CHAPTER V
A CHILEAN RONDEO
On November 21, 1913, we crossed the Andes into Chile by rail. The railway led up the pa.s.s which, used from time immemorial by the Indians, afterward marked the course of traffic for their Spanish successors, and was traversed by the army of San Martin in the hazardous march that enabled him to strike the decisive blows in the war for South American independence. The valleys were gray and barren, the sides of the towering mountains were bare, the landscape was one of desolate grandeur. To the north the stupendous peak of Aconquija rose in its snows.
On the Chilean side, as we descended, we pa.s.sed a lovely lake, and went through wonderful narrow gorges; and farther down were trees, and huge cactus, and flowers of many colors. Then we reached the lower valleys and the plains; and the change was like magic. Suddenly we were in a rich fairy-land of teeming plenty and beauty, a land of fertile fields and shady groves, a land of grain and, above all, of many kinds of luscious fruits.
As in the Argentine and Brazil, every courtesy and hospitality was shown us in Chile. We enjoyed every experience throughout our stay. One of the pleasantest and most interesting days we pa.s.sed was at a great ranch, a great cattle-farm and country place twenty-five or thirty miles from Santiago. It was some fifteen miles from the railway station. The road led through a rich, fertile country largely under tillage, but also largely consisting of great fenced pastures.
The owners of the ranch, our kind and courteous hosts, had summoned all the riders of the neighborhood to attend the _rondeo_ (round-up and sports), and several hundred, perhaps a thousand, came. With the growth of cultivation of the soil and the introduction of improved methods of stock-breeding in Chile, the old rude life of the wild cow-herders is pa.s.sing rapidly away. But in many places it remains in modified form, and the country folk whose business is pastoral form a striking and distinctive cla.s.s. These countrymen live their lives in the saddle. All these men, whose industries are connected with cattle, are known as _huasos_. They are kin to the Argentine _gauchos_, and more remotely to our own cowboys.
As we neared the ranch, slipping down broad, dusty, tree-bordered roads beside which irrigation streams ran, we began to come across the _huasos_ gathering for the sports. They rode singly and by twos and threes, or in parties of fifteen or twenty. They were on native Chilean horses--stocky, well-built beasts, hardy and enduring, and on the whole docile. Almost all the men wore the light _manta_, less heavy than the _serapi_, but like it in shape, the head of the rider being thrust through a hole in the middle. It would seem as though it might interfere with the free use of their arms, but it does not, and at the subsequent cattle sports many of the partic.i.p.ants never took off their _mantas_.
The riders wore straw hats of various types, but none of them with the sugar-loaf cones of the Mexicans. Their long spurs bore huge rowels. The _mantas_ were not only picturesque, but gave the company a look of diversified and gaudy brilliancy, for they were of all possible colors, green, red, brown, and blue, solid and patterned. The saddles were far forward, and the shoe-shaped wooden stirrups were elaborately carved.
The men were fine-looking fellows, some with smooth faces or mustaches, some with beards, some of them light, most of them dark. They rode their horses with the utter ease found only in those who are born to the saddle. Now and then there were family parties, mother and children, all, down to the smallest, riding their own horses or perhaps all going in a wagon. Once or twice we pa.s.sed hors.e.m.e.n who were coming out of the yards of their tumble-down houses, women and children crowding round.
Generally the women had something in the dress that reminded one more or less of our Southwestern semicivilized Indians, and the strain of Indian blood in both men and women was evident. Some of the men were poorly clad, others had paid much attention to their get-up and looked like very efficient dandies; but in its essentials the dress was always the same.
When we reached the ranch we first drove to a ma.s.s of buildings, which included the barns, branding-pens, corrals, and the like. It was here that the hors.e.m.e.n had gathered, and one of the pens was filled with an uneasy ma.s.s of cattle. Not far from this pen was a big hitching rail or bar, very stout, consisting of tree trunks at least a foot in diameter, the total length of the rail being forty or fifty feet. Beside it was a very large and stout corral. The inside of this corral was well padded with poles, making a somewhat springy wall, a feature I have never seen in any corrals in our own ranch country, but essential where the horses are trained to jam the cattle against the corral side.
