Since the topic of the inner man appeals at least as much to the Uruguayan as to any other mortal, there are some very pleasant restaurants set in the midst of this land of eucalyptus. Perhaps the best and prettiest of these is one known by the very English name of the Tea Garden Restaurant. One of the chief peculiarities of the place is that tea is actually partaken of there from time to time, as the modern Oriental is beginning to accord this cosmopolitan beverage a recognised place by the side of coffee and his own native Yerba Maté.
At the Tea Garden Restaurant it is possible to lunch by the side of a lake, with ripening grape-bunches above to throw their reflections in the soup, and with the falling petals of orange-blossom floating daintily past the steaming cutlets, while the music of the ducks blends admirably with the clatter of the table weapons. With really good cooking and attentive service added to these side attractions, what more could one want!
But the proprietors of the restaurant are nothing if not enterprising. They give the wayfarer something even beyond an excellent meal. At the end of the repast each guest is presented with a ticket that entitles him to a free cab-ride to the tramway terminus. The idea is admirable. Nothing is wanting but the cabs! At all events, when I had concluded lunch there the surface of the fine avenue was innocent of any vehicle, and continued so until the walk to the car was accomplished. But the courtesy of the offer had been effectual, and a certain sense of obligation remained.
The bathing-places of Poçitos and Ramirez are akin in many respects to these inland resorts. By the side of the sea here are fewer blossoms and rather smaller eucalyptus groves, but a greater number of open-air restaurants and one or two quite imposing hotels. Indeed, Ramirez, the nearer of the two, is endowed with a really fine casino, that faces the shoreward end of the pier, and that has by its side the spacious and well-timbered public park.
Poçitos occupies the next bay, and is notable for its lengthy esplanade and for the very pleasant houses that give upon the semicircular sweep. This bay, moreover, is the first that has, so to speak, turned its back upon the river and has faced the open ocean. As a token, the waters are tinged with a definite blue, and the air holds a genuine sting of salt that rapidly dies away when passing up-stream away from here. To the Buenos Airen, who enthusiastically patronises the place, Poçitos is delightful, if for no other reason than the sense of contrast to his own surroundings that it affords him. Not that he has any reason to grumble at the river frontier of the rich alluvial soil, from out of which his fortunes have been built. But here, in place of the soft, stoneless mud, is bright sand, and genuine rocks, piled liberally all over the shore, that shelter crabs, and pools that hold fish of the varieties that refuse to breathe in any other but guaranteed salt water. So it is that the summer season sees the long rows of tents and bathing machines crowded and overflowing with the Uruguayans and the host of visitors from across the river.
Both Ramirez and Poçitos are within the range of the ubiquitous tramcar. But this very efficient service, not content with its excursion of half a dozen miles and more on the ocean side of Montevideo, runs in the opposite direction completely round the port bay, and performs the yet more important journey to Villa del Cerro, the small town that lies at the foot of the hill that is so closely associated with Montevideo and its affairs. A far shorter route to this latter place, however, is by the busy little steam ferry that puffs straight across the bay, and that starts faithfully at every hour, as promised by the timetable, although, if that hour coincides with the one specified, the event may be accepted as a fortunate accident.
Its most patriotic inhabitant could not claim loveliness for Villa del Cerro. The existence of the spot is mainly due to the presence of some neighbouring saladeros, or meat-curing factories, and thus the small town presents the aspects of the more humble industrial centres. There are two or three regular streets, it is true, that contain a few houses with some faint pretensions to importance. Upon the balconies of these the local señoritas are wont to gather of an evening. They are obviously a little starved in such matters as romance, and a little fearful lest their eye language should lose its eloquence through too long a disuse. Thus the advent of any passing stranger whatever suffices to cause a certain flutter and excitement in the balconies above.
Outside these main streets the pattern of the town has been left much to the discretion of its most lowly inhabitants. Buildings composed of unexpected material sprout up from the earth in unexpected places. Earth, boards, tin, and fragments of stone are amongst the commonest of these, although there are a certain number, stiffened by bricks, whose comparatively commonplace exterior looks smug and respectable by the side of the rest.
Mounting upwards, the architecture of the outskirts comes as something of a relief, since its simplicity is crude and absolute to the point of excluding any jarring possibilities.
The ranchos here are composed of nothing beyond loose fragments of rock piled one on top of the other, with an odd hole here and there that serves for window or door, frequently for both.
