Puslapio vaizdai
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provinces and the Canary Islands, while the Argentino came chiefly from southern Spain, and that the former brought with him, and still retains, a sturdier, less facile, but more dependable, more thoroughgoing character than the latter. Those who have business dealings with him say the Uruguayan is the most honest man south of Panama; every foreign resident I met rated Uruguay the finest country in South America, and as a rule foreign residents do not see the best side first. Personally, I found him more sincere, less selfish, somewhat more solid, and at the same time more of an impulsive idealist than the materialistic Argentino. His country is far enough south not to give him the laziness of the tropics, far enough north to make life itself seem of equal importance with making a living. Uruguay's reputation as the most progressive republic in South America, however, is largely based on its advanced legislation, most of it fathered by a recent president. Under his guidance Uruguayan lawmakers have enacted stern minimum wage and maximum-hour laws, and many doctrines of the less extreme socialists have been put into modified practice. The legislators forbade bull-fights, cock-fights, and prize-fights in one breath. Uruguay is the only country in South America which has a divorce law, and the church has been greatly hampered in its abuse of power.

Yet there is still no Utopia at the mouth of the Plata. The ultra-modern laws often work far better in theory than in practice; as a widely traveled native put it, "At their very best, our South American presidents are enlightened tyrants"; "there is a curious mixture of lofty idealism and Tammany tricks in Uruguayan politics," adds another experienced observer. Politically, the Uruguayans are divided between the blancos and the colorados, the "whites" and the "reds." It is a splendid distinction for several reasons. For one thing, the parties can print their arguments and their lists of candidates in posters of their own color, and even the stranger has no difficulty in deciding which side is talking. Townsmen can announce their political affiliation by wearing a red or white cravat or a bit of ribbon in

their lapels, countrymen by the color of their neckerchiefs.

In theory at least the "reds" are "advanced," the "whites" somewhat conservative. There are apparently no neutrals in Uruguayan politics, no "nonpartizan leagues," and the like. Every one is either "red" or "white" from the cradle not because Uruguayans take a greater interest in political matters than the average republican societies, but because it is bad form, as well as lonesome, to be outside the ranks; moreover, men who do not vote are fined. How a Uruguayan becomes attached to the party of this or that color is a mystery; almost none of them can give any real reason for their affiliation, except the equally fluent flow of curses at the other side. Evidently, like Topsy, they are just born in their natural colors.

This, however, makes the two parties none the less ready to engage in fratricidal strife at the behest of their politicians, and probably as capable of exterminating one another for no real cause, as did the Paraguayans half a century ago. It is fifteen years since the "reds" came to power on the heels of Uruguay's last revolution, possession is nine points even in so progressive a corner of LatinAmerica, and the "whites" have been the "outs" unbrokenly from the day they were driven from office. Yet it is common talk in Uruguay to refer to the time "when the 'whites' start their new revolution." It is taken for granted that the tables will eventually be violently turned; the "whites" expect, and are expected, to come back some day with bullets instead of ballots, and virtually every man in the country is prepared to fight on short notice for one side or the other.

Roughly speaking, "big business," big estate-owners, and the church,in other words, the predatory classes,are "whites," though neck-cloths of that color are by no means rare on the peons and gauchos of the more backward country districts. The leader of the "reds," now a private citizen merely because the constitution does not permit the same man to be president twice in succession, has often been described as "a composite of idealist and predatory politician," but he knows the secret of imposing his will

upon the Government, and is generally credited with most of Uruguay's progressive legislation since he came in on the wings of the revolution of 1905. For all his efforts, however, there is still much that is rotten in the Republic of Uruguay. The most advanced laws are of slight value when they are administered by the legal bandits who still flourish in office throughout the rural districts. Even in Montevideo the government telegraph and postal service are atrocious. One must carry his own letters to the post-office, and see that the man to whom they are handed cancels the stamps lest he steal them when one's back is turned. A few years ago the "reds" bought a large block in the capital, much of it having mysteriously become the property of high politicians not long before, and began the construction of a cut-stone government palace. When two hundred thousand dollars had been spent, the structure was abandoned, a mere foundation surrounded by a wall, an eyesore in the heart of town, and another palace was started in the Plaza Flores, though that, too, is expected to "fracaso."

