I can hardly consider myself presumptuous in believing that few travellers who have made an ascent of the Paraná for the first time have done so with a more agreeable impression of its beauty than I experienced. The only drawback connected with this pleasure is the consciousness of being unable fully to describe it. My readers will, however, be indulgent enough to give me credit for an effort to do my best.
Our water-way in the little steamer “Dolorcitas,” after leaving Buenos Ayres, was through one of the narrow passages that are the boundaries of islets, higher up than, as well as parallel with, the island of Martin Garcia. As we steam along and pass the estancias of wealthy farmers, I observe on the banks hundreds of cows, large troops of horses, and flocks of sheep, in numbers sufficient to puzzle even the calculating Pedder. There are very few wild trees to be seen, except on the highlands an occasional specimen of the Ombu or Algaroba species. The residences are invariably surrounded by groves or shrubberies of peach-trees. The physical aspect of the islands is quite flat, and until we advance a few hundred miles there is no elevation above a few feet close to the river’s side. Now and then—as, for example, when passing through the creek called the “Baradero”—I catch a glimpse of high land, on part of which there is a convent or chapel; but the whole country is uncultivated, except in isolated patches near the compounds of the tillers.
Flocks of wild duck and snipe are seen in abundance; wild turkeys likewise, with occasionally a group of flamingoes, whose scarlet plumage forms a strikingly dazzling object in the bright sunshine. Indeed, birds of various kinds are about us everywhere. Passing through one of these island passages, you see strewing the banks on the mainland side the skeletons of cows and horses, while other poor brutes are lying in the agonies of death; for the mud at the extreme edge of the water is too soft to support them; hence, when they go down to drink, they are swamped in its sponginess, and must therefore remain to die.
Steaming on, we pass or meet several small river-craft engaged in the coasting-trade between Montevideo, Buenos Ayres, and the towns up the river, until we land at an estancia, where cows, horses, and sheep are bred and nurtured: the cows and bullocks chiefly for the hides and meat, disposed of as already described at a saladero; sheep for their wool; while horses are reared for every possible purpose, and are turned to use whether alive or dead.
Horses dead! Their skins are tanned; the grease of the mare’s body is used for light, and for many oleaginous purposes. Close to one of our towns is a rancho or hut belonging to a brick-maker, and there, between his door and the kiln, is an immense pile—as high as an ordinary house—of dead horses, whose bodies are to be used for burning the bricks. Mares’ tongues, preserved, are sold in the market as luxuries; hoofs, skulls, shank, thigh, and other bones of the animal, as well as the hair of the mane and tail, are exported hence to England, America, and other places across the sea in large quantities. At the saladeros, too, they slaughter mares in hundreds for their hides and grease, the operation being conducted by crunching the animal’s skull with a mallet, after it has been brought to the ground by means of a lasso thrown round the feet. One can scarcely travel a mile through the camp without seeing a dead horse somewhere.
Horses alive! At many stations on the river they fish on horseback, by riding into a considerable depth of water and throwing a peculiar kind of net, which is drawn back to the shore by the horse. Our letters are delivered at the door by a rat-tat in regular English style from the postman, who is on horseback. The daily journal is brought to us by a cavalier, who hands it in without dismounting; even a beggar-man rides up every Saturday to solicit Una limosna por el amor de Dios, and he has a license from the police in the shape of a piece of branded wood suspended round his neck. The aristocracy of beggary is evident in this fellow, too; for on one occasion, being offered cold meat and bread by my servant, he rode off, indignantly saying he wanted money to buy cigarritos.
Horses making bricks! Ay, incredible as it may appear, there are the very animals which dragged the dead bodies of their brethren to be made fuel of at the brick-kilns before mentioned, now driven round and round in a circus, tramping into malleable mud clay and water mixed together, and doing everything in the brick-making except the moulding.
Horses threshing corn! Here at our friend’s estancia I see another large circus, styled a hera, in which are placed several sheaves of wheat, and into this are turned fifteen to twenty horses; a mounted man goes in also, and drives these animals with whip and yell round the circus until all the corn is threshed by their tramping.