At one point in the midst of these primitive stone dwellings a small group of scantily clothed boys are playing football, the implement of their game being an old sheepskin rolled into the nearest imitation to a globe to which its folds will consent and held together roughly with string—one more instance of the spreading triumph of football, that wonderful game that seems to conquer its surroundings and to implant itself firmly throughout the world entire.
The turf slopes of the Cerro itself are all about one now. From the distance they had appeared of an unbroken green, but when actually approached the broken patches of bare rock upon their surface become evident. The last of the stone shanties are not only contrived upon one of these, but constructed from the very site upon which they repose. The result is a difficulty to distinguish between the natural rock and the habitable flakes.
The short turf of the wind-swept Cerro is innocent of blossoms save for the ubiquitous verbena, a few stunted tobacco flowers, and some other lowly blooms. Upon the very summit, where the rock breaks out boldly and piles itself in jagged heaps, is a picturesque fort, from the midst of whose walls of solid masonry rises the dome of the light that guides the ships into the harbour below.
The panorama that opens itself out from this point is not a little remarkable. On the one side lies the bay of Montevideo, thickly dotted with its steamers and sailing vessels, with the towers and streets of the capital spreading far inland upon the opposite shore. Beyond this, again, are the undulations of the hills, the coastline, and the ocean that shines brilliantly, although it is only dimly blue. On the other hand stretches the River Plate, whose waters are deepening their yellow as they extend towards the landless horizon, beneath which lies Buenos Aires and Argentina.
The Cerro guards the entrance to the great river. It is the first true hill upon its banks—and the last, for over a thousand miles. For the next of its kind signals the approach to Asuncion—beyond Argentina and far beyond the Banda Oriental—in far-away Paraguay. And much water flows between the tropical heat of Asuncion and the cool freshness of this Cerro. Therefore the place is worthy of mark as the southernmost of the two widely separated sentinel hills that guard such different climes.
CHAPTER XIV
FROM MONTEVIDEO TO THE NORTHERN FRONTIER
Leaving Montevideo—General aspects of the Campo—The Rio Negro as a line of demarcation—Growing exuberance of the scenery—Flor morala—Blue lupin—Camp flowers—A sparsely populated countryside—Absence of homesteads—A soft landscape—Humble ranchos—Cattle and horses—Iguanas and ostriches—Deer—Cardoso—Influence of climate and marriage upon the colonists—A cheese-making centre—A country of table-lands—A Campo load—Some characteristics of the way—A group of riders—Some contrasts—A country of rocks—Stone walls—Crude homesteads—Kerosene tins as building material—"Camp" stations—The carpets of blossom—Piedra Sola—Tambores—Landscape and nomenclature—Increase in the height of the table-lands—Scenes at a country station—Aspects of the inhabitants—Some matters of complexion—The train and its transformation—Influence of the country upon the carriages—Northern passengers—Metropolitan and local costume—Some questions of clothes and figure—Relations between mistresses and maids—Democratic households—A patriarchal atmosphere—Things as they seem, and as they are—Conversation no guide to profession.
A journey from south to north through the heart of Uruguay reveals an infinitely greater variety of landscape and humanity than is suspected by the dwellers in the better known littoral districts of the land. It is true that for the purpose the employment of the homely and convenient railway train is essential. Although it has been my good fortune to drive for day after day and for league upon league through lesser areas of the Uruguayan Campo, to cover such a lengthy stretch as this by means of coach and horses is only possible for him who can afford the supreme luxury of ignoring time.
The first portion of the journey, moreover, although far from wearisome in the circumstances, is effected across a landscape almost every league of which presents the exact replica of its neighbours. Once clear of the woods, fields, vineyards, orchards, and flowers that lie so pleasantly to the landward side of Montevideo, the rolling grass waves of the Campo come to stretch themselves from horizon to horizon, rising and dipping with a ceaseless regularity of sweep until it becomes difficult to believe that the entire world itself is not composed of these smiling folds of land.
It is not until nearly three hundred kilometres have been traversed, and the train has rumbled over the long bridge that spans the Rio Negro that the first symptoms of a changing scenery become evident. The undulations have become less regular, and the hill-tops are soaring higher into the sky-line. Indeed, the tendency throughout is towards an exuberance that has been hitherto lacking. Thus not only the outbreaks of stone that scar the hill-faces at intervals are bolder in character now, but the wealth of field flowers, too, has grown in extent and brilliance.
