Brought forward

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

LIBRARY

GOLDWIN SMITH LIBRARY

Cornell University Library
PR6013.R145B8

Brought forward,

3 1924 012 973 800

The original of tliis bool< is in
tine Cornell University Library.

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BROUGHT FORWARD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FAITH.

HOPE.

CHARITY.

SUCCESS.

PROGRESS.

HIS PEOPLE.

A HATCHMENT.

THIRTEEN STORIES.

MOGREB EL ACKSA : A Journey in Morocco.
{New Edition in Preparation.'}

BROUGHT FORWARD

BY

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM

LONDON
DUCKWORTH & CO.

3 HENRIETTA ST., COVENT GARDEN, W.C,

TO

First Published 1916.
Second Impression 1917.

At/rig-Ats reserved.

TO

COMMANDER

CHARLES E. F. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM

R.N.

PREFACE

Luckily the war has made eggs too expensive
for me to fear the public will pelt me oflF the
stage with them.

Still after years of writing one naturally
dreads the cold potato and the orange-peel.

I once in talking said to a celebrated dancer
who was about to bid farewell to her admirers
and retire to private life, " Perhaps you will
take a benefit when you come back from
finishing your last tour." She answered,
" Yes . . . " ; and then added, " or perhaps
two."

That is not my way, for all my life I have
loved bread, bread, and wine, wine, not caring
for half - measures, like your true Scot, of
whom it has been said, " If he believes in
Christianity he has no doubts, and if he is a
disbeliever he has none either."

vii

PREFACE

Once in the Sierra Madre, either near the
Santa Rosa Mountains or in the Bolson de
Mdpimi, I disremember which, out after
horses that had strayed, we came upon a little
shelter made of withies, and covered with
one of those striped blankets woven by the
Ndvajos.

A Texan who was with the party pointed
to it, and said, " That is a wickey-up, I guess."

The little wigwam, shaped like a "gipsy
tent, stood close to a thicket of huisache trees
in flower. Their round and ball-like blossoms
filled the air with a sweet scent. A stream
ran gently tinkling over its pebbly bed, and
the tall prairie grasses flowed up to the lost
little hut as if they would engulf it like a sea.

On every side of the deep valley — for I
forgot to say the hut stood in a valley — towered
hills with great, flat, rocky sides. On some of
them the Indian tribes had scratched rude
pictures, records of their race.

In one of them — I remember it just as if
now it was before my eyes — an Indian chief,
surrounded by his friends, was setting free his

PREFACE

favourite horse upon the prairies, either before
his death or in reward of faithful services.
The little group of men cut in the stone, most
probably with an obsidian arrow-head, was
life-like, though drawn without perspective,
which gave those figures of a vanished race
an air of standing in the clouds.

The chief stood with his bridle in his hand,
his feather war-bonnet upon his head, naked
except the breech-clout. His bow was slung
across his shoulders and his quiver hung below
his arm, and with the other hand he kept the
sun off from his face as he gazed upon his horse.
All kinds of hunting scenes were there dis-
played, and others, such as the burial of a
chief, a dance, and other ceremonials, no
doubt as dear to those who drew them as are
the rites in a cathedral to other faithful. The
flat rock bore one more inscription, stating
that Eusebio Leal passed by bearing despatches,
and the date, June the fifteenth, of the year
1687. But to return again to the lone wickey-
up.

We all sat looking at it : Eustaquio Gomez,

PREFACE

Polibio Medina, Exaltacion Garcia, the Texan,
two Pueblo Indians, and I who write these
lines.

Somehow it had an eerie look about it,
standing so desolate, out in those flowery
wilds.

Inside it lay the body of a man, with the
skin dry as parchment, and his arms beside
him, a Winchester, a bow and arrows, and a
lance. Eustaquio, taking up an arrow, after
looking at it, said that the dead man was an
Apache of the Mescalero band, and then,
looking upon the ground and pointing out
some marks, said, " He had let loose his horse
before he died, just as the chief did in the
picture-writing."

That was his epitaph, for how death over-
took him none of us could conjecture ; but
I liked the manner of his going off the stage.

'Tis meet and fitting to set free the horse
or pen before death overtakes you, or before
the gentle public turns its thumbs down and
yells, " Away with him."

Charles Lamb, when some one asked him

PREFACE

something of his works, answered that they
were to be found in the South Sea House,
and that they numbered forty volumes, for
he had laboured many years there, making his
bricks with the least possible modicum of straw,
just like the rest of us.

Mine, if you ask me, are to be found but
in the trails I left in all the years I galloped
both on the prairies and the pampas of America.

Hold it not up to me for egotism, O
gentle reader, for I would have you know
that hardly any of the horses that I rode had
shoes on them, and thus the tracks are faint.

Vale.

R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM.

XI

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. Brought Forward ..... I

II. Los PiNGOS

II

III. Fidelity ....

30

IV. "Uno DEI Mille" .

40

V. With the North-East Wind

SI

VI. Elysium ....

60

VII. Heredity ....

66

VIII. El Tango Argentino

81

IX. In a Backwater

97

X. HiPPOMORPHOUS

106

XI. Mudejar ....

120

XII. A Minor Prophet .

130

XIII. El Masgad ....

146

XIV. Feast Day in Santa Maria Mayor .

16^

XV. BopicuA

185

xm

BROUGHT FORWARD

The workshop in Parkhead was not inspiriting.
From one week's end to another, all throughout
the year, life was the same, almost without an
incident. In the long days of the Scotch
summer the men walked cheerily to work,
carrying their dinner in a little tin. In the
dark winter mornings they tramped in the
black fog, coughing and spitting, through the
black mud of Glasgow streets, each with a
woollen comforter, looking like a stocking,
round his neck.

Outside the dreary quarter of the town, its
rows of dingy, smoke-grimed streets and the
mean houses, the one outstanding feature was
Parkhead Forge, with its tall chimneys belching
smoke into the air all day, and flames by night.
Its glowing furnaces, its giant hammers, its

BROUGHT FORWARD

little railway trucks in which men ran the
blocks of white-hot iron which poured in
streams out of the furnaces, flamed like the
mouth of hell.

Inside the workshop the dusty atmosphere
made a stranger cough on entering the door.
The benches with the rows of aproned men all
bending at their work, not standing upright,
with their bare, hairy chests exposed, after
the fashion of the Vulcans at the neighbouring
forge, gave a half-air of domesticity to the close,
stuffy room.

A semi-sedentary life quickened their in-
tellect ; for where men work together they are
bound to talk about the topics of the day,
especially in Scotland, where every man is
a born politician and a controversialist. At
meal-times, when they ate their " piece " and
drank their tea that they had carried with them
in tin flasks, each one was certain to draw out a
newspaper from the pocket of his coat, and,
after studying it from the Births, Deaths, and
Marriages, down to the editor's address on
the last page, fall a-disputing upon politics.
" Man, a gran' speech by Bonar Law aboot
Home Rule. They Irish, set them up, what

2

BROUGHT FORWARD

do they make siccan a din aboot ? Ca' ye it
Home Rule ? I juist ca' it Rome Rule. A
miserable, priest-ridden crew, the hale rick-
ma-tick o' them."

The reader then would pause and, looking
round the shop, wait for the answer that he
was sure would not be long in coming from
amongst such a thrawn lot of commentators.
Usually one or other of his mates would fold
his paper up, or perhaps point with an oil-
stained finger to an article, and with the head-
break in the voice, characteristic of the Scot
about to plunge into an argument, ejaculate :
" Bonar Law, ou aye, I kent him when he was
leader of the South Side Parliament. He
always was a dreary body, sort o' dreich like ;
no that I'm saying the man is pairfectly illiter-
ate, as some are on his side o' the Hoose there
in Westminister. I read his speech — the body
is na blate, sort o' quick at figures, but does na
take the pains to verify. Verification is the
soul of mathematics. Bonar Law, eh 1 Did
ye see how Maister Asquith trippit him
handily in his tabulated figures on the jute
business under Free Trade, showing that all
he had advanced about protective tariffs and

3

BROUGHT FORWARD

the drawback system was fair redeeklous . . .
as well as several errors in the total sum ? "

Then others would cut in and words be
bandied to and fro, impugning the good faith
and honour of every section of the House of
Commons, who, by the showing of their own
speeches, were held to be dishonourable rogues
aiming at power and place, without a thought
for anything but their own ends.

This charitable view of men and of affairs
did not prevent any of the disputants from
firing up if his own party was impugned ; for
in their heart of hearts the general denunciation
was but a covert from which to attack the
other side.

In such an ambient the war was sure to be
discussed ; some held the German Emperor
was mad — " a daft-like thing to challenge the
whole world, ye see ; maist inconsiderate,
and shows that the man's intellect is no weel
balanced . . . philosophy is whiles sort of
unsettlin' . . . the felly's mad, ye ken."

Others saw method in his madness, and
alleged that it was envy, " naething but sheer
envy that had brought on this tramplin' upon
natural rights, but for all that he may be

4

BROUGHT FORWARD

thought to get his own again, with they in-
demnities."

Those who had studied economics " were
of opinion that his reasoning was wrong, built
on false premises, for there can never be a
royal road to wealth. Labour, ye see, is the
sole creative element of riches." At once a
Tory would rejoin, " And brains. Man, what
an awfu' thing to leave out brains. Think of
the marvellous creations of the human genius."
The first would answer with, " I saw ye
coming, man, I'll no deny that brains have
their due place in the economic state ; but
build me one of your Zeppelins and stick it in
the middle of George Square without a crew
to manage it, and how far will it fly .'' I do
not say that brains did not devise it ; but, after
all, labour had to carry out the first design."
This was a subject that opened up enormous
vistas for discussion, and for a time kept them
from talking of the war.

Jimmy and Geordie, hammering away in
one end of the room, took little part in the
debate. Good workmen both of them, and
friends, perhaps because of the difference of
their temperaments, for Jimmy was the type

5

BROUGHT FORWARD

of red-haired, blue-eyed, tall, lithe Scot, he of
the perfervidum ingenium, and Geordie was a
thick-set, black-haired, dour and silent man.

Both of them read the war news, and Jimmy,
when he read, commented loudly, bringing
down his fist upon the papery exclaiming,
" Weel done, Gordons 1 " or " That was a
richt gude charge upon the trenches by the
Sutherlands." Geordie would answer shortly,
" Aye, no sae bad," and go on hammering.

One morning, after a reverse, Jimmy did
not appear, and Geordie sat alone working
away as usual, but if possible more dourly and
more silently. Towards midday it began to be
whispered in the shop that Jimmy had enlisted,
and men turned to Geordie to ask if he knew
anything about it, and the silent workman,
brushing the sweat off his brow with his coat-
sleeve, rejoined : " Aye, ou aye, I went wi' him
yestreen to the headquarters o' the Camerons ;i
he's joined the kilties richt eneugh. Ye mind
he was a sergeant in South Africa." Then he
bent over to his work and did not join in the
general conversation that ensued.

Days passed, and weeks, and his fellow-
workmen, in the way men will, occasionally

6

BROUGHT FORWARD

bantered Geordie, asking him if he was going
to enlist, and whether he did not think shame
to let his friend go off alone to fight. Geordie
was silent under abuse and banter, as he had
always been under the injustices of life, and
by degrees withdrew into himself, and when
he read his newspaper during the dinner-hour
made no remark, but folded it and put it
quietly into the pocket of his coat.

Weeks passed, weeks of suspense, of flaring
headlines in the Press, of noise of regiments
passing down the streets, of newsboys yelling
hypothetic victories, and of the tension of the
nerves of men who know their country's
destiny is hanging in the scales. Rumours of
losses, of defeats, of victories, of checks and of
advances, of naval battles, with hints of dreadful
slaughter filled the air. Women in black were
seen about, pale and with eyelids swollen with
weeping, and people scanned the reports of
killed and wounded with dry throats and
hearts constricted as if they had been wrapped
in whipcord, only relaxing when after a second
look they had assured themselves the name
they feared to see was absent from the list.

Long strings of Clydesdale horses ridden by

7

BROUGHT FORWARD

men in ragged clothes, who sat them uneasily,
as if they felt their situation keenly, perched up
in the public view, passed through the streets.
The massive caulkers on their shoes struck
fire occasionally upon the stones, and the great
beasts, taught to rely on man as on a god from
the time they gambolled in the fields, went to
their doom unconsciously, the only mitigation
of their fate. Regiments of young recruits,
some in plain clothes and some in hastily-made
uniforms, marched with as martial an air as
three weeks' training gave them, to the stations
to entrain. Pale clerks, the elbows of their
jackets shiny with the slavery of the desk,
strode beside men whose hands were bent
and scarred with gripping on the handles of
the plough in February gales or wielding
sledges at the forge.

All of them were young and resolute, and
each was confident that he at least would come
back safe to tell the tale. Men stopped and
waved their hats, cheering their passage, and
girls and women stood with flushed cheeks and
straining eyes as they passed on for the first
stage that took them towards the front. Boys
ran beside them, hatless and barefooted, shout-

8

BROUGHT FORWARD

ing out words that they had caught up on the
drill-ground to the men, who whistled as they
marched a slow and grinding tune that sounded
like a hymn.

Traffic was drawn up close to the kerbstone,
and from the top of tram-cars and from carts
men cheered, bringing a flush of pride to many
a pale cheek in the ranks. They passed on ;
men resumed the business of their lives, few
understanding that the half-trained, pale-faced
regiment that had vanished through the great
station gates had gone to make that business
possible and safe.

Then came a time of waiting for the news, of
contradictory paragraphs in newspapers, and
then a telegram, the " enemy is giving ground
on the left wing " ; and instantly a feeling of
relief that lightened every heart, as if its owner
had been fighting and had stopped to wipe his
brow before he started to pursue the flying
enemy.

The workmen in the brassfitters' shop came
to their work as usual on the day of the good
news, and at the dinner-hour read out the
accounts of the great battle, clustering upon
each other's shoulders in their eagerness. At

9

BROUGHT FORWARD

last one turned to scan the list of casualties.
Cameron, Campbell, M'Alister, Jardine, they
read, as they ran down the list, checking the
names ofF with a match. The reader stopped,
and looked towards the corner where Geordie
still sat working silently.

All eyes were turned towards him, for the
rest seemed to divine even before they heard
the name. " Geordie man, Jimmy's killed,"
the reader said, and as he spoke Geordie laid
down his hammer, and, reaching for his coat,
said, " Jimmy's killed, is he ? Well, some
one's got to account for it."

Then, opening the door, he walked out
dourly, as if already he felt the knapsack on his
back and the avenging rifle in his hand.

lO

II

LOS PINGOS

The amphitheatre of wood enclosed a bay
that ran so far into the land it seemed a
lake. The Uruguay flowed past, but the
bay was so land-locked and so well defended
by an island lying at its mouth that the illusion
was complete, and the bay appeared to be cut
off from all the world.

Upon the river twice a day passed steam-
boats, which at night-time gave an air as of a
section of a town that floated past the wilder-
ness. Streams of electric light from every cabin
lit up the yellow, turgid river, and the notes of
a band occasionally floated across the water as
the vessel passed. Sometimes a searchlight
falling on a herd of cattle, standing as is
their custom after nightfall upon a little
hill, made them stampede into the darkness,

II

LOS PINGOS

dashing through brushwood or floundering
through a marsh, till they had placed them-
selves in safety from this new terror of the
night.

Above the bay the ruins of a great building
stood. Built scarcely fifty years ago, and now
deserted, the ruins had taken on an air as of
a castle, and from the walls sprang plants,
whilst in the deserted courtyard a tree had
grown, amongst whose branches oven-birds
had built their hanging nests of mud. Cypresses
towered above the primeval hard-wood, which
grew all gnarled and horny-looking, and nearly
all had kept their Indian names, as nandubay,
chanar, tala and sarandi, molle, and many
another name as crabbed as the trunks which,
twisted and distorted, looked like the limbs of
giants growing from the ground.

Orange trees had run wild and shot up
all unpruned, and apple trees had reverted
back to crabs. The trunks of all the fruit-
trees in the deserted garden round the ruined
factory were rubbed shiny by the cattle, for
all the fences had long been destroyed or
fallen into decay.

A group of roofless workmen's cottages

12

LOS PINGOS

gave an air of desolation to the valley in which
the factory and its dependencies had stood.
They too had been invaded by the powerful
sub-tropical plant life, and creepers covered
with bunches of bright flowers climbed up
their walls. A sluggish stream ran through
the valley and joined the Uruguay, making
a little natural harbour. In it basked cat-fish,
and now and then from off the banks a
tortoise dropped into the water like a stone.
Right in the middle of what once had been
the square grew a ceiba tree, covered with
lilac flowers, hanging in clusters like gigantic
grapes. Here and there stood some old
ombiis, their dark metallic leaves affording
an impenetrable shade. Their gnarled and
twisted roots, left half-exposed by the fierce
rains, gave an unearthly, prehistoric look to
them that chimed in well with the deserted
air of the whole place. It seemed that
man for once had been subdued, and that
victorious nature had resumed her sway
over a region wherein he had endeavoured
to intrude, and had been worsted in the
fight.

Nature had so resumed her sway that

13

LOS PINGOS

buildings, planted trees, and paths long over-
grown with grass, seemed to have been decayed
for centuries, although scarce twenty years had
passed since they had been deserted and had
fallen into decay.

They seemed to show the power of the
recuperative force of the primeval forest, and
to call attention to the fact that man had
suffered a defeat. Only the grass in the
deserted square was still triumphant, and
grew short and green, like an oasis in the
rough natural grasses that flowed nearly up
to it, in the clearings of the woods.

The triumph of the older forces of the world
had been so final and complete that on the
ruins there had grown no moss, but plants
and bushes with great tufts of grass had sprung
from them, leaving the stones still fresh as when
the houses were first built. Nature in that
part of the New World enters into no compact
with mankind, as she does over here in Europe
to touch his work kindly and almost with a
reverent hand, and blend it into something
half compounded of herself. There bread is
bread and wine is wine, with no half-tints
to make one body of the whole. The one

14

LOS PINGOS

remaining evidence of the aggression of
mankind, which still refused to bow the knee
to the overwhelming genius of the place, was
a round bunch of eucalyptus trees that stood
up stark and unblushing, the colour of the
trunks and leaves so harshly different from
all around them that they looked almost vulgar,
if such an epithet can be properly applied to
anything but man. Under their exiguous
shade were spread saddles and bridles, and on
the ground sat men smoking and talking, whilst
their staked-out horses fed, fastened to picket-
pins by raw- hide ropes. So far away from
everything the place appeared that the group
of men looked like a band of pioneers upon
some frontier, to which the ruins only gave an
air of melancholy, but did nothing to dispel
the loneliness.

As they sat idly talking, trying to pass, or,
as they would have said, trying to make time,
suddenly in the distance the whistle of an
approaching steamer brought the outside world
into the little, lonely paradise. Oddly enough
it sounded, in the hot, early morning air,
already heavy with the scent of the mimosas
in full bloom. Butterflies flitted to and fro

15

LOS PINGOS

or soared above the scrub, and now and then
a wild mare whinnied from the thickets,
breaking the silence of the lone valley through
which the yellow, little stream ran to the
Uruguay.

Catching their horses and rolling up the
ropes, the men, who had been sitting under-
neath the trees, mounted, and following a little
cattle trail, rode to a high bluff looking down
the stream.

Panting and puffing, as she belched out a
column of black smoke, some half a mile away,
a tug towing two lighters strove with the
yellow flood. The horsemen stood like statues
with their horses' heads stretched out above
the water thirty feet below.

Although the feet of several of the horses
were but an inch or two from the sheer limit,
the men sat, some of them with one leg on their
horses' necks ; others lit cigarettes, and one,
with his horse sideways to the cliff, leaned
sideways, so that one of his feet was in the air.
He pointed to the advancing tug with a brown
finger, and exclaimed, " These are the lighters
with the horses that must have started yesterday
from Gualeguaychii, and ought to have been

i6

LOS PINGOS

here last night." We had indeed been wait-
ing all the night for them, sleeping round
a fire under the eucalyptus grove, and rising
often in the night to smoke and talk, to see
our horses did not get entangled in their
stake ropes, and to listen for the whistle of
the tug.

The tug came on but slowly, fighting her
way against the rapid current, with the lighters
towing behind her at some distance, looking
like portions of a pier that had somehow or
another got adrift.

From where we sat upon our horses we
could see the surface of the Uruguay for miles,
with its innumerable flat islands buried in
vegetation, cutting the river into channels ;
for the islands, having been formed originally
by masses of water-weeds and drift-wood,
were but a foot or two above the water, and
all were elongated, forming great ribbons in
the stream.

Upon the right bank stretched the green
prairies of the State of Entre-Rios, bounded on
either side by the Uruguay and Parand. Much
flatter than the land upon the Uruguayan
bank, it still was not a sea of level grass as is

17 c

LOS PINGOS

the State of Buenos Aires, but undulating, and
dotted here and there with white estancia
houses, all buried in great groves of peach
trees and of figs. On the left bank on which
we stood, and three leagues ofF, we could just
see Fray Bentos, its houses dazzlingly white,
buried in vegetation, and in the distance like
a thousand little towns in Southern Italy and
Spain, or even in Morocco, for the tower of
the church might in the distance just as well
have been a minaret.

The tug-boat slowed a little, and a canoe
was slowly paddled out to pilot her into the
little haven made by the brook that flowed
down through the valley to the Uruguay.

Sticking out like a fishing-rod, over the
stem of the canoe was a long cane, to sound
with if it was required.

The group of horsemen on the bluff rode
slowly down towards the river's edge to watch
the evolutions of the tug, and to hold back
the horses when they should be disembarked.
By this time she had got so near that we
could see the horses' heads looking out wildly
from the sparred sides of the' great decked
lighters, and hear the thunderous noise their
i8

LOS PINGOS

feet made tramping on tile decks. Passing the
bay, into which ran the stream, by about three
hundred yards, the tug cast off one of the
lighters she was towing, in a backwater.
There it remained, the current slowly bearing it
backwards, turning round upon itself. In the
wild landscape, with ourselves upon our horses
forming the only human element, the gigantic
lighter with its freight of horses looked like
the ark, as set forth in some old-fashioned book
on Palestine. Slowly the tug crept in, the
Indian-looking pilot squatted in his canoe
sounding assiduously with his long cane.
As the tug drew about six feet of water and
the lighter not much more than three, the
problem was to get the lighter near enough to
the bank, so that when the hawser was cast off
she would come in by her own way. Twice
did the tug ground, and with furious shoutings
and with all the crew staving on poles, was she
got off again. At last the pilot found a little
deeper channel, and coming to about some fifty
feet away, lying a length or two above the
spot where the stream entered the great river,
she paid her hawser out, and as the lighter
drifted shorewards, cast it off, and the great

19

LOS PINGOS

ark, with all its freight, grounded quite
gently on the little sandy beach. The Italian
captain of the tug, a Genoese, with his grey
hair as curly as the wool on a sheep's back,
wearing a pale pink shirt, neatly set off with
yellow horseshoes, and a blue gauze necktie
tied in a flowing bow, pushed off his dirty
little boat, rowed by a negro sailor and a
Neapolitan, who dipped their oars into the
water without regard to one another, either as
to time or stroke.

The captain stepped ashore, mopping his
face with a yellow pocket-handkerchief, and
in the jargon between Spanish and Italian
that men of his sort all affect out in the River
Plate, saluted us, and cursed the river for its
sandbanks and its turns, and then having left
it as accursed as the Styx or Periphlegethon,
he doubly cursed the Custom House, which, as
he said, was all composed of thieves, the sons
of thieves, who would be certainly begetters of
the same. Then he calmed down a little, and
drawing out a long Virginia cigar, took out the
straw with seriousness and great dexterity,
and then allowed about a quarter of an inch
of it to smoulder in a match, lighted it, and
20

LOS PINGOS

sending out a cloud of smoke, sat down
upon the grass, and fell a-cursing, with all
the ingenuity of his profession and his
race, the country, the hot weather, and the
saints.

This done, and having seen the curient
was slowly bearing down the other lighter past
the sandy beach, with a last hearty curse upon
God's mother and her Son, whose birth he
hinted not obscurely was of the nature of a
mystery, in which he placed no credence, got
back into his boat, and went back to his tug,
leaving us all" amazed, both at his fluency and
faith.