Uruguay has not always been a small country, nor, for that matter, a country at all. In the olden days the Banda Oriental, or "Eastern Bank," of the River Uruguay was a province of the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires. To-day the official name of the country is "La República Oriental del Uruguay," and the people still call themselves "Orientals." When, therefore, one hears or uses that word in South America, it does not mean a Turk or a Hindu, but a citizen of the smallest and most progressive republic on the continent. In 1800 the whole "Eastern Bank" had only forty thousand inhabitants, of whom fifteen thousand lived in Montevideo. When Napoleon overran Spain, the viceroyalty of Buenos Aires revolted, but the Banda Oriental remained loyal, thus opening the first breach between the two parts of the colony. Not long afterward the "grito de libertad" was given in the interior of the province, and the man who was destined to become the national hero of Uruguay soon took the head of the revolt. Born in Montevideo, José Gervasio Artigas was a mere

estanciero until 1797, when he became a soldier. In 1811 he left the Spanish army and fled to Buenos Aires, but soon became an advocate of Uruguayan independence, a "patriot" or a "traitor," according to the speaker. In 1815 the Argentinos were defeated by Rivera, and Artigas became ruler not only of the present Uruguay, but of the now Argentine provinces of Entre Rios, Corrientes, Santa Fé, and Córdoba, these having formed the "Liga Federal" in opposition to the Buenos Aires Directory. An attempt was made to hold the former viceroyalty together, but, to read Uruguayan school-books, "at the same time the Tucumán Congress worked secretly to establish a monarchy in La Plata, and our five provinces sent no delegates." One by one the other provinces returned to the new mother country, but the "Eastern Bank" persisted in its isolation and demand for independence. For a time the Uruguay of to-day was the "Provincia Cisplatina," the southernmost province of Brazil, and took the oath to the Brazilian constitution. Artigas was meanwhile in exile. Finally, in 1825, a band of "Orientals" besieged Montevideo, and Uruguay declared her full independence.

The revolutions of 1863 and 1870, each two years long, are the only serious disturbances that have occurred in the "República Oriental" since its independence, that of 1905 might perhaps be included were not all the school histories written by "reds," and with those exceptions the country has steadily advanced in health and prosperity. Its Government is somewhat more centralized than our own, on the style of the Argentine, the two hundred members of the senate and the house being elected in the departments, the latter having executives appointed by the Federal Government. To the average "Oriental," history begins with the first demand for independence, in 1808. There are no reminders of the conquistadores, few monuments of pre-independence days, and few men who remember further back than that period. During my stay there Montevideo was trying to find out when Zabala founded her, sending, by act of congress, a well-known author of Uruguayan school-books to

delve in the colonial archives of Buenos Aires.

Several fierce thunderstorms had marked my stay in the capital, some of them accompanied by the mightiest of flashes and crashes, during which water fell in such torrents that one could scarcely see across a narrow street; tropical storms one might have called them were it not that it kept right on raining after it got through raging. My first railway journey in Uruguay began under just such wet and gloomy conditions, though one might as well stay at home as travel in an incessant deluge. We rambled on at moderate speed across a somewhat rolling country, more fertile in appearance than the Argentine, and brought up at Minas. A broad stone highway, here and there disintegrated by the heavy rains, led the mile or more from the station to the town, an overgrown village in a lap of low, rocky hills monotonously like any other Uruguayan or Argentine town of its size, with a twotowered church and a few rows of onestory buildings toeing wide, bottomless streets. As in the Argentine, there are no cities in Uruguay which compare with the capital. The present department capitals were originally forts against the Indians and the Portuguese, around which people gathered for protection and other reasons, and few of them have cause to grow to importance.

My second journey carried me into the northwestern corner of the country. As far as La Piedras, a suburban town twenty miles from the capital, there are a score of daily trains in both directions. Here street-cars come also, for the place is noted for its granite monument topped by a golden-winged Victory commemorating a battle for independence in 1811, from the terrace of which Montevideo's fortress-crowned Cerro still stands conspicuously above all the rest of the visible world. Then this chief "Oriental" landmark disappears, and to the comparative cosmopolitanism of the federal district succeeds the bucolic calm of the campaña, as the pampa, or "camp," is called in Uruguay. The nudity of an Uruguayan, like an Argentine, landscape, especially as compared with the richness in flora of Paraguay or tropical Bolivia, makes a long journey by any

means of transportation tiresome. The absence of trees alone gives the campaña an oppressive aspect. The "Oriental" has tried rather half-heartedly to make up for this natural lack of woods by planting the imported eucalyptus and the poplar, at least about his country dwellings, but nowhere do these reach the density of a forest.

