CHAPTER VI

HEALTHY LITTLE URUGUAY

One cold June evening, with more than a hundred days and eight hundred miles of travel in Chile and the Argentine behind me, I took final leave of Buenos Aires—not without regret, for all its ostentatious artificialities. Or it may be that my sorrow was at parting from the good friends with whom I had been wont to gather toward sunset in the café across from the consulate for a “cocktail San Martin,” one of whom now volunteered to see me as far as Montevideo just across the river—a hundred and twenty miles away. Out the Paseo de Colón the Dársena Sud was ablaze with the lights of the several competing steamers, equal to the best on our Great Lakes, which nightly cross the mouth of the Plata. For the two cities are closely related. In summer _Porteños_ flee to Montevideo’s beaches; in winter the white lights of Buenos Aires attract many Uruguayans; the year round business men hurry back and forth. Aboard the _Viena_ of the Mihanovich Line I watched the South American metropolis shrink to a thin row of lights strewn unbrokenly for many miles along the edge of the horizon, like illuminated needle-points where sea and sky had been sewed together. Wide and shallow, exposed here to all the raging winds from the south, the Paraná Guazú (“River like a Sea”) often shows itself worthy of its aboriginal name in this winter season. I did not wake, however, until the red sun was rising over Montevideo and her Cerro and we were gliding up to a capacious wharf.

It was fitting that my sight-seeing should begin with the little rocky hill surmounted by an old Spanish fortress which is the first and last landmark of the traveling Uruguayan. To the Cerro, barely five hundred feet high, yet standing conspicuously above all the rest of the surrounding world, Montevideo owes both its name and its situation. When the Portuguese navigator Magalhães, whom we call Magellan, sailed up what he hoped might prove a passageway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a sailor on lookout, catching sight of this little eminence, cried out, “Monte vid’ eu! I see a hill!” On it was built the first fort against the Charrúa Indians, and its value both as a place of refuge and as a stone quarry made it natural that the chief town of the region should have grown up about it. The part the Cerro has since played in Uruguayan history is out of all keeping with its insignificant size; the poems that have been written about it are as legion as the legends which hover over it. It holds chief place in the national coat-of-arms and in the hearts of homesick sons of Uruguay. Never in all the rebellions and revolutions since its discovery has the Cerro been taken by force of arms; never will the people of Montevideo tire of telling haughty _Porteños_ that Buenos Aires has nothing like it.

From its summit all Montevideo may be seen in picturesque detail and far-spread entirety, the point where the Plata, deep brown to the last, for all its sea-like width, meets the Atlantic and flows away with it over the horizon, then, swinging round the circle, the faintly undulating plains, broken here and there by low purplish hillocks, of the “Purple Land.” It is a pity that the Cerro, certainly not impregnable as a fortress, has not been made a place of residence, or, better still, transformed into such a park as Santa Lucía of Santiago. The fashionable section of Montevideo, however, has moved in the other direction, leaving the famous hill, with its garrison-sheltering old Spanish fort and its lighthouse, to squatters’ shanties, rubbish heaps, and capering goats, not to mention the insistent odors of a neighboring _saladero_ where cattle are reduced to salt beef.

In many ways the Uruguayan capital is the most attractive city of South America; as a place to live in, contrasted with a place in which to make a living, it is superior to many American cities. There is a peculiar quality of restfulness about it unknown to its large and excited rival across the Plata, something distinctive which easily makes up for the handicap of being so near a world metropolis as to be overshadowed by it. For another thing, it is nearer the mouth of the river, making it a true ocean port and the most nearly a seaside resort of any national capital in Spanish-America. Built on a series of rocky knolls, roughly suggesting the fingers of a rude hand, the charm of its location is enhanced by undulations that recall by contrast the deadly flatness of Buenos Aires. The old town, all that existed two generations ago, is crowded compactly together in true Spanish fashion on what might be called the forefinger, though it had unlimited space to spread landward. On this rocky peninsula the cross streets are narrow and fall into the sea at either end, for here it is but eight or ten short blocks from the Plata to the Atlantic. On one side is an improved harbor with steamers of many nationalities, on the other is a bay lined with splendid beaches. Like that of its great neighbor, the harbor of Montevideo requires frequent dredging, and its problem is quite the contrary of that in Valparaiso and other bottomless west-coast ports.

Along with its seascape, this situation gives the city a very exhilarating air, especially in the winter season. Then it is often penetratingly cold, and frequently so windy that not only the most securely fastened hat but the hair beneath it threatens to abandon the wearer. On the day of my landing a windstorm caused several deaths and much property damage. Among other things it took the sheet-iron roof off a building in which four fishermen had taken refuge and as these ran away the roof followed and fell upon them. In the third story of the frame hotel that housed me I often woke from a dream of being rocked in a ship at sea, and Punta Brava in a far corner of Montevideo’s suburbs was rightly named indeed on windy days. Fierce thunderstorms also marked my stay in the capital, some of them accompanied by the mightiest of flashes and crashes, during which water fell in such torrents that one could scarcely see across a narrow street—tropical storms they might have been called, had it not kept right on raining long after it had done raging.

Uruguay claims 1,400,000 inhabitants, of whom all but the million are said to live in the capital, though the lack of a definite census makes guessing a popular pastime. But the city is much larger in extent than this number would imply. One can ride for hours on the lines of its two excellent tramway companies without once leaving town. Even in the older sections Montevideo is substantially and handsomely built, with many good modern monuments. Only a few old landmarks are left, such as the purely Spanish cathedral on the Plaza de la Constitución, for Uruguay seems to consider her first demand for independence in 1808 the beginning of her history and makes no effort to preserve the memories of her colonial or pre-colombian days. For all that, the capital has retained a considerable atmosphere of old Spain, a distinctly seventeenth-century echo, along with her South American style of up-to-datedness. The best houses along the fine avenues are generally in colonial style, an almost Moorish one-story building, with lofty ceilings and space-devouring patios. Especially in the roomy suburbs do the dwellings stop abruptly at one story, so abruptly sometimes as to suggest that ruin, or at least a laborer’s strike, has suddenly befallen the owner. The real reason is probably because it would be hard to marry off one’s daughters if their “dragons” had to begin their wooing by shouting up to the second or third floor windows.

Iron-work grilles are universal, and many house-doors have brass-lined peepholes through which the resident can see whether the man knocking is worth admitting. Gardens with subtropical plants are numerous and promenades under palm-trees by no means unusual. Especially along the edge of the sea there are over-ornate _quintas_, alternating with washerwoman shanties; but there is little oppressive poverty in Montevideo, and at the same time little of the conspicuous plutocracy so familiar across the river, a lack of contrast which adds, perhaps, to the monotony of many a street vista. Poor _ranchos_ are by no means rare in the farther outskirts, but these are open-air and almost clean slums compared with the congested sections of our own large cities. Out beyond the older town are park improvements on an extensive scale. The Prado, with its great Rose Gardens, said to include hundreds of varieties, though but few were in bloom among the dead leaves of June, is worth coming far to see. Here real hills break the monotony of the landward vista and make artificial, over-polished Palermo with its deadly flatness seem disagreeable by contrast. The tale goes that a group of wealthy _Porteños_ once set on foot a movement to buy one of Uruguay’s hills, carry it across the river, and set it up in one of their own plazas. No doubt they could have reimbursed themselves by charging admission and rights of ascension, but like many ambitious Latin-American plans this one died prematurely.