When he had gone and grappled with the
other lighter which was slowly drifting down
the stream, two or three men came forward in
the lighter that was already in the little river's
mouth, about a yard or so distant from the
edge, and calling to us to be ready, for the
horses had not eaten for sixteen hours at least,
slowly let down the wooden landing-flap. At
first the horses craned their necks and looked
out on the grass, but did not venture to go
down the wooden landing-stage; then a big
roan, stepping out gingerly and snorting as he

21

LOS PINGOS

went, adventured, and when he stood upon the
grass, neighed shrilly and then rolled. In a
long string the others followed, the clattering
of their unshod feet upon the wood sounding
like distant thunder.

Byrne, the Portefio, stout and high-coloured,
dressed in great thigh boots and baggy breeches,
a black silk handkerchief tied loosely round
his neck, a black felt hat upon his head, and a
great silver watch-chain, with a snaffle-bridle
in the middle of it, contrasting oddly with his
broad pistol belt, with its old silver dollars
for a fastening, came ashore, carrying his saddle
on his back. Then followed Doherty, whose
name, quite unpronounceable to men of Latin
race, was softened in their speech to Duarte,
making a good Castilian patronymic of it.
He too was a Porteno,^ although of Irish stock.
Tall, dark, and dressed in semi-native clothes,
he yet, like Byrne, always spoke Spanish
when no foreigners were present, and in his
English that softening of the consonants and
broadening of the vowels was discernible that
makes the speech of men such as himself have

' PoruSo, literally a man born in the port of Buenos Aires, but is also
applied to any one born in the province of Buenos Aires.

22

LOS PINGOS

in it something, as it were, caressing, strangely
at variance with their character. Two or
three peons of the usual Gaucho type came
after them, all carrying saddles, and walking
much as an alligator waddles on the sand,
or as the Medes whom Xenophon describes,
mincing upon their toes, in order not to blunt
the rowels of their spurs.

Our men, Garcia the innkeeper of Fray
Bentos, with Pablo Suarez, whose negro
blood and crispy hair gave him a look as of a
Roman emperor of the degenerate times, with
Pancho Arrellano and Miguel Paralelo, the
Gaucho dandy, swaying upon his horse with
his toes just touching his heavy silver stirrups
with a crown underneath them, Velez and
El Pampita, an Indian who had been captured
young on the south Pampa, were mounted
ready to round the horses up.

They did not want much care, for they were
eating ravenously, and all we had to do was to
drive them a few hundred yards ^way to let
the others land.

By this time the Italian captain in his tug
had gently brought the other lighter to the
beach, and from its side another string of horses

23

LOS PINGOS

came out on to the grass. They too all rolled,
and, seeing the other band, by degrees mixed
with it, so that four hundred horses soon were
feeding ravenously on the sweet grass just
at the little river's mouth that lay between its
banks and the thick belt of wood.

Though it was early, still the sun was hot,
and for an hour we held the horses back,
keeping them from the water till they had
eaten well.

The Italian tugmaster, having produced a
bottle of trade gin (the Anchor brand), and
having drank our health, solemnly wiped the
neck of the bottle with his grimy hand and
passed it round to us. We also drank to his
good health and voyage to the port, that he
pronounced as if it were written " Bono Airi,"
adding, as it was war-time, " Avanti Savoia "
to the toast. He grinned, and with a gesture
of his thick dirty hand, adorned with two
or three coppery-looking rings, as it were,
embedded in the flesh, pronounced an all-
embracing curse on the Tedeschi, and went
aboard the tug.

When he had made the lighters fast, he
turned down stream, saluting us with three
24

LOS PINGOS

shrill blasts upon the whistle, and left us and
our horses thousands of miles away from steam
and smoke, blaspheming skippers, and the
noise and push of modern life.

Humming-birds poised themselves before
the purple bunches of the ceiba ^ flowers, their
tongues thrust into the calyx and their iri-
descent wings whirring so rapidly, you could
see the motion, but not mark the movement,
and from the yellow balls of the mimosas came
a scent, heady and comforting.

Flocks of green parroquets flew shrieking
over the clearing in which the horses fed, to
their great nests, in which ten or a dozen
seemed to harbour, and hung suspended from
them by their claws, or crawled into the holes.
Now and then a few locusts, wafted by the
breeze, passed by upon their way to spread
destruction in the plantations of young poplars
and of orange trees in the green islands in the
stream.

An air of peace gave a strange interest to
this little corner of a world plunged into strife
and woe. The herders nodded on their

1 BetAax cciba, » large tree with ipongy, light wood, that has im-
mense bunches of purple flowers.

25

LOS PINGOS

horses, who for their part hung down their
heads, and now and then shifted their quarters
so as to bring their heads into the shade. The
innkeeper, Garcia, in his town clothes, and
perched upon a tall grey horse^ to use his own
words, " sweated blood and water like our
Lord " in the fierce glare of the ascending sun.
Suarez and Paralelo pushed the ends of the
red silk handkerchiefs they wore tied loosely
round their necks, with two points like the
wings of a great butterfly hanging upon their
shoulders, under their hats, and smoked innum-
erable cigarettes, the frontiersman's specific
against heat or cold. Of all the little company
only the Fampa Indian showed no sign of
being incommoded by the heat. When horses
strayed he galloped up to turn them, now
striking at the passing butterflies with his
heavy- handled whip, or, letting himself fall
down from the saddle almost to the ground,
drew his brown finger on the dust for a few
yards, and with a wriggle like a snake got back
into his saddle with a yell.

The hours passed slowly, till at last the
horses, having filled themselves with grass,
stopped eating and looked towards the river,
26

LOS PINGOS

so we allowed them slowly to stream along
towards a shallow inlet on the beach. There
they stood drinking greedily, up to their knees,
until at last three or four of the outermost
began to swim.

Only their heads appeared above the water,
and occasionally their backs emerging just as
a porpoise comes to the surface in a tideway,
gave them an amphibious air, that linked
them somehow or another with the classics
in that unclassic land.

Long did they swim and play, and then,
coming out into the shallow water, drink again,
stamping their feet and swishing their long
tails, rise up and strike at one another with
their feet.

As I sat on my horse upon a little knoll,
coiling my laze, which had got uncoiled by
catching in a bush, I heard a voice in the soft,
drawling accents of the inhabitants of Corri-
entes, say, " Pucha, Pingos." ^

Turning, I saw the speaker, a Gaucho of
about thirty years of age, dressed all in black
in the old style of thirty years ago. His silver

' Pinga in Argentina is » good horse. Pucha i% a eupliuitm for
another word.

27

LOS PINGOS

knife, two feet or more in length, stuck in his
sash, stuck out on both sides of his body like
a lateen.

Where he had come from I had no idea, for
he appeared to have risen from the scrub
behind me. " Yes," he said, " Puta, Pingos,"
giving the phrase in the more classic, if more
unregenerate style, " how well they look, just
like the garden in the plaza at Fray Bentos in
the sun."

All shades were there, with every variegation
and variety of colour, white, and fern noses,
chestnuts with a stocking on one leg up to
the stifle joint, horses with a ring of white
right round their throats, or with a star as clear
as if it had been painted on the hip, and
" tuvianos," that is, brown, black, and white,
a colour justly prized in Uruguay.

Turning half round and offering me a
cigarette, the Correntino spoke again. " It
is a paradise for all those pingos here in this
rinc6n : ^ grass, water, everything that they
can want, shade, and shelter from the wind
and sun."

So it appeared to me — the swiftly flowing

' Elbow of a river.
28

LOS PINGOS

river with its green islands ; the Pampas grass
along the stream ; the ruined buildings, half-
buried in the orange trees run wild; grass,
shade, and water : " Pucha, no . . . Puta,
Pingos, where are they now ? "

29

Ill

FIDELITY

My tall host knocked the ashes from his pipe,
and crossing one leg over the other looked
into the fire.

Outside, the wind howled in the trees, and
the rain beat upon the window-panes. The
firelight flickered on the grate, falling upon
the polished furniture of the low-roofed, old-
fashioned library, with its high Georgian
overmantel, where in a deep recess there stood
a clock, shaped like a cross, with eighteenth-
century cupids carved in ivory fluttering round
the base, and Time with a long scythe standing
upon one side.

In the room hung the scent of an old

country-house, compounded of so many samples

that it is difficult to enumerate them all.

Beeswax and potpourri of roses, damp, and

30

FIDELITY

the scent of foreign woods in the old cabinets,
tobacco and wood smoke, with the all-per-
vading smell of age, were some of them. The
result was not unpleasant, and seemed the
complement of the well-bound Georgian books
standing demure upon their shelves, the black-
ening family portraits, and the skins of red deer
and of roe scattered about the room.

The conversation languished, and we both
sat listening to the storm that seemed to fill
the world with noises strange and unearthly,
for the house was far from railways, and the
avenues that lead to it were long and dark.
The solitude and the wild night seemed to have
recreated the old world, long lost, and changed,
but still remembered in that district just where
the Highlands and the Lowlands meet.

At such times and in such houses the country
really seems country once again, and not the
gardened, gamekeepered mixture of shooting
ground and of fat fields tilled by machinery
to which men now and then resort for sport,
or to gather in their rents, with which the whole
world is familiar to-day.

My host seemed to be strugglijig with
himself to tell me something, and as I looked

31

FIDELITY

at him, tall, strong, and upright, his face all
mottled by the weather, his homespun coat,
patched on the shoulders with buckskin that
once had been white, but now was fawn-
coloured with wet and from the chafing of his
gun, I felt the parturition of his speech would
probably cost him a shrewd throe. So I said
nothing, and he, after having filled his pipe,
ramming the tobacco down with an old silver
Indian seal, made as he told me in Kurachi,
and brought home by a great-uncle fifty years
ago, slowly began to speak, not looking at me,
but as it were delivering his thoughts aloud,
almost unconsciously, looking now and then
at me as if he felt, rather than knew, that I
was there. As he spoie, the tall, stuflFed hen-
harrier ; the little Neapolitan shrine in tortoise-
shell and coral, set thick with saints ; the flying
dragons from Ceylon, spread out like butterflies
in a glazed case ; the " poor's-box " on the
shelf above the books with its four silver sides
adorned with texts ; the rows of blue books,
and of Scott's Novels (the Roxburgh edition),
together with the scent exuding from the
Kingwood cabinet ; the sprays of white Scotch
rose, outlined against the window blinds ; and
32

FIDELITY

the sporting prints and family tree, all neatly
framed in oak, created the impression of being
in a world remote, besquired and cut off from
the century in which we live by more than
fifty years. Upon the rug before the fire
the sleeping spaniel whined uneasily, as if,
though sleeping, it still scented game, and all
the time the storm roared in the trees and
whistled down the passages of the lone country
house. One saw in fancy, deep in the recesses
of the woods, the roe stand sheltering, and the
capercailzie sitting on the branches of the firs,
wet and dejected, like chickens on a roost,
and little birds sent fluttering along, battling
for life against the storm. Upon such nights,
in districts such as that in which the gaunt
old house was situated, there is a feeling of
compassion for the wild things in the woods
that, stealing over one, bridges the gulf between
them and ourselves in a mysterious way.
Their lot and sufferings, joys, loves, and the
epitome of their brief lives, come home to us
with something irresistible, making us feel
that our superiority is an unreal thing, and
that in essentials we are one.

My host went on : " Some time ago I
33 D

FIDELITY

walked up to the little moor that overlooks
the Clyde, from which you see ships far off
lying at the Tail of the Bank, the smoke of
Greenock and Port Glasgow, the estuary itself,
though miles away, looking like a sheet of
frosted silver or dark -grey steel, according
to the season, and in the distance the range
of hills called Argyle's Bowling Green, with
the deep gap that marks the entrance to the
Holy Loch. Autumn had just begun to tinge
the trees, birches were golden, and rowans red,
the bents were brown and dry. A few bog
asphodels still showed amongst the heather,
and bilberries, dark as black currants, grew
here and there amongst the carpet of green
sphagnum and the stag's-head moss. The
heather was all rusty brown, but still there was,
as it were, a recollection of the summer in the
air. Just the kind of day you feel inclined to
sit down on the lee side of a dry-stone dyke,
and smoke and look at some familiar self-sown
birch that marks the flight of time, as you
remember that it was but a year or two ago
that it had first shot up above the grass.

" I remember two or three plants of tall
hemp-agrimony still had their flower heads
34

FIDELITY

withered on the stalk, giving them a look of
wearing wigs, and clumps of ragwort still had
a few bees buzzing about them, rather faintly,
with a belated air. I saw all this — not that
I am a botanist, for you know I can hardly
tell the diflFerence between the Cruciferse and
the Umbelliferae, but because when you live
in the country some of the common plants
seem to obtrude themselves upon you, and you
have got to notice them in spite of you. So I
walked on till I came to a wrecked plantation
of spruce and of Scotch fir. A hurricane had
struck it, turning it over almost in rows, as it
was planted. The trees had withered in most
cases, and in the open spaces round their
upturned roots hundreds of rabbits burrowed,
and had marked the adjoining field with little
paths, just like the lines outside a railway-
station.

" I saw all this, not because I looked at it,
for if you look with the idea of seeing every-
thing, commonly everything escapes you, but
because the lovely afternoon induced a feeling
of well-being and contentment, and everything
seemed to fall into its right proportion, so
that you saw first the harmonious whole, and

35

FIDELITY

then the salient points most worth the look-
ing at.

" I walked along feeling exhilarated with
the autumn air and the fresh breeze that blew
up from the Clyde. I remember thinking
I had hardly ever felt greater content, and as I
walked it seemed impossible the world could
be so full of rank injustice, or that the lot of
three-fourths of its population could really be
so hard. A pack of grouse flew past, skimming
above the heather, as a shoal of flying-fish
skims just above the waves. I heard their
quacking cries as they alighted on some stboks
of oats, and noticed that the last bird to settle
was an old hen, and that, even when all were
down, I still could see her head, looking out
warily above the yellow grain; Beyond the
ruined wood there came the barking of a
shepherd's dog, faint and subdued, and almost
musical.

" I sat so long, smoking and looking at
the view, that when I turned to go the sun was
sinking and our long, northern twilight almost
setting in.

" You know it," said my host, and I, who
often had read by its light in summer and the
36

FIDELITY

early autumn, nodded assent, wondering to
myself what he was going to tell me, and he
went on.

" It has the property of making all things
look a little ghostly, deepening the shadows
and altering their values, so that all that you
see seems to acquire an extra significance, not
so much to the eye as to the mind. Slowly I
retraced my steps, walking under the high wall
of rough piled stones till it ends, at the copse
of willows, on the north side of the little moor
to which I had seen the pack of grouse fly
after it had left the stooks. I crossed into it,
and began to walk towards home, knee-deep
in bent grass and dwarf willows, with here and
there a patch of heather and a patch of bil-
berries. The softness of the ground so dulled
my footsteps that I appeared to walk as lightly
as a roe upon the spongy surface of the moor.
As I passed through a slight depression in
which the grass grew rankly, I heard a wild
cry coming, as it seemed, fron\ just beneath
my feet. Then came a rustling In the grass,
and a large, dark-grey bird sprang out, re-
peating the wild cry, and ran off swiftly, trailing
a broken wing.

37

FIDELITY

" It paused upon a little hillock fifty yards
away, repeating its strange note, and looking
round as if it sought for something that it was
certain was at hand. High in the air the cry,
wilder and shriller, was repeated, and a great
grey bird that I saw was a whaup slowly
descended in decreasing circles, and settled
down beside its mate.

" They seemed to talk, and then the
wounded bird set off at a swift run, its fellow
circling above its head and uttering its cry
as if it guided it. I watched them disappear,
feeling as if an iron belt was drawn tight round
my heart, their cries growing fainter as the
deepening shadows slowly closed upon the
moor."

My host stopped, knocked the ashes from
his pipe, and turning to me, said : —

" I watched them go to what of course
must have been certain death for one of them,
furious, with the feelings of a murderer towards
the man whose thoughtless folly had been the
cause of so much misery. Curse him 1 I
watched them, impotent to help, for as you
know the curlew is perhaps the wildest of our
native birds ; and even had I caught the

38

FIDELITY

wounded one to set its wing, it would have
pined and died. One thing I could have
done, had I but had a gun and had the light
been better, I might have shot them both, and
had I done so I would have buried them beside
each other.

" That's what I had upon my mind to tell
you. I think the storm and the wild noises
of the struggling trees outside have brought
it back to me, although it happened years ago.
Sometimes, when people talk about fidelity,
saying it is not to be found upon the earth,
I smile, for I have seen it with my own eyes,
and manifest, out on that little moor."

He filled his pipe, and sitting down in an
old leather chair, much worn and rather
greasy, silently gazed into the fire.

I, too, was silent, thinking upon the tragedy ;
then feeling that something was expected of
me, looked up and murmured, " Yes."

39

IV

" UNO DEI MILLE "

A VEIL of mist, the colour of a spider's web,
rose from the oily river. It met the mist that
wrapped the palm-trees and the unsubstantial-
looking houses painted in light blue and yellow
ochre, as it descended from the hills. Now
and then, through the pall of damp, as a light
air was wafted up the river from the sea, the
bright red earth upon the hills showed like
a stain of blood ; canoes, paddled by men who
stood up, balancing themselves with a slight
movement of the hips, slipped in and out of
sight, now crossing just before the steamer's
bows and then appearing underneath her stern
in a mysterious way. From the long line of
tin-roofed sheds a ceaseless stream of snufF-
and-butter-coloured men trotted continuously,
carrying bags of coffee to an elevator, which
40

" UNO DEI MILLE "

shot them headlong down the steamer's hold.
Their naked feet pattered upon the warm, wet
concrete of the dock side, as it were stealthily,
with a sound almost alarming, so like their
footfall seemed to that of a wild animal.

The flat-roofed city, buried in sheets of
rain, that spouted from the eaves of the low
houses on the unwary passers-by, was stirred
unwontedly. Men, who as a general rule
lounged at the corners of the streets, pressing
their shoulders up against the houses as if they
thought that only by their own self-sacrifice
the walls were kept from falling, now walked
up and down, regardless of the rain.

In the great oblong square, planted with
cocoa-palms, in which the statue of Cabral
stands up in cheap Carrara marble, looking as
if he felt ashamed of his discovery, a sea of
wet umbrellas surged to and fro, forging
towards the Italian Consulate. Squat Genoese
and swarthy Neapolitans, with sinewy Pied-
montese, and men from every province of the
peninsula, all had left their work. They all
discoursed in the same tone of voice in which
no doubt their ancestors talked in the Forum,
even when Cicero was speaking, until the

41

" UNO DEI MILLE "

lictors forced them to keep silence, for their
own eloquence is that which in all ages has had
most charm for them. The reedy voices of
the Brazilian coloured men sounded a mere
twittering compared to their full-bodied tones.
" Viva r Italia " pealed out from thousands of
strong throats as the crowd streamed from the
square and filled the narrow streets ; fireworks
that fizzled miserably were shot off in the
mist, the sticks falling upon the umbrellas of
the crowd. A shift of wind cleared the mist
oflf the river for a moment, leaving an Italian
liner full in view. From all her spars floated
the red and white and green, and on her decks
and in the rigging, on bridges and on the rail,
men, all with bundles in their hands, clustered
like ants, and cheered incessantly. An answer-
ing cheer rose from the crowd ashore of
" Long live the Reservists I Viva 1' Italia," as
the vessel slowly swung into the stream. From
every house excited men rushed out and flung
themselves and their belongings into boats,
and scrambled up the vessel's sides as she began
to move. Brown hands were stretched down
to them as they climbed on board. From
every doorstep in the town women with hand-
42

" UNO DEI MILLE "

kerchiefs about their heads came out, and with
the tears falling from their great, black eyes
and running down their olive cheeks, waved
and called out, " Addio Giuseppe ; addio Gian
Battista, abbasso gli Tedeschi," and then
turned back into their homes to weep. On
every side Italians stood and shouted, and still,
from railway station and from the river-side,
hundreds poured out and gazed at the departing
steamer with its teeming freight of men.

Italians from the coffee plantations of Sao
Paulo, from the mines of Ouro Preto, from
Goyaz, and from the far interior, all young
and sun-burnt, the flower of those Italian
workmen who have built the railways of
Brazil, and by whose work the strong founda-
tions of the prosperity of the Republic have
been laid, were out, to turn their backs upon the
land in which, for the first time, most of them
had eaten a full meal. Factories stood idle,
the coasting schooners all were left unmanned,
and had the coffee harvest not been gathered
in, it would have rotted on the hills. The
Consulate was unapproachable, and round it
throngs of men struggled to enter, all demand-
ing to get home. No rain could damp their

43

" UNO DEI MILLE "

spirits, and those who, after waiting hours,
came out with tickets, had a look in their eyes
as if they just had won the chief prize in the
lottery.

Their friends surrounded them, and strained
them to their hearts, the water from the um-
brellas of the crowd trickling in rivulets upon
the embracer and the embraced.

Mulatto policemen cleared the path for
carriages to pass, and, as they came, the gap
filled up again as if by magic, till the next
carriage passed. Suddenly a tremor ran
through the crowd, moving it with a shiver
like the body of a snake. All the umbrellas
which had seemed to move by their own will,
covering the crowd and hiding it from view,
were shut down suddenly. A mist-dimmed
sun shone out, watery, but potent, and in an
instant gaining strength, it dried the streets
and made a hot steam rise up from the crowd.
Slouched hats were raised up on one side,
and pocket handkerchiefs wrapped up in paper
were unfolded and knotted loosely round men's
necks, giving them a look as of domestic
bandits as they broke out into a patriotic song,
which ceased with a long drawn-out " Viva,"

44

" UNO DEI MILLE "

as the strains of an approaching band were
heard and the footsteps of men marching
through the streets in military array.

The coloured policemen rode their horses
through the throng, and the streets, which till
then had seemed impassable, were suddenly
left clear. Jangling and crashing out the
Garibaldian hymn, the band debouched into
the square, dressed in a uniform half-German,
half-Brazilian, with truncated pickel-hauben
on their heads, in which were stuck a plume
of gaudy feathers, apparently at the discretion
of the wearer, making them look like something
in a comic opera ; a tall mulatto, playing on a
drum with all the seriousness that, only one of
his colour and his race is able to impart to futile
actions, swaggered along beside a jet-black
negro playing on the flute. All the executants
wore brass-handled swords of a kind never
seen in Europe for a hundred years. Those
who played the trombone and the ophicleide
blew till their thick lips swelled, and seemed
to cover up the mouthpieces. Still they blew
on, the perspiration rolling down their cheeks,
and a black boy or two brought up the rear,
clashing the cymbals when it seemed good to

45

" UNO DEI MILLE "

them, quite irrespective of the rest. The
noise was terrifying, and had it not been for
the enthusiasm of the crowd, the motley band
of coloured men, arrayed like popinjays, would
have been ridiculous ; but the dense ranks of
hot, perspiring men, all in the flower of youth,
and every one of whom had given up his work
to cross the ocean at his country's call, had
something in them that turned laugHter into
tears. The sons of peasants, who had left
their homes, driven out from Apulean plains
or Lombard rice-fields by the pinch of poverty,
they now were going back to shed their blood
for the land that had denied them bread in
their own homes. Twice did the band march
round the town whilst the procession was
getting ready for a start, and each time that
it passed before the Consulate, the Consul
came out on the steps, bare-headed, and
saluted with the flag.

Dressed in white drill, tall, grey-haired,
and with the washed-out look of one who has
spent many years in a hot country, the Consul
evidently had been a soldier in his youth. He
stood and watched the people critically, with
the appraising look of the old officer, so like
46

" UNO DEI MILLE "

to that a grazier puts on at a cattle market
as he surveys the beasts. " Good stuff," he
muttered to himself, and then drawing his
hand across his eyes, as if he felt where most
of the " good stuff" would lie in a few months,
he went back to the house.

A cheer at the far corner of the square
showed that the ranks were formed. A
policeman on a scraggy horse, with a great
rusty sabre banging at its side, rode slowly
down the streets to clear the way, and once
again the parti-coloured band passed by,
playing the Garibaldian hymn. Rank upon
rank of men tramped after it, their friends
running beside them for a last embrace, and
women rushing up with children for a farewell
kiss. Their merry faces set with determina-
tion, and their shoulders well thrown back, three
or four hundred men briskly stepped along,
trying to imitate the way the Bersaglieri march
in Italy. A shout went up of " Long live the
Reservists," as a contingent, drawn from every
class of the Italian colony, passed along the
street. Dock-labourers and pale-faced clerks
in well-cut clothes and unsubstantial boots
walked side by side. Men burnt the colour

47

" UNO DEI MILLE "

of a brick by working at the harvest rubbed
shoulders with Sicilian emigrants landed a
month or two ago, but who now were going
off to fight, as poor as when they left their
native land, and dressed in the same clothes.
Neapolitans, gesticulating as they marched,
and putting out their tongues at the Brazilian
negroes, chattered and joked. To them life
was a farce, no matter that the setting of the
stage on which they moved was narrow, the
fare hard, and the remuneration small. If
things were adverse they still laughed on, and
if the world was kind they jeered at it and at
themselves, disarming both the slings of
fortune and her more dangerous smiles with a
grimace.

