Devoured by the pariah dogs, the carrion hawks, and a
multitude of screaming black-headed gulls always in attendance. The
blood so abundantly shed from day to day, mixing with the dust, had
formed a crust half a foot thick all over the open space: let the
reader try to imagine the smell of this crust and of tons of offal and
flesh and bones lying everywhere in heaps. But no, it cannot be
imagined. The most dreadful scenes, the worst in Dante's _Inferno_,
for example, can be visualized by the inner eye; and sounds, too, are
conveyed to us in a description so that they can be heard mentally;
but it is not so with smells. The reader can only take my word for it
that this smell was probably the worst ever known on the earth, unless
he accepts as true the story of Tobit and the "fishy fumes" by means
of which that ancient hero defended himself in his retreat from the
pursuing devil.
It was the smell of carrion, of putrifying flesh, and of that old and
ever-newly moistened crust of dust and coagulated blood. It was, or
seemed, a curiously substantial and stationary smell; travellers
approaching or leaving the capital by the great south road, which
skirted the killing-grounds, would hold their noses and ride a mile or
so at a furious gallop until they got out of the abominable stench.
One extraordinary feature of the private _quintas_ or orchards and
plantations in the vicinity of the Saladeros was the walls or hedges.
These were built entirely of cows' skulls, seven, eight, or nine deep,
placed evenly like stones, the horns projecting. Hundreds of thousands
of skulls had been thus used, and some of the old, very long walls,
crowned with green grass and with creepers and wild flowers growing
from the cavities in the bones, had a strangely picturesque but
somewhat uncanny appearance. As a rule there were rows of old Lombardy
poplars behind these strange walls or fences.
In those days bones were not utilized: they were thrown away, and
those who wanted walls in a stoneless land, where bricks and wood for
palings were dear to buy, found in the skulls a useful substitute.
The abomination I have described was but one of many - the principal
and sublime stench in a city of evil smells, a populous city built on
a plain without drainage and without water-supply beyond that which
was sold by watermen in buckets, each bucketful containing about half
a pound of red clay in solution. It is true that the best houses had
_algibes,_ or cisterns, under the courtyard, where the rainwater from
the flat roofs was deposited. I remember that water well: you always
had one or two to half-a-dozen scarlet wrigglers, the larvae of
mosquitoes, in a tumblerful, and you drank your water, quite calmly,
wrigglers and all!
All this will serve to give an idea of the condition of the city of
that time from the sanitary point of view, and this state of things
lasted down to the 'seventies of the last century, when Buenos Ayres
came to be the chief pestilential city of the globe and was obliged to
call in engineers from England to do something to save the inhabitants
from extinction.
When I was in my fifteenth year, before any changes had taken place
and the great outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever were yet to come,
I spent four or five weeks in the city, greatly enjoying the novel
scenes and new life. After about ten or twelve days I began to feel
tired and languid, and this feeling grew on me day by day until it
became almost painful to exert myself to visit even my most favoured
haunts - the great South Market, where cage-birds were to be seen in
hundreds, green paroquets, cardinals, and bishop-birds predominating;
or to the river front, where I spent much time fishing for little
silvery king-fishes from the rocks; or further away to the quintas and
gardens on the cliff, where I first feasted my eyes on the sight of
orange groves laden with golden fruit amidst the vivid green polished
foliage, and old olive trees with black egg-shaped fruit showing among
the grey leaves.
And through it all the feeling of lassitude continued, and was, I
thought, due to the fact that I was on foot instead of on horseback,
and walking on a stony pavement instead of on a green turf. It never
occurred to me that there might be another cause, that I was breathing
in a pestilential atmosphere and that the poison was working in me.
Leaving town I travelled by some conveyance to spend a night at a
friend's house, and next morning set out for home on horseback. I had
about twenty-seven miles across country to ride and never touched a
road, and I was no sooner on my way than my spirits revived; I was
well and unspeakably happy again, on horseback on the wide green
plain, drinking in the pure air like a draught of eternal life. It was
autumn, and the plain as far as one could see on every side a moist
brilliant green, with a crystal blue sky above, over which floated
shining white clouds. The healthy glad feeling lasted through my ride
and for a day or two after, during which I revisited my favourite
haunts in the grounds, rejoicing to be with my beloved birds and trees
once more.
Then the hateful town feeling of lassitude returned on me and all my
vigour was gone, all pleasure in life ended. Thereafter for a
fortnight I spent the time moping about the house; then there was a
spell of frosty weather with a bleak cutting wind to tell us that it
was winter, which even in those latitudes can be very cold.