In general Uruguayans are well-dressed, and comfortably well-to-do, if one may judge from appearances; compared with _roto_ Chile the capital is immaculate. “Beachcombers” are rare in this only important port of the country and beggars are seldom seen, though there is a plague of petty vendors. It had been like landing on a hostile shore to make our way through the amazingly impudent mob of hoarse-voiced cabmen, newsboys, hotel touts, lottery-ticket vendors, vagrants, pickpockets, useless policemen, and idle citizens into the tranquil waters of a Sunday morning in the Uruguayan capital; but this common waterfront experience did not last long. There is something extremely pleasant about most of the modest, unpretentious _Fluvenses_, as the people of Montevideo call themselves, a term we might translate as “rivereens.” They have, as a rule, a natural politeness, a frank and open simplicity all but unknown across the river, a leisurely, contemplative philosophy that will not be broken down even by the material prosperity of a country that is making perhaps the most intelligent use of its situation and resources of all the republics of Latin-America. It is said that the Uruguayan came mainly from the Basque provinces and the Canary Islands, while the _argentino_ is chiefly of southern Spanish origin; that the former brought with him and still retains a sturdier, less facile, but more dependable, more thoroughgoing character. Those of wide commercial experience in the continent say that the Uruguayan is the most honest man south of Panama; every foreign resident I questioned rated Uruguay as the most lovable country in South America—and as a rule foreign residents do not see the best side first. Personally, I found the Uruguayan more sincere, less selfish, somewhat more solid and at the same time more of an impulsive idealist than his materialistic neighbors across the Plata. His country is far enough south to escape the indolence of the tropics, far enough north to make life itself seem of equal importance with making a living. With every natural advantage of the Argentine, except the doubtful one of size, and a more frugal and industrious population not greatly modified by recent immigration, Uruguay is still peopled by a kind of colonial Spaniard, somewhat improved by the breezy, generous quality of his New World domain.

To those who approach it from the south, where they are almost unknown, negroes are noticeable in Montevideo and become more so as one proceeds northward through the country. No doubt they drift down from Brazil and, finding the wide Plata an obstacle, seldom reach its southern shores. Yet they are so few, and slavery is so slightly connected with them in the Uruguayan mind, that there is scarcely a “color-line.” The daughter of a former Uruguayan minister to Washington told me she had always informed inquiring Americans that there were no negroes in Uruguay, and had only discovered her error upon her return with a sharpened color sense. In Uruguay people are often called by nicknames of color, ample proof that there is no sensitiveness about the hue of the skin. These popular terms, usually preceded by the affectionate “Ché” of southeastern South America, run all the gamut of tints,—“Hola, Ché morocha.” “Diga, Ché trigueña!” “Cómo va, Ché negrito?” It is a common experience of visiting Anglo-Saxons to hear themselves addressed by familiar persons as “Ché rubio,” literally “red-head,” as a complimentary distinction from the universally black-haired natives. The latter, particularly the women, are almost always of plump form and comely face, whatever their color, with few of the cadaverous types so numerous in the north temperate zone. Uruguayan women, by the way, are perhaps a trifle more Moorish in their family life than those of Buenos Aires, but they are not wholly unaware of the “advanced” atmosphere of their environment.

Buenos Aires has long had the reputation of being the most expensive city on earth, probably because it is large enough to be famous, for certainly its neighbor Montevideo is still less of a poor man’s paradise. For one thing, the difference in basic coins favors the Uruguayan profiteer. Many things which cost an Argentine peso in Buenos Aires cost an Uruguayan peso, or two and a half times as much, in Montevideo. It is highly to the credit of Uruguay, and a constant source of pride to her citizens, that her dollar is the only one in the world normally worth more than our own; but it is painful for the visitor to be forced to purchase at so high a price pesos that will seldom buy what a quarter should. In hotel charges, public conveyances, laundries, lottery-tickets, and other necessities of life the Uruguayan dollar seems to go little farther than that of the Argentine, and certainly it has nothing like the purchasing power of our own. Not only are there substantial coins in circulation, instead of more or less ragged scraps of paper redeemable only in the imagination, or coins so debased that only a careless speaker would refer to them as silver, but any gold coin is legal tender in Uruguay. Throw down an English sovereign in the smallest shop in the most isolated corner of the republic and it is instantly accepted at a fixed value. An American $10 gold piece passed without argument as $9.66 Uruguayan, though our dollar bill was rated at only ninety _centésimos_ before the war. I chanced to be in a _pulpería_ far out in the interior of Uruguay when the shopkeeper asked the large estate owner of the vicinity to take a hundred pesos to the capital for him. By and by the _pulpero_ returned from a back room with a small handful of gold and a bit of paper on which he had figured out the sum he wished to send. He handed the _estanciero_ several English sovereigns, some German 20-mark pieces, a Brazilian gold coin, an American half-eagle, two French napoleons, and the rest of the sum in Uruguayan paper, silver, and nickel. There was no argument whatever as to the “exchange” on the foreign coins; each had its fixed value anywhere in Uruguay. It was something like what a universal coinage will be when the world grows honest and intelligent enough to establish one—though of course our bankers would not allow any such system to become universal, even did the perversity of human nature make it possible. This ready exchange, and the possibility of turning Uruguayan paper into gold upon demand, are among the reasons which make the Uruguayan dollar normally the most valuable in the world.

Down on one of its beaches the city of Montevideo runs a sumptuous hotel and an official Monte Carlo. Here it brings ambassadors and “distinguished visitors” for afternoon tea or formal banquets, gives balls, keeps an immense staff of liveried menials at public expense the year round, and during the season takes money away from the wealthy “sports” from across the river with an efficiency not exceeded anywhere along the Riviera. More than one passing observer has found this an excellent means of taxing the rich for the benefit of the poor, since the profits of the Casino go into the municipal treasury. As much can scarcely be said for the lottery run by the federal government, with its incessant appeal to the gambling instincts of all classes of the population. The tickets assert that “the lottery is run for the Hospital de Caridad and its profits are destined for exclusively beneficent ends,” but the statement rings as hollow as many similar attempts on the part of Latin-America to coax itself to believe that there is something good in an essentially vicious institution.

Music and drama flourish during the winter in Montevideo; uncounted cinemas perpetrate their piffle in and out of season. An excellent Italian dramatic company, headed by the emotional actress Lyda Borelli, sometimes, and probably not unjustly, called the successor of Duse, was playing at the “Solis” during my visit—and bringing out in pitiless contrast the insufferable barnstormers usually seen on the South American stage. The opera season is in August, when that half of stars and troupe who do not cross to Santiago de Chile are on their way back from Buenos Aires to New York or Europe. Orchestra seats are then at least $12 each and boxes from $80 up, but as one _must_ have a box for the season or be rated a social nonentity, there are sad rumors of _Fluvense_ families scrimping all the rest of the year in order to buy their opera tickets. Naturally this makes them somewhat exacting and capable of giving an unpleasant reception to singers tired out at the end of a long season. Caruso himself has been roundly hissed in Montevideo. Plays and the opera begin at twenty-one o’clock. As in Italy and Brazil, and more recently in the Argentine, the law requires the use of the excellent twenty-four-hour system in all public buildings, and many a private timepiece has followed suit. The decree was new and throughout the city were many pasted-over signs such as:

Museum open from 12 to _16_ o’clock.