Most of the sports took place inside this big corral. Gates led into it from opposite ends. Some thirty or forty feet in front of one of the gates, and just about that distance from the middle of the corral, was a short, crescent-shaped fence which served to keep the stock that had yet to be worked separate from those that had been worked. Proceedings were begun by some thirty riders and a mob of cattle coming through one of the doors of the corral. A glance at the cattle was enough to show that the old days of the wild ranches had pa.s.sed. These were not longhorns, staring, vicious creatures, shy and fleet as deer; they were graded stock, domestic in their ways, and rather reluctant to run. Among the riders, however, there was not the slightest falling off from the old dash and skill, and their very air, as they rode quietly in, and the way they sat every sudden, quick move of their horses showed their complete ease and self-confidence.
In addition to the _huasos_, the peasants-on-horseback, the riders included several of the gentry, the great landed proprietors. These took part in the sports, precisely as in our own land men of the corresponding cla.s.s follow the hounds or play polo. Two of the most skilful and daring riders, who always worked together, were a wealthy neighboring ranchman and his son.
The first feat began by two of the hors.e.m.e.n, acting together, cutting out an animal from the bunch. This was done with skill and precision, but differed in no way from the work I used formerly to see and take part in on the Little Missouri. What followed, however, was totally different. The animal was raced by the two men out from the herd and from behind the little semicircular fence, and was taken at full speed round the edge of the great corral past the closed gate on the other side, and almost back to the starting-point. One horseman rode behind the animal, a little on its inner side. The other rode outside it, the horse"s head abreast of the steer"s flank. As they galloped the riders uttered strange, long-drawn cries, evidently of Indian origin. Round the corral rushed the steer, and, after it pa.s.sed the door on the opposite-side and began to return toward its starting-point and saw the other cattle ahead, it put on speed. Then the outside rider raced forward and at the same moment wheeled inward, pinning the steer behind the horns and either by the neck or shoulder against the rough, yielding boughs with which the corral was lined. Instantly the other horseman pressed the steer"s hind quarters outward, so that it found itself not only checked, but turned in the opposite direction. Again it was urged into a gallop, the calling hors.e.m.e.n following and repeating their performance. The steer was thus turned three times. After the third turning the gate which it had pa.s.sed was opened and it trotted out.
A dozen times different pairs of riders performed the feat with different steers. It was a fine exhibition of daring prowess and of good training in both the horses and the riders. Of course, if it had not been for the lining of the inner fence with limber poles the steer would have been killed or crippled--we saw one of them injured, as it was. The horse, which entered heartily into the spirit of the chase, had to crash straight into the fence, nailing the steer and bringing it to a standstill in the midst of its headlong gallop. Once or twice at the critical moment the rider was not able to charge quickly enough; and when the steer was caught too far back it usually made its escape and rejoined the huddle of cattle from which it had been cut out. The men were riders of such skill that shaking them in their seats was impossible, no matter how quickly the horse turned or how violent the shocks were; nor was a single horse hurt in the rough play. It was a wild scene, and an exhibition of prowess well worth witnessing.