As they marched on, they now and then
sketched out in pantomime the fate of any
German who might fall into their hands, so
vividly that shouts of laughter greeted them,
which they acknowledged by putting out their
tongues. Square - shouldered Liguresi suc-
ceeded them, with Lombards, Sicilians, and
men of the strange negroid-looking race from
the Basilicata, almost as dark-skinned as the
Brazilian loungers at the corners of the streets.
48

" UNO DEI MILLE "

They all passed on, laughing, and quite
oblivious of what was in store for most of them
— laughing and smoking, and, for the first
time in their lives, the centre of a show. After
them came another band ; but this time of
Italians, well-dressed, and playing on well-
cared-for instruments. Behind them walked
a little group of men, on whose appearance a
hush fell on the crowd. Two of them wore
uniforms, and between them, supported by
silk handkerchiefs wrapped round his arms,
there walked a man who was welcomed with
a scream of joy. Frail, and with trembling
footsteps, dressed in a faded old red shirt and
knotted handkerchief, his parchment cheeks
lit up with a faint flush as the Veteran of
Marsala passed like a phantom of a glorious
past. With him appeared to march the rest
of his companions who set sail from Genoa
to call into existence that Italy for which the
young men all around him were prepared to
sacrifice their lives.

To the excited crowd he typified all that
their fathers had endured to drive the stranger
from their land. The two Cairoli, Nino Bixio,
and the heroic figure, wrapped in his poncho,

49 E

" UNO DEI MILLE "

who rides in glory on the Janiculum, visible
from every point of Rome, seemed to march
by the old man's side in the imagination of
the crowd. Women rushed forward, carrying
flowers, and strewed them on the scant grey
locks of the old soldier, and children danced in
front of him, like little Bacchanals. All hats
were off as the old man was borne along, a
phantom of himself, a symbol of a heroic past,
and still a beacon, flickering but alight, to
show the way towards the goal which in his
youth had seemed impossible to reach;

Slowly the procession rolled along, surging
against the houses as an incoming tide swirls
up a river, till it reached the Consulate. It
halted, and the old Garibaldian, drawing him-
self up, saluted the Italian colours. The
Consul, bare-headed and with tears running
down his cheeks, stood for a moment, the
centre of all eyes, and then, advancing, tore
the flag from off its staff, and, after kissing it,
wrapped it round the frail shoulders of the
veteran.

50

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

A NORTH-EAST haar had hung the city with a
pall of grey. It gave an air of hardness to the
stone-built houses, blending them with the
stone-paved streets, till you could scarce see
where the houses ended and the street began.
A thin grey dust hung in the air. It coloured
everything, and people's faces all looked pinched
with the first touch of autumn cold. The
wind, boisterous and gusty, whisked the soot-
grimed city leaves about in the high suburb
at the foot of a long range of hills, making
one think it would be easy to have done with
life on such an uncongenial day. Tramways
were packed with people of the working
class, all of them of the alert, quick-witted
type only to be seen in the great city on the
Clyde, in all our Empire, and comparable

51

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

alone to the dwellers in Chicago for dry
vivacity;

By the air they wore of chastened pleasure,
all those who knew them saw that they were
intent upon a funeral. To serious-minded
men such as are they, for all their quickness,
nothing is so soul-filling, for it is of the nature
of a fact that no one can deny. A wedding
has its possibilities, for it may lead to children,
or divorce, but funerals are in another category.
At them the Scottish people is at its best, for
never more than then does the deep underlying
tenderness peep through the hardness of the
rind. On foot and in the tramways, but most
especially on foot, converged long lines of men
and women, though fewer women, for the
national prejudice that in years gone by thought
it not decent for a wife to follow to the grave
her husband's cofBn, still holds a little in the
north. Yet there was something in the crowd
that showed it was to attend no common
funeral, that they were " stepping west." No
one wore black, except a minister or two, who
looked a little like the belated rook you some-
times see amongst a flock of seagulls, in that
vast ocean of grey tweed.
52

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

They tramped along, the whistling north-
east wind pinching their features, making their
eyes run, and as they went, almost uncon-
sciously they fell into procession, for beyond
the tramway line, a country lane that had not
quite put on the graces of a street, though
straggling houses were dotted here and there
along it, received the crowd and marshalled it,
as it were mechanically, without volition of its
own. Kept in between the walls, and blocked
in front by the hearse and long procession of
the mourning-coaches, the people slowly surged
along. The greater portion of the crowd were
townsmen, but there were miners washed and
in their Sunday best. Their faces showed the
blue marks of healed-up scars into which coal
dust or gunpowder had become tattooed, scars
gained in the battle of their lives down in the
pits, remembrances of falls of rock or of
occasions when the mine had " fired upon
them."

Many had known Keir Hardie in his youth,
had " wrocht wi' him out-by," at Blantyre, at
Hamilton, in Ayrshire, and all of them had
heard him speak a hundred times. Even to
those who had not heard him, his name was
53

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

as a household word. Miners predominated,
but men of every trade were there. Many
were members of that black-coated proletariat,
whose narrow circumstances and daily struggle
for appearances make their life harder to them
than is the life of any working man before he
has had to dye his hair. Women tramped,
too, for the dead leader had been a champion
of their sex. They all respected him, loving
him with that half-contemptuous gratitude
that women often show to men who make
the "woman question " the object of their
lives.

After the Scottish fashion at a funeral,
greetings were freely passed, and Reid, who
hadna' seen his friend Mackinder since the
time of the Mid-Lanark fight, greeted him
with " Ye mind when first Keir Hardie was
puttin' up for Parliament," and wrung his
hand, hardened in the mine, with one as hard-
ened, and instantly began to recall elections
of the past.

" Ye mind yon Wishaw meeting ? "
" Aye, ou aye ; ye mean when a' they Irish
wouldna' hear John Ferguson. Man, he
almost grat after the meeting aboot it."
54

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

" Aye, but they gied Hardie himself a maist
respectful hearing . . . aye, ou aye."

Others remembered him a boy, and others
in his home at Cumnock, but all spoke of him
with affection, holding him as something of
their own, apart from other politicians, almost
apart from men.

Old comrades who had been with him either
at this election or that meeting, had helped or
had intended to have helped at the crises of
his life, fought their old battles over, as they
tramped along, all shivering in the wind.

The procession reached a long dip in the
road, and the head of it, full half a mile
away, could be seen gathered round the
hearse, outside the chapel of the crematorium,
whose ominous tall chimney, through which
the ashes, and perchance the souls of thousands
have escaped towards some empyrean or
another, towered up starkly. At last all had
arrived, and the small open space was crowded,
the hearse and carriages appearing stuck
amongst the people, like raisins in a cake,
so thick they pressed upon them. The chapel,
differing from the ordinary chapel of the faiths
as much as does a motor driver from a cabman,

SS

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

had an air as of modernity about it, which
contrasted strangely with the ordinary looking
crowd, the adjacent hills, the decent mourning
coaches and the black-coated undertakers who
bore the coffin up the steps. Outside, the wind
whistled and swayed the soot -stained trees
about ; but inside the chapel the heat was
stifling.

When all was duly done, and long ex-
ordiums passed upon the man who in his life
had been the target for the abuse of press and
pulpit, the coffin slid away to its appointed
place. One thought one heard the roaring of
the flames, and somehow missed the familiar
lowering of the body . . . earth to earth . ; .
to which the centuries of use and wont have
made us all familiar, though dust to dust in
this case was the more appropriate.

In either case, the book is closed for ever,
and the familiar face is seen no more.

So, standing just outside the chapel in the
cold, waiting till all the usual greetings had
been exchanged, I fell a-musing on the man
whom I had known so well; I saw him as he
was thirty years ago, outlined against a bing or
standing in a quarry in some mining village,
56

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

and heard his once familiar address of " Men."
He used no other in those days, to the immense
disgust of legislators and other worthy but
unimaginative men whom he might chance to
meet. About him seemed to stand a shadowy
band, most of whom now are dead or lost to
view, or have gone under in the fight.

John Ferguson was there, the old-time Irish
leader, the friend of Davitt and of Butt. Tall
and erect he stood, dressed in his long frock-
coat, his roll of papers in one hand, and with
the other stuck into his breast, with all the air
of being the last Roman left alive. Tom
Mann, with his black hair, his flashing eyes,
and his tumultuous speech peppered with
expletives. Beside him, Sandy Haddow, of
Parkhead, massive and Doric in his speech,
\dth a grey woollen comforter rolled round his
neck, and hands like panels of a door.
Champion, pale, slight, and interesting, still
the artillery officer, in spite of Socialism. John
Burns ; and Small, the miners' agent, with his
close brown beard and taste for literature.
Smillie stood near, he of the seven elections,
and then check-weigher at a pit, either at
Cadzow or Larkhall. There, too, was silver-

57

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

tongued Shaw Maxwell and Chisholm Robert-
son, looking out darkly on the world through
tinted spectacles ; with him Bruce Glasier,
girt with a red sash and with an aureole of fair
curly hair around his head, half poet and half
revolutionary.

They were all young and ardent, and as I
mused upon them and their fate, and upon
those of them who have gone down into the
oblivion that waits for those who live before
their time, I shivered in the wind.

Had he, too, lived in vain, he whose scant
ashes were no doubt by this time all collected
in an urn, and did they really represent all
that remained of him ?

Standing amongst the band of shadowy
comrades I had known, I saw him, simple and
yet with something of the prophet in his air,
and something of the seer. Effective and yet
ineffectual, something there was about him
that attracted little children to him, and I
should think lost dogs. He made mistakes,
but then those who make no mistakes seldom
make anything. His life was one long battle,
so it seemed to me that it was fitting that at
his funeral the north-east wind should howl
58

WITH THE NORTH-EAST WIND

amongst the trees, tossing and twisting them
as he himself was twisted and storm-tossed in
his tempestuous passage through the world.

As the crowd moved away, and in the
hearse and mourning - coaches the spavined
horses limped slowly down the road, a gleam
of sunshine, such as had shone too little in his
life, lighted up everything.

The swaying trees and dark, grey houses
of the ugly suburb of the town were all trans-
figured for a moment. The chapel door was
closed, and from the chimney of the crema-
torium a faint blue smoke was issuing, which,
by degrees, faded into the atmosphere, just as
the soul, for all I know, may melt into the air.

When the last stragglers had gone, and bits
of paper scurried uneasily along before the
wind, the world seemed empty, with nothing
friendly in it, but the shoulder of Ben Lomond
peeping out shyly over the Kilpatrick Hills.

59

VI

ELYSIUM

The Triad came into my life as I walked
underneath the arch by which the sentinels sit
in Olympian state upon their rather long-
legged chargers, receiving, as is their due, the
silent homage of the passing nurserymaids.
The soldier in the middle was straight back
from the front. The mud of Flanders clung
to his boots and clothes. It was " deeched "
into his skin, and round his eyes had left a
stain so dark, it looked as if he had been painted
for a theatrical make-up. Upon his puttees
it had dried so thickly that you could scarcely
see the folds. He bore upon his back his
knapsack, carried his rifle in his hand all done
up in a case, which gave it, as it seemed to me,
a look of hidden power, making it more terrible
to think of than if it had shone brightly in the
60

ELYSIUM

sun. His water-bottle and a pack of some
kind hung at his sides, and as he walked kept
time to every step. Under his elbow pro-
truded the shaft of something, perhaps an
entrenching tool of some sort, or perhaps some
weapon strange to civilians accustomed to
the use of stick or umbrella as their only arm.
In himself he seemed a walking arsenal, carry-
ing his weapons and his baggage on his back,
after the fashion of a Roman legionary. The
man himself, before the hand of discipline
had fashioned him to number something or
another, must have looked fresh and youthful,
not very different from a thousand others that in
time of peace one sees in early morning going
to fulfil one of those avocations without which
no State can possibly endure, and yet are
practically unknown to those who live in the
vast stucco hives either of Belgravia or May-
fair.

He may have been some five-and-twenty,
and was a Londoner or a man from the home
counties lying round about. His sunburnt
face was yet not sunburnt as is the face of
one accustomed to the weather all his life.
Recent exposure had made his skin all feverish,

6i

ELYSIUM

and his blue eyes were fixed, as often are the
eyes of sailors or frontiersmen after a long
watch.

The girls on either side of him clung to his
arm with pride, and with an air of evident affec-
tion, that left them quite unconscious of every-
thing but having got the beloved object of their
care safe home again. Upon the right side,
holding fast to the warrior's arm, and now and
then nestling close to his side, walked his sweet-
heart, a dark-haired girl, dressed in the miser-
able cheap finery our poorer countrywomen
wear, instead of well-made plainer clothes that
certainly would cost them less and set them off
a hundredfold the more. Now and again she
pointed out some feature of the town with
pride, as when they climbed the steps under
the column on which stands the statue of the
Duke of York. The soldier, without looking,
answered, " I know, Ethel, Dook of York," and
hitched his pack a little higher on his back.

His sister, hanging on his left arm, never
said anything, but walked along as in a dream ;
and he, knowing that she was there and under-
stood, spoke little to her, except to murmur
" Good old Gladys " now and then, and press
62

ELYSIUM

her to his side. As they passed by the stunted
monument, on which the crowd of Httle figures
standing round a sledge commemorates the
Franklin Expedition, in a chill Arctic way,
the girl upon the right jerked her head towards
it and said, " That's Sir John Franklin,
George, he as laid down his life to find the
North- West Passage, one of our 'eroes, you
remember 'im." To which he answered,
" Oh yes, Frenklin " ; then looking over at
the statue of Commander Scott, added, " 'ee
done his bit too," with an appreciative air.
They gazed upon the Athenaeum and the other
clubs with that air of detachment that all
Englishmen affect when they behold a build-
ing or a monument — taking it, as it seems
to me, as something they have no concern
with, just as if it stood in Petrograd or in
Johannesburg.

The homing triad passed into Pall Mall,
oblivious of the world, so lost in happiness
that they appeared the only living people in
the street. The sister, who had said so little,
when she saw her brother shift his knapsack,
asked him to let her carry it. He smiled, and
knowing what she felt, handed his rifle to her,

(>3

ELYSIUM

remarking, " 'Old it the right side up, old girl,
or else it will go off."

And so they took their way through the
enchanted streets, not feeling either the pene-
trating wind or the fine rain, for these are but
material things, and they were wrapped apart
from the whole world. Officers of all ranks
passed by them, some young and smart, and
others paunchy and middle-aged ; but they were
non-existent to the soldier, who saw nothing but
the girls. Most of the officers looked straight
before them, with an indulgent air ; but two
young men with red bands round their caps
were scandalised, and muttering something as
to the discipline of the New Army, drew them-
selves up stiffly and strutted off, like angry
game-cocks when they eye each other in the
ring.

The triad passed the Rag, and on the steps
stood two old colonels, their faces burnt the
colour of a brick, and their moustaches stiff
as the bristles of a brush. They eyed the
passing little show, and looking at each other
broke into a smile. They knew that they
would never walk oblivious of mankind, linked
to a woman's arm ; but perhaps memories of
64

ELYSIUM

what they had done stirred in their hearts, for
both of them at the same moment ejaculated
a modulated " Ha ! " of sympathy. All this
time I had walked behind the three young
people, unconsciously, as I was going the same
road, catching half phrases now and then,
which I was half ashamed to hear.

They reached the corner of St. James's
Square, and our paths separated. Mine took
me to the London Library to change a book,
and theirs led straight to Elysium, for five
long days.

65

VII

HEREDITY

Right along the frontier between Uruguay
and Rio Grande, the southern province of
Brazil, the Spanish and the Portuguese sit
face to face, as they have sat for ages, looking
at, but never understanding, one another, both
in the Old and the New World.

In Tuy and Valenza, Monzon and Salva-
tierra, at Poncho Verde and Don Pedrito,
Rivera and Santa Ana do Libramento, and
far away above Cruz Alta, where the two
clumps of wood that mark old camps of the
two people are called O Matto Castelhano
and O Matto Portuguez, the rivalry of cen-
turies is either actual or at least commemorated
on the map.

The border-line that once made different
peoples of the dwellers at Floriston and
66

HEREDITY

Gretna, still prevails in the little castellated
towns, which snarl at one another across the
Minho, just as they did of old.

" Those people in Valenza would steal the
sacrament," says the street urchin playing
on the steps of the half fortalice, half church
that is the cathedral of Tuy on the Spanish'
side.

His fellow in Valenza spits towards Tuy
and remarks, " From Spain come neither good
marriages nor the wholesome winds."

So on to Salvatierra and Monzon, or any
other of the villages or towns upon the river,
and in the current of the native speech there
still remains some saying of the kind, with its
sharp edges still unworn after six centuries of
use. Great is the power of artificial barriers
to restrain mankind. No proverb ever penned
is more profound than that which sets out,
" Fear guards the vineyard, not the fence
around it."

So Portuguese and Spaniards in their
peninsula have fought and hated and fought
and ridiculed each other after the fashion of
children that have quarrelled over a broken
toy. Blood and an almost common speech,

67 "

HEREDITY

for both speak one Romance when all is said,
have both been impotent against the custom-
house, the flag, the foolish dynasty, for few
countries in the world have had more foolish
kings than Spain and Portugal.

That this should be so in the Old World
is natural enough, for the dead hand still
rules, and custom and tradition have more
strength than race and creed ; but that the
hatred should have been transplanted to
America, and still continue, is a proof that
folly never dies.

In the old towns on either side of the
Minho the exterior life of the two peoples is
the same.

In the stone-built, arcaded plazas women
still gather round the fountain and fill their
iron-hooped water-barrels through long tin
pipes, shaped like the tin valences used in
wine-stores. Donkeys stand at the doors,
carrying charcoal in esparto baskets, whether
in Portugal or Spain, and goats parade the
streets driven by goatherds, wearing shapeless,
thickly-napped felt hats and leather overalls.

The water-carrier in both countries calls
out " agua-a-a," making it sound like Arabic,
68

HEREDITY

and long trains of mules bring brushwood for
the baker's furnace (even as in Morocco), or
great nets of close-chopped straw for horses'
fodder.

At eventide the girls walk on the plaza,
their mothers, aunts, or servants following
them as closely as their shadows on a sunny
afternoon. In quiet streets lovers on both
sides of the river talk from a first-floor balcony
to the street, or whisper through the window-
bars on the ground floor. The little shops
under the low arches of the arcaded streets
have yellow flannel drawers for men and
petticoats of many colours hanging close
outside their doors, on whose steps sleep
yellow dogs.

The jangling bells in the decaying lichen-
grown old towers of the churches jangle and
clang in the same key, and as appears without
a touch of odium theologicum. The full bass
voices boom from the choirs, in which the self-
same organs in their walnut cases have the
same rows of golden trumpets sticking out
into the aisle.

One faith, one speech, one mode of daily
life, the same sharp " green " wine, the same
69

HEREDITY

bread made of maize and rye, and the same
heaps of red tomatoes and green peppers
glistening in the sun in the same market-
places, and yet a rivalry and a difFerence as
far apart as east from west still separates them.

In both their countries the axles of the
bullock-carts, with solid wheels and wattled
hurdle sides, like those upon a Roman coin,
still creak and whine to keep away the wolves.

In the soft landscape the maize fields wave
in the rich hollows on both sides of the
Minho.

The pine woods mantle the rocky hills that
overhang the deep-sea lochs that burrow in
both countries deep into the entrails of the
land.

The women, with their many-coloured petti-
coats and handkerchiefs, chaffer at the same
fairs to which their husbands ride their ponies
in their straw cloaks.

At " romerias " the peasantry dance to the
bagpipe and the drum the self-same dances,
and both climb the self-same steep grey steps
through the dark lanes, all overhung with
gorse and broom, up to the Calvaries, where
the three crosses take on the self-same growth
70

HEREDITY

of lichen and of moss. Yet the " boyero "
who walks before the placid oxen, with their
cream-coloured flanks and liquid eyes of onyx,
feels he is different, right down to the last
molecule of his being, from the man upon the
other side.

So was it once, and perhaps is to-day,
with those who dwell in Liddes or Bewcastle
dales. Spaniard and Portuguese, as Scot and
Englishman in older times, can never see one
matter from the same point of view. The
Portuguese will say that the Castilian is a
rogue, and the Castilian returns the compli-
ment. Neither have any reason to support
their view, for who wants reason to support
that which he feels is true.

It may be that the Spaniard is a little
rougher and the Portuguese more cunning ;
but if it is the case or not, the antipathy re-
mains, and has been taken to America.

From the Laguna de Merin to the Cuareim,
that is to say, along a frontier of two hundred
leagues, the self-same feeling rules upon both
sides of the line. There, as in Portugal and
Spain, although the country, whether in
Uruguay or in Brazil, is little different, yet it
71

HEREDITY

has suffered something indefinable by being
occupied by members of the two races so near
and yet so different from one another.

Great rolling seas of waving grass, broken
by a few stony hills, are the chief features of
the landscape of the frontiers in both republics.
Estancia houses, dazzlingly white, buried in
peach and fig groves, dot the plains, looking
like islands in the sea of grass. Great herds
of cattle roam about, and men on horse-
back, galloping like clockwork, sail across the
plains like ships upon a sea. Along the river-
banks grow strips of thorny trees, and as the
frontier line trends northward palm-trees
appear, and monkeys chatter in the woods.
Herds of wild asses, shyer than antelopes,
gaze at the passing horsemen, scour off when
he approaches, and are lost into the haze.
Stretches of purple borage, known as La Flor
Morada, carpet the ground in spring and early
summer, giving place later on to^ red verbena ;
and on the edges of the streams the tufts of
the tall Pampa grass recall the feathers on a
Pampa Indian's spear.

Bands of grave ostriches feed quietly upon
the tops of hills, and stride away when fright-
72

HEREDITY

ened, down the wind, with wings stretched out
to catch the breeze.

Clothes are identical, or almost so ; the
poncho and the loose trousers stuffed into
high patent-leather boots, the hat kept in its
place by a black ribbon with two tassels, are
to be seen on both sides of the frontier.
Only in Brazil a sword stuck through the
girth replaces the long knife of Uruguay.
Perhaps in that one item all the differences
between the races manifests itself, for the
sword is, as it were, a symbol, for no one ever
saw one drawn or used in any way but as an
ornament. It is, in fact, but a survival of old
customs, which are cherished both by the
Portuguese and the Brazilians as the apple of
the eye.

The vast extent of the territory of Brazil,
its inaccessibility, and the enormous distances
to be travelled from the interior to the coast,
and the sense of remoteness from the outer
world, have kept alive a type of man not
to be found in any other country where the
Christian faith prevails. Risings of fanatics
still are frequent ; one is going on to-day in
Parand, and that of the celebrated Antonio
73

HEREDITY

Concelheiro, twenty years ago, shook the
wholp country to its core. Slavery existed in
the memory of people still alive. Women in
the remoter towns are still secluded almost
as with the Moors. The men still retain
something of the Middle Ages in their love of
show. All in the province of Rio Grande are
great horsemen, and all use silver trappings
on a black horse, and all have horses bitted so
as to turn round in the air, just as a hawk turns
on the wing.

The sons of men who have been slaves
abound in all the little frontier towns, and old
grey-headed negroes, who have been slaves
themselves, still hang about the great estates.
Upon the other side, in Uruguay, the negro
question was solved once and for all in the
Independence "Wars, for then the negroes were
all formed into battalions by themselves and
set in the forefront of the battle, to die for
liberty in a country where they all were slaves
the month before. War turned them into
heroes, and sent them out to die.

When once their independence was assured,
the Uruguayans fell into line like magic with
the modern trend of thought. Liberty to
74

HEREDITY

them meant absolute equality, for throughout
the land no snob is found to leave a slug's
trail on the face of man by his subserviency.

