It Did Not Seem So
At The Time, When In Any House On The Wide Pampas One Would Meet With
People Whose Lives And Characters Would Be Regarded In Civilized
Countries As Exceedingly Odd And Almost Incredible.
It was a red-letter day to us children when, about once a month, we
were packed into a trap and driven with our parents to spend a day at
Casa Antigua.
The dinner at noon was the most gorgeous affair of the
kind we knew. One of Mr. Royd's enthusiasms was cookery - the making of
rare and delicate dishes - and the servants had been taught so well
that we used to be amazed at the richness and profusion of the repast.
These dinners were to us like the "collations" and feasts so minutely
and lovingly described in the _Arabian Nights_, especially that dinner
of many courses given by the Barmecide to his hungry guest which
followed the first tantalizing imaginary one. The wonder was that any
man in the position of a sheep-farmer in a semi-barbarous land, far
from any town, could provide such dinners for his visitors.
After dinner my best time would come, when I would steal off to look
for Estanislao, the young native horseman, who was only too
enthusiastic about wild life and spent more time hunting rheas than in
attending to his duties. "When I see an ostrich," he would say, "I
leave the flock and drop my work no matter what it is. I would rather
lose my place on the estancia than not chase it." But he never lost
his place, since it appeared that no one could do anything wrong on
the estancia and not be forgiven by its master.
Then Estanislao, a big fellow in gaucho dress, wearing a red
handkerchief tied round his head in place of hat, and a mass or cloud
of blackish crinkled hair on his neck and shoulders, would take me
round the plantation to show me any nests he had found and any rare
birds that happened to be about.
Towards evening we would be bundled back into the trap and driven
home. Then, when the day came round for the return visit, Mr. Royd
would bundle his family into their "carriage," which he, without being
a carriage-builder or even a carpenter, had made with his own hands.
It had four solid wooden wheels about a yard in diameter, and upright
wooden sides about four or five feet high. It was springless and
without seats, and had a long pole to which two horses were fastened,
and Estanislao, mounted on one, would thrash them into a gallop and
carry the thing bounding over the roadless plain. The fat lady and
other passengers were saved from being bumped to death by several
mattresses, pillows, and cushions heaped inside. It was the strangest,
most primitive conveyance I ever saw, except the one commonly used by
a gaucho to take his wife on a visit to a neighbour's house when she
was in a delicate condition or too timid to ride on a horse or not
well enough off to own a side-saddle.
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