Other exhibitions of horsemanship followed, including the old feat of riding a bull. The bull, a vicious one, was left alone in the ring, and his temper soon showed signs of extreme shortness as he pawed the dirt, tossing it above his shoulders. Watching the chance when the bull"s attention was fixed elsewhere, a man ran in and got to the little fence before the bull could charge him. Then, while the bull was still angrily endeavoring to get at the man, the corral gate opposite was thrown open and six or eight hors.e.m.e.n entered, riding with quiet unconcern. The bull was obviously not in the least afraid of the footman, whereas he had a certain feeling of respect for the hors.e.m.e.n. Two of the latter approached him. One got his rope over the bull"s horns, and the other then dexterously roped the hind legs. The footman rushed in and seized the tail, and the bull was speedily on his side. Then a lean, slab-sided, rather frowzy-looking man, outwardly differing in no essential respect from the professional bronco-buster of the Southwest, slipped from the spectators" seats into the ring. A saddle was girthed tight on the bull, and a rope ring placed round his broad chest so as to give the rider something by which to hang. The la.s.sos upon him were cast loose, and he rose, snorting with rage and terror. If he had thrown the man, the hors.e.m.e.n would have had to work with instantaneous swiftness to save his life. But all the bull"s furious bucking and jumping could not unseat the rider. The hors.e.m.e.n began to tease the animal, flapping red blankets in his face, and luring him to charges which they easily evaded. Finally they threw him again, took off his saddle and turned him loose, and at the same time some steers were driven into the corral to serve as company for him. A couple of the hors.e.m.e.n took him out of the bunch and raced him round the corral, turning him when they wished by pressing him against the pole corral lining, thus repeating the game that had already been played with so many of the steers. In his case it was, of course, more dangerous. But they showed complete mastery, and the horses had not the slightest fear, nailing him flat against the wall with their chests, and spinning him round when they struck him on occasions when he was trying to make up his mind to resist.
Meanwhile the bull-rider pa.s.sed his hat among the spectators, who tossed silver pieces into it--thus marking the fundamental difference between the life we were witnessing and our own Western ranch life. In Chile, with its aristocratic social structure, there is a wide gulf between the gentry and the ranch-hands; whereas in the democratic life of our own cow country the ranch-owner has, more often than not, at one time been himself a ranch-hand.
After the sports in the corral were finished eight or ten of the _huasos_ appeared on big horses at the bar of which I have spoken, and took part in a sport which was entirely new to me. Two champions would appear side by side or half-facing each other, at the bar. Each would turn his horse"s head until it hung over the bar as they half-fronted each other, on the same side of the bar. The object was for each man to try to push his opponent away from the bar and then shove past him, usually carrying his opponent with him. Sometimes it was a contest of man against man. Sometimes each would have two or three backers. No one could touch any other man"s horse, and each drove his animal right against his opponent. The two men fronting each other at the bar kept their horses head-on against the bar; the others strove each to get his horse"s head between the body of one of his opponents and the head of that opponent"s horse. They then remained in a knot for some minutes, the riders cheering the horses with their strange, wild, Indian-like cries, while the horses pushed and strained. Usually there was almost no progress on either side at first. It would look as though not an inch was gained. Gradually, however, the horses on one side or the other got an inch or two or three inches advantage of position by straining and shoving. Suddenly the right vantage-point was attained. There was an outburst of furious shouting from the riders. The horses of one side with straining quarters thrust their way through the press, whirling round or half upsetting their opponents, and rushed down alongside the bar. Why the men"s legs were not broken I could not say. On this occasion all the men were good-natured. But it was a rough sport, and I could well credit the statement that, if there were bad blood to gratify, the chances were excellent for a fight.
After the sports we motored down to a great pasture on one side of a lake, beyond which rose lofty mountains. Then we returned to the ranch-house itself--a huge, white, single-storied house with a great courtyard in the middle and wings extending toward the stable, the saddle-rooms, and the like. It was a house of charm and distinction; the low building--or rather group of buildings, with galleries and colonnades connecting them--being in the old native style, an outgrowth of the life and the land. After a siesta our hosts led us out across a wide garden brilliant and fragrant with flowers, to the deep, cool shade of a row of lofty trees, where stood a long table spread with white linen and laden with silver and gla.s.s; and here, we were served with a delicious and elaborate breakfast--the Chilean breakfast, that of Latin Europe, for in most ways the life of South America is a development of that of Latin Europe, and much more closely kin to it than it is to the life of the English-speaking peoples north of the Rio Grande.