Women were held free, that is, as free as
it is possible for them to be in any Latin-
peopled land. Across the line, even to-day,
a man may stay a week in a Brazilian country
house and never see a woman but a mulata
girl or an old negro crone. Still he feels he
is watched by eyes he never sees, listens to
voices singing or laughing, and a sense of
mystery prevails.

Spaniards and Portuguese in the New World
have blended just as little as they have done
at home. Upon the frontier all the wilder
spirits of Brazil and Uruguay have congre-
gated. There they pursue the life, but little
altered, that their fathers led full fifty years
ago. All carry arms, and use them on small
provocation, for if an accident takes place the
frontier shields the slayer, for to pursue him
usually entails a national quarrel, and so the
game goes on.

So Jango Chaves, feeling inclined for sport,
or, as he might have said, to " brincar un
bocadinho," saddled up his horse. He

75

HEREDITY

mounted, and, as his friends were looking on,
ran it across the plaza of the town, and, turning
like a seagull in its flight, came back to where
his friends were standing, and stopped it with
a jerk.

His silver harness jingled, and his heavy
spurs, hanging loosely on his high-heeled boots,
clanked like fetters, as his active little horse
bounded into the air and threw the sand up in
a shower.

The rider, sitting him like a statue, with
the far-off look horsemen of every land assume
when riding a good horse and when they know
they are observed, slackened his hand and
let him fall into a little measured trot, arching
his neck and playing with the bit, under which
hung a silver eagle on a hinge. Waving his
hand towards his friends, Jango rode slowly
through the town. He passed through sandy
streets of flat -roofed, whitewashed houses,
before whose doors stood hobbled horses
nodding in the sun.

He rode past orange gardens, surrounded

by brown walls of sun-baked bricks with the

straw sticking in them, just as it had dried. In

the waste the castor-oil bushes formed little

76

HEREDITY

jungles, out of which peered cats, exactly as a
tiger peers out of a real jungle in the woods.
The sun poured down, and was reverberated
back from the white houses, and on the great
gaunt building, where the captain-general lived,
floated the green-and-yellow flag of the republic,
looking like a bandana handkerchief. He
passed the negro rancheria, without which no
such town as Santa Anna do Libramento is
■ complete, and might have marked, had he not
been too much used to see them, the naked
negro children playing in the sand. Possibly,
if he marked them, he referred to them as
" cachorrinhos pretos," for the old leaven of
the days of slavery is strongly rooted in Brazil.
So he rode on, a slight and graceful figure,
bending to each movement of his horse, his
mobile, olive-coloured features looking like a
bronze masque in the fierce downpour of the
sun.

As he rode on, his whip, held by a thong
and dangling from his fingers, swung against
his horse's flanks, keeping time rhythmi-
cally to its pace. He crossed the rivulet that
flows between the towns and came out on the
little open plain that separates them. From

77

HEREDITY

habit, or because he felt himself amongst un-
friendly or uncomprehended people, he touched
his knife and his revolvers, hidden beneath
his summer poncho, with his right hand, and
with his bridle arm held high, ready for all
eventualities, passed into just such another
sandy street as he had left behind.

Save that all looked a little newer, and that
the stores were better supplied with goods,
and that there were no negro huts, the difference
was slight between the towns. True that the
green-and-yellow flag had given place to the
barred blue - and - white of Uruguay. An
armed policeman stood at the corners of the
riiain thoroughfares, and water-carts went up
and down at intervals. The garden in the
plaza had a well-tended flower-garden.

A band was playing in the middle of it,
and Jango could not fail to notice that Rivera
was more prosperous than was his native town.

Whether that influenced him, or whether
it was the glass of cafia which he had at the
first pulperia, is a moot point, or whether
the old antipathy between the races brought
by his ancestors from the peninsula ; any-
how, he left his horse untied, and with the
78

HEREDITY

reins thrown down before it as he got oflF
to have his drink. "When he came out, a
policeman called to him to hobble it or tie
it up.

Without a word he gathered up his reins,
sprang at a bound upon his horse, and, draw-
ing his mother-of-pearl-handled pistol, fired
at the policeman almost as he sprang. The
shot threw up a shower of sand just in the police-
man's face, and probably saved Jango's life.
Drawing his pistol, the man fired back, but
Jango, with a shout and pressure of his heels,
was oflF like lightning, firing as he rode, and
zigzagging across the street. The policeman's
shot went wide, and Jango, turning in the
saddle, fired again and missed.

By this time men with pistols in their hands
stood at the doors of all the houses ; but the
Brazilian passed so rapidly, throwing himself
alternately now on the near side, now on the
oflF side of his horse, hanging by one foot
across the croup and holding with the other
to the mane, that he presented no mark for
them to hit.

As he passed by the " jefatura " where the
alcalde and his friends were sitting smoking

79

HEREDITY

just before the door, he fired with such good
aim that a large piece of plaster just above
their heads fell, covering them with dust.

Drawing his second pistol and still firing
as he went, he dashed out of the town, in spite
of shots from every side, his horse bounding
like lightning as his great silver spurs ploughed
deep into its sides. When he had crossed the
little bit of neutral ground, and just as a patrol
of cavalry appeared, ready to gallop after him,
a band of men from his own town came out
to meet him.

He stopped, and shouting out defiance to
the Uruguayans, drew up his horse, and lit
a cigarette. Then, safe beyond the frontier,
trotted on gently to meet his friends, his horse
shaking white foam from off its bit, and little
rivulets of blood dripping down from its sides
into the sand.

80

VIII

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

Motor-cars swept up to the covered passage
of the front door of the hotel, one of those
international caravansaries that pass their clients
through a sort of vulgarising process that blots
out every type. It makes the Argentine, the
French, the Englishman, and the American
all alike before the power of wealth.

The cars surged up as silently as snow falls
from a fir-tree in a thaw, and with the same
soft swishing noise. Tall, liveried porters
opened the doors (although, of course, each
car was duly furnished with a footman) so
nobly that any one of them would have graced
any situation in the State.

The ladies stepped down delicately, showing
a fleeting vision of a leg in a transparent
stocking, just for an instant, through the

8i G

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

slashing of their skirts. They knew that
every man, their footman, driver, the giant
watchers at the gate, and all who at the time
were going into the hotel, saw and were moved
by what they saw just for a moment ; but the
fact did not trouble them at all. It rather
pleased them, for the most virtuous feel a
pleasurable emotion when they know that they
excite. So it will be for ever, for thus and not
by votes alone they show that they are to the
full men's equals, let the law do its worst.

Inside the hotel, heated by steam, and with
an atmosphere of scent and flesh that went
straight to the head just as the fumes of whisky
set a drinker's nerves agog, were seated all the
finest flowers of the cosmopolitan society of
the French capital.

Lesbos had sent its legions, and women
looked at one another appreciatively, scanning
each item of their neighbours' clothes, and with
their colour heightening when by chance their
eyes met those of another priestess of their
sect.

Rich rastaquaoures, their hats too shiny,
and their boots too tight, their coats fitting
too closely, their sticks mounted with great
82

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

gold knobs, walked about or sat at little tables,
all talking strange varieties of French.

Americans, the men apparently all run out
of the same mould, the women apt as monkeys
to imitate all that they saw in dress, in fashion
and in style, and more adaptable than any other
women in the world from lack of all traditions,
conversed in their high nasal tones. Spanish-
Americans from every one of the Republics
were well represented, all talking about money :
of how Dona Fulana Perez had given fifteen
hundred francs for her new hat, or Don Fulano
had just scored a million on the Bourse.

Jews and more Jews, and Jewesses and still
more Jewesses, were there, some of them
married to Clnistians and turned Catholic,
but betrayed by their Semitic type, although
they talked of Lourdes and of the Holy
Father with the best.

After the " five-o'clock," turned to a heavy
meal of toast and buns, of Hugel loaf, of
sandwiches, and of hot cake, the scented throng,
restored by the refection after the day's hard
work of shopping, of driving here and there
like souls in purgatory to call on people that
they detested, and other labours of a like

83

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

nature, slowly adjourned to a great hall in
which a band was playing. As they walked
through the passages, men pressed close up
to women and murmured in their ears, telling
them anecdotes that made them flush and
giggle as they protested in an unprotesting
style. Those were the days of the first advent
of the Tango Argentino, the dance that since
has circled the whole world, as it were, in a
movement of the hips. Ladies pronounced
it charming as they half closed their eyes and
let a little shiver run across their lips. Men
said it was the only dance that was worth danc-
ing. It was so Spanish, so unconventional,
and combined all the aesthetic movements of
the figures on an Etruscan vase with the strange
grace of the Hungarian gipsies ... it was
so, as one may say, so ... as you may say
. . . you know.

When all were seated, the band, Hun-
garians, of course, — oh, those dear gipsies ! —
struck out into a rhythm, half rag-time, half
habanera, canaille, but sensuous, and hands
involuntarily, even the most aristocratic hands
— of ladies whose immediate progenitors had
been pork-packers in Chicago, or gambusinos
84

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

who had struck it rich in Zacatecas, — ^tapped
delicately, but usually a little out of time, upon
the backs of chairs.

A tall young man, looking as if he had got
a holiday from a tailor's fashion plate, his hair
sleek, black, and stuck down to his head with
a cosmetic, his trousers so immaculately creased
they seemed cut out of cardboard, led out a
girl dressed in a skirt so tight that she could
not have moved in it had it not been cut open
to the knee.

Standing so close that one well-creased
trouser leg disappeared in the tight skirt, he
clasped her round the waist, holding her hand
almost before her face. They twirled about,
now bending low, now throwing out a leg, and
then again revolving, all with a movement of
the hips that seemed to blend the well-creased
trouser and the half-open skirt into one in-
harmonious whole. The music grew more
furious and the steps multiplied, till with a
bound the girl threw herself for an instant into
the male dancer's arms, who put her back
again upon the ground with as much care as
if she had been a new-laid egg, and the pair
bowed and disappeared.

85

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

Discreet applause broke forth, and ex-
clamations such as " wonderful," " what
grace," " Vivent les Espagnoles," for the dis-
criminating audience took no heed of inde-
pendence days, of mere political changes and
the like, and seemed to think that Buenos
Aires was a part of Spain, never having heard
of San Martin, Bolivar, Paez, and their fellow-
liberators.

Paris, London, and New York were to that
fashionable crowd the world, and anything
outside — except, of course, the Hungarian
gipsies and the Tango dancers — barbarous
and beyond the pale.

After the Tango came " La Maxixe Br^
silienne," rather more languorous and more
befitting to the dwellers in the tropics than
was its cousin from the plains. Again the
discreet applause broke out, the audience
murmuring " charming," that universal adjec-
tive that gives an air of being in a perpetual
pastrycook's when ladies signify delight. Smiles
and sly glances at their friends showed that
the dancers' efforts at indecency had been
appreciated.

Slowly the hall and tea-rooms of the great
86

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

hotel emptied themselves, and in the corridors
and passages the smell of scent still lingered,
just as stale incense lingers in a church.

Motor-cars took away the ladies and their
friends, and drivers, who had shivered in the
cold whilst the crowd inside sweated in the
central heating, exchanged the time of day
with the liveried doorkeepers, one of them
asking anxiously, " Dis, Anatole, as-tu vu
mes vaches ? "

With the soft closing of a well -hung
door the last car took its perfumed freight
away, leaving upon the steps a group of
men, who remained talking over, or, as they
would say, undressing, all the ladies who had
gone.

" Argentine Tango, eh?" I thought, after
my friends had left me all alone. Well, well,
it has changed devilishly upon its passage
overseas, even discounting the difference of
the setting of the place where first I saw it
danced so many years ago. So, sauntering
down, I took a chair far back upon the terrace
of the Cafe de la Paix, so that the sellers of La
Patrie, and the men who have some strange
new toy, or views of Paris in a long album

87

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

like a broken concertina, should not tread
upon my toes.

Over a Porto Blanc and a Brazilian cigarette,
lulled by the noise of Paris and the raucous
cries of the street-vendors, I fell into a doze.

Gradually the smell of petrol and of horse-
dung, the two most potent perfumes in our
modern life, seemed to be blown away. Dyed
heads and faces scraped till they looked blue
as a baboon's ; young men who looked like
girls, with painted faces and with mincing airs ;
the raddled women, ragged men, and hags
huddled in knitted shawls, lame horses, and
taxi-cab drivers sitting nodding on their boxes
— all faded into space, and from the nothing
that is the past arose another scene.

I saw myself with Witham and his brother,
whose name I have forgotten, Eduardo Pena,
Congreve, and Eustaquio Medina, on a small
rancho in an elbow of the great River Yi.
The rancho stood upon a little hill. A quarter
of a mile or so away the dense and thorny
montd of hard-wood trees that fringed the
river seemed to roll up towards it like a sea.
The house was built of yellow pine sent from
the United States. The roof was shingled,
88

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

and the rancho stood planked down upon the
plain, looking exactly like a box. Some
fifty yards away stood a thatched hut that
served as kitchen, and on its floor the cattle
herders used to sleep upon their horse-gear
with their feet towards the fire.

The corrals for horses and for sheep were
just a little farther off, and underneath a shed
a horse stood saddled day in, day out, and
perhaps does so yet, if the old rancho still
resists the winds.

Four or five horses, saddled and bridled,
stood tied to a great post, for we were just
about to mount to ride a league or two to a
Baile, at the house of Frutos Barragdn. Just
after sunset we set out, as the sweet scent
that the grasses of the plains send forth after
a long day of heat perfumed the evening air.

The night was clear and starry, and above
our heads was hung the Southern Cross. So
bright the stars shone out that one could see
almost a mile away ; but yet all the perspective
of the plains and woods was altered. Hillocks
were sometimes undistinguishable, at other
times loomed up like houses. Woods seemed
to sway and heave, and by the sides of streams

89

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

bunches of Pampa grass stood stark as sen-
tinels, their feathery tufts looking like plumes
upon an Indian's lance.

The horses shook their bridles with a clear,
ringing sound as they stepped double, and
their riders, swaying lightly in their seats,
seemed to form part and parcel of the animals
they rode.

Now and then little owls flew noiselessly
beside us, circling above our heads, and then
dropped noiselessly upon a bush. Eustaquio
Medina, who knew the district as a sailor
knows the seas where he was born, rode in the
front of us. As his horse shied at a shadow
on the grass or at the bones of some dead
animal, he swung his whip round ceaselessly,
until the moonlight playing on the silver-
mounted stock seemed to transform it to an
aureole that flickered about his head. Now
and then somebody dismounted to tighten up
his girth, his horse twisting and turning round
uneasily the while, and, when he raised his
foot towards the stirrup, starting off^ with a
bound.

Time seemed to disappear and space be
swallowed in the intoxicating gallop, so that
90

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

when Eustaquio Medina paused for an instant
to strike the crossing of a stream, we felt
annoyed with him, although no hound that
follows a hot scent could have gone truer on
his line.

Dogs barking close at hand warned us our
ride was almost over, and as we galloped up a
rise Eustaquio Medina pulled up and turned
to us.

"There is the house," he said, "just at
the bottom of the hollow, only five squares
away," and as we saw the flicker of the lights,
he struck his palm upon his mouth after the
Indian fashion, and raised a piercing cry.
Easing his hand, he drove his spurs into his
horse, who started with a bound into full
speed, and as he galloped down the hill we
followed him, all yelling furiously.

Just at the hitching-post we drew up with
a jerk, our horses snorting as they edged oflF
sideways from the black shadow that it cast
upon the ground. Horses stood about every-*
where, some tied and others hobbled, and from
the house there came the strains of an accordion
and the tinkling of guitars.

Asking permission to dismount, we hailed
91

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

the owner of the house, a tall, old Gaucho,
Frutos Barragan, as he stood waiting by the
door, holding a mat6 in his hand. He bade
us welcome, telling us to tie our horses up, not
too far out of sight, for, as he said, " It is not
good to give facilities to rogues, if they should
chance to be about."

In the low, straw-thatched ranchp, with its
eaves blackened by the smoke, three or four
iron bowls, filled with mare's fat, and with a
cotton wick that needed constant trimming,
stuck upon iron cattle-brands, were burning
fitfully.

They cast deep shadows in the corners of
the room, and when they flickered up occasion-
ally the light fell on the dark and sun-tanned
faces of the tall, wiry Gauchos and the light
cotton dresses of the women as they sat with
their chairs tilted up against the wall. Some
thick-set Basques, an Englishman or two in
riding breeches, and one or two Italians made
up the company. The floor was earth, stamped
hard till it shone like cement, and as the
Gauchos walked upon it, their heavy spurs
clinked with a noise like fetters as they trailed
them on the ground.

92

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

An old, blind Paraguayan played on the
guitar, and a huge negro accompanied him on
an accordion. Their united efforts produced
a music which certainly was vigorous enough,
and now and then, one or the other of them
broke into a song, high-pitched and melan-
choly, which, if you listened to it long enough,
forced you to try to imitate its wailing melody
and its strange intervals.

Fumes of tobacco and rum hung in the air,
and of a strong and heady wine from Catalonia
much favoured by the ladies, which they drank
from a tumbler, passing it to one another, after
the fashion of a grace-cup at a City dinner,
with great gravity. At last the singing ceased,
and the orchestra struck up a Tango, slow,
marked, and rhythmical.

Men rose, and, taking off their spurs,
walked gravely to the corner of the room where
sat the women huddled together as if they
sought protection from each other, and with a
compliment led them out upon the floor. The
flowing poncho and the loose chiripd, which
served as trousers, swung about just as the
tartans of a Highlander swing as he dances,
giving an air of ease to all the movements of

93

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

the Gauchos as they revolved, their partners*
heads peeping above their shoulders, and their
hips moving to and fro.

At times they parted, and set to one another
gravely, and then the man, advancing, clasped
his partner round the waist and seemed to
push her backwards, with her eyes half-closed
and an expression of beatitude. Gravity was
the keynote of the scene, and though the
movements of the dance were as significant as
it was possible for the dancers to achieve, the
effect was graceful, and the soft, gliding motion
and the waving of the parti-coloured clothes,
wild and original, in the dim, flickering light.

Rum flowed during the intervals. The
dancers wiped the perspiration from their
brows, the men with the silk handkerchiefs
they wore about their necks, the women with
their sleeves. Tangos, cielitos, and pericones
succeeded one another, and still the atmosphere
grew thicker, and the lights seemed to flicker
through a haze, as the dust rose from the mud
floor. Still the old Paraguayan and the negro
kept on playing with the sweat running down
their faces, smoking and drinking rum in their
brief intervals of rest, and when the music
94

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

ceased for a moment, the wild neighing of a
horse tied in the moonlight to a post, sounded
as if he called his master to come out and gallop
home again.

The night wore on, and still the negro and
the Paraguayan stuck at their instruments.
Skirts swung and ponchos waved, whilst mat^
circulated amongst the older men as they stood
grouped about the door.

Then came a lull, and as men whispered in
their partners' ears, telling them, after the
fashion of the Gauchos, that they were lovely,
their hair like jet, their eyes bright as " las tres
Marias," and all the compliments which in their
case were stereotyped and handed down for
generations, loud voices rose, and in an instant
two Gauchos bounded out upon the floor.

Long silver-handled knives were in their
hands, their ponchos wrapped round their left
arms served them as bucklers, and as they
crouched, like cats about to spring, they
poured out blasphemies.

" Stop this 1 " cried Frutos Barragdn ; but
even as he spoke, a knife-thrust planted in the
stomach stretched one upon the floor. Blood
gushed out from his mouth, his belly fell like

95

EL TANGO ARGENTINO

a pricked bladder, and a dark streairj of blood
trickled upon the ground as he lay writhing in
his death agony.

The iron bowls were overturned, and in
the dark girls screamed and the men crowded
to the door. When they emerged into the
moonlight, leaving the dying man upon the
floor, the murderer was gone ; and as they
looked at one another there came a voice shout-
ing out, " Adios, Barragin 1 Thus does Vi-
cente Castro pay his debts when a man tries to
steal his girl," and the faint footfalls of an
unshod horse galloping far out upon the plain.

I started, and the waiter standing by my
side said, " Eighty centimes " ; and down
the boulevard echoed the harsh cry, " La
Pattie, achetez La Patrie," and the rolling
of the cabs.

96

IX

IN A BACKWATER

" This 'ere war, now," said the farmer, in the
slow voice that tells of life passed amongst
comfortable surroundings into which haste
has never once intruded, " is a 'orrid business."
He leaned upon a half-opened gate, keeping
it swaying to and fro a little with his foot. His
waistcoat was unbuttoned, showing his greasy
braces and his checked blue shirt. His box-
cloth gaiters, falling low down upon his high-
lows, left a gap between them' and his baggy
riding-breeches, just below the knee. His
flat-topped bowler hat was pushed back over
the fringe of straggling grey hair upon his
neck. His face was burned a brick -dust
colour with the August sun, and now and then
he mopped his forehead with a red hand-
kerchief.

97 H

IN A BACKWATER

His little holding, an oasis in the waste of
modern scientific farming, was run in the old-
fashioned way, often to be seen in the home
counties, as if old methods linger longest
where they are least expected, just as a hunted
fox sometimes takes refuge in a rectory.

His ideas seemed to have become unsettled
with constant reading of newspapers filled
with accounts of horrors, and his speech, not
fluent at the best of times, was slower and more
halting than his wont.

He told how he had just lost his wife, and
felt more than a little put about to get his
dairy work done properly without her help.

" When a man's lost his wife it leaves him,
somehow, as if he were like a 'orse hitched on
one side of the wagon-pole, a-puUin' by hisself.
Now this 'ere war, comin' as it does right on
the top of my 'ome loss, sets me a-thinkin',
especially when I'm alone in the 'ouse of
night."

The park-like English landscape, with its
hedgerow trees and its lush fields, that does not
look like as if it really were the country, but
seems a series of pleasure-grounds cut off into
convenient squares, was at its time of greatest
98

IN A BACKWATER

beauty and its greatest artificiality. Cows
swollen with grass till they looked like balloons
lay in the fields and chewed the cud. Geese
cackled as they strayed upon the common,
just as they appear to cackle in a thousand
water-colours. The hum of bees was in the
limes. Dragon-flies hawked swiftly over the
oily waters of the two slow-flowing rivers that
made the farm almost an island in a suburban
Mesopotamia, scarce twenty miles away from
Charing Cross. An air of peace and of
contentment, of long well-being and security,
was evident in everything. Trees flourished,
though stag-headed, under which the Round-
head troopers may have camped, or at the least,
veterans from Marlborough's wars might have
sat underneath their shade, and smoked as
they retold their fights.

A one-armed signboard, weathered, and
with the lettering almost illegible, pointed out
the bridle-path to Ditchley, now little used,
except by lovers on a Sunday afternoon, but
where the feet of horses for generations in the
past had trampled it, still showing clearly as
it wound through the fields.

In the standing corn the horses yoked to

99

IN A BACKWATER

the reaping machine stood resting, now and
again shaking the tassels on their little netted
ear-covers. They, too, came of a breed long
used to peace and plenty, good food and treat-
ment, and short hours of work. The kindly
landscape and the settled life of centuries had
formed the kind of man ' of which the farmer
was a prototype, — slow-footed and slow-
tongued, and with his mind as bowed as were
his shoulders with hard work, by the continual
pressure of the hierarchy of wealth and station,
that had left him as much adscript to them as
any of his ancestors had been bound to their
glebes. He held the Daily Mail, his gospel
and his vade mecum, crumpled in his hand as
if he feared to open it again to read more
details of the War. A simple soul, most likely
just as oppressive to his labourers as his
superiors had always showed themselves to
him, he could not bear to read of violence, as
all the tyranny that he had bent under had
been imposed so subtly that he could never
see more than the shadow of the hand that had
oppressed him.

It pained him, above all things, to read
about the wounded and dead horses lying in

lOO

IN A BACKWATER

the corn, especially as he had " 'card the
'arvest over there in Belgium was going to be
good." The whirr of the machines reaping
the wheatfield sounded like the hum of some
gigantic insect, and as the binder ranged the
sheaves in rows it seemed as if the golden age
had come upon the earth again, bringing with
it peace and plenty, with perhaps slightly
stouter nymphs than those who once followed
the sickle-men in Arcady,

A man sat fishing in a punt just where the
river broadened into a backwater edged with
willow trees. At times he threw out ground-
bait, and at times raised a stone bottle to his
lips, keeping one eye the while watchfully
turned upon his float. School children strayed
along the road, as rosy and as flaxen-haired as
those that Gregory the Great thought fitting
to be angels, though they had never been
baptized.

