These
latter are innumerable, and whatever may be their position in the
minds of Romanists in other lands, in South America they are distinct
and separate gods, and their graven image, picture or carving is
worshipped as such.
When religious questions have not arisen, life in those remote
villages has passed very pleasantly. The people live in great
simplicity, knowing scarcely anything of the outside world and its
progress.
At the Feast of St. John the women take sheep and lambs, gaily
decorated with colored ribbons, to church with them. That is an act
of worship, for the priest puts his hand on each lamb and blesses it.
A velorio for the dead, or a dance at a child's death, are
generally the only meetings beside the church; but, as the poet says:
"'Tis known, at least it should be, that throughout
All countries of the Catholic persuasion,
Some weeks before Shrove Tuiesiday comes about,
The people take their fill of recreation,
And buy repentance ere they grow devout,
However high their rank or low their station,
With fiddlling, feasting, dancing, drinking, masking,
And other things which may be had for asking."
Carnival is a joyous time, and if for only once in the year the quiet
town then resounds with mirth. Pails of water are carried up to the
flat roofs of the houses, and each unwary pedestrian is in turn
deluged. At other times flour is substituted, and on the last day of
the feast ashes are thrown on all sides. At other seasons of the year
the streets are quiet, and after the rural pursuits of the day are
over, the guitar is brought out, and the evening breeze wafts waves
of music to each listening ear. The guitar is in all South America
what the bag-pipes are to Scotland-the national musical instrument of
the people. The Criollo plays mostly plaintive, broken airs - now so
low as to be almost inaudible, then high and shrill. Here and there
he accompanies the music with snatches of song, telling of an exploit
or describing the dark eyes of some lovely maiden. The airs strike
one as being very strange, and decidedly unlike the rolling songs of
British music.
In those interior towns a very quiet life may be passed, far away
from the whistle of the railway engine. Everything is simplicity
itself, and it might almost be said of some that time itself seems
at a standstill. During the heat of the day the streets are entirely
deserted; shops are closed, and all the world is asleep, for that is
the siesta time. "They eat their dinners and go to sleep - and could
they do better?"
After this the barber draws his chair out to the causeway and shaves
or cuts his customer's hair. Women and children sit at their doors
drinking mate and watching the slowly drawn bullock-carts go up and
down the uneven, unmade roads, bordered, not by the familiar maple,
but with huge dust-covered cactus plants, The bullocks all draw with
their horns, and the indolent driver sits on the yoke, urging forward
his sleepy animals with a poke of his cane, on the end of which he
has fastened a sharp nail. The buey is very thick-skinned and would
not heed a whip. The wheels of the cart are often cut from a solid
piece of wood, and are fastened on with great hardwood pins in a most
primitive style. Soon after sunset all retire to their trestle beds.
In early morning the women hurry to mass. The Criollo does not break
his fast until nearly mid-day, so they have no early meal to prepare.
Even before it is quite light it is difficult to pass along the
streets owing to the custom they have of carrying their praying-
chairs with them to mass. The rich lady will be followed by her dark-
skinned maid bearing a sumptuously upholstered chair on her head. The
middle classes carry their own, and the very poor take with them a
palm-leaf mat of their own manufacture. When mass is over religion is
over for the day. After service they make their way down to the river
or pond, carrying on their heads the soiled linen. Standing waist-
high in the water, they wash out the stains with black soap of their
own manufacture, beating each article with hardwood boards made
somewhat like a cricketer's bat. The cloths are then laid on the sand
or stones of the shore. The women gossip and smoke until these are
dry and ready to carry home again ere the heat becomes too intense.
In a description of Argentine village life, I could not possibly omit
the priest, the "all in all" to the native, the temporal and
spiritual king, who bears in his hands the destinies of the living
and the dead. These men are the potentates of the people, who refer
everything to them, from the most trivial matter to the weightier one
of the saving of their souls after death. Bigotry and superstition
are extreme.
Renous, the naturalist, tells us that he visited one of these towns
and left some caterpillars with a girl. These she was to feed until
his return, that they might change to butterflies. When this was
rumored through the village, priest and governor consulted together
and agreed that it must be black heresy. When poor Renous returned
some time afterwards he was arrested.
The Argentine village priest is a dangerous enemy to the Protestant.
Many is the time he has insulted me to my face, or, more cowardly,
charged the school-boys to pelt and annoy me. In the larger towns the
priest has defamed me through the press, and when I have answered him
also by that means, he has heaped insult upon injury, excluded me
from society, and made me a pariah and a byword to the superstitious
people.
