I Myself Can Bear Witness To The Fact That Even Strong Men Find It Hard To Walk A Mile After Spending Years In Equestrian Travel.

The native tells you that God formed your legs so that you might be able to sit on a horse rather than to walk with them.

A favorite expression with them is, "I was born on horseback."

Stone not being found on the pampas, these people generally build their houses of square sods, with a roof of plaited grasses - sometimes I have observed these beautifully woven together. Two or more holes, according to the size of the house, are left to serve for door and window. Wood cannot be obtained, glass has not been introduced, so the holes are left as open spaces, across which, when the pampa wind blows, a hide is stretched. No hole is left in the roof for the smoke of the fire to escape, for this to the native is no inconvenience whatever. When I have been compelled to fly with racking cough and splitting head, he has calmly asked the reason. Never could I bear the blinding smoke that issues from his fire of sheep or cow dung burning on the earthen floor, though he heeds it not as, sitting on a bullock's skull, he ravenously eats his evening meal.

If entertaining a stranger, he will press uncut joint after joint of his asado upon him. This asado is meat roasted over the fire on a spit; if beef, with the skin and hair still attached. Meat cooked in this way is a real delicacy. A favorite dish with them (I held a different opinion) is a half-formed calf, taken before its proper time of birth. The meat is often dipped in the ashes in lieu of salt. I have said the Gaucho has no chair. I might add that neither has he a table, for with his fingers and knife he eats the meat off the fire. Forks he is without, and a horn or shell spoon conveys the soup to his mouth direct from the copper pan. So universal is the use of the shell for this service that the native does not speak of it as caracol, the real word for shell, but calls it cuchara del agua, or water spoon. Of knives he possesses more than enough, and heavy, long, sharp-pointed ones they are. When his hunger is appeased the knife goes, not to the kitchen, but to his belt, where, when not in his hand, you may always see it. With that weapon he kills a sheep, cuts off the head of a serpent - seemingly, however, not doing it much harm, for it still wriggles - sticks his horse when in anger, and, alas, as I have said, sometimes stabs his fellow-man. Being so far isolated from the coast, he is necessarily entirely uneducated. The forward march of the outer world concerns him not; indeed he imagines that his native prairie stretches away to the end of the world.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 37 of 161
Words from 18623 to 19129 of 83353