Now and again the farmer stepped into his
field to watch the harvesting, and cast an eye of
pride and of aff^ection on his horses, and then,
coming back to the gate, he drew the paper
from his pocket and read its columns, much
in the way an Arab reads a letter, murmuring

lOI

IN A BACKWATER

the words aloud until their meaning penetrated
to his brain.

Chewing a straw, and slowly rubbing oflF
the grains of an ear of wheat into his hand, he
gazed over his fields as if he feared to see in
them some of the horrors that he read. Again
he muttered, with a puzzled air, " 'Orrible !
'undreds of men and 'orses lying in the corn.
It seems a sad thing to believe, doesn't it now ? "
he said ; and as he spoke soldiers on motor-
cycles hurtled down the road, leaving a trail
of dust that perhaps looked like smoke to him
after his reading in the Dai/y Mail.

" They tell me," he remarked, after a
vigorous application of his blue handkerchief
to his streaming face, " that these 'ere motor-
cycles 'ave a gun fastened to them, over there
in Belgium, where they are a-goin' on at it in
such a way. The paper says, ' Ranks upon
ranks of 'em is just mowed down like wheat.'
. . . 'Orrid, I call it, if it's true, for now and
then I think those chaps only puts that kind of
thing into their papers to 'ave a sale for them."
He looked about him as if, like Pilate, he was
looking for an elusive truth not to be found on
earth, and then walked down the road till he

I02

IN A BACKWATER

came to the backwater where the man was
fishing in his punt. They looked at one
another over a yard or two of muddy water,
and asked for news about the war, in the way
that people do from others who they must
know are quite as ignorant as they are them-
selves. The fisherman " 'ad given up readin'
the war noos ; it's all a pack of lies," and
pointing to the water, said in a cautious voice,
" Some people says they 'ears, I ain't so sure
about it ; but, anyhow, it's always best to be
on the safe side." Then he addressed himself
once more to the business of the day, and in
the contemplation of his float no doubt became
as much absorbed into the universal principle
of nature as is an Indian sitting continually
with his eyes turned on his diaphragm.

Men passing down the road, each with a
paper in his hand, looked up and threw the
farmer scraps of news, uncensored and spiced
high with details which had never happened,
so that'in after years their children will most
likely treasure as facts, which they have re-
ceived from long-lost parents, the wildest
fairy tales.

The slanting sun and lengthening shadows
103

IN A BACKWATER

brought the farmer no relief of mind ; and still
men, coming home from work on shaky
bicycles, plied him with horrors as they passed
by the gate, their knee-joints stiff with the
labours of the day, seeming in want, of oil. A
thin, white mist began to creep along the
backwater. Unmooring his punt, the fisher-
man came unwillingly to shore, and as he
threw the fragments of his lunch into the
water and gathered up his tackle, looked back
upon the scene of his unfruitful labours with
an air as of a man who has been overthrown
by circumstances, but has preserved his honour
and his faith inviolate.

Slinging his basket on his back, he trudged
off homewards, and instantly the fish began
to rise. A line of cows was driven towards the
farm, their udders all so full of milk that they
swayed to and fro, just as a man sways wrapped
in a Spanish cloak, and as majestically. The
dragon-flies had gone, and in their place
ghost-moths flew here and there across the
meadows, and from the fields sounded the
corncrake's harsh, metallic note.

The whirring of the reaper ceased, and
when the horses were unyoked the driver led
104

IN A BACKWATER

them slowly from the field. As they passed
by the farmer he looked lovingly towards
them, and muttered to himself, " Dead 'orses
and dead soldiers lying by 'undreds in the
standing corn, ... I wonder *ow the folks
out there in Belgium will 'ave a relish for their
bread next year. This 'ere war's a 'orrid
business, coming as it does, too, on the top
of my own loss . . . dead 'orses in the
corn. . . ."

He took the straw out of his mouth, and
walking up to one of his own sleek-sided cart-
horses, patted it lovingly, as if he wanted to
make sure that it was still alive.

105

X

HIPPOMORPHOUS

On the I2th of October 1524, Cortes left
Mexico on his celebrated expedition to Hon-
duras. The start from Mexico was made to
the sound of music, and all the population of
the newly conquered city turned out to escort
him for a few miles upon his way.

The cavalcade must have been a curious
spectacle enough. Cortes himself and his
chief officers rode partly dressed in armour,
after the fashion of the time. Then came the
Spanish soldiers, mostly on foot and armed
with lances, swords, and bucklers, though there
was a troop of crossbowmen and harquebusiers
to whom " after God " we owed the Conquest,
as an old chronicler has said when speaking of
the Conquest of Peru. In Mexico they did
good service also, although it was the horsemen
106

HIPPOMORPHOUS

that in that conquest played the greater part.
Then came a force of three thousand friendly
Indians from Tlascala, and last of all a herd of
swine was driven slowly in the rear, for at that
time neither sheep nor cattle were known in
the New World.

Guatimozin, the captive King of Mexico,
graced his conquerors' triumphal march, and
with the army went two falconers, Garci Caro
and Alvaro Montafies, together with a band of
music, some acrobats, a juggler, and a man
" who vaulted well and played the Moorish
pipe."

Cortes rode the black horse which he had
ridden at the siege of Mexico. Fortune
appeared to smile upon him. He had just
added an enormous empire to the Spanish
crown, and proved himself one of the most
consummate generals of his age. Yet he was
on the verge of the great misfortune of his life,
which at the same time was to prove him still
a finer leader than he had been, even in Mexico.

His black horse also was about to play the
most extraordinary rUe that ever horse has
played in the whole history of the world.

With varying fortunes, now climbing moun-
107

HIPPOMORPHOUS

tains, now flound^ing in swamps, and again
passing rivers over which they had to throw
bridges, the expedition came to an open
country, well watered, and the home of count-
less herds of deer. Villagutierre, in his History
of the Conquest of the Province of Itza (Madrid,
1 701), calls it the country of the Mafotecas,
which name Bernal Diaz del Castillo says
means " deer " in the language of those infidels.
Fresh meat was scarce, and all the Spanish
horsemen of those days were experts with the
lance. Instantly Cortes and all his mounted
officers set out to chase the deer. The weather
was extraordinarily hot, hotter, so Diaz says,
than they had had it since they left Mexico.
The deer were all so tame that the horsemen
speared them as they chose (Jos alancearon muy
4 su placer), and soon the plain was strewed
with dying animals just as it used to be when
the Indians hunted buffalo thirty or forty
years ago.

Diaz says that the reason for the tameness
of the deer was that the Ma9otecas (here he
applies the word to the Indians themselves)
worshipped them as gods. It appears that
their Chief God had once appeared in the
108

HIPPOMORPHOUS

image of a stag, and told the Indians not to
hunt his fellow-gods, or even frighten them.
Little enough the Spaniards cared for any gods
not strong enough to defend themselves, for
the deity that they adored was the same God
of Battles whom we adore to-day.

So they continued spearing the god-like
beasts, regardless of the heat and that their^
horses were in poor condition owing to their
long march. The horse of one Palacios
Rubio, a relation of Cortes, fell dead, overcome
with the great heat ; the grease inside him
melted, Villagutierre says. The black horse that
was ridden by Cortes also was very ill, although
he did not die — though it perhaps had been
better that he should have died, for Villagutierre
thinks " far less harm would have been done
than happened afterwards, as will be seen by
those who read the tale." After the hunting
all was over, the line of march led over stony
hills, and through a pass that Villagutierre
calls " el Paso del Alabastro," and Diaz " La
Sierra de los Pedernales " (flints). Here the
horse that had been ill, staked itself in a fore-
foot, and this, as Villagutierre says, was the
real reason that Cortes left him behind. He
109

HIPPOMORPHOUS ^

adds, " It does not matter either way, whether
he was left because his grease was melted with
the sun, or that his foot was staked." This,
of course, is true, and anyhow the horse was
reserved for a greater destiny than ever fell
to any of his race.

Cortes, in his fifth letter to the Emperor
Charles V., says simply, " I was obliged to
leave my black horse (mi caballo morzillo) with
a splinter in his foot." He takes no notice
of the melting of the grease. " The Chief
promised to take care of him, but I do not
know that he will succeed or what he will do
with him."

He told the Chief that he would send to
fetch the horse, for he was very fond of him,
and prized him very much. The Chief, no
doubt, received the strange and terrible animal
with due respect, and Cortes went on upon
his way. That is all that Cortes says about
the matter, and the mist of history closed upon
him and on his horse. Cortes died, worn-
out and broken-hearted, at the white little town
of Castilleja de la Cuesta, not far from Seville ;
but El Morzillo had a greater destiny in store.
This happened in the year 1525, and nothing
no

HIPPOMORPHOUS

more was heard of either the Ma^otecas or
the horse, after that passage in the fifth letter
of Cortes, till 1697. In that year the Fran-
ciscans set out upon the gospel trail to convert
the Indians of Itza, attached to the expedition
that Ursua led, for the interior of Yucatan had
never been subdued. They reached Itza,
having come down the River Tipu in canoes.

This river, Villagutierre informs us, is as
large as any river in all Spain. Moreover,
it is endowed with certain properties, its water
being good and clear, so that in some respects
it is superior to the water even of the Tagus.
It is separated into one hundred and ninety
channels (neither more nor less), and every
one of these has its right Indian name, that
every Indian knows. Upon its banks grows
much sarsaparilla, and in its sand is gold.

Beyond all this it has a hidden virtue, which
is that taken (fasting) it cures the dropsy, and
makes both sick and sound people eat heartily.
Besides this, after eating, when you have drunk
its water you are inclined to eat again.

At midday it is cold, and warm at night,
so warm that a steam rises from it, just as it
does when a kettle boils on the fire. Other
lU

HIPPOMORPHOUS

particularities it has, which though they are
not so remarkable, yet are noteworthy.

Down this amazing river Ursua's expedition
navigated for twelve days in their canoes till
they came to a lake called Peten-Itza, in which
there was an island known as Tayasal. All
unknown to themselves, they had arrived close
to the place where long ago Cortes had left
his horse. Of this they were in ignorance ;
the circumstance had been long forgotten, and
Cortes himself had become almost a hero of a
bygone age even in Mexico.

Fathers Orbieta and Fuensalida, monks of
the Franciscan order, chosen both for their
zeal and for their knowledge of the Maya
language, were all agog to mark new sheep.
The Indians amongst whom they found them-
selves were " ignorant even of the knowledge
of the true faith." Moreover, since the con-
quest they had had no dealings with Europeans,
and were as primitive as they were at the time
when Cortes had passed, more than a hundred
years ago.

One- of the Chiefs, a man known as Isquin,
when he first saw a horse, " almost ran mad
with joy and with astonishment. Especially

112

HIPPOMORPHOUS

the evolutions and the leaps it made into the
air moved him to admiration, and going down
upon all fours he leaped about and neighed."
Then, tired with this practical manifestation
of his joy and his astonishment, he asked the
Spanish name of the mysterious animal. When
he learned that it was caballo, he forthwith
renounced his name, and from that day this
silly infidel was known as Caballito. Then
when the soul-cleansing water had been poured
upon his head, he took the name of Pedro,
and to his dying day all the world called him
" Don Pedro Caballito, for he was born a
Chief."

This curious and pathetic little circumstance,
by means of which a brand was snatched red-
hot from the eternal flames, lighted for those
who have deserved hell-fire by never having
heard of it, might, one would think, have
shown the missionaries that the poor Indians
were but children, easier to lead than drive.

It only fired their zeal, and yet all their
solicitude to save the Indians' souls was
unavailing, and the hard-hearted savages, dead
to the advantages that baptism has ever brought
with it, clave to their images.

113 I

HIPPOMORPHOUS

The good Franciscans made several more
attempts to move the people's hearts by
preaching ceaselessly. All failed, and then
they went to several islands in the lake, in one
of which Father Orbieta hardly had begun to
preach, when, as Lopez Cogulludo ^ tells us,
an Indian seized him by the throat and nearly
strangled him, leaving him senseless on the
ground.

At times, seated in church listening to what
the Elizabethans called " a painful preacher,"
even the elect have felt an impulse to seize
him by the throat. Still, it is usually re-
strained ; but these poor savages, undisciplined
in body and in mind, were perhaps to be
excused, for the full flavour of a sermon had
never reached them in their Eden by the lake.
Moreover, after he was thus rudely cast from
the pulpit to the ground. Father Fuensalida,
nothing daunted by his fate, stepped forward
and took up his parable. He preached to
them this time in their own language, in which
he was expert, with fervid eloquence and great
knowledge of the Scriptures, ^ explaining to

^ Lopez Cogulludo, Historia de Tucatan,
^ Era gran Escriturario,

114

HIPPOMORPHOUS

them the holy mystery of the incarnation of the
eternal Word.^ The subject was well chosen
for a first attempt upon their hearts ; but it,
too, proved unfruitful, and the two friars were
forced to re-embark.

As the canoe in which they sat moved from
the island and launched out into the lake, the
infidels who stood and watched them paddling
were moved to fury, and, rushing to the edge,
stoned them whole-heartedly till they were
out of reach.

It is a wise precaution, and one that the
" conquistadores " usually observed, to have
the spiritual well supported by the secular
arm when missionaries, instinct with zeal and
not weighed down with too much common
sense, preach for the first time to the infidel.

This first reverse was but an incident, and
by degrees the friars, this time accompanied
by soldiers, explored more of the islands in
the lake. At last they came to one called
Tayasal, which was so full of idols that they
took twelve hours to burn and to destroy them
all.

One island still remained to be explored,

^ El sagrado misterio de la encarnacion de el eterno Verbo,

HIPPOMORPHOUS

and in it was a temple with an idol much
reverenced by the Indians. At last they
entered it, and on a platform about the height
of a tall man they saw the figure of a horse
rudely carved out of stone..

The horse was seated on the ground resting
upon his quarters, his hind legs bent and his
front feet stretched out. The barbarous in-
fidels ^ adored the abominable and monstrous
beast under the name of Tziunchan, God of
the Thunder and the Lightning, and paid it
reverence. Even the Spaniards, who, as a
rule, were not much given to inquiring into
the history of idols, but broke them instantly,
ad majorem Dei gkriam, were interested and
amazed. Little by little they learned the
history of the hippomorphous god, which had
been carefully preserved. It appeared that
when Cortes had left his horse, so many
years ago, the Indians, seeing he was ill, took
him into a temple to take care of him. Think-
ing he was a reasoning animal, ^ they placed
before him fruit and chickens, with the result
that the poor beast — who, of course, was

' Los barbaros infieles.
' Entendiendo que era animal de razon,

ii6

HIPPOMORPHOUS

reasonable enough in his own way — eventually
died;

The Indians, terrified and fearful that Cortes
would take revenge upon them for the death
of the horse that he had left for them to care
for and to minister to all his wants, before
they buried him, carved a rude statue in his
likeness and placed it in a temple in the lake.

The devil, who, as Villagutierre observes,
is never slack to take advantage when he can,
seeing the blindness and the superstition
(which was great) of those abominable idola-
ters, induced them by degrees to make a God
of the graven image they had made. Their
veneration grew with time, just as bad weeds
grow up in corn, as Holy Writ sets forth for
our example, and that abominable statue
became the chiefest of their gods, though they
had many others equally horrible.

As the first horses that they saw were ridden
by the Spaniards in the chase of the tame deer,
and many shots were fired, the Indians not
unnaturally connected the explosions and the
flames less with the rider than the horse.
Thus in the course of years the evolution of
the great god Tziunchan took place, and, as
117

Ignorance
Father

HIPPOMORPHOUS

the missiojnaries said, these heathen steeped in
adored the work of their own hands.
Orbieta, not stopping to reflect
that all of us adore what we have made, but
" filled with the spirit of the Lord and carried
off with furious zeal for the honour of our
God,^" seized a great stone and in an instant
cast the idol down, then with a hammer he
broke it into bits.

When Father Orbieta had finished his work
and thus destroyed one of the most curious
monuments of the New World, which ought
to have been preserved as carefully as if it had
been carved by Praxiteles, " with the ineflFable
and holy joy that filled him, his face shone
with a light so spiritual that it was something
to praise God for and to view with delight."
Most foolish actions usually inspire their
perpetrators with deljght, although their faces
do not shine with spiritual joy when they have
done them ; so when one reads the folly of
this muddle-headed friar, it sets one hoping
that several of the stones went home upon his
back as he sat paddling the canoe.

The Indians broke into lamentations, ex-

' Arrebatado de un furioso zelo de la honra de Dio».

ii8

HIPPOMORPHOUS

claiming, " Death to him, he has killed our
God " ; but were prevented from avenging
his demise by the Spanish soldiers who
prudently had accompanied the friar.

Thus was the mystery of the eternal Word
made manifest amongst the Ma^otecas, and
a deity destroyed who for a hundred years and
more had done no harm to any one on earth
... a thing unusual amongst Gods.

119

XI

MUDEJAR

Brown, severe, and wall-girt, the stubborn
city still held out.

Its proud traditions made it impossible for
Zaragoza to capitulate without a siege. As in
the days of Soult, when the heroic maid, the
artillera, as her countrymen call her with pride,
when Palafox held up the blood and orange
banner in which float the lions and the castles
of Castille, the city answered shot for shot.

Fire spurted from the Moorish walls, built
by the Beni Hud, who reigned in Zaragoza,
when still Sohail poured its protecting rays
upon the land. The bluish wreaths of smoke
curled on the Ebro, running along the water
and enveloping the Coso as if in a mist.

A dropping rifle-fire crackled out from the
ramparts, and above the castle the red flag
1 20

MUDEJAR

of the Intransigent -Republic shivered and
fluttered in the breeze;

The Torre-Nueva sprang from the middle
of the town, just as a palm tree rises from the
desert sands. It was built at the time when
Moorish artisans, infidel dogs who yet pre-
served the secrets of the East amongst the
Christians (may dogs defile their graves), had
spent their science and their love upon it.

Octagonal, and looking as if tlpwn into the
air by the magician's art, it leaned a littlejto
one side, and, as the admiring inhabitants
averred, drawing their right hands open over
their left arms, laughed at its rival of Bologna
and at every other tower on earth.

No finer specimen of the art known as
Mudejar existed in all Spain. Galleries cut it
here and theife ; and ajimeces, the little horse-
shoe windows divided by a marble pillar, loved
of the Moors, which tradition says they took
from the rude openings in their tents of camel's
hair, gave light to the inside. Stages of in-
clined planes led to the top, so gradual in their
ascent that once a Queen of Spain had ridden
up them to admire the view over the Sierras
upon her palfrey, or her donkey, for all is one

121

MUDEJAR

when treating of a queen, who of a certainty
ennobles the animal she deigns to ride upon.
Bold ajaracaSj the patterns proper to the style
of architecture, stood up in high relief upon its
sides, and near the balustrade upon the top a
band of bluish tiles relieved the brownness of
the brickwork and sparkled in the sun. Sieges
and time and storms, rain, wind, and snow
had spared it ; even the neglect of centuries
had left it unimpaired — erect and elegant as a
young Arab maiden carrying water from the
well. Architects said that it inclined a little
more each year, and talked about subsidences ;
but they were foreigners, unused to the things
of Spain, and no one marked them ; and the
tower continued to be loved and prized and to
fall into disrepair. On this occasion riflemen
lined the galleries, pouring a hot fire upon the
attacking forces of the Government.

Encamped upon the heights above Torero,
the Governmental army held the banks of
the canal that gives an air of Holland to that
part of the adust and calcined landscape of
Aragon.

The General's quarters overlooked the
town, and from them he could see Santa

122

MUDEJAR

Engracia, in whose crypt repose the bodies
of the martyrs in an atmosphere of ice, standing
alone upon its little plaza, fringed by a belt
of stunted and ill-grown acacia trees. The
great cathedral, with its domes, in which the
shrine of the tutelary Virgin of the Pilar, the
Pilarica of the country folk, glittering with
jewels and with silver plate, is venerated as
befits the abiding place on earth of the miracu-
lous figure sent direct from heaven, towered
into the sky.

Churches and towers and convents, old
castellated houses with their overhanging eaves
and coats-of-arms upon the doors, jewels of
architecture, memorials of the past, formed
as it were a jungle wrought in a warm brown
stone. Beyond the city towered the mountains
that hang over Huesca of the Bell. Through
them the Aragon has cut its roaring passages
towards Sobrarbe to the south. Northwards
they circle Jaca, the virgin little city that beat
off the Moors a thousand years ago, and still
once every year commemorates her prowess
outside the walls, where Moors and Christians
fight again the unequal contest, into which
St. James, mounted upon his milk-white

123

MUDEJAR

charger, had plunged and thrown the weight
of his right arm. The light was so intense
and African that on the mountain sides each
rock was visible, outlined as in a camera-lucida,
and as the artillery played upon the tower the
effects of every salvo showed up distinctly on
the crumbling walls. All round the Govern-
ment's encampment stood groups of peasantry
who had been impressed together with their
animals to bring provisions. Wrapped in
their brown and white checked blankets,
dressed in tight knee-breeches, short jackets,
and grey stockings, and shod with alpargatas —
the canvas, hemp-soled sandals that are fastened
round the ankles with blue cords — they stood
and smoked, stolid as Moors, and as un-
fathomable as the deep mysterious corries of
their hills.

When the artillery- thundered and the
breaches in the walls grew daily more apparent
and more ominous, the country people merely
smiled, for they were sure the Pilarica would
preserve the city ; and even if she did not, all
Governments, republican or clerical, were the
same to them.

All their ambition was to live quietly, each
124

MUDEJAR

in his village, which to him was the hub round
which the world revolved.

So one would say, as they stood watching
the progress of the siege : " Chiquio, the
sciences advance a bestiality, the Government
in the Madrids can hear each cannon-shot.
The sound goes on those wires that stretch
upon the posts we tie our donkeys to when
we come into town. ..."

Little by little the forces of the Government
advanced', crossing the Ebro at the bridge
which spans it in the middle of the great double
promenade called the Coso, and by degrees
drew near the walls.

The stubborn guerrilleros in the town
contested every point of vantage, fighting like
wolves, throwing themselves with knives and
scythes stuck upright on long poles upon the
troops.

So fought their grandfathers against the
French, and so Strabo describes their ancestors,
adding, " The Spaniard is a taciturn, dark man,
usually dressed in black ; he fights with a
short sword, and always tries to come to close
grips with our legionaries."

As happens in all civil wars, when brother
125

MUDEJAR

finds himself opposed to brother, the strife
was mortal, and he who fell received no mercy
from the conqueror.

The riflemen upon the Torre Nueva poured
in their fire, especially upon the Regiment of
Pavia, whose Colonel, Don Luis Montoro, on
several occasions gave orders to the artillerymen
at any cost to spare the tower.

Officer after officer fell by his side, and
soldiers in the ranks cursed audibly, covering
the saints with filth, as runs the phrase in
Spanish, and woridering why their Colonel did
not dislodge the riflemen who made such havoc
in their files. Discipline told at last, and all
the Intransigents were forced inside the walls,
leaving the moat with but a single plank to
cross it by which to reach the town. Upon
the plank the fire was concentrated from the
walls, and the besiegers stood for a space
appalled, sheltering themselves as best they
could behind the trees and inequalities of the
ground.

Montoro called for volunteers, and one by
one three grizzled soldiers, who had grown
grey in wars against the Moors, stepped for-
ward and fell pierced with a dozen wounds.
126

MUDEJAR

After a pause there was a movement in the
ranks, and with a sword in his right hand, and
in his left the colours of Castille, his brown
stuff gown tucked up showing his hairy knees
knotted and muscular, out stepped a friar, and
strode towards the plank. Taking the sword
between his teeth he crossed himself, and
beckoning on the men, rushed forward in the
thickest of the fire.

He crossed in safety, and then the regiment,
with a hoarse shout of " Long live God,"
dashed on behind him, some carrying planks
and others crossing upon bales of straw, which
they had thrown into the moat. Under the
walls they formed and rushed into the town,
only to find each house a fortress and each
street blocked by a barricade. From every
window dark faces peered, and a continual
fusillade was poured upon them, whilst from
the house-tops the women showered down
tiles.

Smoke filled the narrow streets, and from
dark archways groups of desperate men came
rushing, armed with knives, only to fall in
heaps before the troops who, with fixed
bayonets, steadily pushed on.
127

MUDEJAR

A shift of wind cleared ofF the smoke and
showed the crimson flag still floating from the
citadel, ragged and torn by shots. Beyond
the town appeared the mountains peeping out
shyly through the smoke, as if they looked
down on the follies of mankind with a con-
temptuous air.