Fertile rolling lomas, with now and then a solitary ombú, the striking national tree of Uruguay, spreading its arms to the wind on the summit, made up most of the landscape, a scene not greatly different from, yet vastly more pleasing than, the dead flatness of the Argentine pampas. At Mal Abrigo, properly named "Bad Shelter," a branch line set out for Colonia, just across the river from Buenos Aires, which here gets most of its building stone, and such of its paving-blocks as are not made of the quebracho-wood from the Argentine Chaco. Granite rocks thrust themselves here and there through the soil; for long stretches the coarse, brown espartillo grass covered the country like a blanket. This and the abundant thistles ruin the black loam underneath, but the average "Oriental" estanciero abhors agriculture, preferring to give his rather indolent attention to cattle and sheep, considering planting fit only for Indians, peons, and immigrant chacreros. Nor is the lot of these Basque or Italian new-comers always happy, despite the fairly generous terms on which they hold their plots of earth, for the locusts have been known to destroy a year's labor in a few hours.

From La Lata onward, however, there were a few riding gang-plows, drawn by eight or ten oxen, and many primitive wooden plows behind a pair or two, oxen with sad, lowered heads that moved with slow, powerful, yet almost painful, step as they turned up the rich, black loam. Now and then a nandu, occasionally a whole flock of them, legged it away across the plump, rolling campaña. Sleek cattle, and horses of much better stock than the average in South America, were grazing along the hollows and hillsides. A rolling country, one realized, with slopes for drainage and ravines in which to catch the water, is less subject than table-flat

pampas both to floods and waterless

summers.

I had ridden the sun clear around his short winter half-circle when I descended at Tacuarembó, far north near the Brazilian boundary. The town had a hint of tropical ways-women going languidly down to the sandy little river with bundles of clothing on their heads, the streets running out into grassy lanes scattered with carelessly built ranchos. and happy-go-easy living, the features, which had grown more and more Indian all day along the way and in the secondclass coaches, here sometimes suggesting more aboriginal than Caucasian blood. Next morning I rode away on a stout tordillo, a gray-white horse of rockingchair canter. The often muddy or flooded road curved and turned and rose and fell, always seeking the moderate height of the succeeding ridges, and here and there crossing gently rounded cuchillas. The mucamo accompanying me on his piebald pinto was outwardly a most unprepossessing creature, yet he was a helpful, cheery fellow, in great contrast to the usual surly workman of southern South America, and though only sixteen and scarcely able to read, he was by no means dull-witted. Apparently there was not a bird, a flower, or an animal which he did not know intimately, and he was supernaturally quick in catching sight or sound of them. Many were the new species he pointed out to me on that glorious half-day's ride.

Tacuarembó, in its lap of rolling hills, had long since disappeared behind us before my companion gave any indication that we were nearing our destination. At the door of an estancia house, with all the comforts reasonably to be expected in so isolated a location, I was met by "Pirirín," the son of a former minister to London and Washington, and brother of a well-known Uruguayan writer. His English was as fluent as my own, with just the scent of something to show that it was not his native tongue. An old woman brought us mate, and we sucked alternately at the protruding tube each time she refilled the gourd with hot water. The sun soon set across the rich loam country, which was here and there being turned up by plodding oxen,

and threw into relief the three cerros chatos, or flat-topped hills that give the region its nickname, and which suggest that the level of the country was once much higher before it was washed away into the sea by the heavy rains, which even now gave earth and sky such striking colors.

Next day "Pirirín" and I rode off through the Sunday morning sunshine across the immense estancia, the teruteru birds screaming a warning ahead of us wherever we went. The gauchos of the estate had been ordered to rodear, or round up, a large herd of cattle, and soon we came upon them riding round and round several hundred animals on the crest of a hillock. More than two hours of riding brought us to the almacén, or pulpería, the general store isolated out on the great rolling campaña that is to be found on or near every large estancia in Uruguay. As the day was Sunday, scores of gauchos of that half-bashful, laconic, yet self-reliant, independent air common to their class, ranging all the way from half-Indian to pure white in race, with here and there the African features bequeathed by some Brazilian who had wandered over the near-by border, rode up silently one after another out of the treeless immensity on their shaggy, unsophisticated ponies, and each throwing the reins of his animal over a fence-post beside many others drowsing motionless in the sun, stalked noiselessly into the dense shade of the acacia- and eucalyptus-trees about the pulpería, then into the store itself.

