a mile to +reach the gate.</p> +<p>Passing some smaller mud-holes, the body of a horse lay near +to one of them, horribly swollen, and with its stiff legs hoisted +a little in the air by the distension of its flanks. The +passing horses edged away from it in terror, and a young roan +snorted and darted like an arrow from the herd. Quick as +was the dart he made, quicker still El Correntino wheeled his +horse on its hind legs and rushed to turn him back. With +his whip whirling round his head he rode to head the truant, who, +with tail floating in the air, had got a start of him of about +fifty yards. We pressed instinctively upon the horses; but +not so closely as to frighten them, though still enough to be +able to stop another of them from cutting out. The +Correntino on a half-tamed grey, which he rode with a raw-hide +thong bound round <a name="page198"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +198</span>its lower jaw, for it was still unbitted, swaying with +every movement in his saddle, which he hardly seemed to grip, so +perfect was his balance, rode at a slight angle to the runaway +and gained at every stride. His hat blew back and kept in +place by a black ribbon underneath his chin, framed his head like +an aureole. The red silk handkerchief tied loosely round +his neck fluttered beneath it, and as he dashed along, his lazo +coiled upon his horse’s croup, rising and falling with each +bound, his eyes fixed on the flying roan, he might have served a +sculptor as the model for a centaur, so much did he and the wild +colt he rode seem indivisible.</p> +<p>In a few seconds, which to us seemed minutes, for we feared +the infection might have spread to the whole +“caballada,” the Correntino headed and turned the +roan, who came back at three-quarter speed, craning his neck out +first to one side, then to the other, as if he still thought that +a way lay open for escape.</p> +<p>By this time we had reached the gates of Bopicuá, and +still seven miles lay between us and our camping-ground, with a +fast-declining <a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +199</span>sun. As the horses passed the gate we counted +them, an operation of some difficulty when time presses and the +count is large. Nothing is easier than to miss animals, +that is to say, for Europeans, however practised, but the +lynx-eyed gauchos never are at fault. “Where is the +little brown horse with a white face, and a bit broken out of his +near forefoot?” they will say, and ten to one that horse is +missing, for what they do not know about the appearance of a +horse would not fill many books. Only a drove road lay +between Bopicuá and the great pasture, at whose faraway +extremity the horses were to sleep. When the last animal +had passed and the great gates swung to, the young law student +rode up to my side, and, looking at the “great +tropilla,” as he called it, said, “<i>Morituri te +salutant</i>. This is the last time they will feed in +Bopicuá.” We turned a moment, and the falling +sun lit up the undulating plain, gilding the cottony tufts of the +long grasses, falling upon the dark-green leaves of the low trees +around Parodi’s camp, glinting across the belt of wood that +fringed the Uruguay, and striking full upon a white estancia +house in <a name="page200"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +200</span>Entre-Rios, making it appear quite close at hand, +although four leagues away.</p> +<p>Two or three hundred yards from the great gateway stood a +little native hut, as unsophisticated, but for a telephone, as +were the gaucho’s huts in Uruguay, as I remember them full +thirty years ago. A wooden barrel on a sledge for bringing +water had been left close to the door, at which the occupant sat +drinking maté, tapping with a long knife upon his +boot. Under a straw-thatched shelter stood a saddled horse, +and a small boy upon a pony slowly drove up a flock of +sheep. A blue, fine smoke that rose from a few smouldering +logs and bones, blended so completely with the air that one was +not quite sure if it was really smoke or the reflection of the +distant Uruguay against the atmosphere.</p> +<p>Not far off lay the bones of a dead horse, with bits of hide +adhering to them, shrivelled into mere parchment by the +sun. All this I saw as in a camera-lucida, seated a little +sideways on my horse, and thinking sadly that I, too, had looked +my last on Bopicuá. It is not given to all men after +a break of years to come back to the scenes of youth, and still +<a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>find in +them the same zest as of old. To return again to all the +cares of life called civilised, with all its littlenesses, its +newspapers all full of nothing, its sordid aims disguised under +high-sounding nicknames, its hideous riches and its sordid +poverty, its want of human sympathy, and, above all, its +barbarous war brought on it by the folly of its rulers, was not +just at that moment an alluring thought, as I felt the little +“malacara” <a name="citation201"></a><a +href="#footnote201" class="citation">[201]</a> that I rode +twitching his bridle, striving to be off. When I had +touched him with the spur he bounded forward and soon overtook +the caballada, and the place which for so many months’ had +been part of my life sank out of sight, just as an island in the +Tropics fades from view as the ship leaves it, as it were, hull +down.</p> +<p>When we had passed into the great enclosure of La Pileta, and +still four or five miles remained to go, we pressed the caballada +into a long trot, certain that the danger of a stampede was +past. Wonderful and sad it was to ride behind so many +horses, trampling knee-high through the wild grasses of the <a +name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 202</span>Camp, +snorting and biting at each other, and all unconscious that they +would never more career across the plains. Strange and +affecting, too, to see how those who had known each other all +kept together in the midst of the great herd, resenting all +attempts of their companions to separate them.</p> +<p>A “tropilla” <a name="citation202"></a><a +href="#footnote202" class="citation">[202]</a> that we had bought +from a Frenchman called Leon, composed of five brown horses, had +ranged itself around its bell mare, a fine chestnut, like a +bodyguard. They fought off any of the other horses who came +near her, and seemed to look at her both with affection and with +pride.