Dead bodies strewed the streets, in attitudes
half tragical, half ludicrous, some looking like
mere bundles of old clothes, and some distorted
with a stiff arm still pointing to the sky.

Right in the middle of a little square the
friar lay shot through the forehead, his sword
beside him, and with the flag clasped tightly
to his breast.

His great brown eyes stared upwards, and
as the soldiers passed him some of them crossed
themselves, and an old sergeant spoke his
epitaph : " This friar," he said, " was not of
those fit only for the Lord ; he would have
made a soldier, and a good one ; may God
have pardoned him."

Driven into the middle plaza of the town,
the Intransigents fought till the last, selling
their lives for more than they were worth,
and dying silently.

128

MUDEJAR

The citadel was taken with a rush, and the
red flag hauled down.

Bugles rang out from the other angle of the
plaza ; the General and his staff rode slowly
forward to meet the Regiment of Pavia as it
debouched into the square.

Colonel Montoro halted, and then, saluting,
advanced towards his chief. His General,
turning to him, angrily exclaimed, " Tell me,
why did you let those fellows in the tower do
so much damage, when a few shots from the
field guns would have soon finished them ? "

Montoro hesitated, and recovering his
sword once more saluted as his horse fretted
on the curb, snorting and sidling from the dead
bodies that were strewed upon the ground.

" My General," he said, " not for all Spain
and half the Indies would I have trained the
cannon on the tower ; it is Mudejar of the
purest architecture."

His General smiled at him a little grimly,
and saying, " Well, after all, this is no time to
ask accounts from any man," touched his
horse with the spur and, followed by his staff,
he disappeared into the town.

129 K

XII

A MINOR PROPHET

The city sweltered in the August heat. No
breath of air lifted the pall of haze that wrapped
the streets, the houses, and the dark group of
Grseco-Roman buildings that stands up like a
rock in the dull tide-way of the brick-built
tenements that compose the town.

Bells pealed at intervals, summoning the
fractioned faithful to their various centres of
belief.

When they had ceased and all the congrega-
tions were assembled listening to the exhorta-
tions of their spiritual advisers, and were
employed fumbling inside their purses, as
they listened, for the destined " threepenny,"
that obolus which gives respectability to alms,
the silence was complete. Whitey-brown
paper bags, dropped overnight, just stirred
130

A MINOR PROPHET

occasionally as the air swelled their bellies,
making them seem alive, or as alive as is a
jelly-fish left stranded by the tide.

Just as the faithful were assembled in their
conventicles adoring the same Deity, all filled
with rancour against one another because their
methods of interpretation of the Creator's will
were diflferent, so did the politicians and the
cranks of every sort and sect turn out to push
their methods of salvation for mankind. In
groups they gathered round the various speakers
who discoursed from chairs and carts and points
of vantage on the streets.

Above the speakers' heads, banners, held
up between two poles, called on the audiences
to vote for Liberal or for Tory, for Poor Law
Reform, for Social Purity, and for Temperance.
Orators, varying from well-dressed and glibly-
educated hacks from party centres, to red-faced
working-men, held forth perspiring, and
occasionally bedewing those who listened to
them with saliva, after an emphatic burst.

It seemed so easy after listening to them
to redress all wrongs, smooth out all wrinkles,
and instate each citizen in his own shop where
he could sell his sweated goods, with the best

131

A MINOR PROPHET

advantage to himself and with the greatest
modicum of disadvantage to his neighbour,
that one was left amazed at the dense apathy
of those who did not fall in with the nostrums
they had heard. Again, at other platforms,
sleek men in broadcloth, who had never seen
a plough except at Agricultural Exhibitions,
nor had got on closer terms of friendship with
a horse than to be bitten by him as they passed
along a street, discoursed upon the land.

" My friends, I say, the land is a fixed
quantity, you can't increase it, and without it,
it's impossible to live. 'Ow is it, then, that
all the land of England is in so few hands ? "
He paused and mopped his face, and looking
round, began again : " Friends — ^you'll allow
me to style you Friends, I know. Friends in
the sycred cause of Liberty — the landed aristo-
cracy is our enemy.

" I am not out for confiscation, why should
I? I 'ave my 'ome purchased with the fruits
of my own hhonest toil . . ."

Before he could conclude his sentence, a

dock labourer, dressed in his Sunday suit of

shoddy serge, check shirt, and black silk

handkerchief knotted loosely round his neck,

132

A MINOR PROPHET

looked up, and interjected : " 'Ard work, too,
mate, that 'ere talkin' in the sun is, that built
your 'ome. Beats coal whippin'."

Just for an instant the orator was dis-
concerted as a laugh ran through the audience ;
but habit, joined to a natural gift of public
speaking, came to his aid, and he rejoined :
" Brother working-men, I say ditto to what has
fallen from our friend 'ere upon my right. We
all are working-men. Some of us, like our
friend, work with their 'ands, and others with
their 'eds. In either case, the Land is what
we 'ave to get at as an article of prime
necessity."

Rapidly he sketched a state of things in
which a happy population, drawn from the
slums, but all instinct with agricultural know-
ledge, would be settled on the land, each on
his little farm, and all devoted to intensive
culture in the most modern form. Trees
would be all cut down, because they only
" 'arbour " birds that eat the corn. Hedges
would all be extirpated, for it is known to
every one that mice and rats and animals of
every kind live under them, and that they only
serve to shelter game. Each man would own

133

A MINOR PROPHET

a gun and be at liberty to kill a " rabbut " or
a " 'are " — " animals, as we say at college,
feery naturrey^ and placed by Providence upon
the land."

These noble sentiments evoked applause,
which was a little mitigated by an interjection
from a man in gaiters, with a sunburnt face,
of : " Mister, if every one is to have a gun and
shoot, 'ow long will these 'ere 'ares and rabbuts
last ? "

A little farther on, as thinly covered by his
indecently transparent veil of reciprocity as a
bare-footed dancer in her Grecian clothes, or
a tall ostrich under an inch of sand, and yet
as confident as either of them that the essential
is concealed, a staunch Protectionist discoursed.
With copious notes, to which he turned at
intervals, when he appealed to those statistics
which can be made in any question to fit every
side, he talked of loss of trade. " Friends, we
must tax the foreigner. It is this way, you see,
our working classes have to compete with other
nations, all of which enjoy protective duties.
I ask you, is it reasonable that we should let a
foreign article come into England .'' "

Here a dour-looking Scotsman almost spat
134

A MINOR PROPHET

out the words : " Man, can ye no juist say
Great Britain ? " and received a bow and
" Certainly, my friend, I am not here to wound
the sentiments of any man ... as I was
saying, is it reasonable that goods should come
to England ... I mean Great Britain, duty
free, and yet articles we manufacture have to
pay heavy duties in any foreign port ? "
" 'Ow about bread ? " came from a voice upon
the outskirts of the crowd.

The speaker reddened, and resumed : " My
friend, man doth not live by bread alone ;
still, I understand the point. A little dooty
upon corn, say five shillings in the quarter,
would not hurt any one. We've got to do it.
The foreigner is the enemy. I am a Christian ;
but yet, readin' as I often do the Sermon on
the Mount, I never saw we had to lie down in
the dust and let ourselves be trampled on.

" Who are to be the inheritors of the
earth .'' Our Lord says, ' Blessed are the
meek ; they shall inherit it.' "

He paused, and was about to clinch his
argument, when a tall Irishman, after ex-
pectorating judiciously upon a vacant space
between two listeners, shot in : " Shure, then,

135

A MINOR PROPHET

the English are the meekest of the lot, for they
have got the greater part of it."

At other gatherings Socialists held forth
under the red flag. " That banner, comrades,
which 'as braved a 'undred fights, and the mere
sight of which makes the Capitalistic blood-
sucker tremble as he feels the time approach
when Lybor shall come into its inheritance and
the Proletariat shyke off its chaine and join
'ands all the world over, despizin' ryce and
creed and all the artificial obstructions that a
designin' Priest-' ood and a blood-stained Pluto-
cracy 'ave placed between them to distract
their attention from the great cause of Socialism,
the great cause that mykes us comrades . . .
'ere, keep off my 'oof, you blighter, with your
ammunition wagons. . . ."

Religionists of various sects, all with long
hair and dressed in shabby black, the Book
either before them on a campaigning lectern
or tucked beneath one arm, called upon
Christian men to dip their hands into the
precious blood and drink from the eternal
fountain of pure water that is to be found in
the Apocalypse. " Come to 'Im, come to 'Im,
I say, my friends, come straight ; oh, it is
136

A MINOR PROPHET

joyful to belong to Jesus. Don't stop for
anything, come to 'Im now like little children.
. . . Let us sing a 'y^"- You know it, most
of you ; but brother 'ere," and as he spoke he
turned towards a pale-faced youth who held a
bag to take the offertory, that sacrament that
makes the whole world kin, " will lead it for
you."

The acolyte cleared his throat raucously,
and to a popular air struck up the refrain of
" Let us jump joyful on^ the road." Flat-
breasted girls and pale-faced boys took up the
strain, and as it floated through the heavy air,
reverberating from the pile of public buildings,
gradually all the crowd joined in ; shyly at
first and then whole-heartedly, and by degrees
the vulgar tune and doggerel verses took on an
air of power and dignity, and when the hymn
was finished, the tears stood in the eyes of
grimy-looking women and of red-faced men.
Then, with his bag, the pale-faced hymn-
leader went through the crowd, reaping a
plenteous harvest, all in copper, from those
whose hearts had felt, but for a moment, the
full force of sympathy.

Suffragist ladies discussed upon " the

137

A MINOR PROPHET

Question," shocking their hearers as they
touched on prostitution and divorce, and
making even stolid policemen, who stood
sweating in their thick blue uniforms, turn
their eyes upon the ground.

After them, Suffragette girls bounded upon
the cart, consigning fathers, brothers, and the
whole male section of mankind straight to
perdition as they held forth upon the Vote,
that all-heal of the female politician, who thinks
by means of it to wipe out all those disabilities
imposed upon her by an unreasonable Nature
and a male Deity, who must have worked
alone up in the Empyrean without the human-
ising influence of a wife.

Little by little the various groups dissolved,
the speakers and their friends forcing their
" literatoor " upon the passers-by, who gener-
ally appeared to look into the air a foot or two
above their heads, as they went homewards
through the streets.

The Anarchists were the last to leave, a
faithful few still congregating around a youth
in a red necktie who denounced the other
speakers with impartiality, averring that they
were " humbugs every one of them," and, for
138

A MINOR PROPHET

his part, he believed only in dynamite, by
means of which he hoped some day to be able
to devote " all the blood-suckers to destruction,
and thus to bring about the reign of brother-
hood."

The little knot of the elect applauded
loudly, and the youth, catching the policeman's
eye fixed on him, descended hurriedly from off
the chair on which he had been perorating,
remarking that " it was time to be going home
to have a bit of dinner, as he was due to speak
at Salford in the evening."

Slowly the square was emptied, the last
group or two of people disappearing into the
mouths of the incoming streets just as a Roman
crowd must have been swallowed up in the
vomitoria of an amphitheatre, after a show of
gladiators.

Torn newspapers and ends of cigarettes
were the sole result of all the rhetoric that
had been poured out so liberally upon the
assembled thousands in the square.

Two or three street boys in their shirt-
sleeves, bare-footed and bare-headed, their
trousers held up by a piece of string, played
about listlessly, after the fashion of their kind

139

A MINOR PROPHET

on Sunday in a manufacturing town, when
the life of the streets is dead, and when men's
minds are fixed either upon the mysteries of
the faith or upon beer, things in which children
have but little share.

The usual Sabbath gloom was creeping on
the town and dinner-time approaching, when
from a corner of the square appeared a man
advancing rapidly. He glanced about in-
quiringly, and for a moment a look of dis-
appointment crossed his face. Mounting the
steps that lead up to the smoke-coated Areo-
pagus, he stopped just for an instant, as if to
draw his breath and gather his ideas. Decently
dressed in shabby black, his trousers frayed
a little above the heels of his elastic-sided
boots, his soft felt hat that covered long but
scanty hair just touched with grey, he had an
air as of a plaster figure set in the middle of a
pond, as he stood silhouetted against the back-
ground of the buildings, forlorn yet resolute.

The urchins, who had gathered round him,
had a look upon their faces as of experienced
critics at a play ; that look of expectation and
subconscious irony which characterises all
their kind at public spectacles.
140

A MINOR PROPHET

Their appearance, although calculated to
appal a speaker broken to the platform business,
did not influence the man who stood upon the
steps. Taking off his battered hat, he placed
it and his umbrella carefully upon the ground.
A light, as of the interior fire that burned in
the frail tenement of flesh so fiercely that it
illuminated his whole being, shone in his mild
blue eyes. Clearing his throat, and after
running his nervous hands through his thin
hair, he pitched his voice well forward, as if the
deserted square had been packed full of people
prepared to hang upon his words. His voice,
a little hoarse and broken during his first
sentences, gradually grew clearer, developing
a strength quite incommensurate with the
source from which it came.

" My friends," he said, causing the boys to
grin and waking up the dozing policeman,
" I have a doctrine to proclaim. Love only
rules the world. The Greek word caritas in
the New Testament should have been rendered
love. Love sufFereth long. Love is not puffed
up ; love beareth all things. That is what the
Apostle really meant to say. Often within
this very square I have stood listening to the
141

A MINOR PROPHET

speeches, and have weighed them in my mind.
It is not for me to criticise, only to advocate
my own belief. Friends ..."

As his voice had gathered strength, two or
three working-men, attracted by the sight of
a man speaking to the air, surrounded but by
the street boys and the nodding policeman on
his beat, had gathered round about. Dressed
in their Sunday clothes ; well washed, and
with the look as of restraint that freedom from
their accustomed toil often imparts to them
on Sunday, they listened stolidly, with that
toleration that accepts all doctrines, from that
of highest Toryism down to Anarchy, and acts
on none of them. The speaker, spurred on
by the unwonted sight of listeners, for several
draggled women had drawn near, and an ice-
cream seller had brought his donkey-cart up
to the nearest curb-stone, once more launched
into his discourse.

" Friends, when I hear the acerbity of the
address of some ; when I hear doctrines setting
forth the rights but leaving out the duties of
the working class ; when I hear men defend
the sweater and run down the sweated, calling
them thriftlesSj idle, and intemperate, when
142

A MINOR PROPHET

often they are but unfortunate, I ask myself,
what has become of Love ? Who sees more
clearly than I do myself what the poor have
to suffer ? Do I not live amongst them
and share their difficulties ? Who can divine
better than one who has imagination — and in
that respect I thank my stars I have not been
left quite unendowed — what are the difficulties
of those high placed by fortune, who yet have
got to strive to keep their place ?

" Sweaters and sweated, the poor, the rich,
men, women, children, all mankind, suffer
from want of Love. I am not here to say that
natural laws will ever cease to operate, or that
there will not be great inequalities, if not of
fortune, yet of endowments, to the end of Time.
What the Great Power who sent us here in-
tended, only He can tell. One thing He
placed within the grasp of every one, capacity
to love. Think, friends, what England might
become under the reign of universal love.
The murky fumes that now defile the landscape,
the manufactories in which our thousands toil
for others, the rivers vile with refuse, the
knotted bodies and the faces scarcely human
in their abject struggle for their daily bread,

143

A MINOR PROPHET

would disappear. Bradford and Halifax and
Leeds would once again be fair and clean.
The ferns would grow once more in Shipley
Glen, and in the valleys about Sheffield the
scissor-grinders would ply their trade upon
streams bright and sparkling, as they were of
yore. In Halifax, the Roman road, now black
with coal-dust and with mud, would shine as
well-defined as it does where now and then it
crops out from the ling upon the moors, just
as the Romans left it polished by their caligulae.
Why, do you ask me ? Because all sordid
motives would be gone, and of their superfluity
the rich would give to those less blessed by
Pro\ddence. The poor would grudge no one
the gifts of fortune, and thus the need for grind-
ing toil would disappear, as the struggle and
the strain for daily bread would fade into the
past.

" Picture to yourselves, my friends, an
England once more green and merry, with
the air fresh and not polluted by the smoke of
foetid towns.

" 'Tis pleasant, friends, on a spring morning
to hear the village bells calling to church, even
although they do not call you to attend. It
144

A MINOR PROPHET

heals the soul to see the honeysuckle and the
eglantine and smell the new-mown hay. . . .

** Then comes a chill when on your vision
rises the England of the manufacturing town,
dark, dreary, and befouled with smoke. How
different it might be in the perpetual May
morning I have sketched for you.

" Love sufFereth all things, endureth all
things, createth all things. ..."

He paused, and, looking round, saw he
was all alone. The boys had stolen away,
and the last workman's sturdy back could be
just seen as it was vanishing towards the
public-house.

The speaker sighed, and wiped the per-
spiration from his forehead with a soiled
handkerchief.

Then, picking up his hat and his umbrella,
a far-oflf look came into his blue eyes as he
walked homewards almost jauntily, conscious
that the inner fire had got the better of the
fleshly tenement, and that his work was done.

145

XIII

EL MASGAD

The camp was pitched upon the north bank of
the Wad Nefis, not far from Tamoshlacht.
Above it towered the Atlas, looking like a
wall, with scarce a peak to break its grim
monotony. A fringe of garden lands enclosed
the sanctuary, in which the great Sherif lived
in patriarchal style ; half saint, half warrior,
but wholly a merchant at the bottom, as are
so many Arabs ; all his surroundings enjoyed
peculiar sanctity.

In the long avenue of cypresses the birds
lived safely, for no one dared to frighten them,
much less to fire a shot. His baraka, that is
the grace abounding, that distils from out the
clothes," the person and each action of men
such as the Sherif, who claim descent in
apostolic continuity from the Blessed One,
146

EL MASGAD

Mohammed, Allah's own messenger, pro-
tected everything. Of a mean presence, like
the man who stood upon the Areopagus and
beckoned with his hand, before he cast the spell
of his keen, humoristic speech upon the Greeks,
the holy one was of a middle stature. His
face was marked with smallpox. His clothes
were dirty, and his haik he sometimes mended
with a thorn, doubling it, and thrusting one
end flirough a slit to form a safety-pin. His
shoes were never new, his turban like an old
bath towel ; yet in his belt he wore a
dagger with a gold hilt, for he was placed so
far above the law, by virtue of his blood, that
though the Koran especially enjoins the faith-
ful not to wear gold, all that he did was
good.

Though he drank nothing but pure water,
or, for that matter, lapped it like a camel,
clearing the scum off with his fingers if on a
journey, he might have drank champagne or
brandy, or mixed the two of them, for the
Arabs are the most logical of men, and to them
such a man as the Sherif is holy, not from
anything he does, but because Allah has
ordained it. An attitude of mind as good as
147

EL MASGAD

any other, and one that, after all, makes a man
tolerant of human frailties.

Allah gives courage, virtue, eloquence, ot
skill in horsemanship. He gives or he with-
holds them for his good pleasure ; what he has
written he has written, and therefore he who
is without these gifts is not held blamable.
If he should chance to be a saint, that is a true
descendant, in the male line, from him who
answered nobly when his foolish followers
asked him if his young wife, Ayesha, should sit
at his right hand in paradise, " By Allah, not
she ; but old Kadijah, she who when all men
mocked me, cherished and loved, she shall sit
at my right hand," that is enough for them.

So the Sherif was honoured, partly because
he had great jars stuffed with gold coin, the
produce of his olive yards, and also of the tribute
that the faithful brought him ; partly because
of his descent ; and perhaps, more than all, on
account of his great store of Arab lore on every
subject upon earth. His fame was great,
extending right through the Sus, the Draa,
and down to Tazauelt, where it met the oppos-
ing current of the grace of Bashir-el-Biruk,
Sherif of the Wad-Nun. He liked to talk to
148

EL MASGAD

Europeans, partly to show his learning, and
partly to hear about the devilries they had
invented to complicate their lives.

So when the evening prayer was called, and
all was silent in his house, the faithful duly
prostrate on their faces before Allah, who
seems to take as little heed of them as he does
of the other warring sects, each with its doctrine
of damnation for their brethren outside the
pale, the Sherif, who seldom prayed, knowing
that even if he did so he could neither make
nor yet unmake himself in Allah's sight, called
for his mule, and with two Arabs running by
his side set out towards the unbeliever's
camp.

Though the Sherif paid no attention to it,
the scene he rode through was like fairyland.
The moonbeams falling on the domes of house
and mosque and sanctuary lit up the green
and yellow tiles, making them sparkle like
enamels. Long shadows of the cypresses cast
great bands of darkness upon the red sand of
the avenue. The croaking of the frogs sounded
metallic, and by degrees resolved itself into a
continuous tinkle, soothing and musical, in the
Atlas night. Camels lay ruminating, their
149

EL MASGAD

monstrous packs upon their backs. As the
Sherif passed by them on his mule they snarled
and bubbled, and a faint odour as of a mena-
gerie, mingled with that of tar, with which the
Arabs cure their girth and saddle galls, floated
towards him, although no doubt custom had
made it so familiar that he never heeded it.

From the Arab huts that gather around
every sanctuary, their owners living on the
baraka, a high-pitched voice to the accompani-
ment of a two-stringed guitar played with a
piece of stifF palmetto leaf, and the monotonous
Arab drum, that if you listen to it long enough
invades the soul, blots from the mind the
memory of towns, and makes the hearer long
to cast his hat into the sea and join the dwellers
in the tents, blended so inextricably with the
shrill cricket's note and the vast orchestra of
the insects that were praising Allah on that
night, each after his own fashion, that it was
difficult to say where the voice ended and the
insects' hum began.

Still, in despite of all, the singing Arab,

croaking of the frogs, and the shrill paeans of

the insects, the night seemed calm and silent,

for all the voices were attuned so well to the

150

EL MASGAD

surroundings that the serenity of the whole
scene was unimpaired.

The tents lay in the moonlight like gigantic
mushrooms; the rows of bottles cut in blue
cloth with which the Arabs ornament them
stood out upon the canvas as if in high relief.
The first light dew was falling, frosting the
canvas as a piece of ice condenses air upon a
glass. In a long line before the tents stood the
pack animals munching their corn placed on
a cloth upon the ground.

A dark-grey horse, still with his saddle on
for fear of the night air, was tied near to the
door of the chief tent, well in his owner's eye.
Now and again he pawed the ground, looked up,
and neighed, straining upon the hobbles that
confined his feet fast to the picket line.

On a camp chair his owner sat and smoked,
and now and then half got up from his seat
when the horse plunged or any of the mules
stepped on their shackles and nearly fell upon
the ground.

As the Sherif approached he rose to welcome
him, listening to all the reiterated compliments
and inquiries that no self-respecting Arab ever
omits when he may chance to meet a friend.
151

EL MASGAD

A good address, like mercy, is twice blest,
both in the giver and in the recipient of it ;
^but chiefly it is beneficial to the giver, for in
addition to the pleasure that he gives, he earns
his own respect. Well did both understand
this aspect of the question, and so the com-
pliments stretched out into perspectives quite
unknown in Europe, until the host, taking his
visitor by the hand, led him inside the tent.
" Ambassador," said the Sherif, although he
knew his friend was but a Consul, " my heart
yearned towards thee, so I have come to talk
with thee of many things, because I know
that thou art wise, not only in the learning of
thy people, but in that of our own."

The Consul, not knowing what the real
import of the visit might portend, so to speak
felt his adversary's blade, telling him he was
welcome, and that at all times his tent and
house were at the disposition of his friend.
Clapping his hands he called for tea, and when
it came, the little flowered and gold-rimmed
glasses, set neatly in a row, the red tin box with
two compartments, one for the tea and one for
the blocks of sugar, the whole surrounding the
small dome-shaped pewter teapot, all placed

1^2

EL MASGAD

in order on the heavy copper tray, he waved the
equipage towards the Sherif, tacitly recognising
his superiority in the art of tea-making. Seated
beside each other on a mattress they drank
the sacramental three cups of tea, and then,
after the Consul had lit his cigarette, the
Sherif having refused one with a gesture of
his hand and a half-murmured " Haram " —
that is, "It is prohibited " — they then began
to talk.

