nm rn-' 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 A HATCHMENT
 
 A HATCHMENT 
 
 BY 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GRAHAM 
 
 LONDON 
 
 DUCKWORTH tif CO. 
 
 3 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
 
 
 TO 
 
 WALTER B. HARRIS 
 
 OF TANGIER 
 
 EXPLORER, WRITER AND FRIEND 
 
 518320 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 PREFACE 
 
 There is a something almost indecent, as it 
 were, in setting forth all a man thinks and feels, 
 without an explanation or at the least a prelude 
 of some sort. A fencing master goes through 
 the salute, a jockey takes a preliminary canter, 
 even divines resort to incantations of some kind 
 or other before they fall a-preaching, and when 
 a speaker starts with " Mr. Chairman, Ladies 
 and Gentlemen " and the farrago that goes to 
 herald forth a speech, that is his preface. 
 
 Now, preludes, prefaces and explanations are 
 of the nature of a stalking horse, by means of 
 which writers may approach their readers on 
 their blind side. If a man writes a treatise 
 upon aviation, or astronomy, he naturally has 
 no false shame, for no one writes upon such 
 matters without full knowledge, and it is ten to 
 one he knows a hundred times more of them 
 than does the man who reads. If by mischance 
 the writer on the subjects I have named makes
 
 X PREFACE 
 
 a mistake of detail, he is easily excused, and 
 no one thinks himself aggrieved. 
 
 Upon the other hand, a man who writes 
 from his own imagination should he chance to 
 err in taste (a fault that even critics sometimes 
 fall into) or fail in interesting, make but the 
 slightest slip in grammar or in style, he is held 
 as one accursed. 
 
 Only a poet gets worse treatment, for he, if 
 he should happen to turn out a genius, is 
 straightway worshipped, almost held a god ; 
 but if he fail, or if he only should attain mere 
 excellence, all those who read him, although 
 most likely they never wrote a line of verse in 
 all their lives (or even decent prose), treat him 
 as if he had insulted all their female relatives, 
 was a stealer of the sacrament, and had sinned 
 against the Holy Ghost. This possibly is just 
 as it applies to poets, for when they are really 
 great they make humanity feel small, and to a 
 degree the same applies to every writer who 
 comes before the public with something of his 
 own, I mean something that no one else in the 
 whole world could possibly have written, let it 
 be good or bad.
 
 PREFACE xi 
 
 In a way no writer can complain. Suppose 
 Columbus after all the coil he made, and after 
 all the months that he had bothered both the 
 Catholic kings, when they, as they conceived 
 it, were occupied before Granada, in the most 
 important matter in the world, had sailed away 
 upon the proceeds of Queen Isabella's jewels, 
 and had returned again, having found nothing 
 but a waste of water, just like eternity, with 
 no end or beginning, what would the world 
 have said ? 
 
 There was no standard in those days by 
 which to judge Columbus, and there is none 
 to-day, or ever will be one (as far as I can see), 
 by which to measure writers, except they 
 write on history, or mathematics, or compile 
 biographies. 
 
 This being so, writers have no ground of 
 complaint If they are weighed by a different 
 metric system to that by which they weigh 
 themselves. All they can do Is to write some 
 kind of preface or another for their own satis- 
 faction, and to explain themselves ... to them- 
 selves, for naturally no one pays any attention 
 to anything they write.
 
 xii PREFACE 
 
 When a friend comes up for election at a 
 club we do not go about saying he is a 
 swindler and a rogue (that would be action- 
 able and hence immoral) ; but very quietly, 
 after having said we hope that Jones will be 
 elected, drop a black bullet in the urn. The 
 same thing happens to a writer, and his 
 friends and critics straightway fall upon him, 
 frequently not because of anything he writes, 
 but from political, religious, or from social 
 prejudice, just like a hundredweight of bricks. 
 
 Therefore, why after all should any writer 
 take the trouble to write a preface to his work ? 
 I take it that it is, as it were, an involuntary 
 action, just as some men, as brave as lions, 
 never can fire a gun without first closing both 
 their eyes. 
 
 Writers there are who are so far removed 
 above their fellow-men, either by talent, social 
 position, or by an aptitude for golf or politics 
 (for these things weigh with critics just as 
 much as style, or as originality), that they are 
 shut off in a tower of brass, and quite invulner- 
 able. 
 
 Let these write on, conscious that everything
 
 PREFACE xiii 
 
 they pen will be approved of; but the rout of 
 scribblers always should have some little thing, 
 such as a preface or the like, on which the 
 critics may take off the keen edge of their wit, 
 just as in times gone by in low-class schools 
 they served the suet pudding out before the 
 meat. 
 
 I pen this foreword, not that I hope in any 
 way it may avert misapprehension, for that I 
 know is sure, but because in a mameluke bit, 
 in the high port, are not infrequently put several 
 little rings ... so that the horse may champ 
 upon them. 
 
 R. B. CUNNINGHAME GrAHAM.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 A Hatchment . 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 Los Indios 
 
 
 
 
 . 19 
 
 A Retrospect . 
 
 
 
 
 • 34 
 
 El Rodeo 
 
 
 
 
 • 50 
 
 Upwards 
 
 
 
 
 . 69 
 
 A Moral Victory 
 
 
 
 
 . 81 
 
 BiSMILLAH 
 
 
 
 
 94 
 
 Mist in Menteith 
 
 
 
 
 104 
 
 The Pass of the River 
 
 
 
 
 114 
 
 Anastasio Lucena 
 
 
 
 
 131 
 
 A Page of Pliny 
 
 
 
 
 144 
 
 The Beggar Earl 
 
 
 
 
 183 
 
 A Belly-God 
 
 
 
 
 195 
 
 Falkirk Tryst . 
 