Somewhere in South America I met a Dane who contended that a small country, like a man of modest wealth, is better off than a great nation. Uruguay bears out the statement. We have been accustomed to speak of the “A.B.C.” countries of South America as having the only stable and progressive governments in that continent. Only its slight size, as compared with its gigantic neighbors, has caused Uruguay to be overlooked in the formation of that list. As its near neighbor and relative, Paraguay, is perhaps at the bottom of the scale governmentally, so Uruguay, by its national spirit, its energetic character, and its advanced legislation is probably at the top, more nearly fulfilling the requirements of an independent state than any other nation south of the United States. Certainly it is superior to both Chile and Brazil in everything but size, and it is doubtful whether even the Argentine is governed with more intelligence and general honesty. Once as troublesome a state as any in Latin-America, Uruguay has settled down and developed her natural resources until she is noted for her financial stability, and revolutions are memories of earlier generations. Were she a large country, instead of being merely a choice morsel of land smaller than some counties of Texas, there is little doubt that she would stand at least as high as any of her neighbors—or would size, always an obstacle to good government in Latin-America, bring her down from her high level?

Uruguay has not always been a small country, nor for that matter a country at all. In the olden days the _Banda Oriental_, or “Eastern Bank,” of the River Uruguay was a province of the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires. To this day the official name of the country is “La República Oriental del Uruguay,” and the people still call themselves “Orientals.” In 1800 the whole “Eastern Bank” had but 40,000 inhabitants, of whom 15,000 lived in Montevideo. When Napoleon overran Spain and the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires revolted, the _Banda Oriental_ remained loyal, thus opening the first breach between the two sections of the colony. Not long afterward the “grito de libertad” sounded in the interior of the province, and the man who was destined to become the national hero of Uruguay, the “First Oriental,” the “Protector of the Oriental Provinces,” soon took the head of the revolt.

José Gervasio Artigas was a mere _estanciero_ of the “Eastern Bank” until he took up soldiering, some time before the “cry of liberty.” In 1811 he left the Spanish army and fled to Buenos Aires, but soon became an advocate of complete Uruguayan independence, a patriot or a traitor, according to the side of the Plata on which the speaker lives. Having won their freedom from Spain, the _argentinos_ were finally defeated by the “Oriental” general, Rivera, and Artigas became ruler not only of the present Uruguay but of the now Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, Santa Fé, and Córdoba, these having formed the “Federal League” in opposition to the Buenos Aires Directory. To read Uruguayan school-books, “the Tucumán congress was secretly working to establish a monarchy on the Plata, and our five provinces sent no delegates.” One by one, however, the other provinces returned to the new mother country, only the “Eastern Bank” persisting in its isolation and demand for complete autonomy. Meanwhile Artigas was in exile—and at one time was offered a pension by the United States—but finally, in 1825, a band of “Orientals” besieged Montevideo and Uruguay declared her full independence.

The Uruguayan flag remains the same as that of the Argentine, with a golden sun superimposed. The revolutions of 1863 and 1870, each two years long, are the only serious disturbances that have occurred in the “República Oriental” since its independence, and with those exceptions the country has steadily advanced in health and prosperity. Its government is more centralized than our own, more like that of the Argentine, the congress being elected by popular vote in the departments, but the executives of the latter being appointed by the federal government. _Argentinos_ speak of Uruguay with a kind of forced condescension, as of a member of the family temporarily estranged from the rest, or as a land of no great importance yet one worthy of again being a province of what they consider the greatest country on the globe, and they pretend at least to think that the great development of the Argentine will in time inevitably bring back to the fold this one lost lamb. But the “Orientals” consider their government superior and show no tendency to make the change.

Uruguay’s reputation as perhaps the most progressive republic in South America is largely based on her advanced legislation, most of it fathered by a recent president. Under his guidance stern minimum wage and maximum hour laws have been enacted, and many doctrines of the milder radicals have been put into modified practice. The legislators forbade bull-fights, cock-fights, and prize-fights in one breath. Uruguay is the only country in South America with a divorce law, and the church has been shorn of the militant power it still has in most of Spanish-America. Montevideo bids fair to become the Reno of the continent, as well as its only summer-resort capital. Dissatisfied husbands or wives move over from Buenos Aires; Spanish and Italian actors look forward to their Uruguayan engagement as an opportunity to air their conjugal grievances—though they are not “aired” in the American yellow-journal sense, for here divorce is strictly an affair between the parties concerned and the judge and lawyers, rarely being so much as mentioned even in the back pages of a provincial newspaper. Priests are comparatively rare sights in the _Banda Oriental_; religious festivals and public processions have been abolished, and the influence of the church on the government reduced to a minimum. Montevideo is the seat of an archbishop, but he exists only on paper, for the party in power is not friendly to the clergy and the papal appointment must be confirmed by congress. There are, to be sure, many crude superstitions left, especially among the poorer classes and in the rural districts, but they give Rome no such income as it derives from similar sources in the rest of the continent. Several Protestant churches have been built in Montevideo, and all faiths enjoy a freedom that would seem astounding on the West Coast. Indeed, comparative indifference to sect lines makes it an ordinary experience for Protestant ministers traveling in rural districts to be asked by persons professing themselves devout Catholics to baptize their children. “For one thing,” as one such rustic put it, “it is cheaper than when the priest does it.” It may seem a matter of slight importance to those who have never known the suffering inflicted by the infernal din of hand-beaten clappers against disguised kettles in the church towers of the Andes that on the evening of my first day in Uruguay real church bells, of a musical tone I had almost forgotten, were ringing in a way that must have been genuine music to the ocean-battered old windjammer just creeping into the harbor. Far off in the autumn twilight the sound was still carried softly to my ears by the wind before which gray clouds were scurrying like a battalion in broken ranks of defeat, toward the western sky, stained blood-red by the already dead sun.

Politically the Uruguayans are _blancos_ or _colorados_, “whites” or “reds.” It is a splendid distinction. For one thing, the parties can print their arguments and their lists of candidates in posters of their own color and even the stranger has no difficulty in deciding which side is speaking. Townsmen can announce their political affiliation by wearing a red or a white cravat, or a bit of ribbon in their lapels; countrymen, by the color of their neckerchiefs. There is contrast enough between the two colors to obscure the lack of any other real difference between the two parties. In theory the “reds” are “advanced” and the “whites” more conservative. Evidently there are no neutrals in Uruguayan politics; everyone is either “red” or “white” from the cradle, not because Uruguayans take a greater interest in political matters than average republican societies, but because it is bad form, and lonesome, to be outside the ranks; and men who do not vote are fined. How an Uruguayan becomes attached to this or that party is a mystery; almost none of them can give any real reason for their affiliation. Evidently, like “Topsy,” they are “jes’ born” in their natural colors.

