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diff --git a/47930-0.txt b/47930-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5da66bb --- /dev/null +++ b/47930-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4440 @@ +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: UTF-8 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROUGHT FORWARD*** + + +This eBook was transcribed by Les Bowler. + + + + +_BY THE SAME AUTHOR_ + + + FAITH. + + HOPE. + + CHARITY. + + SUCCESS. + + PROGRESS. + + HIS PEOPLE. + + A HATCHMENT. + + THIRTEEN STORIES. + + * * * * * + +MOGREB EL ACKSA: A Journey in Morocco. + + (_New Edition in Preparation_.) + + * * * * * + + + + + + BROUGHT FORWARD + + + * * * * * + + BY + R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM + + * * * * * + + LONDON + DUCKWORTH & CO. + 3 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN, W.C. + + * * * * * + + _First Published_ 1916. + _Second Impression_ 1917. + + * * * * * + + _All rights reserved_. + + * * * * * + + TO + COMMANDER + CHARLES E. F. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM + R.N. + + * * * * * + + + + +PREFACE + + +LUCKILY the war has made eggs too expensive for me to fear the public +will pelt me off the stage with them. + +Still after years of writing one naturally dreads the cold potato and the +orange-peel. + +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.” + +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.” + +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. + +A Texan who was with the party pointed to it, and said, “That is a +wickey-up, I guess.” + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +We all sat looking at it: Eustaquio Gomez, Polibio Medina, Exaltacion +Garcia, the Texan, two Pueblo Indians, and I who write these lines. + +Somehow it had an eerie look about it, standing so desolate, out in those +flowery wilds. + +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.” + +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. + +’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.” + +Charles Lamb, when some one asked him 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. + +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. + +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. + + _Vale_. + + R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM. + + + + +CONTENTS + + PAGE + I. BROUGHT FORWARD 1 + II. LOS PINGOS 11 + III. FIDELITY 30 + IV. “UNO DEI MILLE” 40 + V. WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND 51 + VI. ELYSIUM 60 + VII. HEREDITY 66 + VIII. EL TANGO ARGENTINO 81 + IX. IN A BACKWATER 97 + X. HIPPOMORPHOUS 106 + XI. MUDEJAR 120 + XII. A MINOR PROPHET 130 + XIII. EL MASGAD 146 + XIV. FEAST DAY IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR 164 + XV. BOPICUÁ 185 + + + + +I +BROUGHT FORWARD + + +THE 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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.” + +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 the drawback system was fair +redeeklous . . . as well as several errors in the total sum?” + +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. + +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. + +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.” + +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 thought to get his own again, with they +indemnities.” + +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. + +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 +of red-haired, blue-eyed, tall, lithe Scot, he of the _perfervidum +ingenium_, and Geordie was a thick-set, black-haired, dour and silent +man. + +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. + +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. + +Days passed, and weeks, and his fellow-workmen, in the way men will, +occasionally 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. + +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. + +Long strings of Clydesdale horses ridden by 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. + +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, +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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.” + +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. + + + + +II +LOS PINGOS + + +THE 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. + +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, dashing through brushwood or floundering through a +marsh, till they had placed themselves in safety from this new terror of +the night. + +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. + +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. + +A group of roofless workmen’s cottages 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. + +Nature had so resumed her sway that 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +Sticking out like a fishing-rod, over the stem of the canoe was a long +cane, to sound with if it was required. + +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 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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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, {22} 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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +When he had made the lighters fast, he turned down stream, saluting us +with three 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. + +Humming-birds poised themselves before the purple bunches of the ceiba +{25} 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +The hours passed slowly, till at last the horses, having filled +themselves with grass, stopped eating and looked towards the river, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” {27} + +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 +knife, two feet or more in length, stuck in his sash, stuck out on both +sides of his body like a lateen. + +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.” + +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. + +Turning half round and offering me a cigarette, the Correntino spoke +again. “It is a paradise for all those pingos here in this rincón: {28} +grass, water, everything that they can want, shade, and shelter from the +wind and sun.” + +So it appeared to me—the swiftly flowing 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?” + + + + +III +FIDELITY + + +MY tall host knocked the ashes from his pipe, and crossing one leg over +the other looked into the fire. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +My host seemed to be struggling with himself to tell me something, and as +I looked 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 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. + +My host went on: “Some time ago I 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. + +“I remember two or three plants of tall hemp-agrimony still had their +flower heads 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. + +“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 then the salient points most worth the +looking at. + +“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. + +“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. + +“You know it,” said my host, and I, who often had read by its light in +summer and the early autumn, nodded assent, wondering to myself what he +was going to tell me, and he went on. + +“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. + +“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. + +“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.” + +My host stopped, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and turning to me, +said:— + +“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 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. + +“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.” + +He filled his pipe, and sitting down in an old leather chair, much worn +and rather greasy, silently gazed into the fire. + +I, too, was silent, thinking upon the tragedy; then feeling that +something was expected of me, looked up and murmured, “Yes.” + + + + +IV +“UNO DEI MILLE” + + +A VEIL 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 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. + +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. + +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 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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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,” as the strains of an approaching band were heard and the +footsteps of men marching through the streets in military array. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + + + + +V +WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND + + +A NORTH-EAST 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 alone to the dwellers in Chicago for +dry vivacity. + +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. + +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.” + +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 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. + +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. + +“Ye mind yon Wishaw meeting?” + +“Aye, ou aye; ye mean when a’ they Irish wouldna’ hear John Ferguson. +Man, he almost grat after the meeting aboot it.” + +“Aye, but they gied Hardie himself a maist respectful hearing . . . aye, +ou aye.” + +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. + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +In either case, the book is closed for ever, and the familiar face is +seen no more. + +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, 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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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? + +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 amongst the trees, tossing +and twisting them as he himself was twisted and storm-tossed in his +tempestuous passage through the world. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +VI +ELYSIUM + + +THE 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 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. + +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, and his blue eyes were +fixed, as often are the eyes of sailors or frontiersmen after a long +watch. + +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. + +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 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. + +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, remarking, “’Old it the right side up, old +girl, or else it will go off.” + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + + + + +VII +HEREDITY + + +RIGHT 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. + +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. + +The border-line that once made different peoples of the dwellers at +Floriston and Gretna, still prevails in the little castellated towns, +which snarl at one another across the Minho, just as they did of old. + +“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. + +His fellow in Valenza spits towards Tuy and remarks, “From Spain come +neither good marriages nor the wholesome winds.” + +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.” + +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, 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. + +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. + +In the old towns on either side of the Minho the exterior life of the two +peoples is the same. + +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. + +The water-carrier in both countries calls out “agua-a-a,” making it sound +like Arabic, 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. + +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. + +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 _odium theologicum_. 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. + +One faith, one speech, one mode of daily life, the same sharp “green” +wine, the same 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. + +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. + +In the soft landscape the maize fields wave in the rich hollows on both +sides of the Minho. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 has suffered +something indefinable by being occupied by members of the two races so +near and yet so different from one another. + +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. + +Bands of grave ostriches feed quietly upon the tops of hills, and stride +away when frightened, down the wind, with wings stretched out to catch +the breeze. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +When once their independence was assured, the Uruguayans fell into line +like magic with the modern trend of thought. Liberty to 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. + +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. + +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. + +So Jango Chaves, feeling inclined for sport, or, as he might have said, +to “brincar un bocadinho,” saddled up his horse. He 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 jungles, out of which peered +cats, exactly as a tiger peers out of a real jungle in the woods. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +As he passed by the “jefatura” where the alcalde and his friends were +sitting smoking 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. + +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. + +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. + + + + +VIII +EL TANGO ARGENTINO + + +MOTOR-CARS 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. + +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. + +The ladies stepped down delicately, showing a fleeting vision of a leg in +a transparent stocking, just for an instant, through the 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. + +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. + +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. + +Rich rastaquaoures, their hats too shiny, and their boots too tight, +their coats fitting too closely, their sticks mounted with great gold +knobs, walked about or sat at little tables, all talking strange +varieties of French. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 who had struck it rich in +Zacatecas,—tapped delicately, but usually a little out of time, upon the +backs of chairs. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Slowly the hall and tea-rooms of the great hotel emptied themselves, and +in the corridors and passages the smell of scent still lingered, just as +stale incense lingers in a church. + +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?” + +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. + +“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 _La +Patrie_, and the men who have some strange new toy, or views of Paris in +a long album like a broken concertina, should not tread upon my toes. + +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. + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +bunches of Pampa grass stood stark as sentinels, their feathery tufts +looking like plumes upon an Indian’s lance. + +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. + +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. + +Time seemed to disappear and space be swallowed in the intoxicating +gallop, so that 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. + +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. + +“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. + +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. + +Asking permission to dismount, we hailed 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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 the Gauchos as they +revolved, their partners’ heads peeping above their shoulders, and their +hips moving to and fro. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“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 pricked bladder, and a dark stream +of blood trickled upon the ground as he lay writhing in his death agony. + +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. + +I started, and the waiter standing by my side said, “Eighty centimes”; +and down the boulevard echoed the harsh cry, “_La Patrie_, achetez _La +Patrie_,” and the rolling of the cabs. + + + + +IX +IN A BACKWATER + + +“THIS ’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.” + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“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.” + +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 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. + +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. + +In the standing corn the horses yoked to 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 _Daily Mail_, his gospel and his _vade mecum_, 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. + +It pained him, above all things, to read about the wounded and dead +horses lying in 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. + +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. + +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 the words aloud until +their meaning penetrated to his brain. + +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 _Daily Mail_. + +“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 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. + +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. + +The slanting sun and