In the afternoon we drove back to the railroad. At one point of our drive we were joined by a rider who had taken part in the morning"s sports. He galloped at full speed beside the rushing motor-car, waving his hat to us and shouting good-by. He was a tall, powerfully built, middle-aged man, with fine, clean-cut features; his brightly colored mantle streamed in the wind, and he sat in the saddle with utter ease while his horse tore over the ground alongside us. He was a n.o.ble figure, and his farewell to us was our last glimpse of the wild, old-time _huaso_ life.
CHAPTER VI
ACROSS THE ANDES AND NORTHERN PATAGONIA
As the great chain of the Andes stretches southward its alt.i.tude grows less, and the mountain wall is here and there broken by pa.s.ses. When the time came for me to leave Chile I determined to cross the Andes by the easiest and most accessible and one of the most beautiful of these comparatively low pa.s.ses. At the other end of the pa.s.s, on the Argentine or Patagonian side, we were to be met by motor-cars, sent thither by my considerate hosts, the governmental authorities of Argentina.
From Santiago we went south by rail to Puerto Varas. The railway pa.s.sed through the wide, rolling agricultural country of central Chile, a country of farms and prosperous towns. As we went southward we found ourselves in a land which was new in the sense that our own West is new.
Middle and southern Chile were in the hands of the Indians but a short while since. We were met by fine-looking representatives of these Araucanian Indians, all of them now peaceable farmers and stock-growers, at a town of twenty or thirty thousand people where there was not a single white man to be found a quarter of a century ago. Our party included, among others, Major Shipton, U.S.A., the military aide to our legation at Buenos Ayres, my son Kermit, and several kind Chilean friends.
We reached our destination, Puerto Varas, early in the morning. It stands on the sh.o.r.e of a lovely lake. There has been a considerable German settlement in middle and southern Chile, and, as everywhere, the Germans have made capital colonists. At Puerto Varas there are two villages, mainly of Germans, one Protestant and the other Catholic. We were made welcome and given breakfast in an inn which, with its signs and pictures, might have come from the Fatherland. Among the guests at the breakfast, in addition to the native Chilean Intendente, were three or four normal-school teachers, all of them Germans--and evidently uncommonly good teachers, too. There were school-children, there were citizens of every kind. Many of the Germans born abroad could speak nothing but German. The children, however, spoke Spanish, and in some cases nothing but Spanish. Here, as so often in the addresses made to me, special stress was laid upon the fact that my country represented the cause of civil and religious liberty, of the absolute equality of treatment of all men without regard to creed, and of social and industrial justice; in short, the cause of orderly liberty in body, soul, and mind, in things intellectual and spiritual no less than in things industrial and political; the liberty that guarantees to each free, bold spirit the right to search for truth without any check from political or ecclesiastical tyranny, and that also guarantees to the weak their bodily rights as against any man who would exploit or oppress them.
We left Puerto Varas by steamer on the lake to begin our four days" trip across the Andes and through northern Patagonia, which was to end when we struck the Argentine Railway at Neuquen. This break in the Andes makes an easy road, for the pa.s.s at its summit is but three thousand feet high. The route followed leads between high mountains and across lake after lake, and the scenery is as beautiful as any in the world.
The first lake was surrounded by a rugged, forest-clad mountain wilderness, broken here and there by settlers" clearings. Wonderful mountains rose near by; one was a snow-clad volcano with a broken cone which not many years ago was in violent eruption. Another, even more beautiful, was a lofty peak of virginal snow. At the farther end of the lake we lunched at a clean little hotel. Then we took horses and rode for a dozen miles to another lake, called Esmeralda or Los Santos.
Surely there can be no more beautiful lake anywhere than this! All around it are high mountains, many of them volcanoes. One of these mountains to the north, Punti Agudo, rises in sheer cliffs to its soaring summit, so steep that snow will hardly lie on its sides. Another to the southwest, called Tronador, the Thunderer, is capped with vast fields of perpetual snow, from which the glaciers creep down to the valleys. It gains its name of thunderer from the tremendous roaring of the shattered ice ma.s.ses when they fall. Out of a huge cave in one of its glaciers a river rushes, full grown at birth. At the eastern end of this lake stands a thoroughly comfortable hotel, which we reached at sunset. Behind us in the evening lights, against the sunset, under the still air, the lake was very beautiful. The peaks were golden in the dying sunlight, and over them hung the crescent moon.