A broad, glowing bank of the purple flor morala lines the railway track on either hand, pricking across the landscape in twin unbroken bands of colour. Where the loftier flower ceases, the red, white, and mauve of the verbena clings closely to the turf. At longer intervals sprout clumps of blue lupin blossom, while the white mallows, harebells, and tobacco flowers lurk thickly in between the groves of thistle, and large yellow marguerites and daisies mingle with a variegated host of blooms.
The countryside is as sparsely populated as elsewhere. League upon league of the great rolling sweeps of the land spread their panorama unflecked by a single homestead. So far as the mere picturesque is concerned, the result is admirable. The soft, dreamy landscape is at its very best when unburdened by human habitation. Yet in such cases the picturesque becomes a luxury won at the expense of the practical. Undoubtedly from the green background of the pastures should shine out the white walls of estancia-houses and ranchos. The time is now probably near enough when such will actually be the case; but in the meanwhile the land waits in complacent patience, sprouting out its grassy covering with contemptuous ease.
Yet it must not be imagined that the landscape, however lonely, is altogether deserted. Now and then may be discerned the clump of trees that stand out like islands from the sea to shelter the dwellings of the owners of these great areas of soil. At long intervals, too, springs up a hedge of tall cactus that flanks the humble rancho, whose tin roof, as often as not, is held down in its place by means of small boulders—a feature of architecture that recalls the châlets of Switzerland, although it is certain enough that the respective buildings have nothing else in common.
Here and there graze the dumb supporters of the homesteads—herds of cattle, troops of horses, and flocks of sheep. These districts of the centre have not yet attained to the standard of breeding that characterises the lands that fringe the great rivers to the south and west. Thus, the cattle, although sufficiently fat and sleek, lack the finish of the more aristocratic Hereford. Shaggy of coat, long of horn, and exhibiting an utter lack of restraint in the strangely varied colour scheme of their bodies, they are essentially of the criollo, or native, order.
In the neighbourhood of these licensed occupiers of the pastures are others whose existence is more precarious. These are hares who race away at the advent of a train, and iguanas whose long tails stream behind them as they depart in a flurry. As for the ostriches, they have obviously come to the conclusion that their life is too short and their neck too long for any excitement of the kind. They are plainly bored by the advent of this noisy invention of man, and regard it languidly from the height of the two long legs that repose in a supercilious attitude.
On through the undulating Campo, where the rain pools lie like dew ponds upon an English South Down, and where the banks of the intermittent streams of the cañadas thread in and out of the green grass for all the world like the bodies of black snakes. A company of deer are feeding peacefully in the distance, intermingled with the bulky members of a herd of cattle with whom the wild creatures have condescended to associate for the time being.
The train has pulled up at Cardoso now, the centre of a district that is considerably more populous than the majority. The place was once the site of a German colony, and indeed the sole reasons why it does not remain so to this day must be laid at the doors of climate, surroundings, intermarriage, and the influence of all three. As it is, chastened by the all-powerful atmosphere of the spot, Teutonic features, customs, and language have already become modified almost to the extinction of the original type.
The phenomenon affords only one more of the innumerable instances of the tremendous power of absorption that is latent in the South American continent. In contrast to the mutability of all things intrinsically human, the industry of the community remains the same as when the first colonists, strangers and foreigners, introduced it to the spot. Cheese-making is still the staple trade of Cardoso, and the district is not a little famed for the art.
This particular neighbourhood, however, is to be noted for something of more enduring importance than cheese. It is here, indeed, that the soil of the land, after many tentative swellings, each more ambitious than the last, takes upon itself to change its outline in a determined and conclusive fashion. The universal, gentle swell of the undulations has given way to steeper walls of green surmounted by curiously level, flat surfaces. Thus the face of the Campo is now dotted, so far as the eye can reach, with a collection of table-lands, each separate and differing slightly from the rest in the details of its pattern, but each marvellously distinct and clearly cut. The feature is characteristic of central northern Uruguay, and is continued well beyond the frontier into Brazil.
Obeying the sociable instinct that so frequently links the railway line with the highway in these parts of the world, the main road runs close alongside the locomotive track. Where it goes the dark, rich soil gleams moistly in every dip, and each cup in the land holds its pool, for heavy rains have preceded the brilliant sunshine of the day.
