The armies of most of these republics are divided into sections
bearing such blasphemous titles as "Division of the Son of God,"
"Division of the Good Shepherd," "Division of the Holy Lancers of
Death" and "Soldiers of the Blessed Heart of Mary." These are often
placed under the sceptre of the Sacred Heart of Jesus as the national
emblem.
Boys of seven and old men of seventy stand on the sidewalks selling
lottery tickets; and the priest, with black beaver hat, the brim of
which has a diameter of two feet, is always to be seen. One of these
priests met a late devotee, but now a follower of Christ through
missionary effort, and said: "Good morning, Daughter of the Evil
One!" "Good morning, Father," she replied.
The cemetery is one of the finest on the continent, and is well worth
a visit. Very few of Montevideo's dead are buried. The coffins of
the rich are zinc-lined, and provided with a glass in the lid. All
caskets are placed in niches in the high wall which surrounds the
cemetery. These mural niches are six or eight feet deep in the wall,
and each one has a marble tablet for the name of the deposited one.
By means of a large portable ladder and elevator combined, the
coffins are raised from the ground. At anniversaries of the death the
tomb is filled with flowers, and candles are lit inside, while a
wreath is hung on the door. A favorite custom is to attend mass on
Sunday morning, then visit the cemetery, and spend the afternoon at
the bull-fights.
NATIVE HOUSES AND HABITS.
Uruguay is essentially a pastoral country, and the finest animals of
South America are there raised. It is said that "Uruguay's pasture
lands could feed all the cattle of the world, and sheep grow fat at
50 to the acre." In 1889, when I first went there, there were thirty-
two millions of horned cattle grazing on a thousand hills. Liebig's
famous establishments at Fray Bentos, two hundred miles north of
Montevideo, employs six hundred men, and kills one thousand bullocks
a day.
Uruguay has some good roads, and the land is wire-fenced in all
directions. The rivers are crossed on large flat-bottomed boats
called balsas. These are warped across by a chain, and carry as
many as ten men and horses in one trip. The roads are in many places
thickly strewn with bones of dead animals, dropped by the way, and
these are picked clean by the vultures. No sooner does an animal lie
down to die than, streaming out of the infinite space, which a moment
before has been a lifeless world of blue ether, there come lines of
vultures, and soon white bones are all that are left.
On the fence-posts one sees many nests of the casera (housebuilder)
bird, made of mud. These have a dome-shaped roof, and are divided by
a partition inside into chamber and ante-chamber. By the roadside are
hovels of the natives not a twentieth part so well-built or rain-
tight. Fleas are so numerous in these huts that sometimes, after
spending a night in one, it would have been impossible to place a
five-cent piece on any part of my body that had not been bitten by
them. Scorpions come out of the wood they burn on the earthen floor,
and monster cockroaches nibble your toes at night. The thick, hot
grass roofs of the ranches harbor centipedes, which drop on your face
as you sleep, and bite alarmingly. These many-legged creatures grow
to the length of eight or nine inches, and run to and fro with great
speed. Well might the little girl, on seeing a centipede for the
first time, ask: "What is that queer-looking thing, with about a
million legs?" Johnny wisely replied: "That's a millennium. It's
something like a centennial, only its has more legs."
After vain attempts to sleep, you rise, and may see the good wife
cleaning her only plate for you by rubbing it on her greasy hair and
wiping it with the bottom of her chemise. Ugh! Proceeding on the
journey, it is a common sight to see three or four little birds
sitting on the backs of the horned cattle getting their breakfast,
which I hope they relish better than I often did.
A WAKE, AND HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN.
During my journey I was asked: Would I like to go to the wake held
that night at the next house, three miles away? After supper, horses
were saddled up and away we galloped. Quite a number had already
gathered there. We found the dead man lying on a couple of
sheepskins, in the centre of a mud-walled and mud-floored room. "No
useless coffin enclosed his breast," nor was he wound in either sheet
or shroud. There he lay, fully attired, even to his shoes. Four
tallow candles lighted up the gloom, and these were placed at his
head and feet. His clammy hands were reverently folded over his
breast, whilst entwined in his fingers was a bronze cross and rosary,
that St. Peter, seeing his devotion, might, without questioning,
admit him to a better world. The scene was weird beyond description.
Outside, the wind moaned a sad dirge; great bats and black moths, the
size of birds, flitted about in the midnight darkness. These, ever
and anon, made their way inside and extinguished the candles, which
flickered and dripped as they fitfully shone on the shrunken features
of the corpse. He had been a reprobate and an assassin, but, luckily
for him, a pious woman, not wishing to see him die "in his sins," had
sprinkled Holy Water on him. The said "Elixir of Life" had been
brought eighty miles, and was kept in her house to use only in
extreme cases.