It is now fifteen years since the “reds” came to power on the heels of Uruguay’s last revolution. Possession is nine points, even in so progressive a corner of Latin-America, and the “whites” have been the “outs” from that day to this. Yet one often hears _blancos_ speak of “when we start our new revolution,” for it seems to be taken for granted that the “whites” will come back some day with bullets, and virtually every man in the country is prepared to fight on short notice for one side or the other. Roughly speaking, “big business,” large estate owners, and the church, in other words the predatory classes, are “whites,” though neckcloths of that color are by no means rare on the peons and _gauchos_ of the more backward country districts. The leader of the “reds,” now a private citizen merely because the constitution does not permit the same man to be president twice in succession, has often been described as “a mixture of idealist and predatory politician,” but he knows the secret of imposing his will upon the government and is generally credited with most of Uruguay’s progressive legislation. For all his efforts and many real results, however, there is still much that is rotten in the Republic of Uruguay. The most advanced laws are of doubtful use when they are administered by the bandits in office who still flourish throughout the rural districts. In contrast with the brave modern theories of government is the practice in such things as permitting scores of the lowest forms of brothels to flourish in the very heart of the capital. I cannot recall a more disgusting public sight in the western hemisphere than the long rows of female wrecks in scant attire who solicit at the doors of several streets radiating from the Anglican church, while veritable mobs of men and youths march back and forth to “look ’em over,” amid laughter, ribald witticisms, and worse.

Contrary to the usual custom in South America, there is no military conscription in Uruguay; recruits are enticed by posters covered with glowing promises. Yet for all the “advanced” principles of equality reputed to reign in the little republic, its army is largely made up of the poorer and more ignorant element of the population. It is not a dangerous military force, but it is very useful to the party in power not only in preserving law and order but for discouraging “white” revolutions. Whether or not only “reds” are recruited, or whether those placed on the government payroll automatically become “reds,” whether indeed youths in the political-ridden interior do not have redness thrust upon them, is a question not to be determined during a brief visit. As to the “national navy” of Uruguay, it consists, if my semi-official informant is trustworthy, of one gunboat, two cruisers, four steamers, and a transport, all of which, when they are not absent on one of the frequent “official missions” that make life in the Uruguayan navy just one festival after another, may be seen anchored in the harbor of Montevideo, their eyes turned rather toward the “whites” on shore than toward foreign foes.

I traveled fifteen hundred miles on the network of the _Ferrocarril Central_ of Uruguay. This and the equally British “Midland” reach all towns of importance in the republic, though they still by no means cover it thoroughly. Railway travel in South America is seldom as luxurious as in the United States, but in the dwarf republic both cars and service are, on the whole, excellent; the trains are so much more comfortable than many of the towns through which they run that it is not strange that scores of the inhabitants come down to sit in them as long as they remain. There are few accidents, the trains are seldom late, though not particularly swift, and while fares are high there are frequent low-priced excursions, announced on handbills as in our own land. The English-made cars are on a modified American plan, some of the first-class coaches having leather-upholstered divans as large as beds, even second-class boasting little tables between the seats for those who care to lunch or play cards. Between the two classes at opposite ends of the train there is usually a compartment with kitchen stove and pantry that serves as a combination café and dining-car, a generous dinner costing a _peso_, wine, or “cork rights” from those who bring their liquor with them, extra. Sleeping-cars, journeying on both lines in order to find distance enough for an all-night trip, run from Montevideo to Paysandú and Salto, on the shores of the River Uruguay bounding on the west the republic of the “Eastern Bank.” Compared with Chile, railroading in Uruguay is palatial and immaculate, though even here the only heating arrangements for bitter June days are doormats between the seats, and the only really serious criticism to be made is against the bad habit, common throughout South America, of starting the trains at some unearthly hour in the morning.

I took the shortest line first and, rambling at moderate speed across a somewhat rolling country more fertile in appearance than the Argentine, brought up at Minas. A broad stone highway, here and there disintegrated by the heavy rains, led the mile or more from the station to the town, an overgrown village in a lap of low rocky hills monotonously like any other Uruguayan or Argentine town of its size, with a two-towered church and a few rows of one-story buildings toeing wide, bottomless streets. As in the Argentine, there are no cities in Uruguay that compare with the capital; the present department capitals were originally forts against the Indians and the Portuguese around which people gathered for protection, and few of them have cause to grow to importance.

The second journey carried me into the northwestern corner of the country. As far as Las Piedras, a suburban town twenty miles from the capital, there are a score of daily trains in either direction. Street-cars come here also, the place being noted for a granite monument topped by a golden winged Victory commemorating a battle for independence in 1811, from the terrace of which Montevideo’s fortress-crowned Cerro still stands conspicuously above all the rest of the visible world. Then this chief “Oriental” landmark disappears and to the comparative cosmopolitanism of the federal district succeeds the bucolic calm of the _campaña_, as the pampa is called in Uruguay. The absence of trees alone gives this a mournful aspect. The “Oriental” has tried half-heartedly to make up for the natural lack of woods by planting imported eucalyptus and poplar, at least about his country dwellings, but nowhere do these reach the dignity of a forest. Uruguay has less excuse for poor roads than the Argentine, for if it has as much rain and even heavier soil, it has an abundance of stone, rare in the land across the Plata. Yet though several stone highways leave the capital with the best of intentions, they soon degenerate into sloughs seldom navigable in the wet winter season. Most Uruguayan roads are merely strips of open _campaña_, the legal twenty-two meters wide, flanked by wire fences, or occasionally by cactus hedges. Estates a few miles off the railroads have no chance of getting produce to market during a large portion of the year; yet the prosperity of the country depends almost entirely on the exporting of foodstuffs.

Fertile rolling _lomas_, with now and then a solitary _ombú_ spreading its arms to the wind on the summit, made up most of the landscape, a scene not greatly different from, yet infinitely more pleasing than, the dead flatness of Argentine pampas. The _ombú_ is the national tree of Uruguay, of majestic size and always standing in striking isolation on the crest of a _loma_, because, according to the poet, it loves to overlook and laugh at the silly world, though the botanist explains that it is planted by birds dropping single seeds in their flight and reaches maturity only on hillocks out of reach of stagnant water. Beyond Mal Abrigo, rightly named “Bad Shelter,” granite rocks thrust themselves here and there through the soil; for long stretches coarse brown _espartillo_ grass covered the country like a blanket. This and the abundant thistles often ruin the black loam underneath, but the average “Oriental” _estanciero_ abhors agriculture, preferring to give his rather indolent attention to cattle and sheep, for he considers planting fit only for Indians, peons, and immigrant _chacreros_. Nor is the lot of these Basque, Spanish, or Italian small farmers always happy, even though they hold their plots of earth on fairly generous terms, for locusts have been known to destroy a year’s labor in a few hours. There were a few riding gang-plows, however, drawn by eight or ten oxen, and many primitive wooden plows behind a pair or two of them. Sleek cattle, and horses of better stock than the average in South America, grazed along the hollows and hillsides; now and then an ostrich of the pampas, occasionally a whole flock of them, legged it away across the rolling _campaña_. Though most of the country people lived in thatched huts made of the rich loam soil, sometimes laid together with a clapboard effect and oozing streaks of mud at this season, both sexes were well and cleanly dressed.