For many leagues the broad surface of the way has been broken by nothing beyond the inevitable attributes of such thoroughfares—the occasional pathetic heap that stands for the dead body of a horse or cow, or the bleaching framework of bones that gleam out sharply after the vultures' and caranchos' feast. But here at length comes a body of riders, half a dozen Gauchos, enveloped in ponchos of various patterns, who are pricking onwards at the easy canter that renders the conquest of any space whatever a question of mere time.
Thudding over the hill-tops, splashing through the mud-holes below, the progress of the grim, silent centaurs is as inevitable and certain as the presence of the knives at their belts or the maté-bowl slung by the saddles. Then the train has sped ahead, dragging after it a world of its own as remote from the atmosphere that surrounds the six diminishing horsemen as is the clank of the engine from the light jingling of the silvered bridles.
The crop of stone upon the land has become more prolific. The rock has come to adorn the sides of the table-lands more especially, breaking out with precision at the spot where each slope of the green eminences starts out abruptly from the level, after which it continues, unbroken, to the summit. The material, however, has been made to serve for purposes of utility, and here and there are corrals and walls of loosely piled stones, a novel sight to one who is working his way upwards from the south.
The scarce ranchos, however, continue on much the same pattern that has characterised them throughout the journey. The crudeness of many of these is scarcely to be excelled in any part of the world. To imagine an edifice composed of the lids and sides of kerosene tins, roofed and finished off at the odd corners by straggling tufts of reed, is to picture the abode of by no means the most humble settler.
One or two are embellished, it is true, by a rough trellis work from which the vine-leaves hang thickly, while others are decorated by nothing beyond a variety of multi-coloured garments that hang out in the sunshine to dry. Clustered together, the modest homesteads would appear sordid and mean. As it is, the open solitudes of which each stands as the human centre lend it a certain dignity that is not in the least concerned with the pattern of the structure itself.
The train has halted at a couple of small "Camp" stations, and has puffed onwards again, leaving the respective brick buildings, with their scatter of outhouses, to sink back into the lethargy that the passenger train disturbs but for a few minutes every other day. In the neighbourhood of Achar, the latter of these halts, the surrounding country has broken out into an exceptional blaze of flower. The purple of the flor morala stains hillsides entire; the scarlet verbena glows in spreading patches that from a distance might well be mistaken for poppy-fields, while all about are other flower carpets of yellow, blue, and white.
The wealth of blossom continues unbroken as far as Piedra Sola, or Solitary Stone—a spot aptly named from a curious square block of rock that reposes upon the top of a mound in so monumental a fashion that it is difficult to believe that it is the work of Nature rather than of human beings—and beyond it, adorning a country that grows ever bolder until Tambores is reached.
All the attributes in these primitive parts savour of Nature and of its simplicity. The very nomenclature is affected by this influence. Thus no historical significance is to be looked for in the name of Tambores—drums. The origin of the word lies in the surrounding table-lands that have grown loftier and more accentuated here than their brethren to the south, and whose shape resembles not a little the instruments of war.
Tambores is a place of comparative importance. It is true that no architectural beauties are to be looked for at the spot, since the quaint collection of edifices that are scattered in the neighbourhood of the station are almost without exception the tin and reed structures common to the district. Such rare exceptions as exist, moreover, hold out merely minor claims to aristocracy in the shape of an entire sheet or two of corrugated iron. Yet these modest precincts guard a really important cattle and wool centre, and even now many hundreds of bales are lying in readiness in their wagons, while cattle stamp impatiently in the trucks that will bear them southwards to Montevideo.
Passing to and fro by the honeysuckle hedge that flanks the platform is a motley collection of folk. The majority of the men are in sad-coloured ponchos, and in bombachos that frequent staining has imbued with an earthy hue. In addition to the railway officials, beshawled women, children, dogs, and hens complete the gathering. A feature that is especially noticeable here is the number of dusky complexions that have come to assert themselves in the midst of the fresh-coloured Uruguayan faces. Quite distinct from the swarthiness of the Indian, the tint here savours undoubtedly of the African. It becomes, moreover, steadily more marked as the Brazilian frontier is approached.
Indeed, the evidence of variety is everywhere. Even the conventional aspect of the train itself and of its passengers has undergone no little alteration since the start. As it pulled out from Montevideo the train was undoubtedly a model of its kind that took no little pride in its well-ordered level line of day coaches, and sleeping and restaurant cars.