 
 
 
 212 
 
 Loose and Broken Men . 
 
 
 
 
 223 
 
 At Sanchidrian 
 
 
 
 
 241
 
 A HATCHMENT 
 
 The house, covered with creepers, and roofed 
 with slabs of old grey stone, kept In their place 
 by ridges of cement that looked like surf upon 
 a beach that had become congealed, was only 
 cut off from the churchyard by a wall. 
 
 The wall was built of yellowish stone, and, 
 as the slabs upon the roof, was so much 
 weathered that it looked like leather. Out 
 of the crevices sprung pellitory and valerian. 
 
 So close were house and church that on a 
 summer afternoon from the low-arched front 
 door the voices of the congregation singing 
 ** Rock of Ages " seemed to blend with the 
 humminor of the insects in the trees. 
 
 Manor and churchyard were as near to one 
 another as life is to death, only a step divided 
 them. 
 
 At the first glance you saw the house had 
 long been lived in by men rooted in the soil. 
 It had an air of being cut off from the world,
 
 2 A HATCHMENT 
 
 although the entrance-gate opened upon the 
 little village street. 
 
 Still, when you passed through the gate, and 
 came to a flagged path between two pillars, 
 each surmounted by a ball, you felt that you 
 had come into an older life. 
 
 Certainly the house itself stood far removed 
 from railways, and in years gone by you 
 reached it either by a road that ran on windy 
 downs and overlooked the sea, or by one 
 through fields with an infinity of gates. 
 
 These gates I have got down to open scores 
 of times, in the last thirty years, from a high 
 dog-cart, in sunshine and in snow, in rain and 
 in a south-west gale. You had to keep them 
 open with a stone, and if the wind blew fresh 
 they not infrequently shut to and grazed the 
 wheel. The roads were poorly kept and 
 flinty, and twisted in and out, now between 
 hedges, all blown sideways by the prevailing 
 south-west winds, till they had become a sort 
 of mat of vegetation, hollow upon one side, 
 and then came out into lush fields, or ran 
 through copses, so that the world seemed 
 almost remote, as in the Hebrides. 
 
 All this gave the peculiar feeling as of 
 becoming, as it were, marooned, when you had
 
 A HATCHMENT 3 
 
 closed the entrance-gate behind you, and come 
 tino the grounds, with their old mulberries, 
 their golden yew, and the half-dozen flower- 
 beds, set with geraniums and begonias. 
 Things that you never noticed in the outside 
 world became important, and you felt instantly 
 you were identified in some strange way with 
 the old mansion house, and that the affairs of 
 those who owned it had in some manner now 
 become your own. 
 
 Over the gable of the porch, set in cement, 
 was a rough pot of earthenware. It stood a 
 little leaning towards the churchyard, either 
 as a perpetual memento mori to the dwellers in 
 the house, or as a perpetual reminiscence of the 
 carelessness of the masons who in the past 
 had set it in its place. 
 
 You passed into the house through a front 
 door, upon one side of which was a round hole 
 cut in the masonry, just like a leper-squint in 
 an old church, designed in times gone by to 
 reconnoitre those who entered, and if required 
 to fire upon them, if they appeared unfriends. 
 
 The hall was dark, paved with grey flags, 
 and set about with animals and birds, all 
 badly stuffed, and dusty and decayed. A 
 smell of damp mixed with the scent of gun-
 
 4 A HATCHMENT 
 
 oil and of honey, of stale tobacco and of 
 lavender, greeted your nostrils when you 
 opened the front door. This smell, peculiar 
 to the house, became not disagreeable when 
 you were used to it. 
 
 I shall remember it always, and if by chance 
 something recalls it to me, the old house rises 
 in my mind. Its blackened pictures, furniture 
 with little trains of dust below them showing 
 where the worms had been at work upon the 
 softer portions of the wood, its cold stone 
 floors, its creaking stairs that bent and cracked 
 and seemed to be about to break as you 
 walked up them, and the mysterious noises 
 as of footfalls, in the night, on the dark 
 passages, made it a fitting habitation for the 
 men who lived in it. 
 
 As those who live in them mould houses to 
 their own tastes, giving them the stamp of 
 their own idiosyncrasies, so does a house 
 influence its owners, and put its mark upon 
 them. 
 
 If this is so, most certainly the manor-house 
 had set its mark upon the lady who owned it, 
 when I first knew the place, now nearly forty 
 years ago. 
 
 Left widowed early in her life, with three
 
 A HATCHMENT 5 
 
 small children to bring up, and in a place such 
 as was the old manor-house, which fostered 
 prejudices, secluded as it was in its deep valley 
 far from the world, she had become, as it were, 
 a squire in petticoats, gentle and kindly as to 
 exterior but strong and resolute in the con- 
 duct of affairs. 
 
 Her dress was of no fashion in particular, but 
 such as gentlewomen have worn with little 
 change for the last fifty years in country places. 
 Her hair, parted in the middle of her head 
 and drawn down rather low about the ears, 
 had not a single silver thread in it, though she 
 had long passed middle age. The villagers — 
 half agriculturists, half sailors and poachers 
 to a man — adored, but stood in awe of her, and 
 when they met her in the lanes, saluted her, 
 with the old-fashioned wave of the right arm, 
 doubling the right hand backward up against 
 the chest and extricatino^ it below the chin 
 with the palm upwards in the air. 
 