Much had they got to say about the price
of barley and the drought ; of tribal fights ; of
where our Lord the Sultan was, and if he had
reduced the rebels in the hills, — matters that
constitute the small talk of the tents, just as
the weather and the fashionable divorce figure
in drawing-rooms. Knowing what was ex-
pected of him, the Consul touched on European
politics, upon inventions, the progress that the
French had made upon the southern frontier
of Algeria ; and as he thus unpacked his news
with due prolixity, the Sherif now and again
interjected one or another of those pious
phrases, such as " Allah is merciful," or " God's
ways are wonderful," which at the same time
show the interjector's piety, and give the man
^53

EL MASGAD

who is discoursing time to collect himself, and
to prepare another phrase.

After a little conversation languished, and
the two men who knew each other well sat
listlessly, the Consul smoking and the Sherif
passing the beads of a cheap wooden rosary
between the fingers of his right hand, whilst
with his left he waved a cotton pocket hand-
kerchief to keep away the flies.

Looking up at his companion, " Consul,"
he said, for he had now dropped the Ambassa-
dor with which he first had greeted him, " you
know us well, you speak our tongue ; even you
know Shillah, the language of the accursed
Berbers, and have translated Sidi Hammo into
the speech of Nazarenes — I beg your pardon —
of the Rumi," for he had seen a flush rise on
the Consul's cheek.

" You like our country, and have lived in
it for more than twenty years. I do not speak
to you about our law, for every man cleaves to
his own, but of our daily life. Tell me now,
which of the two makes a man happier, the
law of Sidna Aissa, or that of our Prophet,
God's own Messenger ? "

He stopped and waited courteously, playing
154

EL MASGAD

#

with his naked toes, just as a European plays
with his fingers in the intervals of speech.

The Consul sent a veritable solfatara of
tobacco smoke out of his mouth and nostrils,
and laying down his cigarette returned no
answer for a little while.

Perchance his thoughts were wandering
towards the cities brilliant with light — the
homes of science and of art. Cities of vain
endeavour in which men pass their lives think-
ing of the condition of their poorer brethren,
but never making any move to get down off
their backs. He thought of London and of
Paris and New York, the dwelling-places both
of law and order, and the abodes of noise.
He pondered on their material advancement :
their tubes that burrow underneath the ground,
in which run railways carrying their thousands
all the day and far into the night ; upon their
hospitals, their charitable institutions, their
legislative assemblies, and their museums, with
their picture-galleries, their theatres — on the
vast sums bestowed to forward arts and sciences,
and on the poor who shiver in their streets and
cower under railway arches in the dark winter
nights.

EL MASGAD

As he sat with his cigarette smouldering
beside him in a little brazen pan, the night
breeze brought the heavy scent of orange
blossoms, for it was spring, and all the gardens
of the sanctuary each had its orange grove.
Never had they smelt sweeter, and never had the
croaking of the frogs seemed more melodious,
or the cricket's chirp more soothing to the soul.

A death's-head moth whirred through the
tent, poising itself, just as a humming-bird
hangs stationary probing the petals of a flower.
The gentle murmur of its wings brought back
the Consul's mind from its excursus in the
regions of reality, or unreality, for all is one
according to the point of view.

" Sherif," he said, " what you have asked
me I will answer to the best of my ability.

" Man's destiny is so precarious that neither
your law nor our own appear to me to influence
it, or at the best but slightly.

" One of your learned Talebs, or our men of
science, as they call themselves, with the due
modesty of conscious worth, is passing down
a street, and from a house-top slips a tile and
falls upon his head. There he lies huddled
up, an ugly bundle of old clothes, inert and
156

EL MASGAD

shapeless, whilst his immortal soul leaves his
poor mortal body, without which all its divinity
is incomplete ; then perhaps after an hour
comes back again, and the man staggering to
his feet begins to talk about God's attributes,
or about carrying a line of railroad along a
precipice."

The Sherif, who had been listening with the
respect that every well-bred Arab gives to the
man who has possession of the word, said, " It
was so written. The man could not have died
or never could have come to life again had it
not been Allah's will."

His friend smiled grimly and rejoined,
" That is so ; but as Allah never manifests
his will, except in action, just as we act towards
a swarm of ants, annihilating some and sparing
others as we pass, it does not matter very
much what Allah thinks about, as it regards
ourselves."

" When I was young," slowly said the
Sherif, " whilst in the slave trade far away
beyond the desert, I met the pagan tribes.

" They had no God . . . Hke Christians.
. Pardon me, I know you know our phrase :
nothing but images of wood.

EL MASGAD

" Those infidels, who, by the way, were
just as apt at a good bargain as if their fathers
all had bowed themselves in Christian temple
or in mosque, when they received no answer
to their prayers, would pull their accursed
images down from their shrines, paint them
jet black, and hang them from a nail.

" Heathens they were, ignorant even of the
name of God, finding their heaven and their
hell here upon earth, just like the animals,
but . . . sometimes I have thought not quite
bereft of reason, for they had not the diffi-
culties you have about the will of Allah and the
way in which he works.

" They made their gods themselves, just
as we do," and as he spoke he lowered his voice
and peered out of the tent door ; " but wiser
than ourselves they kept a tight hand on them,
and made their will, as far as possible, coincide
with their own.

" It is the hour of prayer. . . .

" How pleasantly the time passes away
conversing with one's friends " ; and as he
spoke he stood erect, turning towards Mecca,
as mechanically as the needle turns towards
the pole.

158

EL MASGAD

His whole appearance altered and his mean
presence suffered a subtle change. With eyes
fixed upon space, and hands uplifted, he
testified to the existence of the one God, the
Compassionate, the Merciful, the Bounteous,
the Generous One, who alone giveth victory.

Then, sinking down, he laid his forehead
on the ground, bringing his palms together.
Three times he bowed himself, and then rising
again upon his feet recited the confession of
his faith.

The instant he had done he sat him down
again ; but gravely and with the air of one
who has performed an action, half courteous,
half obligatory, but refreshing to the soul.

The Consul, who well knew his ways, and
knew that probably he seldom prayed at home,
and that the prayers he had just seen most
likely were a sort of affirmation of his neutral
attitude before a stranger, yet was interested.

Then, when the conversation was renewed,
he said to him, " Prayer seems to me, Sherif,
to be the one great difference between the
animals and man.

" As to the rest, we live and die, drink, eat,
and propagate our species, just as they do ;

EL MASGAD

but no one ever heard of any animal who had
addressed himself to God."

A smile flitted across the pock-marked
features of the descendant of the Prophet,
and looking gravely at his friend, —

" Consul," he said, " Allah to you has given
many things. He has endowed you with your
fertile brains, that have searched into forces
which had remained unknown in nature since
the sons of Adam first trod the surface of the
earth. All that you touch you turn to gold,
and as our saying goes, ' Gold builds a bridge
across the sea.'

" Ships, aeroplanes, cannons of monstrous
size, and little instruments by which you see
minutest specks as if they were great rocks ;
all these you have and yet you doubt His
power.

" To us, the Arabs, we who came from
the lands of fire in the Hejaz and Hadramut.
We who for centuries have remained unchanged,
driving our camels as our fathers drove them,
eating and drinking as our fathers ate and
drank, and living face to face with God. . . .
Consu', you should not smile, for do we not
live closer to Him than you do, under the stars
i6o

EL MASGAD

at night, out in tlie sun by day, our lives almost
as simple as the lives of animals ? To us He
has vouchsafed gifts that He either has withheld
from you, or that you have neglected in your
pride.

" Thus we still keep our faith. . . . Faith
in the God who set the planets in their courses,
bridled the tides, and caused the palm to grow
beside the river so that the traveller may rest
beneath its shade, and resting, praise His
name.

" You ask me, who ever heard of any animal
that addressed himself to God. He in His
infinite power ... be sure of it ... is He
not merciful and compassionate, wonderful in
His ways, harder to follow than the track that
a gazelle leaves in the desert sands ; it cannot
be that He could have denied them access to
His ear ?

" Did not the lizard, Consul . . ., Hamed
el Angri, the runner, the man who never can
rest long in any place, but must be ever tighten-
ing his belt and pulling up his slippers at the
heel to make ready for the road . . ., did he
not tell you of El Hokaitsallah, the little
lizard who, being late upon the day when
i6i M

EL MASGAD

Allah took away speech from all the animals,
ran on the beam in the great mosque at Mecca,
and dumbly scratched his prayer ? "

The Consul nodded. " Hamed el Angri,"
he said, " no doubt is still upon the road, by
whose side he will die one day of hunger or
of thirst. . . . Yes ; he told me of it, and I
wrote it in a book. . . ."

" Write this, then," the Sherif went on,
" Allah in his compassion, and in case the
animals, bereft of speech, that is in Arabic,
for each has his own tongue, should not be
certain of the direction of the Kiblah, has given
the power to a poor insect which we call El
Masgad to pray for all of them. With its
head turned to Mecca, as certainly as if he
had the needle of the mariners, he prays at
El Magreb.

" All day he sits erect and watches for his
prey. At eventide, just at the hour of El
Magreb, when from the * alminares ' of the
Mosques the muezzin calls upon the faithful
for their prayers, he adds his testimony.

" Consu', Allah rejects no prayer, however
humble, and that the little creature knows. He
knows that Allah does not answer every prayer ;
162

EL MASGAD

but yet the prayer remains ; it is not blotted
out, and perhaps some day it may fructify, for
it is written in the book.

" Therefore El Masgad prays each night
for all the animals, yet being but a little thing
and simple, it has not strength to testify at all
the hours laid down in Mecca by our Lord
Mohammed, he of the even teeth, the curling
hair, and the grave smile, that never left his
face after he had communed with Allah in the
cave."

The Consul dropped his smoked-out cigar-
ette, and, stretching over to his friend, held out
his hand to him.

" Sherif," he said, "-maybe El Masgad
prays for you and me, as well as for its kind .'' "

The answer came : " Consu', doubt not ;
it is a little animal of God, ... we too are
in His hand. . . ."

163

XIV

FEAST DAY IN SANTA
MARIA MAYOR

The great Capilla, the largest in the Jesuit
Reductions of Paraguay, was built round a
huge square, almost a quarter of a mile across.

Upon three sides ran the low, continuous
line of houses, like a " row " in a Scotch mining
village or a phalanstery designed by Prudhon
or St. Simon in their treatises ; but by the
grace of a kind providence never carried out,
either in bricks or stone.

Each dweUing-place was of the same design
and size as all the rest. Rough tiles made in
the Jesuit times, but now weathered and
broken, showing the rafters tied with raw hide
in many places, formed the long roof, that
looked a little like the pent-house of a tennis
court.

164

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

A deep verandah ran in front, stretching
from one end to the other of the square, sup-
ported on great balks of wood, which, after
more than two hundred years and the assaults
of weather and the all-devouring ants, still
showed the adze marks where they had been
dressed. The timber was so hard that you
could scarcely drive a nail into it, despite the
flight of time since it was first set up. Rings
fixed about six feet from the ground were
screwed into the pillars of the verandah, before
every door, to fasten horses to, exactly as they
are in an old Spanish town.

Against the wall of almost every house,
just by the door, was set a chair or two of heavy
wood, with the seat formed by strips of hide, on
which the hair had formerly been left, but long
ago rubbed ofF by use, or eaten by the ants.

The owner of the house sat with the back
of the strong chair tilted against the wall,
dressed in a loose and pleated shirt, with a
high turned-down collar open at the throat,
and spotless white duck trousers, that looked
the whiter by their contrast with his brown,
naked feet.

His home-made palm-tree hat was placed
165

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

upon the ground beside him, and his cloak of
coarse red baize was thrown back from his
shoulders, as he sat smoking a cigarette rolled
in a maize leaf, for in the Jesuit capillas only
women smoked cigars.

At every angle of the square a sandy trail
led out, either to the river or the woods, the
little patches planted with mandioca, or to the
maze of paths that, like the points outside a
junction, eventually joined in one main trail,
that ran from Itapua on the Parana, up to
Asuncion.

The church, built of wood cut in the
neighbouring forest, had two tall towers, and
followed in its plan the pattern of all the
churches in the New World built by the
Jesuits, from California down to the smallest
mission in the south. It filled the fourth side
of the square, and on each side of it there rose
two feathery palms, known as the tallest in the
Missions, which served as landmarks for
travellers coming to the place, if they had missed
their road. So large and well-proportioned was
the church, it seemed impossible that it had been
constructed solely by the Indians themselves,
under the direction of the missionaries.
i66

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

The overhanging porch and flight of steps
that ran down to the grassy sward in the
middle of the town gave it an air as of a cathedral
reared to nature in the wilds, for the thick
jungle flowed up behind it and almost touched
its walls.

Bells of great size, either cast upon the spot
or brought at vast expense from Spain, hung
in the towers. On this, the feast day of the
Blessed Virgin, the special patron of the
settlement, they jangled ceaselessly, the Indians
taking turns to haul upon the dried lianas that
served instead of ropes. Though they pulled
vigorously, the bells sounded a little muffled,
as if they strove in vain against the vigorous
nature that rendered any work of man puny
and insignificant in the Paraguayan wilds.

Inside, the fane was dark, the images of
saints were dusty, their paint was cracked, their
gilding tarnished, making them look a little
like the figures in a New Zealand pah, as they
loomed through the darkness of the aisle. On
the neglected altar, for at that time priests were
a rarity in the Reductions, the Indians had
placed great bunches of red flowers, and now
and then a humming-bird flitted in through

167

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

the glassless windows and hung poised above
them ; then darted out again, with a soft,
whirring sound. Over the whole capilla, in
which at one time several thousand Indians
had lived, but now reduced to seventy or
eighty at the most, there hung an air of desola-
tion. It seemed as if man, in his long pro-
tracted struggle with the forces of the woods,
had been defeated, and had accepted his defeat,
content to vegetate, forgotten by the world,
in the vast sea of green.

On this particular day, the annual festival
of the Blessed Virgin, there was an air of
Animation, for from far and near, from Jesuit
capilla, from straw-thatched huts lost in the
clearings of the primeval forest, from the few
cattle ranches that then existed, and from the
little town of Itapua, fifty miles away, the
scanty population had turned out to attend
the festival.

Upon the forest tracks, from earliest dawn,
long lines of white-clad women, barefooted,
with their black hair cut square across the fore-
head and hanging down their backs, had
marched as silently as ghosts. All of them
smoked great, green cigars, and as they
i68

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

marched along, their leader carrying a torch,
till the sun rose and jaguars went back to their
lairs, they never talked ; but if a woman in the
rear of the long line wished to converse with
any comrade in the front she trotted forward
till she reached her friend and whispered in
her ear. When they arrived at the crossing
of the little river they bathed, or, at the least,
washed carefully, and gathering a bunch of
flowers, stuck them into their hair. They
crossed the stream, and on arriving at the plaza
they set the baskets, which they had carried
on their heads, upon the ground, and sitting
down beside them on the grass, spread out
their merchandise. Oranges and bread, called
" chipa," made from mandioca flour and
cheese, with vegetables and various homely
sweetmeats, ground nuts, rolls of sugar done
up in plaintain leaves, and known as " rapa-
dura," were the chief staples of their trade.
Those who had asses let them loose to feed ;
and if upon the forest trails the women had been
silent, once in the safety of the town no flight
of parrots in a maize field could have chattered
louder than they did as they sat waiting by their
wares. Soon the square filled, and men arriv-

I 69

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

ing tied their horses in the shade, slackening
their broad hide girths, and piling up before
them heaps of the leaves of the palm called
" Pindo " in Guarani, till they were cool
enough to eat their corn. Bands of boys, for
in those days most of the men had been killed
off in the past war, came trooping in, accom-
panied by crowds of women and of girls, who
carried all their belongings, for there were
thirteen women to a man, and the youngest
boy was at a premium amongst the Indian
women, who in the villages, where hardly
any men were left, fought for male stragglers
like unchained tigresses. A few old men
came riding in on some of the few native
horses left, for almost all the active, little,
undersized breed of Paraguay had been ex-
hausted in the war. They, too, had bands of
women trotting by their sides, all of them
anxious to unsaddle, to take the horses down
to bathe, or to"^erform any small office that the
men required of them. All of them smoked
continuously, and each of them was ready
with a fresh cigarette as soon as the old man
or boy whom they accompanied finished the
stump he held between his lips. The women
170

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

all were dressed in the long Indian shirt called
a " tupoi," cut rather low upon the breast,
and edged with coarse black cotton lace,
which every Paraguayan woman wore. Their
hair was as black as a crow's back, and quite
as shiny, and their white teeth so strong that
they could tear the ears of corn out of a maize
cob like a horse munching at his corn.

Then a few Correntino gauchos next
appeared, dressed in their national costume of
loose black merino trousers, stuffed into long
boots, whose fronts were all embroidered in
red silk. Their silver spurs, whose rowels
were as large as saucers, just dangled off their
heels, only retained in place by a flat chain,
that met upon the instep, clasped with a lion's
head. Long hair and brown vicuna ponchos,
soft black felt hats, and red silk handkerchiefs
tied loosely round their necks marked them as
strangers, though they spoke Guarani,

They sat upon their silver-mounted saddles,
with their toes resting in their bell-shaped
stirrups, swaying so easily with every move-
ment that the word riding somehow or other
seemed inapplicable to men who, hke the
centaurs, formed one body with the horse.

171

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

As they drew near the plaza they raised
their hands and touched their horses with
the spur, and, rushing like a whirlwind right
to the middle of the square, drew up so suddenly
that their horses seemed to have turned to
statues for a moment, and then at a slow trot,
that made their silver trappings jingle as they
went, slowly rode off into the shade.

The plaza filled up imperceptibly, and the
short grass was covered by a white-clad throng
of Indians. The heat increased, and all the
time the bells rang out, pulled vigorously by
relays of Indians, and at a given signal the
people turned and trooped towards the church,
all carrying flowers in their hands.

As there was no one to sing Mass, and as
the organ long had been neglected, the congre-
gation listened to some prayers, read from a
book of Hours by an old Indian, who pro-
nounced the Latin, of which most likely he
did not understand a word, as if it had been
Guarani. They sang " Las Flores & Maria "
all in unison, but keeping such good time that
at a little distance from the church it sounded
like waves breaking on a beach after a summer
storm.

172

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

In the neglected church, where no priest
ministered or clergy prayed, where all the
stoops of holy water had for years been dry,
and where the Mass had been well-nigh
forgotten as a whole, the spirit lingered, and if
it quickeneth upon that feast day in the
Paraguayan missions, that simple congrega-
tion were as uplifted by it as if the sacrifice
had duly been fulfilled with candles, incense,
and the pomp and ceremony of Holy Mother
Church upon the Seven Hills.

As every one except the Correntinos went
barefooted, the exit of the congregation made no
noise except the sound of naked feet, slapping
a little on the wooden steps, and so the people
silently once again filled the plaza, where a
high wooden arch had been erected in the
middle, for the sport of running at the ring.

The vegetable sellers had now removed
from the middle of the square, taking all their
wares under the long verandah, and several
pedlars had set up their booths and retailed
cheap European trifles such as no one in the
world but a Paraguayan Indian could possibly
require. Razors that would not cut, and little
looking-glasses in pewter frames made in

173

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

Thuringia, cheap clocks that human ingenuity
was powerless to repair when they had run
their course of six months' intermittent ticking,
and gaudy pictures representing saints who had
ascended to the empyrean, as it appeared,
with the clothes that they had worn in life,
and all bald-headed, as befits a saint, were set
out side by side with handkerchiefs of the best
China silk. Sales were concluded after long-
continued chaffering — that higgling of the
market dear to old-time economists, for no one
would have bought the smallest article, even
below cost price, had it been offered to him
at the price the seller originally asked.

Enrique Clerici, from Itapua, had trans-
ported all his pulperia bodily for the occasion
of the feast. It had not wanted more than a
small wagon to contain his stock-in-trade.
Two or three dozen bottles of square-faced
gin of the Anchor brand, a dozen of heady
red wine from Catalonia, a pile of sardine
boxes, sweet biscuits, raisins from Malaga,
esparto baskets full of figs, and sundry pecks
of apricots dried in the sun and cut into the
shape of ears, and hence called " orejones,"
completed all his store. He himself, tall and
174

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

sunburnt, stood dressed in riding-boots and a
broad hat, with his revolver in his belt, beside a
pile of empty bottles, which he had always ready,
to hurl at customers if there should be any
attempt either at cheating or to rush his wares.
He spoke the curious lingo, half-Spanish,
half-Italian, that so many of his countrymen
use in the River Plate ; and all his conversation
ran upon Garibaldi, with whom he had cam-
paigned in youth, upon Italia Irredenta, and
on the time when anarchy should sanctify
mankind by blood, as he said, and bring about
the reign of universal brotherhood.

He did a roaring trade, despite the com-
petition of a native Paraguayan, who had
brought three demi-johns of Cana, for men
prefer the imported article the whole world
over, though it is vile, to native manufactures,
even when cheap and good.

Just about twelve o'clock, when the sun
almost burned a hole into one's head, the band
got ready in the church porch, playing upon
old instruments, some of which may have
survived from Jesuit times, or, at the least,
been copied in the place, as the originals
decayed.

175

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

Sackbuts and psalteries and shaiwms were
there, with serpents, gigantic clarionets, and
curiously twisted oboes, and drums, whose
canvas all hung slack and gave a muffled sound
when they were beaten, and little fifes, ear-
piercing and devilish, were represented in that
band. It banged and crashed " La Palomita,"
that tune of evil - sounding omen, for to its
strains prisoners were always ushered out to
execution in the times of Lopez, and as it
played the players slowly walked down the
steps.

Behind them followed the alcalde, an aged
Indian, dressed in long cotton drawers, that at
the knees were split into a fringe that hung
down to his ankles, a spotless shirt much
pleated, and a red cloak of fine merino cloth.
In his right hand he carried a long cane with
a silver head — his badge of ofiice. Walking
up to the door of his own house, by which was
set a table covered with glasses and with home-
made cakes, he gave the signal for the running
at the ring.

The Correntino gauchos, two or three
Paraguayans, and a German married to a
Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the
176

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

sport. The band struck up, and a young
Paraguayan started the first course. Gri"pping
his stirrups tightly between his naked toes,
and seated on an old " recao," surmounted by
a sheepskin, he spurred his horse, a wall-eyed
skewbald, with his great iron spurs, tied to his
bare insteps with thin strips of hide. The
skewbald, only half- tamed, reared once or
twice and bounded off, switching its ragged
tail, which had been half- eaten off by cows.
The people yelled, a " mosqueador 1 " — that is,
a " fly-flapper," a grave fault in a horse in the
eyes of Spanish Americans — as the Paraguayan
steered the skewbald with the reins held high in
his left hand, carrying the cpther just above the
level of his eyes, armed with a piece of cane
about a foot in length.

As he approached the arch, in which the
ring dangled from a string, his horse, either
frightened by the shouting of the crowd or by
the arch itself, swerved and plunged violently,
carrying its rider through the thickest of the
people, who separated like a flock of sheep when
a dog runs through it, cursing him volubly.
The German came the next, dressed in his
Sunday clothes, a slop -made suit of shoddy
177 N

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

cloth, riding a horse that all his spurring could
not get into full speed. The rider's round,
fair face was burned a brick-dust colour, and
as he spurred and plied his whip, made out of
solid tapir hide, the sweat ran down in streams
upon his coat. So intent was he on flogging,
that as he neared the ring he dropped his piece
of cane, and his horse, stopping suddenly just
underneath the arch, would have unseated him
had he not clasped it round the neck. Shouts
of delight greeted this feat of horsemanship,
and one tall Correntino, taking his cigarette
out of his mouth, said to his fellow sitting next
to him upon his horse, " The very animals
themselves despise the gringos. See how
that little white-nosed brute that he was riding
knew that he was a ' maturango,' and nearly
had him off."