Once well out into the country, however, the democratic influence of the land has overcome its patrician make-up. A passenger coach or two has dropped away at one station; some trucks and goods-vans have been added at another, until its appearance has become as heterogeneous as that of a Uruguayan volunteer soldier in a revolution. In fact, the farther from the capital it gets and the nearer to its destination, the more négligé and doubtless practical does its appearance become. Like to a man who starts out for a walk on a hot summer's day, it is metaphorically trudging along bareheaded, with its coat slung over its shoulder.
In the case of the passengers the same may be said without the apology of metaphor. It is in the occupants of the first-class coaches that the transformation is most evident. Many of the men remain in at least portions of the same clothes of metropolitan cut that served them in Montevideo. But ponchos have now been brought out and donned to hide what lies beneath—ponchos of fine texture, these, that stand quite apart from the meaner drapings of the peon, but nevertheless essentially national and of the land.
As for the women, the few who have remained constant to the train since the beginning of the journey remain in much the same trim as when they first entered the carriage. The persistence may be due to the vanity that is alleged by man to be inherent in woman, or merely to the laudable desire of giving the country cousin an object-lesson in costume.
It must be admitted that the garments of these latter tend to comfort somewhat at the expense of appearances. The loosest of blouses, wraps, and skirts are wont to make up a figure in which a waist may at times be suspected, and even occasionally hoped for, but is never seen. Decidedly the procedure savours of rigid honesty on the part of the country cousin. For frankly to promise nothing is surely more admirable than the transient advertisement achieved by the manufacture of merely temporary space in the position rightfully sought for by superfluous material.
Many of these country ladies with the honest and unaccentuated figures are accompanied by their maids, these latter for the most part negresses. The bond between mistress and maid is very close here. Indeed, in Northern Uruguay such episodes as a "month's warning," a demand for an extra "night out," the right to "followers," and all other similar bones of contention that arise in more populous centres between employer and employed are unknown.
Here the maid, whether she be negress, mottled, or white, obtains an assured, if minor, footing in the family circle. Not only her love affairs but her appetite will call forth the ready sympathy of her mistress. Seated together, their meals will be shared in common, as indeed is occurring in the case of sandwiches and wine in the railway carriage even now. To complete the patriarchial atmosphere, the railway guard has joined one of the groups in question in order to assist, purely platonically, at the impromptu meal, and his manner is equally courteous towards señora and maid.
It is certain that he who travels in the remoter parts must put aside all preconceived notions of degree and appearances. Close by is seated a group of young men who are discussing the opera in Montevideo with critical fervour. After a while the conversation, as is inevitable, turns upon politics, and the arguments and views are bandied to and fro with the eloquence common to the race.
But there is original philosophy here, whether sound or otherwise. Schemes for alleviating the lot of the humble worker follow hard upon the heels of topics of municipal reform, parliamentary procedure, and the vexed and intricate question of where the Uruguayan-Argentine frontier floats in the broad dividing river. The phrases are wonderfully apt, the proposals astonishingly daring. During a pause in the political discussion one of the debaters explains his own walk in life. He is a jeweller's assistant. Another is head waiter in a Montevidean hotel. These products of the land are undoubtedly bewildering. Each has been talking like a prime minister.
CHAPTER XV
FROM MONTEVIDEO TO THE NORTHERN FRONTIER
—continued
A remarkable transformation in Nature—The Valley of Eden—The gateway of the garden—An abrupt descent—From bare plain to sub-tropical forest—Picturesque scenery—Eden station—Some curiosities of nomenclature—Beggary as a profession—The charity of the Latin lands—The cliffs of the valley—Varied aspects of the vegetation—The everlasting sweet pea—Some characteristics of the mountains—A land of tobacco—Negro cultivators—Appearance and dwellings of the colonial population—Some ethics of climate and customs—Tacuarembo—A centre of importance—A picturesque town—Scenes at the station—Some specimens of local humanity—A dandy of the Campo—The northern landscape—The African population—Nature and the hut—The tunnel of Bañada de Rocha—Paso del Cerro—On the Brazilian border—Rivera—A frontier town—Santa Ana—The Brazilian sister township—A comparison between the two—View from a neighbouring hill—The rival claims to beauty of the Uruguayan and Brazilian towns.
Tambores has been left behind, and the train is speeding once again through the undulations and table-lands of the pastures. Although the new-comer is unaware of the fact, the climax of the journey is drawing near, and one of the most remarkable transformations in Nature is about to reveal itself with the suddenness of a pantomimic stage-shifting.