 Kindness was in the marrow of her bones, 
 but yet a kindness tempered with judgment, so 
 that few of the villagers imposed upon her, 
 though she was always ready to come to their 
 assistance, if her help was required. Progress 
 she looked at just a litde bit askance, which
 
 6 A HATCHMENT 
 
 was but natural in her position, as it was new 
 to her, and generally took the form of uproot- 
 ing some old custom which in her eyes was 
 beautiful, and putting nothing in its place. 
 
 Still the advance of education was as great a 
 source of satisfaction to her as the decline of 
 courtesy in speech, a cause of pain mixed with 
 some not unnatural wonder that the increase of 
 learning seemed to bring in its train a corre- 
 sponding falling-off in manners and in kindli- 
 ness. 
 
 Faith she was plentifully endowed with, 
 not to the exclusion of good works, for if a 
 woman was about to be confined or a man fell 
 from a ladder, she turned her household upside 
 down in her anxiety to send them soups and 
 jellies, and bottles of port wine. 
 
 Herself the daughter of a clergyman, she 
 had by right of birth a sort of left-handed 
 interest in church government, in the same way 
 a captain's daughter may think she has an 
 innate gift for navigation, though in her case 
 her theory if it is put in practice may lead to 
 serious results. 
 
 On Sundays, seated in the chancel — for the 
 manorial pew was in the precincts usually kept 
 sacred for the choir — she listened to the service
 
 A HATCHMENT 7 
 
 with a rapt air, joining most conscientiously 
 in the responses, which in those days were 
 muttered rapidly by all the congregation, 
 headed by the clerk. 
 
 Old-fashioned hymns, such as the long- 
 forgotten '* Oh, refresh us, travelling through 
 this wilderness," sung usually to a dull grinding 
 tune, were her especial favourites. She found 
 them as she said more satisfying than the more 
 modern ones, and more appropriate. The 
 church in which she worshipped, and which 
 stood so near her house, was a small Norman 
 edifice, plain, but not quite devoid of blunt 
 architectural beauty, with its pointed arches 
 and its Elizabethan monuments, over one of 
 which were hung the helmet, gauntlet, and a 
 great jingling spur that once belonged to the 
 dead warrior who kneeled in alabaster at the 
 right-hand corner of the tomb. 
 
 The Creed and Ten Commandments were 
 set up on each side of the altar, the words finely 
 set forth in great white lettering, so that the 
 wayfaring man although a fool need not err on 
 the path toward salvation, if he had learned to 
 read. Death took the lady of the manor, in 
 her old painted bed-chamber adorned with 
 scenes drawn by a wandering Dutch artist,
 
 8 A HATCHMENT 
 
 setting forth men going out hunting, all riding 
 rather leggy horses and followed by their hounds. 
 
 She died as she had lived, occupied to the 
 last minute of her life with parish duties, her 
 Infant school, and with the cares of her estate. 
 The villagers mourned her sincerely, feeling 
 they had lost a friend. 
 
 Her family laid her to rest beneath the flag- 
 stones of the chancel, on which during her life- 
 time her feet had rested for so many Sundays, 
 as she sat listening to the sermon, with her 
 head turned a little sideways, so as not to miss 
 a word. 
 
 Her son — after he had given up the sea and 
 returned home from South America, where he 
 had acquired a Spanish, which, as a friend in 
 reply to his mother's question If he spoke the 
 language just like English, answered ''exactly" — 
 had settled down in the old house. Once settled, 
 to the surprise of everyone, he manifested the 
 same kind of Interest as had his mother in the 
 affairs both of the parish and the church. 
 
 Nothing but the advent of a new vicar with 
 High Church ideas ousted him from the 
 chancel, and when the Ten Commandments 
 and the Creed were taken down, when he was 
 away from home, and put up in a corner, he
 
 A HATCHMENT 9 
 
 had them back again, remarking, with a 
 Spanish oath or two, ''we are all Protestants." 
 I had not thought during the many years we 
 spent together in South America that Protes- 
 tantism was very present to his mind ; but after 
 all it must have, as it were, lain dormant, as 
 grains of wheat found in Egyptian tombs, 
 when put into congenial soil, have fructified 
 and taken root after a thousand years. 
 
 The old house had claimed him, and from 
 henceforth there were to be no more wild rides 
 on the south Pampa, no nights in boats lying 
 outside the mouth of rivers on the Gold Coast, 
 for my friend. England is full of country 
 houses, houses in which the family has spent 
 its manhood for generations only to keep the 
 roof watertight and the garden weeded, and yet 
 their owners have passed adventurous years of 
 youth abroad, and now sit waiting, as it were, 
 for the last Tally-ho, and judging poachers on 
 the Bench. Not that my Protestant ex-partner 
 thouo^ht his lot a hard one, or that he ever 
 shirked his duty either in the hunting-field or at 
 Quarter Sessions, for he was, as he might have 
 said himself, " dog-game," and besides was 
 sustained by the gift of humour, that gift which 
 next to faith makes life endurable.
 
 10 A HATCHMENT 
 
 So when he stood, bound in his hat and 
 hosen, and with top-boots on, at his own 
 door, waiting for his horse, watching the rain 
 descend and churn the gravel paths, he used 
 to say, " Fancy a man who sat so many 
 miserable nights herding stock out upon the 
 plains doing this sort of thing for fun." 
 