Next came Hijinio Rojas, a Paraguayan of
the better classes, sallow and Indian looking,
dressed in clothes bought in Asuncion, his
trousers tucked into his riding-boots. His
small black hat, with the brim flattened up
against his head by the wind caused by the
fury of the gallop of his active little roan with
four white feet, was kept upon his head by a
178

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

black ribbon knotted' underneath his chin.
As he neared the arch his horse stepped double
several times and fly-jumped; but that did
not disturb him in the least, and, aiming well
he touched the ring, making it fly into the air.
A shout went up, partly in Spanish, partly
in Guarani, from the assembled people, and
Rojas, reining in his horse, stopped him in a
few bounds, so sharply, that his unshod feet
cut up the turf of the green plaza as a skate
cuts the ice. He turned and trotted gently
to the arch, and then, putting his horse to its
top speed, stopped it again beside the other
riders, amid the " Vivas " of the crowd. Then
came the turn of the four Correntinos, who
rode good horses from their native province,
had silver horse-gear and huge silver spurs,
that dangled from their heels. They were all
gauchos, born, as the saying goes, " amongst
the animals." A dun with fiery eyes and a
black stripe right down his back, and with
black markings on both hocks, a chrfstnut
skewbald, a " doradillo," and a horse of that
strange mealy bay with a fern-coloured muzzle,
that the gauchos call a " Pangar^," carried
them just as if their will and that of those who
179

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

rode them were identical. Without a signal,
visible at least to any but themselves, their
horses started at full speed, reaching occasion-
ally at the bit, then dropping it again and
bridling so easy that one could ride them with
a thread drawn from a spider's web. Their
riders sat up easily, not riding as a European
rides, with his eyes fixed upon each movement
of his horse, but, as it were, divining them
as soon as they were made. Each of them
took the ring, and all of them checked their
horses, as it were, by their volition, rather
than the bit, making the silver horse-gear rattle
and their great silver spurs jingle upon their
feet. Each waited for the other at the far side
of the arch, and then turning in a line they
started with a shout, and as they passed right
through the middle of the square at a wild
gallop, they swung down sideways from their
saddles and dragged their hands upon the
ground. Swinging up, apparently without an
effort, back into their seats, when they arrived
at the point from where they had first started,
they reined up suddenly, making their horses
plunge and rear, and then by a light signal on
the reins stand quietly in line, tossing the foam
1 80

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

into the air. Hijinio Rojas and the four
centaurs all received a prize, and the alcalde,
pouring out wineglasses full of gin, handed
them to the riders, who, with a compliment or
two as to the order of their drinking, emptied
them solemnly.

No other runners having come forward to
compete, for in those days horses were scarce
throughout the Paraguayan Missions, the
sports were over, and the perspiring crowd
went off to breakfast at tables spread under
the long verandahs, and silence fell upon the
square.

The long, hot hours during the middle of
the day were passed in sleeping. Some lay
face downwards in the shade. Others swung
in white cotton hammocks, keeping them in
perpetual motion, till they fell asleep, by
pushing with a naked toe upon the ground.
At last the sun, the enemy, as the Arabs call
him, slowly declined, and white-robed women,
with their " tupois " slipping half off their
necks, began to come out into the verandahs,
slack and perspiring after the midday struggle
with the heat.

Then bands of girls sauntered down to the
i8i

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

river, from whence soon came the sound of
merry laughter as they splashed about and
bathed.

The Correntinos rode down to a pool and
washed their horses, throwing the water on
them with their two hands, as the animals
stood nervously shrinking from each splash,
until they were quite wet through and running
down, when they stood quietly, with their tails
tucked in between their legs.

Night came on, as it does in those latitudes,
no twilight intervening, and from the rows
of houses came the faint lights of wicks burn-
ing in bowls of grease, whilst from beneath
the orange trees was heard the tinkling of
guitars.

Enormous bats soared about noiselessly,
and white-dressed couples lingered about the
corners of the streets, and men stood talking,
pressed closely up against the wooden gratings
of the windows, to women hidden inside the
room. The air was heavy with the languorous
murmur of the tropic night, and gradually
the lights one by one were extinguished, and
the tinkling of the guitars was stilled. The
moon came out, serene and glorious, showing
182

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

each stone upon the sandy trails as clearly as
at midday. Saddling their horses, the four
Correntinos silently struck the trail to Itapua,
and bands of women moved off along the
forest tracks towards their homes, walking in
Indian file. Hijinio Rojas, who had saddled
up to put the Correntinos on the right road,
emerged into the moonlit plaza, his shadow
outlined so sharply on the grass it seemed it
had been drawn, and then, entering a side
street, disappeared into the night. The shrill
neighing of his horse appeared as if it bade
farewell to its companions, now far away upon
the Itapua trail. Noises that rise at night
from forests in the tropics sound mysteri-
ously, deep in the woods. It seemed as if a
population silent by day was active and on foot,
and from the underwood a thick white mist
arose, shrouding the sleeping town.

Little by little, just as a rising tide covers a
reef of rocks, it submerged everything in its
white, clinging folds. The houses disappeared,
leaving the plaza seething like a lake, and then
the church was swallowed up, the towers
struggling, as it were, a little, just as a wreath
of seaweed on a rock appears to fight against
183

IN SANTA MARIA MAYOR

the tide. Then they too disappeared, and
the conquering mist enveloped everything.
All that was left above the sea of billowing
white were the two topmost tufts of the tall,
feathery palms.

184

XV

BOPICUA

The great corral at Bopicua was full of horses.
Greys, browns, bays, blacks, duns, chestnuts,
roans (both blue and red), skewbalds and
piebalds, with claybanks, calicos, buckskins,
and a hundred shades and markings, unknown
in Europe, but each with its proper name in
Uruguay and Argentina, jostled each other,
forming a kaleidoscopic mass.

A thick dust rose from the corral and hung
above their heads. Sometimes the horses
stood all huddled up, gazing with wide dis-
tended eyes and nostrils towards a group of
men that lounged about the gate. At other
times that panic fear that seizes upon horses
when they are crushed together in large
numbers, set them a-galloping. Through
the dust-cloud their footfalls sounded muffled,
1S5

BOPICUA

and they themselves appeared like phantoms
in a mist. When they had circled round a
little they stopped, and those outside the
throng, craning their heads down nearly to
the ground, snorted, and then ran back,
arching their necks and carrying their tails
like flags. Outside the great corral was set
Parodi's camp, below some China trees, and
formed of corrugated iron and hides, stuck
on short uprights, so that the hides and iron
almost came down upon the ground, in gipsy
fashion. Upon the branches of the trees were
hung saddles, bridles, halters, hobbles, lazos,
and boleadoras, and underneath were spread
out saddle-cloths to dry. Pieces of meat
swung from the low gables of the hut, and
under the low eaves was placed a " catre,"
the canvas scissor-bedstead of Spain and of
her colonies in the New World. Upon the
catre was a heap of ponchos, airing in the sun,
their bright and startling colours looking
almost dingy in the fierce light of a March
afternoon in Uruguay. Close to the camp
stood several bullock-carts, their poles sup-
ported on a crutch, and their reed-covered
tilts giving them an air of huts on wheels.
i86

BOPICUA

Men sat about on bullocks' skulls, around a
smouldering fire, whilst the "mat6" circu-
lated round from man to man, after tlie
fashion of a loving-cup. Parodi, the stiff-
jointed son of Italian parents, a gaucho as to
clothes and speech, but still half-European in
his lack of comprehension of the ways of a
wild horse. Arena, the capataz from Entre-
Rios, thin, slight, and nervous, a man who
had, as he said, in his youth known how
to read and even guide the pen ; but now
"things of this world had turned him quite
unlettered, and made him more familiar with
the lazo and the spurs." The mulatto Pablo
Suarez, active and cat-like, a great race-rider
and horse-tamer, short and deep-chested, with
eyes like those of a black cat, and toes, pre-
hensile as a monkey's, that clutched the stirrup
when a wild colt began to buck, so that it
could not touch its flanks. They and Miguel
Paralelo, tall, dark, and handsome, the owner
of some property, but drawn by the excitement
of a cowboy's life to work for wages, so that
he could enjoy the risk of venturing his neck
each day on a "bagual,"i ^jth other peons as

1 Wild horse.
187

BOPICUA

El Correntino and Venancio Baez, were grouped
around the fire. "With them were seated Martin
el Madrilefio, a Spanish horse-coper, who had
experienced the charm of gaucho life, together
with Silvestre Ayres, a Brazilian, slight and
olive-coloured, well-educated, but better known
as a dead pistol-shot than as man of books.
They waited for their turn at mat6, or ate
great chunks of meat from a roast cooked
upon a spit, over a fire of bones. Most of
the men were tall and sinewy, with that air of
taciturnity and self - equilibrium that their
isolated lives and Indian blood so often stamp
upon the faces of those centaurs of the plains.
The carnp, set on a little hill, dominated the
country for miles on every side. Just under-
neath it, horses and more horses grazed.
Towards the west it stretched out to the woods
that fringe the Uruguay, which, with its count-
less islands, flowed between great tracks of
forest, and formed the frontier with the
Argentine.

Between the camp and the corrals smould-
ered a fire of bones and nandubay, and by it,
leaning up against a rail, were set the branding-
irons that had turned the horses in the corral
i88

BOPICUA

into the property of the British Government.
All round the herd enclosed, ran horses neigh-
ing, seeking their companions, who were to
graze no more at Bopicua, but be sent ofF by
train and ship to the battlefields of Europe
to die and sufFer, for they knew not what,
leaving their pastures and their innocent
comradeship with one another till the judgment
day. Then, I am sure, for God must have
some human feeling after all, things will be
explained to them, light come into their semi-
darkness, and they will feed in prairies where
the grass fades not, and springs are never dry,
freed from the saddle, and with no cruel spur
to urge them on they know not where or
why.

For weeks we had been choosing out the
doomed five hundred. Riding, inspecting,
and examining from dawn till evening, till it
appeared that not a single equine imperfection
could have escaped our eyes. The gauchos,
who all think that they alone know anything
about a horse, were all struck dumb with sheer
amazement. It seemed to them astonishing
to take such pains to select horses that for the
most part would be killed in a few months.
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BOPICUA

" These men," they said, " certainly all are
doctors at the job. They know even the least
defect, can tell what a horse thinks about and
why. Still, none of them can ride a horse if
he but shakes his ears. In their bag surely
there is a cat shut up of some kind or another.
If not, why do they bother so much in the
matter, when all that is required is something
that can carry one into the thickest of the
fight.?"

The sun began to slant a little, and we had
still three leagues to drive the horses to the
pasture where they had to pass the night for
the last time in freedom, before they were
entrained. Our horses stood outside of the
corral, tied to the posts, some saddled with
the " recado," ^ its heads adorned with silver,
some with the English saddle, that out of
England has such a strange, unserviceable
look, much like a saucepan on a horse's back.
Just as we were about to mount, a man appeared,
driving a point of horses, which, he said, " to
leave would be a crime against the sacrament."
" These are all pingos," he exclaimed, " fit
for the saddle of the Lord on High, all of them

' Argentine saddle.
190

BOPICUA

are bitted in the Brazilian style, can turn upon
a spread-out saddle-cloth, and all of them can
gallop round a bullock's head upon the ground,
so that the rider can keep his hand upon it
all the time." The speaker by his accent was
a Brazilian. His face was olive-coloured, his
hair had the suspicion of a kink. His horse,
a cream-colour, with black tail and mane, was
evidently only half-tamed, and snorted loudly
as it bounded here and there, making its silver
harness jingle and the rider's poncho flutter
in the air. Although time pressed, the man's
address was so persuasive, his appearance so
much in character with his great silver spurs
just hanging from his heel, his jacket turned
up underneath his elbow by the handle of his
knife, and, to speak truth, the horses looked
so good and in such high condition that we
determined to examine them, and told their
owner to drive them into a corral.

Once again we commenced the work that
we had done so many times of mounting and
examining. Once more we fought, trying to
explain the mysteries of red tape to unsophisti-
cated minds, and once again our " domadores "
sprang lightly, barebacked, upon the horses
191

BOPICUA

they had never seen before, with varjnng
results. Some of the Brazilian's horses bucked
like antelopes,- El Correntino and the others
of our men sitting them barebacked as easily
as an ordinary man rides over a small fence.
To all our queries why they did not saddle
up we got one answer, " To ride with the
recado is but a pastime only fit for boys."
So they went on, pulling the horses up in three
short bounds, nostrils aflame and tails and
manes tossed wildly in the air, only a yard or
two from the corral. Then, slipping off,
gave their opinion that the particular " bayo,"
" zaino," or " gateao " was just the~T:hing to
mount a lancer on, and that the speaker thought
he could account for a good tale of Boches if
he were over there in the Great War. This
same great war, which they called " barbar-
ous," taking a secret pleasure in the fact that
it showed Europeans not a whit more civilised
than they themselves, appeared to them some-
thing in the way of a great pastime from which
they were debarred.

Most of them, when they sold a horse,
looked at him and remarked, " Pobrecito, you
will go' to the Great War," just as a man looks
192

BOPICUA

at his son who is about to go, with feelings of
mixed admiration and regret.

After we had examined all the Brazilian's
" Tropilla " so carefully that he said, " By
Satan's death, your graces know far more
about my horses than I myself, and all I
wonder is that you do not ask me if all of them
have not complied with all the duties of the
Church," we found that about twenty of them
were fit for the Great War. Calling upon
Parodi and the capataz of Bopicua, who all
the time had remained seated round the
smouldering fire and drinking matd, to pre-
pare the branding-irons, the peons led them
ofF, our head man calling out " Artilleria " or
" Caballeria," according to their size. After
the branding, either on the hip for cavalry
and on the neck for the artillery, a peon cut
their manes off, making them as ugly as a
mule, as their late owner said, and we were
once more ready for the road, after the payment
had been made. This took a little time,
either because the Brazilian could not count,
or perhaps because of his great caution, for
he would not take payment except horse by
horse. So, driving out the horses one by one,
193 o

BOPICUA

we placed a roll of dollars in his hand as each
one passed the gate. Even then each roll of
dollars had to be counted separately, for time
is what men have the most at their disposal
in places such as Bopicud.

Two hours of sunset still remained, with
three long leagues to cover, for in those lati-
tudes there is no twilight, night succeeding
day, just as films follow one another in a
cinematograph. At last it all was over, and
we were free to mount. Such sort of drives
are of the nature of a sport in South America,
and so the Brazilian drove off the horses that
we had rejected, half a mile away, leaAdng them
with a negro boy to herd, remarking that the
rejected were as good or better than those
that we had bought, and after cinching up his
horse, prepared to ride with us. Before we
started, a young man rode up, dressed like
an exaggerated gaucho, in loose black trousers,
poncho, and a " golilla " ^ round his neck, a
lazo hanging from the saddle, a pair of bolea-
doras peeping beneath his "cojinillo,"^ and a
long silver knife stuck in his belt. It seemed

^ Golilla, which originally meant a rufF, is now used for a handlcerchief
round the neck.

' Cojinilh, part of the recado.

194

BOPICUA

he was the son of an estanciero who was study-
ing law in Buenos Aires, but had returned for
his vacation, and hearing of our drive had come
to ride with us and help us in our task. No
one on such occasions is to be despised, so,
thanking him for his good intentions, to which
he answered that he was a " partizan of the
Allies, lover of liberty and truth, and was well
on in all his studies, especially in International
Law," we mounted, the gauchos floating
almost imperceptibly, without an eflFort, to
their seats, the European with that air of
escalading a ship's side that differentiates us
from man less civilised.

During the operations with the Brazilian,
the horses had been let out of the corral to
feed, and now were being held back en p'astoreo^
as it is called in Uruguay, that is to say, watched
at a little distance by mounted men. Nothing
remained but to drive out of the corral the
horses bought from the Brazilian, and let
them join the larger herd. Out they came
like a string of wild geese, neighing and
looking round, and then instinctively made
towards the others that were feeding, and were
swallowed up amongst them. Slowly we rode

195

BOPICUA

towards the herd, sending on several well-
mounted men upon its flanks, and with pre-
caution — for of all living animals tame horses
most easily take frigh|^ upon the march and
separate — we got them into motion, on a
well-marked trail that led towards the gate of
Bopicud.

At first they moved a little sullenly, and as
if surprised. Then the contagion of emotion
that spreads so rapidly amongst animals upon
the march seemed to inspire them, and the
whole herd broke into a light trot. That is
the moment that a stampede may happen, and
accordingly we pulled our horses to a walk,
whilst the men riding on the flanks forged
slowly to the front, ready for anything that
might occur. Gradually the trot slowed down,
and we saw as it were a sea of manes and tails
in front of us, emerging from a cloud of dust,
from which shrill neighings and loud snortings
rose. They reached a hollow, in which were
several pools, and stopped to drink, all crowding
into the shallow water, where they stood pawing
up the mud and drinking greedily. Time
pressed, and as we knew that there was water
in the pasture where they were to sleep, we
196

BOPICUA

drove them back upon the trail, the water
dripping from their muzzles and their tails,
and the black mud clinging to the hair upon
their fetlocks, and in drops upon their backs.
Again they broke into a trot, but this time, as
they had got into control, we did not check
them, for there was still a mile to reach the
gate.

Passing some smaller mud-holes, the body
of a horse lay near to one of them, horribly
swollen, and with its stiff legs hoisted a little
in the air by the distension of its flanks. The
passing horses edged away from it in terror,
and a young roan snorted and darted like an
arrow from the herd. Quick as was the dart
he made, quicker still El Correntino wheeled
his horse on its hind legs and rushed to turn
him back. With his whip whirling round
his head he rode to head the .truant, who, with
tail floating in the air, had got a start of him
of about fifty yards. We pressed instinctively
upon the horses ; but not so closely as to
frighten them, though still enough to be able
to stop another of them from cutting out.
The Correntino on a half-tamed grey, which
he rode with a raw-hide thong bound round
197

BOPICUA

its lower jaw, for it was still unbitted, swaying
with every movement in his saddle, which he
hardly seemed to grip, so perfect was his
balance, rode at a slight angle to the runaway
and gained at every stride. His hat blew
back and kept in place by a black ribbon
underneath his chin, framed his head like an
aureole. The red silk handkerchief tied loosely
round his neck fluttered beneath it, and as he
dashed along, his lazo coiled upon his horse's
croup, rising and falling with each bound,
his eyes fixed on the flying roan, he might
have served a sculptor as the model for a
centaur, so much did he and the wild colt
he rode seem indivisible.

In a few seconds, which to us seemed
minutes, for we feared the infection might
have spread to the whole " caballada," the
Correntino headed and turned the roan, who
came back at three-quarter speed, craning his
neck out first to one side, then to the other,
as if he still thought that a way lay open for
escape.

By this time we had reached the gates of
Bopicua, and still seven miles lay between us
and our camping-ground, with a fast-declining
198

BOPICUA

sun. As the horses passed the gate we
counted them, an operation of some difficulty
when time presses and the count is large.
Nothing is easier than to miss animals, that
is to say, for Europeans, however practised,
but the lynx-eyed gauchos never are at fa»ult.
" Where is the little brown horse with a white
face, and a bit broken out of his near fore-
foot ? " they will say, and ten to one that
horse is missing, for what they do not know
about the appearance of a horse would not fill
many books. Only a drove road lay between
Bopicua and the great pasture, at whose far-
away extremity the horses were to sleep.
When the last animal had passed and the great
gates swung to, the young law student rode
up to my side, and, looking at the " great
tropilla," as he called it, said, "Mormri te
salutant. This is the last time they will feed
in Bopicua." We turned a moment, and the
falling sun lit up the undulating plain, gilding
the cottony tufts of the long grasses, falling
upon the dark-green leaves of the low trees
around Parodi's camp, glinting across the
belt of wood that fringed the Uruguay, and
striking full upon a white estancia house in
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BOPICUA

Entre-Rios, making it appear quite close at
hand, although four leagues away.

Two or three hundred yards from the
great gateway stood a little native hut, as
unsophisticated, but for a telephone, as were
the gaucho's huts in Uruguay, as I remember
them full thirty years ago. A wooden barrel
on a sledge for bringing water had been left
close to the door, at which the occupant sat
drinking matd, tapping with a long knife
upon his boot. Under a straw - thatched
shelter stood a saddled horse, and a small
boy upon a pony slowly drove up a flock of
sheep. A blue, fine smoke that rose from a
few smouldering logs and bones, blended so
completely with the air that one was not quite
sure if it was really smoke or the reflection of
the distant Uruguay against the atmosphere.

Not far off^ lay the bones of a dead horse,
with bits of hide adhering to them, shrivelled
ihto mere parchment by the sun. All this I
saw as in a camera-lucida, seated a little side-
ways on my horse, and thinking sadly that I,
too, had looked my last on Bopicua. It is
not given to all men after a break of years to
come back to the scenes of youth, and still
200

BOPICUA

find in them the same zest as of old. To
return again to all the cares of life called
civilised, with all its littlenesses, its newspapers
all full .of nothing, its sordid aims disguised
under high-sounding nicknames, its hideous
riches and its sordid poverty, its want of
human sympathy, and, above all, its barbarous
war brought on it by the folly of its rulers,
was not just at that moment an alluring thought,
as I felt the little " malacara " ^ that I rode
twitching his bridle, striving to be off. When
I had touched him with the spur he bounded
forward and soon overtook the caballada, and
the place which for so many months had been
part of my life sank out of sight, just as an
island in the Tropics fades from view as the
ship leaves it, as it were, hull down.

When we had passed into the great en-
closvire of La Pileta, and still four or five miles
remained to go, we pressed the caballada
into a long trot, certain that the danger of a
stampede was past. Wonderful and sad it
was to ride behind so many horses, trampUng
knee-high through the wild grasses of the

1 Malacara, literally Badface, is the name used for a white-faced
horse. In old days in England such a horse was called Baldfaced.
20 1

BOPICUA

Camp, snorting and biting at each other, and
all unconscious that they would never more
career across the plains. Strange and affecting,
too, to see how those who had known each
other all kept together in the midst of the
great herd, resenting all attempts of their
companions to separate them.

A " tropilla " ^ that we had bought from
a Frenchman called Leon, composed of five
brown horses, had ranged itself around its
bell mare, a fine chestnut, like a bodyguard.
They fought off any of the other horses who
came near her, and seemed to look at her
both with affection and with pride.

Two little bright bay horses, with white
legs and noses, that were brothers, and what
in Uruguay are known- as " seguldores," that
is, one followed the other wherever it might
go, ran on the outskirts of the herd. When
either of them stopped to eat, its companion
turned its head and neighed to it, when it
came galloping up. Arena, our head man,
riding beside me on a skewbald, looked at
them, and, after dashing forward to turn a
runaway, wheeled round his horse almost in

' Little troop.
202

BOPICUA

the air and stopped it in a bound, so suddenly
that for an instant they stood poised Uke an
equestrian statue, looked at the " seguidores,"
and remarked, " Patron, I hope one shell will
kill them both jn the Great War if they have
got to die." I did not answer, except to
curse the Boches with all the intensity the
Spanish tongue commands. The young law-
student added his testimony, and we rode on
in silence.

A passing sleeve of locusts almost obscured
the declining sun. Some flew against our
faces, reminding me of the fight Cortes had
with the Indians not far from Vera Cruz,
which, Bernal Diaz says, was obstructed for a
moment by a flight of locusts that came so
thickly that many lost their lives by the neglect
to raise their bucklers against what they thought
were locusts, and in reality were arrows that
the Indians shot. The eflFect was curious as
the insects flew against the horses, some
clinging to their manes, and others making
them bob up and down their heads, just as a
man does in a driving shower of hail. We
reached a narrow causeway that formed the
passage through a marsh. On it the horses
203

BOPICUA

crowded, making us hold our breath for fear
that they would push each other off into the
mud, which had no bottom, upon either side.
When we emerged and cantered up a little
hill, a lake lay at the bottom of it, and beyond
it was a wood, close to a railway siding. The
evening now was closing in, but there was
still a good half- hour of light. As often
happens in South America just before sundown,
the wind dropped to a dead calm, and pass-
ing little clouds of locusts, feeling the night
approach, dropped into the long grass just as
a flying-fish drops into the waves, with a harsh
whirring of their gauzy wings.

The horses smelt the water at the bottom
of the hill, and the whole five hundred broke
into a gallop, manes flying, tails raised high,
and we, feeling somehow the gallop was the
last, raced madly by their side until within a
hundred yards or so of the great lake. They
rushed into the water and all drank greedily,
the setting sun falling upon their many-coloured
backs, and giving the whole herd the look of
a vast tulip field. We kept away so as to let
them drink their fill, and then, leading our
horses to the margin of the lake, dismounted,
204

BOPICUA

and, taking out their bits, let them drink,
with the air of one accomphshing a rite, no
matter if they raised their heads a dozen times
and then began again.

Slowly Arena, El Correntino, Paralelo,
Suarez, and the rest drove out the herd to
pasture in the deep lush grass. The rest of
us rode up some rising ground towards the
wood. There we drew up, and looking back
towards the plain on which the horses seemed
to have dwindled to the size of sheep in the
half-light, some one, I think it was Arena,
or perhaps Pablo Suarez, spoke their elegy :
" Eat well," he said ; " there is no grass like
that of La Pileta, to where you go across the
sea. The grass in Europe all must smell of
blood."

THE END

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