That the stranger to the land should remain unaware of what lies before him is not surprising. The rolling downs have encompassed him in unbroken sequence from the moment that the outermost suburb of Montevideo was left behind. They are about him now, sinking and rising until their smooth green sweeps upwards in long waves against the blue horizon. Never was a fresher, blowier country, with its every inch open and bare to the sunlight and breeze. It is difficult to imagine such a land rubbing shoulders with a landscape less frank and guileless. Its only fitting boundaries are white cliffs, and, beyond them, the wide ocean.
Yet if Nature aspired to human ideals of consistency the hills would go hopping to many a queer tune. After all, it is best to leave it to arrange its surprises in its own way. The first symptom of a coming change is afforded by the appearance of a growth that has remained a stranger to the landscape until now. Rock plants, with thick, heavy, silver leaves and snowy blossoms rise up thickly of a sudden to whiten the ground. Then without warning the train is speeding downwards through the rock walls of a cutting that seems to have opened out from the ground at the call of an Open Sesame steam-whistle. Two or three hundred yards of a steep descent that makes a precipice out of the stone side on either hand, then a rapid widening of the barrier to the view—and the thing is done! The train has entered the Valley of Eden.
Just as Adam in his fig-leaf gasped in dismay at his eviction from the garden, so does the modern traveller in boots and buttons exclaim in surprise as he passes through the stone gateway of this later Eden. The two or three hundred yards have made an incredible memory of the open downland. In its place are rugged cliffs to right and left, at the base of which dense sub-tropical forest sends its waves upwards to cling to the stone sides as far as they may.
In the centre of the valley is a stream that goes rippling over its rocky bed, overhung with a curtain of flowering trees that hold strange nests within their branches, and the festoons of the lianas that plunge thickly downwards towards the earth. The scene, in fact, holds all the enthusiastic variety of the sub-tropics. Nothing is wanting to the picture. The rock, leaves, flowers, palms, and the vivid patches of smooth green by the edge of the stream have as accessories the turkey-buzzards and black vultures carving their lazy circles above, and the brilliant host of butterflies beneath that float airily to and fro as though to outflash even the wonderful feathers of the local woodpecker.
The train, as though itself entirely taken aback by these new aspects of Nature, has been proceeding at little beyond human walking pace. Now it has drawn up by the side of a modest building and a few surrounding huts that are almost smothered in the verdure. Eden station! The sight of the place is far less incongruous than the sound. As a matter of fact the valley itself is well named. No spot could better endow with its glamour the simple life that endures until the inevitable boredom leads to the death of innocence. Nevertheless, the railway company should reserve special accommodation for the garden. Let the traveller proceed to Margate or Southend as he likes. But a third-class ticket to Eden! The thing is inconceivable, yet it is done every day.
The advent of the train, however, affords a harvest to at least one inhabitant of this secluded and fair corner. An aged negro, who was undoubtedly born a slave across the Brazilian frontier, is slowly hobbling the length of the train collecting toll from the passengers as he goes. In South America are two professions that stand apart from all the rest. Failing the status of a millionaire, become a beggar by all means! As regards a profitable occupation, not one of the intermediate walks of life can equal the extremes at the social poles. That of politician is perhaps nearest akin to both; but, intrinsically, the phrase is transitory, since a rapid absorption at one end or the other is practically inevitable.
The aged negro is collecting his dues with grave complacency. A general dealer in receipts, his profits are by no means restricted to mere cash. Business in centavos is amazingly brisk; but so are the transactions in cigarettes, cigars, fruit, and morsels of food. Ere the train starts the benignity has grown deep upon the old man's face. When the place is lonely and still once more he will totter back to his tiny reed hut, with its insignificant patch of maize, and will smoke, and eat, and drink, in senile enjoyment of the lengthy holiday that separates his tri-weekly half-hours of work. He may thank the God of beggars that he was born in a Latin land.
The train is moving onwards once again, and the bold grey cliffs and bluffs recede as the valley widens. Although the first full beauty of the scene has lost by the expansion, the wealth of colour remains. The forest trees for the most part are flecked with brilliant yellow, while the surface of the swamps that now cover the centre of the valley are thickly spangled with the pure white of their own broad blossoms.
