It Is Interesting To Know How These Old
Groves And Plantations Ever Came Into Existence In A Land Where At
That Time There Was Practically No Tree-Planting.
The first colonists who made their homes in this vast vacant space,
called the pampas, came from a land where the people are accustomed to
sit in the shade of trees, where corn and wine and oil are supposed to
be necessaries, and where there is salad in the garden.
Naturally they
made gardens and planted trees, both for shade and fruit, wherever
they built themselves a house on the pampas, and no doubt for two or
three generations they tried to live as people live in Spain, in the
rural districts. But now the main business of their lives was cattle-
raising, and as the cattle roamed at will over the vast plains and
were more like wild than domestic animals, it was a life on horseback.
They could no longer dig or plough the earth or protect their crops
from insects and birds and their own animals. They gave up their oil
and wine and bread and lived on flesh alone. They sat in the shade and
ate the fruit of trees planted by their fathers or their great-
grandfathers until the trees died of old age, or were blown down or
killed by the cattle, and there was no more shade and fruit.
It thus came about that the Spanish colonists on the pampas declined
from the state of an agricultural people to that of an exclusively
pastoral and hunting one; and later, when the Spanish yoke, as it was
called, was shaken off, the incessant throat-cutting wars of the
various factions, which were like the wars of "crows and pies," except
that knives were used instead of beaks, confirmed and sunk them deeper
in their wild and barbarous manner of life.
Thus, too, the tree-clumps on the pampas were mostly remains of a
vanished past. To these clumps or plantations we shall return later on
when I come to describe the home life of some of our nearest
neighbours; here the houses only, with or without trees growing about
them, need be mentioned as parts of the landscape. The houses were
always low and scarcely visible at a distance of a mile and a half:
one always had to stoop on entering a door. They were built of burnt
or unburnt brick, more often clay and brushwood, and thatched with
sedges or bulrushes. At some of the better houses there would be a
small garden, a few yards of soil protected in some way from the
poultry and animals, in which a few flowers and herbs were grown,
especially parsley, rue, sage, tansy, and horehound. But there was no
other cultivation attempted, and no vegetables were eaten except
onions and garlic, which were bought at the stores, with bread, rice,
mate tea, oil, vinegar, raisins, cinnamon, pepper, cummin seed, and
whatever else they could afford to season their meat-pies or give a
flavour to the monotonous diet of cow's flesh and mutton and pig.
Almost the only game eaten was ostrich, armadillo, and tinamou (the
partridge of the country), which the boys could catch by snaring or
running them down. Wild duck, plover, and such birds they rarely or
never tasted, as they could not shoot; and as to the big rodent, the
vizcacha, which swarmed everywhere, no gaucho would touch its flesh,
although to my taste it was better than rabbit.
The summer change in the aspect of the plain would begin in November:
the dead dry grass would take on a yellowish-brown colour, the giant
thistle a dark rust brown, and at this season, from November to
February, the grove or plantation at the estancia house, with its deep
fresh unchanging verdure and shade, was a veritable refuge on the vast
flat yellow earth. It was then, when the water-courses were gradually
drying up and the thirsty days coming to flocks and herds, that the
mocking illusion of the mirage was constantly about us. Quite early in
spring, on any warm cloudless day, this water-mirage was visible, and
was like the appearance on a hot summer's day of the atmosphere in
England when the air near the surface becomes visible, when one sees
it dancing before one's eyes, like thin wavering and ascending tongues
of flame - crystal-clear flames mixed with flames of a faint pearly or
silver grey. On the level and hotter pampas this appearance is
intensified, and the faintly visible wavering flames change to an
appearance of lakelets or sheets of water looking as if ruffled by the
wind and shining like molten silver in the sun. The resemblance to
water is increased when there are groves and buildings on the horizon,
which look like dark blue islands or banks in the distance, while the
cattle and horses feeding not far from the spectator appear to be
wading knee or belly deep in the brilliant water.
The aspect of the plain was different in what was called a "thistle
year," when the giant thistles, which usually occupied definite areas
or grew in isolated patches, suddenly sprang up everywhere, and for a
season covered most of the land. In these luxuriant years the plants
grew as thick as sedges and bulrushes in their beds, and were taller
than usual, attaining a height of about ten feet. The wonder was to
see a plant which throws out leaves as large as those of the rhubarb,
with its stems so close together as to be almost touching. Standing
among the thistles in the growing season one could in a sense _hear_
them growing, as the huge leaves freed themselves with a jerk from a
cramped position, producing a crackling sound. It was like the
crackling sound of the furze seed-vessels which one hears in June in
England, only much louder.
To the gaucho who lives half his day on his horse and loves his
freedom as much as a wild bird, a thistle year was a hateful period of
restraint.
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