The railroad wound around every _loma_, refusing to take more than the slightest grades. Now and then we climbed ever so little up the flanks of such a knoll and discovered to vast depths of haze-blue horizon a plump, rolling country of purplish hue, dotted with dark little clumps of eucalyptus, from each of which peered a low farmhouse and occasionally a Cervantes windmill for the grinding of grain. There were many such _estancia_ houses, yet they were all far apart in the immensity of the little Republic of the Eastern Bank. Why most stations were so far from the towns they served, in this level country, was a mystery. The towns themselves varied but slightly in appearance,—a scattered collection of one-story buildings, in most cases covered with a stucco that had at some time been painted or whitewashed, a _pulpería_, or general store, sacred chiefly to the dispensing of strong drink, and, radiating from it, wide roads plowed into knee-deep sloughs of black earth. A few sulkies and huge two-wheeled carts, an occasional country wagon with four immense wheels, from which produce was leisurely being loaded into freight-cars set aside by the local switch engine—to wit, a yoke of oxen—some real estate and auction signs offering the chance of a life-time, completed the background of the picture. In the foreground the inevitable gang of shouting, mud-bespattered hackmen was almost lost in the throng of wind-and-sun-browned men in bloomer-like trousers. Peons smoked their eternal cigarettes; _gauchos_ shod in low _alpargatas_ or high, soft, wrinkled leather boots, a white or a red kerchief floating about their necks, the short, stocky riding whip known as a _rebenque_ hanging from a wrist, lounged about the door of the _pulpería_, to posts before which were tied trail-spattered horses saddled with several layers of sheepskins. An incredibly motley collection of dogs; a majestic policeman in full uniform and helmet above his voluminous _bombachas_, looking essentially peaceful for all the sword dangling at his side; a few men and youths, bare-legged to the knee, wading about with cheerful faces, as if the rainy season were at worst a temporary inconvenience more than offset by the long months of fine weather, added their picturesque bit to the gathering. Every movement and gesture showed these people to be of quicker intelligence than the dwellers in the high Andes. Few women were seen either on trains or at stations, except at the smaller towns, where there were sometimes groups of them, wholly white with few exceptions, but wearing earrings worthy the daughters of African chieftains. At each halt the station-master in his best clothes, looking busier and more important than a prime minister on coronation day, stood watch in hand, the bell-rope in the other, waiting for the time-table to catch up with us; the town notables looked on, half-anxiously, half-benignly, as if they considered themselves very indulgent in allowing the train to run through their bailiwick and felt deeply the responsibility involved; boys of assorted sizes, barefoot and shod, wormed their way in and out of the throng staring at everything with wondering eyes; a few comely girls sauntered about to see and be seen, and friends and relatives took the hundredth last embrace amid much chatter and mutual thumping of backs. Then all at once the station-master gives the bell three sharp taps, as much as to say, “I mean it, and I am not a man to be trifled with,” and as the train gets slowly under way some town hero grasps the opportunity to show his fearlessness by catching it on the fly, and dropping off again half a car-length beyond with a triumphant, sheepish grin on his sun-browned countenance.

Two days later the sun, rising huge and red over my left shoulder, painted a brilliant pink the rounded _lomas_ flanking the Y-shaped line to Treinta y Tres (also written “33”) and to Melo, far to the northeast of Montevideo, then spread a pale crimson tint over all the gently rolling world. Fluffy lambs turned tail and fled as we approached, the watchdog, true to his calling even unto death, charging the train against all odds and putting it to ignominious flight. Here and there lay a whitening skeleton, the animal’s skull sometimes stuck up conspicuously on the top of a fence-post. There is no unsettled _despoblado_ in Uruguay, no deserts or haunts of wild Indians, but there is still much land put to little or no use and not a few remains of the destruction wrought during the civil war that ended in 1852. Rare, indeed, is the standing structure in the rural districts that was not built since that time.

At a small station we were joined by a youth of twenty, pure Caucasian of race, of the class corresponding to our “hired man.” His long, wavy, jet-black, carefully oiled hair contrasted strangely with his complexion, very white under the tan; his eyes were light-brown, as was also the labial eyebrow he now and then affectionately stroked. He wore a raven black suit, the coat short and tight-fitting, the trousers, or _bombachas_, huge as grainsacks, disappearing in great folds into calfskin half-boots. A black felt hat of the squared shape once popular at our colleges was held in place by a narrow black ribbon tied coquettishly under his chin. The bit of his speckless shirt that could be seen was light green; above it was a rubber collar and a cream-colored cravat adorned with a “gold” scarfpin; on the third finger of his left hand he wore a plain gold band; about his neck floated a huge, snow-white, near-silk kerchief, and a foreign gold coin hung from the long gilded watch-chain looped ostentatiously all the way across his chest. About his waist he wore a leather belt six inches wide, with several buttoned pockets or compartments in which he kept money, tickets, tobacco, and other small possessions, and from the back of which, barely out of sight, hung his revolver. A poncho of faint pink-white, as specklessly clean as all the rest of his garments, and thrown with studied _abandon_ over one shoulder, completed his outfit.

He rode first-class, and having produced his ticket with a millionaire gesture meant to overawe the modest _guarda_ whose duty it was to gather it, he strode into the dining-car with great ostentation and called for a drink. With the same air of unbounded wealth he paid his reckoning, flung a generous tip to the waiter, who probably got more in a week than this at best low-salaried farm-hand in a month, and strutted back to his seat. It was evident that he was not traveling far, or he would have sneaked into the second-class coach in his old clothes. At each station he got off to parade haughtily up and down the platform, casting peacock glances at the dark-tinted _criolla_ girls who embroidered it. I approached him at one such stop and asked permission to take his picture. He refused in very decided and startled terms. I felt that his “no” was not final, however, and scarcely a mile more lay behind us before he came wandering up with a companion and sat down beside me. Why did I want his picture? Would it cost anything? How many copies of it would I give him? Well, if it was true, as I claimed, that they could not be finished on the spot—and why not?—I could of course send them to him? Gradually he reached the opposite extreme of begging me to take his picture. His companion having suggested that it might be published “_allá en Europa_,” he kept his delight down to becoming _gaucho_ dignity with difficulty, and before we descended to take the picture at the station where he left the train, after a short and evidently his only railway journey in months, he was assuring me that I might publish it “over there in Europe, in ‘Fray Mocho’ of Buenos Aires” (which the raucous-voiced trainboy incessantly offered for sale) “or anywhere else.” Only when the train had gone on without him did I discover that he was a _blanco_ fleeing from arrest in his own department for the killing of a rural official in some political squabble, a fact that seemed to be common knowledge among my fellow-passengers and which must have made a bit startling my sudden request to photograph him.