But an attempt to describe the various growths would be the task of a botanist. One alone must be described for its striking propensities if for nothing beyond. In all directions are bushes of glowing mauve flower—or, at least, so they appear at the first glimpse to the eye. The sight is not a little amazing, since many of the shrubs, a dozen feet in height, are covered from top to bottom with an unbroken coat of petals. A nearer inspection solves the mystery some while after. The flower itself is a parasite, an everlasting sweet pea, that goes the length of concealing from sight the bush on which it depends.
In the meanwhile the valley has widened until the well-defined cliffs that hemmed in its beginning have disappeared altogether. But the country remains entirely distinct from the open Campo that preceded the gate of Eden. There is pasture here, it is true, but it is pasture broken and intersected by woodland, river courses, ravines, and mountains. It is curious to remark that among the latter, although many are bold and lofty, there is not a peak to be met with. In obedience to what appears to be a hard-and-fast law of the hills, the top of each is shorn evenly across, leaving a flat and level summit.
The country is one of tobacco now as well as of maize, and the aspect of the cultivators coincides to a great extent with the popular notions of the mise en scène of the tobacco-fields. The population of the tiny mud huts that decorate the land is almost entirely negro, and the inevitable piccaninny is much in evidence, having apparently escaped in shoals from the London music-hall stage. The costume of the younger boys, however, would scarcely pass muster in a more conventional neighbourhood. The sole garment of many of the younger ones consists of a shirt, and a very frayed one at that—a costume that is eminently suitable to the palm-tree, but criminal beneath the oak.
The next halt is at a place of importance, one of the chief features, in fact, of the Far North. Tacuarembo numbers a population of almost eight thousand, which, although the figure may not impress the outer world, renders the spot something of an urban giant in the neighbourhood. As though to compensate for its lack of imposing buildings, Tacuarembo is exceedingly picturesque. With its avenues of tall trees, and its houses peering everywhere from beneath the shade of an unusual richness of vegetation, the place is sufficiently delightful and striking in its own fashion.
The station itself gives the keynote to the aspects of the place. Within half a dozen yards of where the white steam goes hissing upwards from the engine the green young peaches hang in thick clusters from their branches. To their side is a hedge of blossoming roses that continues until the flowery architecture changes abruptly to a wall of golden honeysuckle. At the rear of this, surrounding the outer yard of the place, are poplars and eucalyptus, while the heavy scent of the purple paraiso-tree overpowers the fainter colours of the mimosa.
A dozen or so of the local "coches" are waiting in the shade of all these and in that of the vines that clamber upwards by their side. They are crude affairs, whose lack of paint and polish is more than counteracted by the dictatorial attitudes of the brigand-like drivers who lounge at ease upon the boxes. It must be admitted that the manners of these latter are far less formidable than their appearance. Indeed, they smile far more graciously than the corresponding metropolitan tyrants of South America as they drive off one by one, bearing away their patrons beneath the shady avenues.
The majority of folk, however, remain for some while to chat together, since in these parts the railway station is an accepted centre of sociability. The queer medley of the crowd possesses its own charm. A group of officers in dark uniforms and red kepis rub shoulders with Gauchos and peones in dark clothes and black or blue bombachos. Beyond is a knot of women in the homely and loose costume of the district, bare-headed, and with hair drawn tightly back to be wound into a plain knot at the back of the head. An elaborate dandy, dressed ostentatiously in the favourite black from head to foot, is extracting a few centavos from the pockets of his shining velvet waistcoat with which to endow a couple of dissolute-looking beggars who have drawn near.
Although the jet-black faces of the negroes and the browner tints of the half-castes are much in evidence, the countenances of the true Uruguayans remain remarkably fair and fresh. Indeed, the features of many are unusually handsome, and curiously untouched by the stress of heat and climate.
Perhaps the most striking of all in the neighbourhood is the tall figure of one who has detached himself from a group of friends, and is walking toward where a line of tethered horses is waiting. Like the other who has been distributing alms to the beggar, he is clad from head to foot in black. Nevertheless, the aspects of the two are as different as night and day. The one is a walker of the streets, this latter a true lord of the Campo. Unmistakably a landed proprietor of no little consideration, his costume affects the Gaucho to a marked degree. With scarf wound negligently round his neck, loose jacket, and broad bombachos, the spotless black of the finest material is finished off by the light boots of the man whose life is spent in the saddle. In his hand the rebenque—the inevitable riding-whip—glistens with its silver carving, a work of art.
