When
hard pressed, is as clever as the gaucho knows himself to be.
CHAPTER VII
MY FIRST VISIT TO BUENOS AYRES
Happiest time - First visit to the Capital - Old and New Buenos Ayres -
Vivid impressions - Solitary walk - How I learnt to go alone - Lost - The
house we stayed at and the sea-like river - Rough and narrow streets -
Rows of posts - Carts and noise - A great church festival - Young men in
black and scarlet - River scenes - Washerwomen and their language - Their
word-fights with young fashionables - Night watchmen - A young
gentleman's pastime - A fishing dog - A fine gentleman seen stoning
little birds - A glimpse of Don Eusebio, the Dictator's fool.
The happiest time of my boyhood was at that early period, a little
past the age of six, when I had my own pony to ride on, and was
allowed to stay on his back just as long and go as far from home as I
liked. I was like the young bird when on first quitting the nest it
suddenly becomes conscious of its power to fly. My early flying days
were, however, soon interrupted, when my mother took me on my first
visit to Buenos Ayres; that is to say, the first I remember, as I must
have been taken there once before as an infant in arms, since we lived
too far from town for any missionary-clergyman to travel all that
distance just to baptize a little baby.