Next morning, before sunrise, we were riding eastward through the valley. For two or three miles the ride suggested that through the Yosemite, because of the abruptness with which the high mountain walls rose on either hand, while the valley was flat, with glades and woods alternating on its surface. Then we got into thick forest. The trees were for the most part giant beeches, but with some conifers, including a rather small species of sequoia. Here and there, in the glades and open s.p.a.ces, there were ma.s.ses of many-hued wild flowers; conspicuous among them were the fuchsias.
A dozen miles on we stopped at another little inn. Here we said good-by to the kind Chilean friends who had accompanied us thus far, and were greeted by no less kind Argentine friends, including Colonel Reybaud of the Argentine army, and Doctor Moreno, the noted Argentine scientist, explorer, and educator. Then we climbed through a wooded pa.s.s between two mountains. Its summit, near which lies the boundary-line between Chile and Argentina, is somewhere in the neighborhood of three thousand feet high; and this is the extreme height over which at this point it is necessary to go in traversing what is elsewhere the mighty mountain wall of the Andes. Here we met a tame guanaco (a kind of llama) in the road; it strolled up to us, smelled the noses of the horses, which were rather afraid of it, and then walked on by us. From the summit of the pa.s.s the ground fell rapidly to a wonderfully beautiful little lake of lovely green water. This little gem is hemmed in by sheer-sided mountains, densely timbered save where the cliffs rise too boldly for even the hardiest trees to take root. As with all these lakes, there are many beautiful waterfalls. The rapid mountain brooks fling themselves over precipices which are sometimes so high that the water reaches the foot in sheets of wavering mist. Everywhere in the background rise the snow peaks.
We crossed this little lake in a steam-launch, and on the other side found the quaintest wooden railway, with a couple of rough handcars, each dragged by an ox. In going down-hill the ox is put behind the car, which he holds back with a rope tied to his horns. We piled our baggage on one car, three or four members of the party got on the other, and the rest of us walked for the two miles or so before we reached the last lake we were to traverse--Nahuel Huapi. Here there happened one of those incidents which show how the world is shrinking. Three travellers, evidently Englishmen, were at the landing. One of them came up to me and introduced himself, saying: "You won"t remember me; when I last saw you, you were romping with little Prince Sigurd, in Buckingham Palace at the time of the King"s funeral; I was in attendance on (naming an august lady); my name is Herschel, Lord Herschel." I recalled the incident at once. On returning from my African trip I had pa.s.sed through western Europe, and had been most courteously received. In one palace the son and heir--whom I have called Sigurd, which was not his name--was a dear little fellow, very manly and also very friendly; and he reminded me so of my own children when they were small that I was unable to resist the temptation of romping with him, just as I had romped with them. A month later, when as special amba.s.sador I was attending King Edward"s funeral, I called at Buckingham Palace to pay my respects, and was taken in to see the august lady above alluded to. The visit lasted nearly an hour, and toward the end I heard little squeaks and sounds in the hall outside, for which I could not account. Finally I was dismissed, and, on opening the door, there was little Sigurd, with his nurse, waiting for me. He had heard that I was in the palace, and had refused to go down to dinner until he had had a play with me; and he was patiently and expectantly waiting outside the door for me to appear. I seized him, tossed him up, while he shouted gleefully, caught him, and rolled him on the floor, quite forgetting that any one was looking on; and then, in the midst of the romp, happening to look up, I saw the lady on whom I had been calling, watching the play with much interest, with her equally interested two brothers, both of them sovereigns, and her lords-in-waiting; she had come out to see what the little boy"s laughter meant. I straightened up, whereupon the little boy"s face fell, and he anxiously inquired: "But you"re not going to stop the play, are you?" Of all this my newfound friend reminded me. It was a far cry in s.p.a.ce and in surroundings, from where he and I had first met to the Andes that border Patagonia. He was a man of knowledge and experience, and the half-hour I spent with him was most pleasant.