Horses churning butter! A novel sort of thing it is to see a bag made of hides, into which the milk is put when it is turned sufficiently sour; this bag, fastened to a long strip of rope-hide, is attached at the other end to the leather girth which is round the horse’s body; the latter is then mounted by a gaucho, and ridden at a hard pace over the camp for a sufficient length of time to secure the making of the butter, by bumping the milk-bag against the ground.
A gaucho without his steed is an impracticability. To move his furniture, consisting of beds, chairs, tables, crockery, or hardware, the horse’s back is fitted to the burden. Coffins are conveyed to the burying-ground by being strapped transversely on a horse’s loins; and one would scarcely be surprised to hear of a specimen of the semi-centaur under consideration going asleep or cooking his dinner on horseback, more especially with the picture before us of a dentist operating on a poor fellow’s grinders, the patient and his physician being both mounted.
No crusader of olden time could have borne himself more proudly at the head of a gallant regiment bound to the Holy Land than does the gaucho, who guides a troop of twenty to thirty carretas, each drawn by six bullocks, across the Pampas to Cordova or Mendoza. On his saddle, chiefly made of untanned horse-hide and sheep-skin, he sits with the consciousness that he is the horse’s master. Indeed, it is rarely that the real gaucho puts his foot in a stirrup,—for practical purposes of riding never,—as it is only on state occasions that he uses them. Stirrups made in this country are of a triangular form, of iron or silver, with the base fabricated after the fashion of a filigree cruet-stand, though on a diminutive scale. At the museum in Buenos Ayres I saw some of these triangular stirrups that were described as having been brought from Paraguay, made from hard wood, so large, clumsy, and heavy as to constitute in themselves a load for a horse. With such heavy stirrups it may be imagined what a weight the gaucho’s horse has to bear, when we consider the component parts of the saddle or recado.
[This saddle is a very complex affair, made up of layers of sheep-skin, carpet, cow-hide, woollen cloth, etc., too intricate to be here described. It consists in all of twelve separate parts.]
The skill and endurance of the gaucho in the management of horses is very remarkable. One of these men is reported to have stood on the transverse bar, which crosses over the gate of the corral, and dropped down upon the back of a horse, while the animal, in company with several others, without bridle or saddle, was at full gallop out of the enclosure. What made the feat more adroit was the fact of his having permitted a looker-on to select the horse for him to bestride before the whole lot were driven out. The endurance of the gaucho is also striking; and I have been told of a man, well known at Buenos Ayres, having ridden a distance of seventy leagues—that is to say, two hundred and ten miles—in one day to that city.
Señor Don Carlos Hurtado, of Buenos Ayres, informs me that the great gaucho game, in which the famous Rosas was most proficient, was what is called el pialar,—that is, catching horses by lassoing their feet (the ordinary mode of doing this round the neck is called enlaser). Two lines of horsemen, each from ten to twenty in number, are placed at distances so far apart as to allow a mounted gaucho to pass between them. This man is to gallop as fast as he can from one end to the other,—in fact, to run the gauntlet. Every horseman in the lines between which he passes is furnished with a lasso. As he gallops up to the end of the line the first lasso is thrown; should it miss him, the second is cast, and so on. The dexterity evidenced by the watchfulness of men able to throw in such rapid succession after a horse which is galloping, whilst they are standing, is truly expert. At length the horse is pinned, and down he falls as if he were shot. And now the activity of the gaucho is displayed, for he comes on his feet without any injury, smoking his cigarette as coolly as when he lighted it at the starting-post.
The original popularity of Rosas was founded on his gaucho dexterity.
The game of el pato is performed by sewing a cooked duck into a piece of hide, leaving a leather point at each end for the hand to grasp. This play having been in former times limited in its carousal to the feast of St. John (or San Juan), a gaucho took it up. Whoever is the smartest secures the duck, and gallops away to any house where he knows a woman residing who bears the name of Juana,—Joan I suppose she would be called in English. It is an established rule that the lady of this name should give a four-real piece (i.e., one shilling and sixpence), either with the original duck returned or another equally complete. Then away he gallops to another house where lives a maiden of the name of Leonora, followed by a troop of his gaucho colleagues, trying to snap the duck-bag out of his hand. With it, of course, must be delivered up the four-real piece in the best of good humor. Falls and broken legs have often been the result of this game.