 At Quarter Sessions he must have intro- 
 duced an air almost of the outside world, 
 according to the story which he used to tell of 
 an exploit of his own. "You see, old man," 
 he said, '' there was a silly devil of a labourer, 
 somewhere by Litton Cheney, who had some 
 row or other with his wife. Perhaps she 
 nagged at him — God knows ! — anyhow the fool 
 went and jumped down a well. When he got 
 there" — this he said just as if the man had 
 gone upon a journey — '' there was about five 
 feet of water in the place. 
 
 ** His courage failed him, and he halloaed 
 out for help, and someone heard him yelling, 
 and went and fetched a rope. They got him 
 out, and charged him with attempting suicide. 
 
 *' Some of those fellows on the Bench took 
 quite a serious view of it. Plug-headed idiots, 
 if they'd seen as many horse thieves hung as 
 we have — eh what, eh ? but they began to jaw.
 
 A HATCHMENT n 
 
 One duffer wanted to send the poor brute off 
 to the Assizes, and it looked as if the rest were 
 going to agree, though one or two stood out. 
 
 '' Then up got a sort of writing-fellow, lived 
 near Dorchester, used to come out occasionally 
 with the Catstock, reins in a bunch, you know, 
 longish hair, that sort of thing, no seat, not a 
 bad sort of man. He began talking nineteen 
 to the dozen about the inalterable right a 
 fellow has to control his destiny. . . . My 
 God, quoted Marcus Aurelius to the Bench 
 . . . if a fellow has a smoky house, you 
 know . . . fancy that sort of chat to a lot of 
 men who had been at public schools, and 
 never knew a word of Latin in their lives. 
 Good, eh, what ? 
 
 "Well, he was just getting up their backs. 
 I saw old Lord Debenham putting on the 
 kind of face that he has when he reads the 
 lessons in Debenham Church ; so I chipped in, 
 first time I'd ever said anything . . . last, too, 
 for that matter, and I said let's look at the 
 thing in a reasonable way. 
 
 " ' This four-storied fool didn't know he was 
 committing any crime ; what he did comes 
 under the Trespass Act. . . . Yes, eh, tres- 
 passing in another fellow's well. Fine him a
 
 i^ A HATCHMENT 
 
 shilling.' The writing- man was mad, but I 
 grabbed him by the coat-tails, and old Lord 
 Debenham's face relaxed a bit. Rest of the 
 beaks laughed . . . and I paid the shilling, and 
 gave the man another, and told him he had 
 most awful luck, and would have to go back to 
 his wife." 
 
 These exercises or sports kept my friend 
 in good health without laying too great a tax 
 upon his intellectual powers, and left him time 
 to devote himself to the furthering of evangelical 
 Christianity throughout the neighbourhood. 
 The vicar, who had removed the symbols of 
 our faith from their position guarding the 
 altar, as Gog and Magog guarded the Guild- 
 hall, soon moved his squire to wrath, for the 
 familiar black o^own was no more seen on 
 Sunday, nor were a good half-dozen collects 
 used before the sermon was begun. His mis- 
 doings culminated when choral service was 
 introduced, and the word *' Vicarage " was 
 painted on the gate. 
 
 Seated one evening in his smoking-room, 
 which contained relics of his life in South 
 America, such as a pair of bolas hung between 
 two prints of stage-coaches stuck in the snow, 
 a silver-headed whip, and a lazo neatly coiled
 
 A HATCHMENT 13 
 
 and carefully greased, "You see," he said, 
 " I like to keep the thing in order, though you 
 can get no ostrich grease to soften it, in this 
 God-forsaken place," he told how he had 
 got the better of the vicar, and forced him to 
 resign. The room was low, and as the grate 
 had always smoked since it was first put in, 
 and the green wood required a world of paper 
 and attention to keep it going, the ceiling was 
 as black as is the top of an Indian's teepee, 
 or as a Gaucho's hut upon the plains. The 
 prints, chiefly of houses in the county, looked 
 as^'if they had been executed in a mist, and 
 on the bookshelves, when you took down the 
 Black Assize or Camden's Britannia (both, of 
 course, in folio), your fingers left their impress, 
 in the dust of years, upon them. 
 
 After having had the workmen in, to pay 
 their wages, treating them just as he would 
 have treated privy councillors, asking them to 
 be seated, and handing them his own tobacco 
 pouch, he launched into his tale. 
 
 *'01d man," he said, "that vicar was too 
 much, a regular Jesuit, auricular confession, and 
 all that sort of thing. I had to bolt him.'* 
 He spoke as if the clergyman had been a 
 rabbit. *' What do you think I did? Eh,
 
 14 A HATCHMENT 
 
 what ? I got the Yellow Van down . . . cost 
 quite a lot of money, camped it outside his 
 gate ..." Vicarage ' painted on it, ugh ! I 
 used to go and listen to the rot they talked. 
 Enough to make a brass monkey sick . . . 
 regular four-storied, magnolia-scented, gilt- 
 edged rot. Still, the fellow wouldn't go . . . 
 got his off-stirrup, as you may say, and settled 
 in his seat. 
 
 '' People did begin to look a little shy of him, 
 but still he stuck to it, sulking at the bottom of 
 the hole. 
 