At Nahuel Huapi we were met by a little lake steamer, on which we spent the next four hours. The lake is of bold and irregular outline, with many deep bays, and with mountain walls standing as promontories between the bays. For a couple of hours the scenery was as beautiful as it had been during any part of the two days, especially when we looked back at the ma.s.s of snow-shrouded peaks. Then the lake opened, the sh.o.r.es became clear of woods, the mountains lower, and near the eastern end, where there were only low rolling hills, we came to the little village of Bariloche.
Bariloche is a real frontier village. Forty years previously Doctor Moreno had been captured by Indians at this very spot, had escaped from them, and after days of extraordinary hardship had reached safety. He showed us a strange, giant pine-tree, of a kind different from any of our northern cone-bearers, near which the Indians had camped while he was prisoner with them. He had persuaded the settlers to have this tree preserved, and it is still protected, though slowly dying of old age.
The town is nearly four hundred miles from a railway, and the people are of the vigorous, enterprising frontier type. It was like one of our frontier towns in the old-time West as regards the diversity in ethnic type and nationality among the citizens. The little houses stood well away from one another on the broad, rough, faintly marked streets. In one we might see a Spanish family, in another blond Germans or Swiss, in yet another a family of gaucho stock looking more Indian than white.
All worked and lived on a footing of equality, and all showed the effect of the wide-spread educational effort of the Argentine Government; an effort as marked as in our own country, although in the Argentine it is made by the nation instead of by the several states. We visited the little public school. The two women teachers were, one of Argentine descent, the other the daughter of an English father and an Argentine mother--the girl herself spoke English only with difficulty. They told us that the Germans had a school of their own, but that the Swiss and the other immigrants sent their children to the government school with the children of the native Argentines. Afterward I visited the German school, where I was welcomed by a dozen of the German immigrants--men of the same stamp as those whom I had so often seen, and whom I so much admired and liked, in our own Western country. I was rather amused to see in this school, together with a picture of the Kaiser, a very large picture of Martin Luther, although about a third of the Germans were Catholics; their feelings as Germans seemed in this instance to have overcome any religious differences, and Martin Luther was simply accepted as one of the great Germans whose memory they wished to impress on the minds of their children. In this school there was a good little library, all the books being, of course, German; it was the only library in the town.
That night we had a very pleasant dinner. Our host was a German. Of the two ladies who did the honors of the table, one was a Belgian, the wife of the only doctor in Bariloche, and the other a Russian. In our own party, aside from the four of us from the United States, there were Colonel Reybaud, of the Argentine army, my aide, and a first-cla.s.s soldier; Doctor Moreno, who was as devoted a friend as if he had been my aide; and three other Argentine gentlemen--the head of the Interior Department, the governor of Neuquen, and the head of the Indian Service.
Among the other guests was a man originally from County Meath, and a tall, blond, red-bearded Venetian, a carpenter by trade. After a while we got talking of books, and it was fairly startling to see the way that polyglot a.s.semblage brightened when the subject was introduced, and the extraordinary variety of its taste in good literature. The men began eagerly to speak about and quote from their favorite authors--Cervantes, Lope de Vega, Camoens, Moliere, Shakespeare, Virgil, and the Greek dramatists. Our host quoted from the "Nibelungenlied" and from Homer, and at least two-thirds of the men at the table seemed to have dozens of authors at their tongues" ends. But it was the Italian carpenter who capped the climax, for when we touched on Dante he became almost inspired and repeated pa.s.sage after pa.s.sage, the majesty and sonorous cadence of the lines thrilling him so that his listeners were almost as much moved as he was. We sat thus for an hour--an unexpected type of _Kaffee Klatsch_ for such an outpost of civilization.
