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.