 '' Then I had a brilliant inspiration, and got a 
 dozen or two of the Priest's Manual on Con- 
 fession — that's what they call the damned 
 thing, I think — and gave 'em out all round 
 the villao^e : that had the desired effect. The 
 villagers, you remember there were a beastly 
 lot of Baptists amongst them, never went near 
 the parish church, but still hated the idea of 
 the confessional and all that sort of thing, used 
 to call their children, and bano- the doors in his 
 face when the vicar walked down the street. 
 
 " He stood it for a month and then resigned. 
 Now I've got a fellow, so to speak, of my own — 
 Welshman, I think he is — a rotten preacher, 
 not a bad sort of chap, and quite a Protestant."
 
 A HATCHMENT 15 
 
 Years passed, and by degrees my friend grew 
 more confirmed in all his habits, if possible 
 kindlier to all his servants and dependents, 
 but more disposed to show himself a cynic in 
 his dealings with the world. 
 
 To the last he thought he was a Liberal, 
 but in reality no one could possibly have 
 been more thoroughly conservative, but 
 not reactionary in regard to politics. In 
 literature and science he always kept abreast 
 of all new movements to the last day of his 
 life. 
 
 Little by little the old manor-house fell into 
 decay, for narrow circumstances always pre- 
 vented him from doing more than what he 
 called "scraping along the bottom," and by 
 degrees one room after another became un- 
 tenantable. The first to go was one of the 
 old painted chambers, over which the roof 
 bulged in so ominously that no one could be 
 found willing to occupy the room. Damp 
 gained upon the house, and in the little room 
 just on the right hand of the porch, which once 
 had been a sort of boudoir, the paddle fell 
 from the Indian maiden's hand, of the wax 
 model of a Mexican canoe, piled up with 
 vegetables.
 
 i6 A HATCHMENT 
 
 Loneliness and seclusion from the world 
 drew a dark cloud over my friend's last years, 
 and he who had passed his life either at sea, or 
 on his horse upon the plains, sat the whole day 
 before the fire, reading and dozing in his 
 smoking-room. 
 
 With his death came the closing of the 
 chapter, and to-day the old house stands 
 tenantless, and the long line of gentlefolks who 
 once inhabited it is ended. 
 
 All of them now have taken the short journey 
 past the manor-house to the damp churchyard, 
 of which the passing bell during their lifetime 
 must so often have reminded them . . . though 
 they were not the kind of men whom death 
 ever intimidated. 
 
 Damp gathers on the cobwebbed windows 
 of the old stables, that stables towards which 
 they turned their steps each morning after 
 breakfast, almost with the air of one who goes 
 to church. 
 
 In the deserted kitchen garden, bindweed 
 climbs on the bushes, and groundsel has 
 usurped the vegetable beds ; only a row of 
 posts shows where the beehives once stood in 
 a well-ordered row. 
 
 If the ghost of my departed friend haunts the
 
 A HATCHMENT 17 
 
 old house, where he once lived, I see it just as 
 he was himself in life — short, active, dark, with 
 the thick, sleek hair that he preserved till the 
 last moment of his life, his eyes prominent, and 
 a little bloodshot in the corners, his hands small 
 and well-cared-for, and his feet disproportion- 
 ately large. 
 
 I think if ghosts can walk, that there can be 
 no reason that we can alleo-e aorainst their 
 riding, so I imagine that his shade stands 
 waiting at the door, until they bring his 
 shadowy horse for him to mount. There he 
 stands, muttering now and then, " Eh, what, 
 eh, a damned long time they take to saddle up 
 a horse," and then mounting him lightly in one 
 motion as we used to do upon the plains, rides 
 slowly up the hill till he arrives at the old 
 Knoll House on the hill that overlooks the sea. 
 There he dismounts, I fancy, and the horse 
 vanishes, whilst he, lighting an insubstantial 
 cigarette of ship's tobacco, sits down on the 
 fine grassy turf, that flows up to the founda- 
 tions of the ruined masonry, and gazes seaward, 
 drinking in the view that he most loved in 
 life. The wide expanse of down, nothing but 
 grass and sky, like the south Pampa, stretches 
 out to Portland Bill, 
 c
 
 i8 A HATCHMENT 
 
 The pebbly beach, on which the water goes 
 down sheer only a few yards from the edge, 
 runs like a serpent all along the coast, up to 
 the great lagoon of Abbotsbury. 
 
 Far in the offing fishing-boats dotted the sea 
 with their white sails, just as the swans dotted 
 the waters of the decoy. 
 
 All that he sees, and feels the fresh breeze on 
 his cheek, coming up from the south-west.
 
 LOS INDIOS 
 
 No one who has not lived upon the southern 
 Pampa in the days when a staunch horse was 
 of more value in time of trouble than all the 
 prayers of all the good men of the world, can 
 know how constantly the fear of Indians was 
 ever present in men's minds. 
 
 The Indiada of the old Chief Catriel was 
 permanently camped outside Bahia Blanca. 
 They lived in peace with all their neighbours ; 
 but on the sly maintained relations with Los 
 Indios Bravos, such as the Pampas, Ranqueles, 
 Pehuelches and the rest who, though they had 
 their Toldos out on the Salinas Grandes, and 
 dotted all the way along the foothills of the 
 Andes right up to the lake of Nahuel-Huapi 
 and down to Cholech^l, occasionally burst like 
 a thunder-cloud upon the inside camps, as 
 suddenly as a pa^itpero blew up from the 
 south. 
 
 All their incursions, known to the Gauchos 
 as malones, were made by the same trails. 
 
