R. B. Cunninghame Graham

“ The town buried in vegetation, the sandy streets, all of them watercourses after a night’s rain, the listless life, the donkeys straying to and fro, the white-robed women, with their hair hanging down their backs, and cut square on the forehead after the style so usual amongst Iceland ponies, the great unfinished palaces, the squares with grass five or six inches high, and over all the reddish haze blending the palm-trees, houses, sandy streets, the river and the distant Chaco into a copper-coloured whole at sunset, rise to my memory like the reflection of a dream. ”

“ Men came and went, on camels, horses, donkeys and on foot; all armed, all beggars, from the rich chief to the poorest horseman of the tribe; and yet all dignified, draped in their fluttering rags, and looking more like men than those whom eighteen centuries of civilization and of trade have turned to apes. Men fought, careering on their horses on the sand, firing their guns and circling round like gulls, shouting their battle-cries; men prayed, turning to Mecca at the appointed hours; men sat for hours half in a dream thinking of much or nothing, who can say ”

“ The war had left the country almost in ruins, business was at a standstill, food was scarce, and but for a bale or two of tobacco, and a hide-sack or two of yerba, the train went empty to and fro. But as the people always wanted to go to the capital in search of work, six or eight empty trucks were always sent with every train. On them the people (mostly women) swarmed, seated like flies, upon the top and sides, dangling their legs outside like people sitting on a wharf, talking incessantly, all dressed in white, and every one, down to the smallest children, smoking large cigars. ”

“ The city, then an oasis in the vast plateau of Anáhuac (now but a station on a railway-line) , a city of enormous distances, of gurgling water led in stucco channels by the side of every street, of long expanses of “adobe” walls, of immense plazas, of churches and of bells, of countless convents; hedged in by mountains to the west, mouth of the “tierra caliente” to the east, and to the north the stopping-place for the long trains of waggons carrying cotton from the States; wrapped in a mist as of the Middle Ages, lay sleeping in the sun. ”

“ Yet still the flat-roofed town, capital of the district in Rio Grande known as Encima de la Sierra, the stopping-place for the great droves of mules which from the Banda Oriental and Entre Rios are driven to the annual fair at Surucaba; the stodgy Brazilian countrymen so different from the Gauchos of the River Plate; the negroes at that time slaves; the curious vegetation, and the feeling of being cut off from all the world, are fresh as yesterday. ”

“ Horsemen rode out, sitting erect in their peaked saddles, toes stuck out and thrust into their curiously stamped toe-leathers; their “chaparreras” giving to their legs a look of being cased in armour, their “poblano” hats, with bands of silver or of tinsel, balanced like halos on their heads.
Long trains of donkeys, driven by Indians dressed in leather, and bareheaded, after the fashion of their ancestors, crawled through the gate laden with “pulque,” and now and then a single Indian followed by his wife set off on foot, carrying a crate of earthenware by a broad strap depending from his head. ”

“ His eyes flashed fire, and drawing his facon he shouted “Muera! . . . Viva Rosas,” and drove his knife into the mud walls, struck on the counter with the flat of the blade, foamed at the mouth, broke into snatches of obscene and long-forgotten songs, as “Viva Rosas! Muera Urquiza dale guasca en la petiza,” whilst the rest, not heeding that I had a pistol in my belt, tried to restrain him by all means in their power. But he was maddened, yelled, “Yes, I, Tio Cabrera, known also as el Cordero, tell you I know how to play the violin (a euphemism on the south pampa for cutting throats) . ”

“ In the evening rockets announced the joyful news, and the stars shone out over the woods and plains as on the evening when the bright particular star guided the three sheikhs to some such place as was the rancho of our host.
Christmas rejoicings over, a month sped past and found us still, so to speak, wind-bound in the little town. No one would buy our horses, some of which died bitten by snakes. It was impossible to think of going on, and to return equally difficult, so that there seemed a probability of being obliged to pass a lifetime in the place. ”

“ At mid-day, when the sun was at its height, when locusts, whirring through the air, sank in the dust as flying-fish sink in the waves, when palm-trees seem to nod their heads, and lizards are abroad drinking the heat and basking in the rays, when the dry air shimmers, and sparks appear to dance before the traveller’s eye, and a thin, reddish dust lies on the leaves, on clothes of men, and upon every hair of horses’ coats, he reached a spring. ”

“ For the first few leagues Don Guillermo rode with us, and then, after a smoke, bade us goodbye and rode away; his tall, lithe figure dressed in loose black merino trousers tucked into his boots, hat tied beneath his chin, and Pampa poncho, fading out of sight, and by degrees the motion of his right arm touching his horse up, Gaucho fashion, at every step, grew slower, then stood still, and lastly vanished with the swaying figure of the rider, out of sight. ”

“ Quickly the Ibicuy melted into the mist, as the wheezy steamer grunted and squattered like a wounded wild duck, down the yellow flood. Inside, the horses, more dead than alive, panted with thirst, and yet were still too timid to approach the water troughs. They slipped and struggled on the deck, fell and plunged up again, and at each fall or plunge, the blows fell on their backs, partly from folly, partly from the satisfaction that some men feel in hurting anything which fate or Providence has placed without the power of resistance in their hands. ”