The Cerro lighthouse was still flashing through the dense black night when, late in June, on the shortest day of the year, I took the tri-weekly train for Brazil. By the time the edge of darkness was tinted pink by a cloudless day which gradually spread upward from the horizon, we were already halting at country stations where thickly wrapped rustics who had driven miles in their bulky two-wheeled carts, a lantern set on either side of them in a sort of wooden niche raised aloft on a stick, were unloading battered cans of milk. Durazno, a good-sized department capital strewn over a low knoll and terminating in a church, was so flooded by the River Yi at its feet that its parks, alameda, and “futbol” field were completely under water and many poor _ranchos_ stood immersed to their ears. The names of the stations were often suggestive,—Carda, Sarandí, Molles, all named for indigenous trees, so striking is one of them in this almost treeless landscape. From Rio Negro, another of the department capitals which pass in close succession on this line, the “Midland” railway paralleled our own for a dozen miles before striking off over the brown lomas toward Paysandú. Well on in the afternoon the smoothly rolling country broke up into the little rocky gorge of a small stream lined with bushy trees. It was probably not five hundred feet anywhere from the bottom of the brook to the top of the rock-faced hill, but this was such unusual scenery to “Orientals” that I had been hearing since hours before of the extraordinary beauty of this natural phenomenon, and all prepared to drink their fill of it from the windows of the train. It was named Valle Eden, but times seem to have changed in that ideal spot, for a policeman in mammoth _bombachas_ stood on the station platform, and of Eve there was not so much as a fig-leaf to be seen.

I had ridden the sun clear around his short winter half-circle when I descended at Tacuarembó. The town had a hint of tropical ways,—women going languidly down to the little sandy river with bundles of clothing on their heads, the streets running out into grassy lanes scattered with carelessly built ranchos. Features, which had grown more and more Indian all day along the way and in the second-class coaches, here sometimes suggested more aboriginal than Caucasian blood. Here, too, there had been much rain, and the very bricks had sprouted green on the humid, unsunned south ends of the houses. The shortness of the days was emphasized by the discovery that I was back in candle-land again, where there was nothing to do in the evening but stroll the streets or go to bed.

I had been reading the Uruguayan epic “Tabaré” for hours next morning, and possessing my soul in such patience as one acquires in Latin-America, when I learned by chance that a _mucamo_, as they call a _mozo_ in Uruguay, had been waiting in the hotel patio below and asking for me every few minutes since the night before, the servants having been too indolent to bring me word. With the better part of a day lost I rode away on a stout, gray-white horse of rocking-chair canter. The muddy or flooded road curved and turned and rose and fell, always seeking the moderate height of the succeeding ridges and here and there crossing gently rounded _cuchillas_. The _mucamo_ on his piebald was outwardly a most unprepossessing creature, but he was a helpful, cheery fellow, in great contrast to the usual surly workman of southern South America, and though only sixteen and scarcely able to read, he was by no means dull-witted. Apparently there was not a bird, a flower, or an animal which he did not know intimately, and he was supernaturally quick in catching sight or sound of them. The _hornero_, a little brown bird that makes its ovenlike nest on fence-posts, the branches of trees, and the crosspieces of telegraph-poles, was there in force; the _cotorra_, a species of noisy paroqueet, was almost as numerous. The _chingolo_, resembling a sparrow, sits on the backs of grazing cattle and lives on the _garrapatas_, or ticks, that burrow into the animal’s hide. The _bien-te-veo_ (“I spy you”), a yellow bird with a whistling call suggesting that of a happy child playing hide-and-seek, frequently glided past; the startled cry of the _teru-teru_ rose as we advanced, disturbing it. The latter is called the “sentinel bird” and is so certain to give warning of anything approaching that even soldiers have found it a useful ally. Dark-gray with white wings and a slight crest, it resembles a lapwing with a cry not unlike that of our “killdeer.” The _bien-te-veo_ and the _teru-teru_ live in perfect immunity because of a local superstition similar to the one sailors have for the albatross. The woodpecker of Uruguay is called _carpintero_, because he works in wood; the _viuda_ (widow), a little white bird with a black head, is so called, my companion explained to me in all innocence, because she produces her brood regularly each year without ever being seen with a male. A little dark-brown bird called the _barranquero_ builds nests like the homes of our ancient cliff-dwellers, in the sides of _barrancas_, or sand-banks. Among the many small birds, songsters, screamers, and disciples of silence, which eddied about us, one of the most conspicuous was the _cardenal_, gray with white under the wings, its whole head covered with a bright-red liberty cap. A large bird resembling the stork my companion called “Juan Grande”; others call it the _chajá_, because of the jeering half-laugh it is always uttering. It lives on the edges of swamps, though it cannot swim. A big brown _carancho_, a hawk-like bird living on carrion, circled above us with the ordinary South American scavenger buzzard, here called simply _cuervo_, or crow. There is good shooting of a local partridge in Uruguay, the open season being from April to September. At plowing time the gulls come in great numbers to feast on the fat grubs. The dainty crested Uruguayan sparrow has all but been driven out by the English variety, introduced, if the local legend can be believed, by an immigrant who let a cageful of them fly rather than pay duty on them.

Thus we rode hour after hour over the rolling _lomas_ and _cuchillas_. The ground was here and there speckled with _macachines_, daisy-like little flowers of a wild plant that produces a species of tiny sweet potato. The _mucamo_ had never heard of the Castilian tongue; what he spoke was the “lingua oriental.” It was, to be sure, by no means pure Spanish, but a Spaniard would have had no difficulty in understanding him.

At the door of an estancia house with all the comforts reasonably to be expected in so isolated a location I was met by “Pirirín,” son of a former minister to London and Washington, and brother of a well-known Uruguayan writer. His English was as fluent as my own, with just a trace of something to show that it was not his native tongue. An old woman at once brought us _mate_, and we sucked alternately at the protruding tube each time she refilled the gourd with hot water. The sun soon set across the rich loam country, which was here and there being turned up by plodding oxen, and threw into relief the three _cerros chatos_, flat-topped hills that give the region its nickname and which suggest that the level of the country was once much higher before it was washed away into the sea by heavy rains that even now gave earth and sky such striking colors.

The wealth and prosperity of the native _estanciero_ of Uruguay is rarely indicated by the size or dignity of his _estancia_ house. As in the Argentine and Chile, many estates are owned by men living in the capital, if not in Europe, each in charge of a _gerente_, or overseer-manager. Small as Uruguay is—by South American standards it seems tiny, even though it is almost as large as New England—many of its estancias are immense, especially in these northern departments. There has been much chatter by politicians about limiting the size of estates and setting up immigrants in the place of absentee owners, but so far it has chiefly ended in political chatter. The average Uruguayan estancia house is not particularly well adapted to the climate, at least during the winter months. A little clump of poplars or eucalyptus, occasionally a solitary _ombú_, invariably marks the site of the main dwelling. Not a few men of comparative wealth pig it out on their own immense estates, scorning modern improvements, cut off by impassable roads from markets and all the outside world several months a year, refusing to subscribe to the rural telephone, depending for their news on private postmen hired by groups of their fellows. A few estate owners, especially those who have lived abroad, demand moderate comfort, whether for themselves or their managers, though even “Pirirín” was content with more primitive conditions than many a small American farmer would endure.