Most of them were in full regalia of recado, pellones, shapeless felt hat, shaggy whiskers, poncho. When on dress-parade the "Oriental" gaucho is indeed a picturesque figure. With few exceptions he still clings to the capacious bombachas, the primitive chiripá, the ballooning folds of which disappear in moccasin-like alpargatas, or into the wrinkled calfskin boots still called botas de potro, though the custom that gave them their name has long since become too expensive to be continued. These "colt boots" were formerly obtained by killing a colt, unless one could be found already dead, removing the skin from two legs without cutting it open, thrusting the gaucho foot into it,

and letting it shape itself to its new wearer. A rebenque, or short, stocky, one-piece leather whip hanging from his weather-browned wrist, a poncho with a long fringe, immense spurs so cruel that the ready wit of the pampa has dubbed them "nazarinas," a gay waistcoat, and last of all his flowing neck-cloth tied in a graceful négligé, the last word of dandyism in "camp" life, its color proclaiming the political party into which the wearer was born, complete his personal wardrobe. It is against the law to carry arms in Uruguay, yet every goucho or peon has his cuchillo in his belt, or carries a revolver if he considers himself above the knife stage. Then every horseman must have his recado, that complication of gear so astonishing to the foreigner, so efficient in use, with which the rural South-American loads down his mount. An oxhide covers the horse from withers to croup, to keep his sweat from the rider's gear; a saddle similar to that used on pack animals, high-peaked fore and aft, is set astride this, and both hide and saddle are cinched to the horse by a strong girth fastened by thongs passed through a ring-bolt. On the bridle, saddle, and whip is brightly shining silver; over the saddle quilts and blankets are piled one above the other, the top cover being a saddlecloth of decorated black sheepskin or a hairy pellón of soft, cool, tough leather; and outside all this is passed a very broad girth of fine, tough webbing to hold it in place. With his recado and his poncho the experienced gancho has bedding, coverings, sun-awning, shelter from the heaviest rain, and all the protection needed to keep him safe and sound on his pampas wanderings.

As they entered the pulpería the new-comers greeted every fellow-gaucho, though some two score were already gathered, with that limp hand-shake peculiar to the rural districts of South America, rarely speaking more than two or three words, and these so low as to be barely audible, apparently because of the presence of "Piririn" and me. For the rules of caste were amazing in a country supposed to be far advanced in democracy.

In theory the pulpero establishes him

self out on the campaña only to sell tobacco, mate, strong drink, and tinned goods from abroad; in practice these country storekeepers have other and far more important sources of income. They are usurers, speculators in land and stock, above all exploiters of the gaucho's gambling instinct. Along with his manana philosophy of life the countryman is fatalistic in temperament and passionately addicted to gambling. Thanks, perhaps, to the greater or less amount of Spanish blood in his veins, he will accept a wager on anything, be it only on the weather, on a child's toys, on which way a cow will run, on how far away a bird will alight, on whether sol ó numero ("sun or number" corresponding to our "heads or tails") will fall uppermost at the flipping of a coin. Indeed, there are evidences that the gaucho's love of gambling is even stronger than his love for women. This makes him easy prey to the pulpero, who is usually a Spaniard, Basque, Italian, or "Turk," and often an unconscionable rogue utterly without any other ideal than the amassing of a fortune, yet who somehow usually grows rich at the expense of the peon and the gaucho's chief weakness instead of meeting violent death from the quick-tempered hijo del país, who despises yet fears him much as the Russian muzhik does the Jew.

There was a suggestion of our own cow-boys among the group that finally overflowed the pulpería, though the gauchos were less given to noisy rowdyism and had far more dignified courtesy.

In the evening, with the gauchos departed and the pulpería officially closed to the public, we added our bonfire to the sixteen others in honor of St. Peter and St. Paul which we could count around the horizon, and gathered about the table with the pulpero's family to play "lottery," a two-cent gambling card-game, until long after midnight. Late next morning "Piririn" carried me back in an arana, a rocking two-wheeled cart that did roughly resemble the spider it is named from, to Tacuarembó, where I caught the evening train for the Brazilian border and the continuation of my journey overland to Rio de Janeiro.

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