lengthening shadows 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. + +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. + +The whirring of the reaper ceased, and when the horses were unyoked the +driver led 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. . . .” + +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. + + + + +X +HIPPOMORPHOUS + + +ON 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. + +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 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. + +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.” + +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. + +His black horse also was about to play the most extraordinary _rôle_ that +ever horse has played in the whole history of the world. + +With varying fortunes, now climbing 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 _History of the Conquest +of the Province of Itza_ (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 (_los alancearon muy á su placer_), 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. + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +Cortes, in his fifth letter to the Emperor Charles V., says simply, “I +was obliged to leave my black horse (_mi caballo morzillo_) 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.” + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +particularities it has, which though they are not so remarkable, yet are +noteworthy. + +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. + +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. + +One of the Chiefs, a man known as Isquin, when he first saw a horse, +“almost ran mad with joy and with astonishment. Especially 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.” + +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. + +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. + +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 {114a} tells us, an Indian +seized him by the throat and nearly strangled him, leaving him senseless +on the ground. + +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, {114b} explaining to them the holy mystery +of the incarnation of the eternal Word. {115} 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +One island still remained to be explored, 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. + +The horse was seated on the ground resting upon his quarters, his hind +legs bent and his front feet stretched out. The barbarous infidels +{116a} 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, _ad majorem Dei gloriam_, +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, {116b} they placed before him fruit and +chickens, with the result that the poor beast—who, of course, was +reasonable enough in his own way—eventually died. + +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. + +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. + +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 the missionaries said, these heathen +steeped in ignorance adored the work of their own hands. + +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,” {118} seized a great stone and +in an instant cast the idol down, then with a hammer he broke it into +bits. + +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. + +The Indians broke into lamentations, 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. + +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. + + + + +XI +MUDEJAR + + +BROWN, severe, and wall-girt, the stubborn city still held out. + +Its proud traditions made it impossible for Zaragoza to capitulate +without a siege. As in the days of Soult, when the heroic maid, the +_artillera_, 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. + +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. + +A dropping rifle-fire crackled out from the ramparts, and above the +castle the red flag of the Intransigent-Republic shivered and fluttered +in the breeze. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +The General’s quarters overlooked the town, and from them he could see +Santa 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +All their ambition was to live quietly, each in his village, which to him +was the hub round which the world revolved. + +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. . . .” + +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. + +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. + +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.” + +As happens in all civil wars, when brother finds himself opposed to +brother, the strife was mortal, and he who fell received no mercy from +the conqueror. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” + +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. + +The citadel was taken with a rush, and the red flag hauled down. + +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. + +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?” + +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. + +“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.” + +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. + + + + +XII +A MINOR PROPHET + + +THE 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. + +Bells pealed at intervals, summoning the fractioned faithful to their +various centres of belief. + +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 +occasionally as the air swelled their bellies, making them seem alive, or +as alive as is a jelly-fish left stranded by the tide. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +“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. + +“I am not out for confiscation, why should I? I ’ave my ’ome purchased +with the fruits of my own hhonest toil . . .” + +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, looked up, and interjected: “’Ard work, +too, mate, that ’ere talkin’ in the sun is, that built your ’ome. Beats +coal whippin’.” + +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.” + +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 gun and be at liberty to kill a “rabbut” or a +“’are”—“animals, as we say at college, _feery naturrey_, and placed by +Providence upon the land.” + +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?” + +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?” + +Here a dour-looking Scotsman almost spat 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?” + +“’Ow about bread?” came from a voice upon the outskirts of the crowd. + +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. + +“Who are to be the inheritors of the earth? Our Lord says, ‘Blessed are +the meek; they shall inherit it.’” + +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, the English are the meekest of the lot, +for they have got the greater part of it.” + +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. . . .” + +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 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.” + +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. + +Suffragist ladies discussed upon “the 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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.” + +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.” + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“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 _caritas_ 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 speeches, and have weighed them +in my mind. It is not for me to criticise, only to advocate my own +belief. Friends . . .” + +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. + +“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 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? + +“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, 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. + +“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. + +“’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 +heals the soul to see the honeysuckle and the eglantine and smell the +new-mown hay. . . . + +“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. + +“Love suffereth all things, endureth all things, createth all things. . . .” + +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. + +The speaker sighed, and wiped the perspiration from his forehead with a +soiled handkerchief. + +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. + + + + +XIII +EL MASGAD + + +THE 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. + +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, 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. + +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 any other, and one that, after all, makes +a man tolerant of human frailties. + +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. + +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 +Europeans, partly to show his learning, and partly to hear about the +devilries they had invented to complicate their lives. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 surroundings that the serenity +of the whole scene was unimpaired. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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.” + +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 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. + +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 who is discoursing time to collect himself, and to prepare +another phrase. + +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. + +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. + +“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?” + +He stopped and waited courteously, playing with his naked toes, just as a +European plays with his fingers in the intervals of speech. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“Sherif,” he said, “what you have asked me I will answer to the best of +my ability. + +“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. + +“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 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.” + +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.” + +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.” + +“When I was young,” slowly said the Sherif, “whilst in the slave trade +far away beyond the desert, I met the pagan tribes. + +“They had no God . . . like Christians. . . Pardon me, I know you know +our phrase: nothing but images of wood. + +“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. + +“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. + +“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. + +“It is the hour of prayer. . . . + +“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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +“As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat, and propagate our species, +just as they do; but no one ever heard of any animal who had addressed +himself to God.” + +A smile flitted across the pock-marked features of the descendant of the +Prophet, and looking gravely at his friend,— + +“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.’ + +“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. + +“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 +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. + +“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. + +“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? + +“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 Allah took away speech from all the animals, ran +on the beam in the great mosque at Mecca, and dumbly scratched his +prayer?” + +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. . . .” + +“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. + +“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. + +“Consu’, Allah rejects no prayer, however humble, and that the little +creature knows. He knows that Allah does not answer every prayer; but +yet the prayer remains; it is not blotted out, and perhaps some day it +may fructify, for it is written in the book. + +“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.” + +The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigarette, and, stretching over to his +friend, held out his hand to him. + +“Sherif,” he said, “maybe El Masgad prays for you and me, as well as for +its kind?” + +The answer came: “Consu’, doubt not; it is a little animal of God, . . . +we too are in His hand. . . .” + + + + +XIV +FEAST DAY IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR + + +THE great Capilla, the largest in the Jesuit Reductions of Paraguay, was +built round a huge square, almost a quarter of a mile across. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +His home-made palm-tree hat was placed 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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 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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +The Correntino gauchos, two or three Paraguayans, and a German married to +a Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the 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. + +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 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.” + +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 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 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 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. + +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. + +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. + +Then bands of girls sauntered down to the river, from whence soon came +the sound of merry laughter as they splashed about and bathed. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + + + + +XV +BOPICUÁ + + +THE 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. + +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, 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. 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,” {187} with +other peons as 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. + +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 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. + +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. “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?” + +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,” {190} 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 at his son +who is about to go, with feelings of mixed admiration and regret. + +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, 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. + +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” {194a} round his +neck, a lazo hanging from the saddle, a pair of boleadoras peeping +beneath his “cojinillo,” {194b} and a long silver knife stuck in his +belt. It seemed 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. + +During the operations with the Brazilian, the horses had been let out of +the corral to feed, and now were being held back _en pastoreo_, 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 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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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, “_Morituri te +salutant_. 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 +Entre-Rios, making it appear quite close at hand, although four leagues +away. + +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. + +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 +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” {201} 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. + +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 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. + +A “tropilla” {202} 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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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, 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. + +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.” + + * * * * * + + THE END + + * * * * * + + _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, _Edinburgh_. + + + + +NOTES. + + +{22} _Porteño_, literally a man born in the port of Buenos Aires, but is +also applied to any one born in the province of Buenos Aires. + +{25} _Benbax ceiba_, a large tree with spongy, light wood, that has +immense bunches of purple flowers. + +{27} Pingo in Argentina is a good horse. Pucha is a euphemism for +another word. + +{28} Elbow of a river. + +{114a} Lopez Cogulludo, _Historia de Yucatan_. + +{114b} Era gran Escriturario. + +{115} El sagrado misterio de la encarnacion de el eterno Verbo. + +{116a} Los barbaros infideles. + +{116b} Entendiendo que era animal de razon. + +{118} Arrebatado de un furioso selo de la honra de Dios. + +{187} Wild horse. + +{190} Argentine saddle. + +{194a} _Golilla_, which originally meant a ruff, is now used for a +handkerchief round the neck. + +{194b} _Cojinillo_, part of the recado. + +{201} _Malacara_, literally Badface, is the name used for a white-faced +horse. In old days in England such a horse was called Baldfaced. + +{202} Little troop. + + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BROUGHT FORWARD*** + + +******* This file should be named 47930-0.txt or 47930-0.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. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part +of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project +Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +concept and trademark. 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