It is quickly evident and freely admitted that the average estancia in Uruguay is loose of morals. _Estancieros_ frankly state that it is better if the cook is old and unattractive. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception, for _estancia_ washerwomen and others of their class to present the estate with a score of children by members of the owning family and perhaps by several of the peons as well. Among this class marriage is unpopular and generally considered superfluous. There is much noise about Uruguay’s “advanced” theories of social improvement, yet the law forces, and _costumbre_ expects, no help from the father in the support of his illegitimate children. If he chooses to acknowledge them and aid in their up-bringing, he is credited with an unusually charitable disposition. The woman, on her side, takes her condition as a matter of course. She will admit with perfect equanimity that she is not certain just who is father of this child or that and pointing out one of a half dozen playing about the _estancia_ backyard she will say laughingly, yet with a hint of seriousness and pride, “Ah, sí, _el_ tiene papá;” that is, he is one of her children whose father has recognized him. Yet these women are as punctilious in general courtesy and the outward forms of behavior as their proud _patrón_ or the hidalgo-mannered peons.

Next day “Pirirín” and I rode away in the Sunday morning sunshine across the immense estate, the _teru-terus_ screaming a warning ahead of us wherever we went. In and about a _bañado_, a swamp full of razor-edged wild grass that cut the fingers at the slightest touch, we saw specimens of the three principal indigenous animals of Uruguay,—the _carpincho_, _nutria_, and _mulita_. The first, large as an Irish terrier, is grayish-brown in color, with an unattractive face sloping back from nose to ears, squirrel-like teeth, and legs suggestive of the kangaroo. Amphibious and sometimes called the river hog, he looks like a cross between a pig and a rabbit, or as if he had wished to be a deer but had found the undertaking so difficult that he had given it up and taken to the water and to rooting instead. On the edges of Uruguayan streams there are many happy little families of the beaver-like nutria, an aquatic animal large as a cat, with long thick fur and a rat-like tail. Playful as a young rabbit, the nutria is quick of hearing and swift of action, taking to the water at once when disturbed and leaving only its nostrils above the surface; yet when cornered it is savage, as many a dog has learned to his sorrow. When the _pulperos_, or country shopkeepers, of Uruguay found that nutria skins brought a high price from the furriers of Europe and the United States they set the countrymen to killing them off regardless of age, sex, or season, ruining many of the skins by their clumsy handling and all but exterminating the species. The _mulita_, also called _tatu_, is a timid, helpless little animal of the iguana family, half-lizard, half-turtle, with a scaly, shield-like covering that suggests medieval armor, and which, dug out of its hole and roasted over a fagot-fire, furnishes a repast fit for kings.

The flora was also striking, for all the absence of forests and large growths. The _sina-sina_ is a small tree with dozens of trunks growing from the same root, willow-like leaves, and large thorns that clutch and tear at anything that ventures within reach of it. A waterside bush called the _curupí_ contains a poison that the Charrúa Indians formerly used for tipping their arrows. The _sarandí_, a bush growing on the banks of streams with its feet always in the water; the _madreselva_, or honeysuckle; the _chilca_, a thinly scattered bush scarcely two feet high, and the _guayacán_, a bushy plant with beautiful white flowers in season, were the most common landscape decorations. Thousands of _macachines_ covered the ground, white flowers with now and then a touch of yellow or velvety dark-red.

The gauchos of the estate had been ordered to _rodear_, to round up a large herd of cattle, and soon we came upon them riding round and round several hundred on the crest of a hillock. On the backs of some of the animals _chingolos_ still sat serenely picking away at the _garrapatas_ or the flesh left bare by them. The latter are the chief pest of an otherwise almost perfect ranching country, for thousands of these aggressive ticks burrow into the hide of the animals and suck their blood so incessantly that great numbers of cattle die of anemia or fever. All but the more backward estates now have a big trough-like bath through which the cattle are driven several times a year as a protection against _garrapatas_, but even so it is one peon’s sole duty to ride over the estate each day to _curear_, or skin the animals that have died, carry the skin home, and stake it out in the sun to dry.

More than two hours of riding brought us to the _almacén_ or _pulpería_, the general store that is to be found on or near every large _estancia_ in Uruguay. As the day was Sunday scores of gauchos with that half-bashful, laconic, yet self-reliant air common to their class, ranging all the way from half-Indian to pure white in race, with here and there the African features bequeathed by some Brazilian who had wandered over the nearby border, silently rode up on their shaggy ponies one after another out of the treeless immensity and, throwing the reins of the animal over a fence-post beside many others drowsing in the sun, stalked noiselessly into the dense shade of the acacia and eucalyptus trees about the _pulpería_, then into the store itself. Most of them were in full regalia of _recado_, _pellones_, shapeless felt hat, shaggy whiskers and poncho. With few exceptions the “Oriental” gaucho still clings to _bombachas_ or _chiripá_, the ballooning folds of which disappear in moccasin-like alpargatas, or into the wrinkled calfskin boots still called _botas de potro_, though the custom that gave them their name has long since become too expensive to be continued. These “colt boots” were formerly obtained by killing a colt, unless one could be found already dead, removing the skin from two legs without cutting it open, thrusting the gaucho foot into it, and letting it shape itself to its new wearer. A short leather whip hanging from his leather-brown wrist, a poncho with a long fringe, immense spurs so cruel that the ready wit of the pampa has dubbed them “_nazarinas_,” a gay waistcoat, and last of all a flowing neckcloth, the last word of dandyism in “camp” life, complete his personal wardrobe. It is against the law to carry arms in Uruguay, yet every gaucho or peon has his _cuchillo_ in his belt, or carries a revolver if he considers himself above the knife stage. Every horseman, too, must have his _recado_, that complication of gear so astonishing to the foreigner, so efficient in use, with which the rural South American loads down his mount. An ox-hide covers the horse from withers to crupper, to keep his sweat from the rider’s gear; a saddle similar to that used on pack animals, high-peaked fore and aft, is set astride this, and both hide and saddle are cinched to the horse by a strong girth fastened by thongs passed through a ringbolt. On the bridle, saddle, and whip is brightly shining silver, over the saddle-quilts and blankets are piled one above the other, the top cover being a saddlecloth of decorated black sheepskin or a hairy _pellón_ of soft, cool, tough leather, and outside all this is passed a very broad girth of fine tough webbing to hold it in place. With his _recado_ and poncho the experienced gaucho has bedding, coverings, sun-awning, shelter from the heaviest rain, and all the protection needed to keep him safe and sound on his pampa wanderings.

As they entered the _pulpería_ the newcomers greeted every fellow-gaucho, though some two score were already gathered, with that limp handshake peculiar to the rural districts of South America, rarely speaking more than two or three words, and these so low as to be barely audible, apparently because of the presence of “Pirirín” and myself. The rules of caste were amazing in a country supposed to be far advanced in democracy. Though the gaucho, in common with most of the human family, considers himself the equal, if not the superior, of any man on earth, he retains many of the manners of colonial days. “Pirirín” and I, as lords of the visible universe and representatives of the wealth and knowledge of the great outside world, had entered the _pulpería_ by the family door and were given the choicest seats—on the best American oil-boxes available—behind the counter. The sophisticated-rustic _pulpero_ greeted us each with a handshake, somewhat weak, to be sure, because that is the only way his class ever shakes hands, but raising his hat each time, while we did not so much as touch ours. To have done so would have been to lower both the _pulpero’s_ and the by-standing gauchos’ opinion of us. Then he turned and greeted his gaucho customers with an air nicely balanced between the friendly and the superior, offering each of them a finger end, they raising their hats and he not so much as touching his.