 J9
 
 20 LOS INDIOS 
 
 They either entered the province near the 
 town of Tapalquen, by the great waste between 
 the Romero Grande and the Cabeza del Buey, 
 or through the pass, right at the top of the 
 Sierra de la Ventana, the curious hill with the 
 strange opening in it, from which it takes its 
 name. 
 
 The terror and romance of the south frontier 
 were centred in the Indian tribes. When they 
 broke in amongst the great estancias of the 
 south, all but the chiefs riding upon a sheep- 
 skin, or without even that, carrying a lance 
 made of a bamboo, fifteen to twenty feet in 
 length, the point a sheep-shear, fastened to the 
 shaft by a piece of a cow's tail, or other bit of 
 hide wrapped round it green, then left to dry 
 till it became as hard as iron, and with a tuft 
 of horse-hair underneath the blade, looking 
 like a human scalp, the deer and ostriches all 
 fled in front of them, just as the spindrift flies 
 before a wave. 
 
 Each warrior led a spare horse, taught to 
 run easily beside him, and leave his hand free 
 for the spear. They rode like demons of the 
 night, their horses all excited by the fury of 
 their charge, leaping the small arroyas, chang- 
 ing their feet like goats upon a stony place,
 
 LOS INDIOS 21 
 
 and brushing through the high grasses with a 
 noise as of a boat crashing through reeds. 
 Now and again they struck their hands upon 
 their mouths to make their yells, a loud pro- 
 longed '*Ah, Ah, Ah — a — a," more wild and 
 terrifying. 
 
 Each warrior carried round his waist two or 
 three pair of bolas ; the two large balls hang- 
 ing on the left side, and the small hand-ball, 
 on the right, just resting on the hip. All had 
 long knives or swords, which as a rule they 
 shortened for convenience of carriage to about 
 the length of a sword-bayonet, wearing them 
 stuck between the girth and the skirt of the 
 saddle, if they should chance to have a saddle, 
 and if they had none, stuck through a narrow 
 woollen sash made by their women in the 
 Tolderias, worked in strange, stiff, concentric 
 patterns, bound round their naked waists. All 
 were smeared over with a coat of ostrich 
 grease, though never painted, and their fierce 
 cries and smell were terrifying to the Gauchos' 
 horses, making them mad with fear. Some 
 twenty paces in advance rode the cacique^ 
 sometimes upon a silver-mounted saddle, 
 choosing if possible a black horse to set it off 
 well, and with his silver reins, seven feet in
 
 22 LOS INDIOS 
 
 length, held high in his left hand as, spurring 
 furiously, he turned occasionally to yell out to 
 his men, grasping his spear about the middle 
 as he careered along. 
 
 To meet them thus, alone upon the plains, 
 say when alone upon a lazy horse, out looking 
 up strayed cattle, was an experience not easily 
 forgotten . . . and one which he who had it 
 remembered vividly, if he escaped their lynx- 
 eyed scouting, up to his dying day. 
 
 Your only chance, unless, as was unlikely, 
 you had 2. ping o "fit for God's saddle," as the 
 Gauchos said, was to alight, and having led 
 your horse into a hollow, to muffle up his 
 head in the folds of your poncho, to stop him 
 neighing, and keep as still as death. Then, 
 if you had not been perceived, and little on 
 the plains escaped an Indian's eye, you almost 
 held your breath, until the thunder of the 
 Indians' horses' feet had died away, and 
 mounting with your heart thumping against 
 your sides, cautiously stole up the hollow, and 
 getting off again, holding your horse by a long 
 rope, peeped stealthily over the brow to see if 
 all was clear. If out upon the plains you saw 
 the ostriches the deer or cattle running, or 
 dust arise without a cause, you had to get
 
 LOS INDIOS 23 
 
 back to the hollow and wait a little. Lastly, 
 when you were certain all had passed, you 
 drew the latigo of the hide-cinch, placing 
 your foot against the horse's side to get more 
 purchase, till he was like an hour-glass with 
 the strain. Then mounting, you touched him 
 with the spur, and galloped for dear life, till 
 you got to a house, shouting as you rode up 
 . . . ''Los Indios'' ... a cry which brought 
 every male Christian running to the door. 
 
 Quickly the tame horses would be driven up 
 and shut in the corral ; all the old arms loaded 
 and furbished up ; for, strange as it may sound, 
 the Gauchos of the south, although they were 
 exposed to constant inroads of the Indians, 
 never had anything but an old blunderbuss or 
 so, or a pair of flint-lock pistols, and those out 
 of repair. 
 
 The Indians themselves, having no arms 
 but spears and bolas, were seldom formidable 
 except out on the plain. A little ditch, not 
 five feet deep and eight or ten across, kept a 
 house safe from them, for as they never left 
 their horses, they could not cross it, and as 
 they came to plunder, not especially to kill, they 
 wasted little time upon such places, unless they 
 knew that there were young and handsome
 
 24 LOS INDIOS 
 
 women shut up in the house. " Christian 
 girl, she more big, more white than Indian," 
 they would say, and woe betide the unlucky 
 girl who fell into their hands. 
 
 Hurried off to the Toldos, often a hundred 
 leagues away, they fell, if young and pretty, to 
 the chiefs. If not, they had to do the hardest 
 kind of work ; but in all cases, unless they 
 gained the affections of their captor, their lives 
 were made a burden by the Indian women, who 
 beat and otherwise ill-used them on the sly. 
 