</p> +<p>Two little bright bay horses, with white legs and noses, that +were brothers, and what in Uruguay are known as +“seguidores,” that is, one followed the other +wherever it might go, ran on the outskirts of the herd. +When either of them stopped to eat, its companion turned its head +and neighed to it, when it came galloping up. Arena, our +head man, riding beside me on a skewbald, looked at them, and, +after dashing forward to turn a runaway, wheeled round his horse +almost in <a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. +203</span>the air and stopped it in a bound, so suddenly that for +an instant they stood poised like an equestrian statue, looked at +the “seguidores,” and remarked, “Patron, I hope +one shell will kill them both in the Great War if they have got +to die.” I did not answer, except to curse the Boches +with all the intensity the Spanish tongue commands. The +young law-student added his testimony, and we rode on in +silence.</p> +<p>A passing sleeve of locusts almost obscured the declining +sun. Some flew against our faces, reminding me of the fight +Cortes had with the Indians not far from Vera Cruz, which, Bernal +Diaz says, was obstructed for a moment by a flight of locusts +that came so thickly that many lost their lives by the neglect to +raise their bucklers against what they thought were locusts, and +in reality were arrows that the Indians shot. The effect +was curious as the insects flew against the horses, some clinging +to their manes, and others making them bob up and down their +heads, just as a man does in a driving shower of hail. We +reached a narrow causeway that formed the passage through a +marsh. On it the horses <a name="page204"></a><span +class="pagenum">p. 204</span>crowded, making us hold our breath +for fear that they would push each other off into the mud, which +had no bottom, upon either side. When we emerged and +cantered up a little hill, a lake lay at the bottom of it, and +beyond it was a wood, close to a railway siding. The +evening now was closing in, but there was still a good half-hour +of light. As often happens in South America just before +sundown, the wind dropped to a dead calm, and passing little +clouds of locusts, feeling the night approach, dropped into the +long grass just as a flying-fish drops into the waves, with a +harsh whirring of their gauzy wings.</p> +<p>The horses smelt the water at the bottom of the hill, and the +whole five hundred broke into a gallop, manes flying, tails +raised high, and we, feeling somehow the gallop was the last, +raced madly by their side until within a hundred yards or so of +the great lake. They rushed into the water and all drank +greedily, the setting sun falling upon their many-coloured backs, +and giving the whole herd the look of a vast tulip field. +We kept away so as to let them drink their fill, and then, +leading our horses to the margin of the lake, dismounted, <a +name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>and, taking +out their bits, let them drink, with the air of one accomplishing +a rite, no matter if they raised their heads a dozen times and +then began again.</p> +<p>Slowly Arena, El Correntino, Paralelo, Suarez, and the rest +drove out the herd to pasture in the deep lush grass. The +rest of us rode up some rising ground towards the wood. +There we drew up, and looking back towards the plain on which the +horses seemed to have dwindled to the size of sheep in the +half-light, some one, I think it was Arena, or perhaps Pablo +Suarez, spoke their elegy: “Eat well,” he said; +“there is no grass like that of La Pileta, to where you go +across the sea. The grass in Europe all must smell of +blood.”</p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">THE +END</span></p> + +<div class="gapspace"> </div> +<p style="text-align: center"><i>Printed by</i> R. & R. +CLARK, LIMITED, <i>Edinburgh</i>.</p> +<h2>NOTES.</h2> +<p><a name="footnote22"></a><a href="#citation22" +class="footnote">[22]</a> <i>Porteño</i>, literally +a man born in the port of Buenos Aires, but is also applied to +any one born in the province of Buenos Aires.</p> +<p><a name="footnote25"></a><a href="#citation25" +class="footnote">[25]</a> <i>Benbax ceiba</i>, a large tree +with spongy, light wood, that has immense bunches of purple +flowers.</p> +<p><a name="footnote27"></a><a href="#citation27" +class="footnote">[27]</a> Pingo in Argentina is a good +horse. Pucha is a euphemism for another word.</p> +<p><a name="footnote28"></a><a href="#citation28" +class="footnote">[28]</a> Elbow of a river.</p> +<p><a name="footnote114a"></a><a href="#citation114a" +class="footnote">[114a]</a> Lopez Cogulludo, <i>Historia de +Yucatan</i>.</p> +<p><a name="footnote114b"></a><a href="#citation114b" +class="footnote">[114b]</a> Era gran Escriturario.</p> +<p><a name="footnote115"></a><a href="#citation115" +class="footnote">[115]</a> El sagrado misterio de la +encarnacion de el eterno Verbo.</p> +<p><a name="footnote116a"></a><a href="#citation116a" +class="footnote">[116a]</a> Los barbaros infideles.</p> +<p><a name="footnote116b"></a><a href="#citation116b" +class="footnote">[116b]</a> Entendiendo que era animal de +razon.</p> +<p><a name="footnote118"></a><a href="#citation118" +class="footnote">[118]</a> Arrebatado de un furioso selo de +la honra de Dios.</p> +<p><a name="footnote187"></a><a href="#citation187" +class="footnote">[187]</a> Wild horse.</p> +<p><a name="footnote190"></a><a href="#citation190" +class="footnote">[190]</a> Argentine saddle.</p> +<p><a name="footnote194a"></a><a href="#citation194a" +class="footnote">[194a]</a> <i>Golilla</i>, which +originally meant a ruff, is now used for a handkerchief round the +neck.</p> +<p><a name="footnote194b"></a><a href="#citation194b" +class="footnote">[194b]</a> <i>Cojinillo</i>, part of the +recado.</p> +<p><a name="footnote201"></a><a href="#citation201" +class="footnote">[201]</a> <i>Malacara</i>, literally +Badface, is the name used for a white-faced horse. In old +days in England such a horse was called Baldfaced.</p> +<p><a name="footnote202"></a><a href="#citation202" +class="footnote">[202]</a> Little troop.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROUGHT FORWARD***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 47930-h.htm or 47930-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/4/7/9/3/47930 + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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