Yet these slender, wiry countrymen, carrying themselves like self-reliant freemen, with a natural ease of bearing and a courtesy in which simplicity and punctilio are nicely blended, take the stranger entirely on his merits and give and expect the same courtesy as the wealthy _estanciero_. If the newcomer shows a friendly spirit, his title soon advances from “Señor”—or “Mister,” in honor of his foreign origin, be he French, Spanish, Italian, English, or American—to the use of his first name, and he will be known as “Don Carlos,” “Don Enrique,” or whatever it may be, to the end of his stay. Later, if he is well liked, he may even be addressed as “Ché,” that curious term of familiarity and affection universally used among friends in Uruguay. It is not a Spanish word, but seems to have been borrowed from the Guaraní tongue, in which it means “mine,” and probably by extension “my friend.” To be called “Ché” by the Uruguayan gaucho is proof of being accepted as a full and friendly equal.

In theory the _pulpero_ establishes himself out on the campaña only to sell tobacco, _mate_, strong drink, and tinned goods from abroad; in practice these country storekeepers have other and far more important sources of income. They are usurers, speculators in land and stock, above all exploiters of the gaucho’s gambling instinct. Thanks perhaps to the greater or less amount of Spanish blood in his veins he will accept a wager on anything, be it only on the weather, on a child’s toys, on which way a cow will run, on how far away a bird will alight, or on whether _sol ó número_ (“sun or number,” corresponding to our “heads or tails”) will fall uppermost at the flipping of a coin. This makes him easy prey to the _pulpero_, who is usually a Spaniard, Basque, Italian, or “Turk,” and an unconscionable rogue without any other ideal than the amassing of a fortune, yet who somehow grows rich at the expense of the peons and gauchos, instead of meeting the violent death from the quick-tempered _hijo del país_ who despises yet fears him.

The gauchos were originally called “gauderios,” that is, lazy, good-for-nothing rascals. To-day that word is an exaggeration, for they have a certain merit of industry and simple honesty. There is considerable vendetta among them, gambling rows and love affairs especially, much of which goes unpunished, particularly if the perpetrator is a “red” and his victim a “white.” Punishment for fence-cutting or sheep-stealing is surer: as in our own West in earlier days the loss of a man is largely his own affair, while the loss of a flock of sheep or a drove of cattle is serious. To make matters worse, the country _comisarios_, or policemen, are often subsidized by certain _estancieros_ to the disadvantage of others, and the _juez de paz_ is quite likely to be a rogue, in either of which cases the friends of “justice” usually get off and their enemies get punished.

According to “Pirirín,” the average gaucho is an incorrigible wanderer. Paid but ten or fifteen pesos a month “and found,” and satisfied with quarters which most workmen in civilized lands would refuse with scorn, he is given to capricious changes of abode and is likely to throw a leg over his faithful horse at the least provocation. Among these incurable pampa wanderers there are not a few “poor whites,” often with considerable Anglo-Saxon blood in their veins, its origin lost in their Spanicized names. Hospitality is the first of the virtues of the _estanciero_, and any genial horseback tramp who turns up may remain on the _estancia_ unmolested for a day, a week, or a month, as the spirit moves him. There was a suggestion of our own cowboys among the group that finally overflowed the _pulpería_, though the gauchos were less given to noisy horseplay and had far more dignity and courtesy. Some of them could read without having to spell out the words, and while “Orientals” in the mass are not a nation of readers and there is considerable illiteracy, these countrymen were much more in touch with the world’s affairs than the same class in the countries of the West Coast.

The gaucho may still occasionally be heard thrumming a guitar and wailing his sad, Moorish, genuinely Oriental songs, invariably sentimental and deeply melancholy, with never a comic touch, like a lineal descendant of the wandering troubadour of the Middle Ages or the street-singers of the Mohammedan East. When he is not making music or love, he is sucking _mate_ and talking horses. He has more than a score of words for his equine companion, running through every gamut of color, behavior, and pace. His obsession for this topic of conversation is natural, for he has an instinctive horror of going on foot and the horse is to the resident of the pampas what the ship is to the sailor; without it he is hopelessly stranded. Yet his interest is entirely of a utilitarian nature. He is racially incapable of any such affection for his mount as causes other races to spare it unnecessary suffering; if he coddles it at all it is merely for the selfish motive of his own safety or convenience. Among the picturesque types of the campaña and the pampa is the _domador_, the professional horse-breaker. His customary fee is five pesos a head, “with living,” and his methods are true to his Spanish blood. Instead of being broken early, the colts are allowed to run wild until they are four or five years old; then a drove of them is rounded up in a corral and the victims suddenly lassooed one by one and thrown to the ground. With half a dozen peons pulling on the rope about his neck until he is all but strangled, his legs are tied and a halter is put on and attached to a tree, where the animal is left to strain until he is exhausted, often hurting himself more or less permanently. Then his tongue and lower jaw are fastened in a painful noose that forces him to follow the peon, who rides away, jerking at the rope. Finally, when the weary and frightened animal is trembling in every limb, the brave domador mounts him and, with a horseman on either side to protect him, and pulling savagely at the colt’s sore mouth, the _potro_ is galloped until he is completely worn out. It used to be beneath gaucho dignity to ride a mare, and to this day no self-respecting _domador_ of the old school will consent to tame one. Sometimes the female of the species draws carts, with her colt running alongside, but on the larger _estancias_ she is allowed to roam at large all her days.

In the evening, with the gauchos departed and the _pulpería_ officially closed to the public, we added our bonfire to the sixteen others in honor of St. Peter and St. Paul, which we could count around the horizon, and gathered about the table with the _pulpero’s_ family to play “lottery,” a two-cent gambling card game. It was long after midnight when “Pirirín” shook off the combined fascination of this and the _pulpero’s_ amenable daughter. From my cot behind the _pulpería_ counter I saw the day dawn rosy red, but clouds and a south wind promised rain before my companion roused himself. We got into an _araña_ (spider), a two-wheeled cart which did somewhat resemble that web-weaving insect, and rocked and bumped away across the untracked campaña behind two half-wild young horses. Never was there a let-up from howling at and lashing the reeking animals all the rest of the morning, an English education not having cured “Pirirín” of the thoughtless cruelty bequeathed by his Spanish blood. Through gullies in which we were showered with mud, up and down hill at top speed we raced, until the trembling horses were so weary that we were forced to hitch on in front of them the one the _mucamo_ was riding. In Tacuarembó this owner, or at least prospective owner, of thousands of acres and cattle went to the cheapest hotel and slept on an ancient and broken cot in the same room with two rough and dirty plowmen, while I caught the evening train for the Brazilian border.