 Such were the Indians on the warpath, from 
 San Luis de la Punta, right down to Cholechel. 
 Stretches of " camp " now under corn were 
 then deserted or, at the best, roamed over by 
 manades of wild mares. 
 
 A chain of forts, starting upon the Rio 
 Ouinto and running north and south, was 
 supposed to hold the Indians in check ; but in 
 reality did little, as they slipped through to 
 plunder, quite at their own sweet will. The 
 mysterious territory known by the name of 
 " Tierra Adentro," began at Las Salinas 
 Grandes, and stretched right to the Andes, 
 through whose passes the Indians, by the help 
 of their first cousins, the Araucanians, con- 
 veyed such of the cattle and the mares they
 
 LOS INDIOS 25 
 
 did not want, to sell or to exchange for silver 
 horse-gear, known to the Gauchos by the name 
 of Chafalonia Pampa, and highly coveted as 
 having no alloy. 
 
 In type and habits there was little difference 
 between La Indiada Mansa of the Chief 
 Catriel and their wild brethren of the plains. 
 Both were a yellow coppery colour, not tall, 
 but well proportioned, all but their legs, which 
 were invariably bowed by their lives passed 
 on horseback from their youth. Both sexes 
 wore the hair long, cut square across the fore- 
 head and hanging down the back, and both 
 had rather flat and brutal faces, and all the 
 men had restless eyes, perpetually fixed on the 
 horizon as if they lived in fear. 
 
 Their beards were sparse, their constitutions 
 hardy, and men and women both went down 
 to the stream and bathed before the sun rose, 
 taking care to be prepared to pour a calabash of 
 water on the ground when the first rays appeared. 
 
 I see them now, coming back in a long 
 string from the water, and hear their saluta- 
 tion "Mari-Mari" as they passed dripping on 
 their way, their long black hair, lustrous and 
 heavy, hanging loose down their backs. 
 
 Tierra Adentro served the wilder Gauchos
 
 26 LOS INDIOS 
 
 for a sure refuge in their times of trouble, to 
 which to fly after some ''trouble" or another, 
 in which some man had lost his life, or to 
 escape from serving in some revolutionary- 
 force or any other cause. 
 
 Jose Hernandez, in his celebrated Martin 
 Fierro, has described how Cruz and his friend 
 took refuge with the Indians, and well do I 
 remember, for we all knew the whole book by 
 heart, taking my turn for a hundred lines or 
 so, round the camp fire, out on the Naposta. 
 The wood engraving, primitive and cheap, in 
 which Cruz and Martin were shown jogging 
 on at the Trotecito wrapped in their ponchos, 
 driving the tropilla ; and with the foal, looking 
 like a young camel, bringing up the rear, is 
 quite as well fixed in my memory as is the 
 picture of the Conde Duque, the Emperor 
 Charles the Fifth at Mulhouse, Las Hilanderas, 
 or any other work of art. 
 
 The line beneath it always impressed us, 
 and we all tried to get the last verses to re- 
 cite, so as to round up with the epic, " Al fin, 
 por una madrugada clara, viceron las ultimas 
 poblaciones," the poblaciones being, if I re- 
 member rightly, some low and straw-thatched 
 ranchos, surrounded by a ditch.
 
 LOS INDIOS 27 
 
 Their subsequent adventures are they not 
 set down with some proHxity in La Vuelta 
 de Martin? 
 
 The serious side of Tierra Adentro was in 
 the refuge it afforded to revolutionary chiefs. 
 The brothers Saa and Colonel Baigoiria held 
 a sort of sub-command for years, under the 
 great Cacique Paine, and to them came all 
 the discontented and broken men, whom they 
 formed into a kind of flying squadron, ranging 
 the frontiers with the Indians, as fierce and 
 wild as they. 
 
 All kinds of Christian women, from the 
 poor China girl, carried off like a mare from 
 an estancia^ to educated women from the 
 towns, and once even a prima donna, journey- 
 ing from Cordoba to Mendoza, were to be 
 found in that mysterious Inside Land. On 
 one occasion a lady carried off from San Luis 
 found herself about to be the prey of several 
 chiefs, who were preparing to settle matters by 
 a fight. 
 
 Throwing herself about Baigoiria's neck, 
 who happened to be there, she cried, '* Save 
 me, compadre,'' and he, after some trouble, took 
 her to his house. There he had several other 
 wives ; but white women, prisoners amongst
 
 28 LOS INDIOS 
 
 the Indians, were said never to quarrel, so that 
 they lived with a white man. Their fate with 
 Indians was not much to be envied, except as 
 in the case of the great Chief Paine, who for 
 ten years at least was ruled by a white girl he 
 took at the sack of an estancia, somewhere 
 near Tapalquen. 
 
 In the Arcadia of the Tolderias, especially 
 in those close by the apple forests of the Andes, 
 the life of those who dwelt in them must have 
 been a survival of another age, without a 
 parallel in all the world. 
 
 In North America, the Indian tribes all 
 had traditions of their own, a polity and a 
 religion, often complicated. 
 