Next morning at five we were off for our four-hundred-mile drive across the Patagonian wastes to the railway at Neuquen. We had been through a stretch of scenery as lovely as can be found anywhere in the world--a stretch that in parts suggested the Swiss lakes and mountains, and in other parts Yellowstone Park or the Yosemite or the mountains near Puget Sound. In a couple of years the Argentines will have pushed their railway system to Bariloche, and then all tourists who come to South America should make a point of visiting this wonderfully beautiful region. Doubtless in the end it will be developed for travellers much as other regions of great scenic attraction are developed. Thanks to Doctor Moreno, the Argentine end of it is already a national park; I trust the Chilean end soon will be.
We left Bariloche in three motor-cars, knowing that we had a couple of hard days ahead of us. After skirting the lake for a mile or two we struck inland over flats and through valleys. We had to cross a rapid river at a riffle where the motor-cars were just able to make it. The road consisted only of the ruts made by the pa.s.sage of the great bullock carts, and often we had to go alongside it, or leave it entirely where at some crossing of a small stream the ground looked too boggy for us to venture in with the motor-cars. Three times in making such a crossing one of the cars bogged down, and we had hard work in getting out. In one case it caused us two hours" labor in building a stone causeway under and in front of the wheels--repeating what I had helped do not many months before in Arizona, when we struck a place where a cloudburst had taken away the bridge across a stream and a good part of the road that led up to it on either side.
In another place the leading car got into heavy sand and was unable to move. A party of gauchos came loping up, and two of them tied their ropes to the car and pulled it backward onto firm ground. These gauchos were a most picturesque set. They were riding good horses, strong and hardy and wild, and the men were consummate hors.e.m.e.n, utterly indifferent to the sudden leaps and twists of the nervous beasts they rode. Each wore a broad, silver-studded belt, with a long knife thrust into it. Some had their trousers in boots, others wore baggy breeches gathered in at the ankle. The saddles, unlike our cow saddles, had no horns, and the rope when in use was attached to the girth ring. The stirrups were the queerest of all. Often they were heavy flat disks, the terminal part of the stirrup-leather being represented by a narrow metal, or stiff leather, bar a foot in length. A slit was cut in the heavy flat disk big enough to admit the toe of the foot, and with this type of stirrup, which to me would have been almost as unsatisfactory as no stirrup at all, they sat their bucking or jumping horses with complete indifference.
It was gaucho land through which we were travelling. Every man in it was born to the saddle. We saw tiny boys not only riding but performing all the duties of full-grown men in guiding loose herds or pack-animals. No less characteristic than these daredevil hors.e.m.e.n were the lines of great two-wheeled carts, each dragged by five mules, three in the lead, with two wheelers, or else perhaps drawn by four or six oxen. For the most part these carts were carrying wool or hides. Occasionally we came on great pastures surrounded by wire fences. Elsewhere the stony, desolate land lay as it had lain from time immemorial. We saw many flocks of sheep, and many herds of horses, among which piebald horses were unusually plentiful. There were a good many cattle, too, and on two or three occasions we saw flocks of goats. It was a wild, rough country, and in such a country life is hard for both man and beast. Everywhere along the trail were the skeletons and dried carca.s.ses of cattle, and occasionally horses. Yet there were almost no carrion birds, no ravens or crows, no small vultures, although once very high up in the air we saw a great condor. Indeed, wild life was not plentiful, although we saw ostriches--the South American rhea--and there was an occasional guanaco, or wild llama. Foxes were certainly abundant, because at the squalid little country stores there were hundreds of their skins and also many skunk skins.