“ Maté went round, and gin served in a square-faced bottle, and drank out of a solitary wine-glass, the stem long snapped in the middle, and spliced by shrinking a piece of green cow-hide round a thin cane, and fastening the cane into a disc of roughly-shaped soft wood. “Three dollars by the cut, and I’ll take fifty.” “No, four and a half; my horses are the best of the whole district.” And so the ignoble farce of bargaining, which from the beginning of the world has been the touchstone of the zero of the human heart, pursued its course. ”

“ Passing through groves of chestnuts, walnut-trees, and hedges thick with blackberries and travellers’ joy, he climbed through vineyards rich with black Atlas grapes, and passed the flat mud-built Berber villages nestling against the rocks. Eagles flew by and moufflons gazed at him from the peaks, and from the thickets of lentiscus and dwarf arbutus wild boars appeared, grunted, and slowly walked across the path, and still he climbed, the icy wind from off the snow chilling him in his cotton shirt, for his warm Tadla haik was long ago wrapped round the bowl to shield the precious fish. ”

“ The call to prayers, the half-contemplative, half-militant existence led by Mohammedans; the immense simplicity of their hegemony; the idea of a not impossible one God, beyond men’s ken, looking down frostily through the stars upon the plains, a Being to be evoked without much hope of being influenced, took hold of him and set him thinking whether all members of the Arab race ought not to hold one faith. ”

“ By the Laguna Ypocarai we took our way; skirting along its eastern shores, then desolate, and the whole district almost depopulated, we passed by palm-groves and deserted mandioca patches, reed cottages in ruins, watched the flamingoes fishing in the lake, the alligators lying motionless, and saw an Indian all alone in a dug-out canoe, casting his line as placidly as he had lived before the coming of the Spaniards to the land. ”

“ Only at Cadiz can the talisman be seen, shining low down on the horizon, and still waiting till the precession of the equinoxes takes it across the Straits. Let it recross, and shine upon the old wild life of the vast plains, upon the horsemen flying on the sands, whirling and circling like gulls, whilst the veiled women raise the joyous cry which pierces ears and soul; upon the solemn stately men who sit and look at nothing all a summer’s day, and above all upon the waveless inland sea men call the Sahara. ”

“ Black, and not comely in the least, bowlegged from constant riding, nose flat, and ears like flappers, a row of teeth almost as strong as a young shark’s, flat feet, and crisp Angola wool which grew so thickly on his head that had you thrown a pin on it, it could not have reached the skin, he yet was honest and faithful to the verge of folly; but then, if heaven there be, it can be but inhabited by fools, for wise men, prudent folk, and those who thrive, have their reward like singers, quickly, and can look for nothing more. ”

“ The old white city girt on the seaward side by its breakwater of tall black rocks, the houses dazzlingly white, the crenelated walls, the long stretch of sand, extending to the belt of grey-green scrub and backed in the distance by the sombre forest, lay in the moonlight as distinct and clear as it had been mid-day. Clearer perhaps, for the sun in a sandy landscape seems to blur the outlines which the moon reveals; so that throughout North Africa night is the time to see a town in all its beauty of effect. ”

“ The palm-trees, cactus, canes, and olives, the tapia walls, the women’s walk and eyes, the horses’ paces, and the fatalistic air which hangs on everything, give them the lie direct. The empire of the Arabs, though departed, yet retains its hold. The hands that built the mosque at Cordoba, the Giralda, the Alhambra, and almost every parish church in Southern Spain, from ruined aqueduct and mosque, sign to the Christian half derisively. ”

“ They are the infidels; see where the men have trod; here is the woman’s print and this the boy’s. Look how their toes are all turned in, unlike the tracks of Christians. This trail is a day old, and yet how fresh! See where the boy has stumbled—thanks to the Blessed Virgin they must all be tired, and praise to God will die upon the road, either by hunger or some Christian hand.” All that he spoke of was no doubt visible to him, but through my want of faith, or perhaps lack of experience, I saw but a faint trace of naked footsteps in the sand. ”

“ Then by the side of a lone palm-tree springing up from a cleft in a tall rock, an island on the plain, he stopped to pray; and sleeping, slept but fitfully, the strangeness of the business making him wonder; and he who cavils over matters in the night can never rest, for thus the jackal and the hyena pass their nights talking and reasoning about the thoughts which fill their minds when men lie with their faces covered in their haiks, and after prayer sleep. ”

“ The group of islands which he had, as he said, rescued from barbarism, and in which he had opened the mines, made all the harbours, and laid out all the roads, looked to him as their Providence; and to crown the work, he had had them placed under the French flag. Rich, décoré, respected, and with no worlds to conquer in particular, he still kept adding wealth to wealth; trading and doing what he considered useful work for all mankind in general, as if he had been poor. ”

“ To those rare Catholic families in Scotland an old-world flavour clings. When Knox and that “lewid monk,” the Regent Murray, all agog for progress and so-called purer worship, pestered and bothered Scotland into a change of faith, those few who clung to Catholicism seemed to become repositories of the traditions of an older world.
Heaven and hell, no resting-place for the weaker souls between, have rendered Scotland a hard place for the ordinary man who wants his purgatory, even if by another name. ”