None could deny the coquetry of his appearance; but this is the stern coquetry of the warrior and hunter, as a glance at his grave, rather hawklike features will confirm. A strikingly handsome figure of a man, he stalks with assured tread, raising his sombrero with a simple gesture to acquaintances, until he reaches the spot where the line of horses are tethered. His mount is a magnificent bay, whose leathers and bridle are silvered as thickly as they may be and yet remain flexible, while the saddle and stirrups are heavily coated with the same material. He has swung himself into the saddle now, and is riding away, forcing his horse with consummate ease into a series of curvets and caracoles that evoke admiration even from the numerous professional centaurs in the crowd. But the rider never once looks back as he swings away in the shade of the trees. The romantic figure is either unconscious of admiration or too accustomed to the tribute to be concerned. In any case, he is a product of the land, a veritable paladin.
To the north of Tacuarembo are grass hills overshadowed by the inevitable tall table-lands. Where the rock juts out from the side of these the fronds of many varieties of fern sprout thickly, and by their sides are clumps of evening primrose, everlasting pea, and a wealth of far more brilliant blossoms of the tropical order. In the hollows the vegetation of the wooded streams grows ever more luxurious, and here the flowers star the banks in the wildest riot of profusion.
Seeing that it is springtime, all this is as it should be. But there cannot be many parts of the world whose inhabitants are permitted such a striking reminder of the season as is the case just here. In the neighbourhood of one of these enchanting streams is a very humble mud hut. Its dwellers are pure Africans, and they are just without, enjoying a sun-bath with all the zest of the race.
But the interest of this particular spot is not concerned with them at all; it is centred upon the modest homestead itself. The mud walls have responded in an amazing fashion to the call of the year. Not content with a background of lichen and moss, they have flung out lengthy streamers of fern, from amidst which peer shyly the blossoms of various plants. Obedient to the impulse of spring, each of the four sides has garbed itself thus. In less exuberant parts the effect would be strained for with toil and achieved with triumph. But here the black inhabitants regard their eloquent house as a matter of course.
Just after leaving the small station of Bañada de Rocha is a tunnel. This fact may appear totally unworthy of mention—anywhere else but within the countries bordering on the River Plate. Here a tunnel is an object to be paused at, and to be inspected with not a little curiosity. Although it is possible that some minor burrowings may exist, to the best of my belief the three republics of Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay can count no more than two regular tunnels between them. The wonderful shaft bored through the heart of the Andes is one—the other is before us here at Bañada de Rocha. As the only specimen of its kind in Uruguay, therefore, it is not without distinction, and is worthy of at least a passing remark.
After passing through the tunnel the line drops down into a fairly wide plain, hemmed in by numerous low ranges of the inevitable flat-topped hills, while a few elevations of the same curious nature dot the country in the nearer neighbourhood of the track. In a short while, however, the more broken country has surged up all about once again, bearing upon its surface quaint rocky projections, some shaped exactly as tables, others in the form of sugar-loaves, while yet others resemble giant mushrooms sprouting cumbrously from the soil.
Ere reaching the station of Paso del Cerro a great grove of carolina-trees rises majestically, and in the grateful shadow of the branches a long line of bullock-wagons, each vehicle loaded with the wool for which the region is noted, goes winding its way towards the station in the stolid fashion of such processions. Paso del Cerro is delightfully situated, facing as it does a range of hills whose surface is dotted with ranches that appear picturesque enough in the distance. Beyond this point lofty cliffs of rock soar aloft, pressing near to the line. In the nooks and crannies of the great walls are dwarf trees of fantastic shapes that make pleasant breaks here and there in the bare rock of the surface.
A little farther on the colour of the soil begins to undergo a transformation, and soon the red sandstone—the colour that is typical of the same, as well as the more northern, latitudes in the surrounding republics—is stretching everywhere to join with the green in dominating the landscape. A few more wayside stations, and then Rivera and the Brazilian frontier are drawing near, while the mountain ranges that mark the Brazilian territory are already in sight.
Rivera is a town of no little local importance, small though its extent may be as it nestles in a hollow in the midst of the hills. The soft pink of its buildings and the red of its roads and hillsides contrast delightfully with the green foliage and brilliant flowers with which the spot is so liberally endowed. Rivera, moreover, is a place that can lay claim to some quite notable characteristics of its own. It possesses, for instance, a magnificent avenue, the Sarandi, that stretches for over a mile, shaded by trees for all its length, from off the central portion of which lies the pretty little plaza.