Now and then we pa.s.sed ranch-houses. There might be two or three fairly close together, then again we might travel for twenty miles without a sign of a habitation or a human being. In one place there was a cl.u.s.ter of buildings and a little schoolhouse. We stopped to shake hands with the teacher. Some of the ranch-houses were cleanly built and neatly kept, shade-trees being planted round about--the only trees we saw during the entire motor journey. Other houses were slovenly huts of mud and thatch, with a brush corral near by. Around the houses of this type the bare dirt surface was filthy and unkempt, and covered with a litter of the skulls and bones of sheep and oxen, fragments of skin and hide, and odds and ends of all kinds, foul to every sense.
Every now and then along the road we came to a solitary little store. If it was very poor and squalid, it was called a _pulperia_; if it was large, it was called an _almacen_. Inside there was a rough floor of dirt or boards, and a counter ran round it. At one end of the counter was the bar, at which drinks were sold. Over the rest of the counter the business of the store proper was done. Hats, blankets, horse-gear, rude articles of clothing, and the like were on the shelves or hung from rings in the ceiling. Sometimes we saw gauchos drinking at these bars--rough, wild-looking men, some of them more than three parts Indian, others blond, hairy creatures with the northern blood showing obviously. Although they are dangerous men when angered, they are generally polite, and we, of course, had no trouble with them. Hides, fox skins, and the like are brought by them for sale or for barter.
Order is kept by the mounted territorial police, an excellent body, much like the Canadian mounted police and the Pennsylvania constabulary.
These men are alert and soldierly, with fine horses, well-kept arms, and smart uniforms. Many of them were obviously mainly, and most of them were partly, of Indian blood. I think that Indian blood is on the whole a distinct addition to the race stock when the ancestral Indian tribe is of the right kind. The acting president of the Argentine during my visit, the vice-president, a very able and forceful man, wealthy, well educated, a thorough statesman and man of the world, and a delightful companion, had a strong strain of Indian blood in him.
The ordinary people we met used "Indian" and "Christian" as opposite terms, having cultural rather than theological or racial significance, this being customary in the border regions of temperate South America.
In one place where we stopped four Indians came in to see us. The chief or head man looked like a thorough Indian. He might have been a Sioux or a Comanche. One of his companions was apparently a half-breed, showing strong Indian features, however. A third had a full beard, and, though he certainly did not look quite like a white man, no less certainly he did not look like an Indian. The fourth was considerably more white than Indian. He had a long beard, being dressed, as were the others, in shabby white man"s garb. He looked much more like one of the poorer cla.s.s of Boers than like any Indian I have ever seen. I noticed this man talking to two of the mounted police. They were smart, well-set-up men, thoroughly identified with the rest of the population, and regarding themselves and being regarded by others as on the same level with their fellow citizens. Yet they were obviously far more Indian in blood than was the unkempt, bearded white man to whom they were talking, and whom they and their fellows spoke of as an Indian, while they spoke of themselves, and were spoken of by others, as "Christians." "Indian" was the term reserved for the Indians who were still pagans and who still kept up a certain tribal relation. Whenever an Indian adopted Christianity in the excessively primitive form known to the gauchos, came out to live with the whites, and followed the ordinary occupations, he seemed to be promptly accepted as a white man, no different from any one else. The Indians, by the way, now have property, and are well treated. Nevertheless, the pure stock is dying out, and those that survive are being absorbed in the rest of the population.
The various accidents we met with during the forenoon delayed us, and we did not take breakfast--or, as we at home would call it, lunch--until about three o"clock in the afternoon. We had then halted at a big group of buildings which included a store and a government telegraph office.
The store was a long, whitewashed, one-story house, the bedrooms in the rear, and all kinds of outbuildings round about. In some corrals near by a thousand sheep were being sheared. Breakfast had been long deferred, and we were hungry. But it was a feast when it did come, for two young sheep or big lambs were roasted whole before a fire in the open, and were then set before us; the open-air cook was evidently of almost pure Indian blood.
On we went with the cars, with no further accidents and no trouble except once in crossing a sand belt. The landscape was parched and barren. Yet its look of almost inconceivable desolation was not entirely warranted, for in the flats and valleys water could evidently be obtained a few feet below the surface, and where it was pumped up anything could be grown on the soil.