Juégo de la sortija is a class of sport played by having a small finger-ring fastened under a gibbet, beneath which a gaucho gallops, and tries to tilt off the ring with a skewer which he holds in his hand. This is done for a prize.
The salutation between two gauchos—even though they be the best of friends—who have not met for a long time is prefixed by a pass of arms with their knives. The conduct of these men is in general marked by sobriety, but when the “patron” pays them their wages they often buy a dozen of brandy or of gin, and this is all drunk, or spilled in drinking, by one man at a single sitting.
It often happens in the gaucho communities that some one gains a reputation for bravery. To prove his courage, this hero goes to a pulperia, with a bottle in one hand and a knife in the other, stands at the door, and turns out all the occupants. One gaucho in the north and another in the south hear of each other’s bravery, obtain a meeting, and, after returning compliments, draw out their knives and fight to the death.
The gaucho dress is peculiar,—a poncho, which is placed over the head by a hole in the centre, and which falls over the body to the hips. This is often of a very gay pattern, especially on Sundays and holidays. The lower garment is a curious combination of bedgown and Turkish trousers, named calzonçillos; it is bordered by a fringe, sometimes of rich lace, from two to six inches in depth. Enormous spurs form part of the toilette. I saw a pair on a gaucho at the estancia of my friend Dr. Perez that measured seven inches in diameter. These were of a larger size than those mentioned by Mr. Darwin in his “Journal of Researches,” describing the “Beagle’s” voyage round the world, and which he saw in Chile, measuring six inches in the same direction as aforesaid. The boots for working purposes are made of untanned hide, but those for holiday dress are often of patent leather with bright scarlet tops.
Many of the gauchos wear purple or yellow handkerchiefs over their heads, inside the sombrero, and others have wide belts around their bodies, that are glistening with silver dollars tacked on. The costume of a gaucho is, however, only complete when he is on horseback with the bolas, the lasso, and a knife at his girdle. The bolas consists of two balls, which are fastened at the end of two short leathern ropes, and thrown by means of another short thong,—all three being secured together,—when they are whirled round the head of the thrower before propulsion, which is so efficaciously managed as to bring down at once the horse or cow in whose legs they get entangled.
Mr. Prescott, in his admirable work on the “History and Conquest of Peru,” when alluding to the attack made by the Peruvians on their ancient capital Cuzco, then (A.D. 1535) occupied by the Spanish invaders under Pizarro, writes thus of the lasso: “One weapon peculiar to South American warfare was used to some effect by the Peruvians. This was the lasso,—a long rope with a noose at the end, which they adroitly threw over the rider, or entangled with it the legs of his horse, so as to bring them both to the ground. More than one family fell into the hands of the enemy by this expedient.” The knowledge of the weapon was therefore, in all probability, derived from this quarter.
The horse-riding of the Chaco Indians, even in our day, surpasses that of the gaucho. Fancy a troop of horses, apparently riderless, galloping at full speed, yet each of these animals is managed by a man who, with one arm over the neck of his brute, and with his other hand guiding a bridle as well as grasping a lance, supports the whole weight of his body by the back of the feet near the toes, clinging on the horse’s spine above his loins,—the rider’s body being thus extended, under cover of the steed’s side. As quick as thought he is up and standing on the horse’s back with a war-cry of defiance,—although, according to Captain Page, U.S.N., never flinging away his javelin, for with him it must be a hand-to-hand fight,—whilst with equal rapidity he is down again, so as to be protected by the body of the horse, which is all the time in full gallop.
Mr. Coghlan, C.E., and now attached to the Buenos Ayres government, writes of those whom he saw when exploring the Salado del Norte: “The riding of the Indians is wonderful. The gauchos even give their horses some preliminary training; but the Indian catches him (of course with the lasso), throws him down, forces a wooden bit into his mouth, with a piece of hide binds it fast to the lower jaw, and rides him. I have seen a man at the full gallop of his horse put his hand on the mane and jump forward on his feet, letting the animal go on without a check, merely to put his hand to something.”