 Amongst the Toldos of the Pampas, except 
 a perfunctory sun-worship and a most real faith 
 in the Gualichu, that evil spirit to which man- 
 kind in every age has paid at least as much 
 attention as to the principle of good, nothing of 
 old traditions had been left. They lived almost 
 exactly like the Gauchos, with the exception 
 that they grew a little maize, and fed on mare's 
 flesh, instead of beef. The Indian's toldo was 
 but little inferior to the Gaucho's hut. Most of 
 the Indians spoke a little Spanish. Both Indian 
 and Gaucho wore the same clothes (the Indians
 
 LOS INDIOS 29 
 
 when they could get them) in time of peace. 
 In time of war, they went about almost stark 
 naked, save for a breech-clout, and generally 
 the hat was, as it is to Arabs, the stumbling- 
 block, the Indians preferring to have their long 
 black locks well dressed with mare's grease, or 
 with ostrich oil, as a protection from the sun. 
 Their carelessness of life and their contempt of 
 death exceeded that even of their first cousins 
 and deadly enemies the Gauchos, of whom it 
 is said that one of them cominor to see his 
 friend, found him in the agonies of rheumatic 
 fever, and after having looked at him com- 
 passionately, said, ** Poor fellow, how he 
 suffers," and drawing out his knife took the 
 sufferer by the beard and cut his throat. 
 Cutting of throats was a subject of much joking 
 both amongst Gauchos and the Indians. 
 Amongst the former it was called to " do the 
 holy office," and a coward was said to be mean 
 about his throat if at the last he showed the 
 slightest fear. The agonies and struggles of a 
 dying man were summed up briefly, ''he put 
 out his tongue when I began to play the 
 violin " (i.e. with the knife), phrases and actions 
 which had their counterpart or origin amongst 
 the Indians.
 
 30 LOS INDIOS 
 
 I who write this have seen the Indian 
 children playing carnival, with hearts of sheep 
 and calves for scent bottles, squirting out blood 
 on one another in the most natural way. 
 
 At the rejoicings in the Tolderias, after a 
 successful malon or raid in some estancia, the 
 amount of mare's flesh that the Indians used to 
 eat was quite phenomenal. Some of them 
 hardly stopped to cook it, or at the best but 
 scorched it at the fire. Some ate it raw, drink- 
 ing the blood like milk, and when half drunk — 
 for cana was never wanting in the Toldos — and 
 well daubed over with the blood, it made one 
 wonder whether the chain connecting man 
 with the orang-outang had any link with 
 them. 
 
 Their choicest delicacy was the fat piece 
 along a young colt's neck ; this they ate always 
 raw, and I remember once having to taste it 
 in response to a compliment addressed me by 
 a young warrior, who yelling '' There's a good 
 Christian," thrust the fat dripping meat into 
 my unwilling hand. The effect was lasting, 
 and to this day I cannot look on a piece of 
 green turtle fat floating in the soup without 
 remembering the Indian delicacy. 
 
 Well, well, the Toldas, those on the edge of
 
 LOS INDIOS 31 
 
 the great apple forests of the Andes, and those 
 between Las Salinas Grandes and the Lago 
 Argentino, all are gone. All the wild riders 
 now ride in Trapalanda, the mysterious city 
 in which no Christian ever breathes his horse. 
 Over the treacherous Guadal the Vizcachera, 
 or through the middle of a Cangrejal, no more 
 wild horsemen gallop, certain to fall upon their 
 feet. If their horse step into a hole ; or if they 
 chanced to fail to land upon their feet, rise and 
 leap on from the off-side leaning upon their 
 spear. 
 
 No longer, on a journey, will they, as It 
 appeared without a cause, suddenly strike their 
 hands upon their mouths and yell, and then 
 when asked the reason, answer, '' Huinca, he 
 foolish ; Auca do that because first see the 
 sierra," as in the days of yore. 
 
 Round the Gualichu tree, no longer bands 
 from north and south will meet, and whilst 
 within its influence forbear to fio^ht ; even 
 refrain from stealing a fine horse during the 
 time they celebrate their medicine dance. In 
 separating, no Indian now will tear a piece 
 from off his poncho and stick it on a thorn ; 
 the tree was a Chailar if I remember right. 
 
 Men looking for strayed horses, sleeping
 
 32 LOS INDIOS 
 
 beside some lonely river no longer have to 
 shiver half the night on guard, and burn their 
 feet against the fire, placed in a hollow, dug 
 with their knives in the orreen turf, so as to 
 show no light, till it was time to saddle up and 
 march. 
 
 No one will travel, as I did with a friend, 
 now riding as I hope in some mysterious 
 Trapalanda of his own (fit for men of no faith, 
 but in good works), from Tapalquen down to 
 the Sauce Grande, passing no house that was 
 not burned and sacked, except a chance estancia 
 surrounded by a ditch and full of women and 
 of wounded men. We started with an alarm 
 of Indians at Tapalquen, the plaza full of men 
 all arming, and with wild-eyed and yelling 
 countrymen galloping in on foaming horses, 
 calling out ''Los hidios'^ what time the coman- 
 dante, seated in a cane-chair, sat taking 7?zat^ 
 as he passed his rough recruits in an extempo- 
 raneous review. 
 
 We camped on the Arroyo de los Huesos, 
 swam the Quequen Salado, buried a man we 
 found dead at Las Tres Horquetas, and after a 
 week's riding, through camps swept clear of 
 cattle and of mares, came to the Sauce Grande 
 just in time to take a hand in a brief skirmish
 
 LOS INDIOS S3 
 
 and see the Indians drive off the few remain- 
 ing horses in the place. 
 
 Those times are gone, and now the plough 
 breaks up the turf that had remained intact and 
 virgin since the creation of the world.
 
 A RETROSPECT 
 
 When they had let the anchor go with a loud 
 splash into the yellow, muddy water, nothing 
 was in sight. By degrees several steam-tugs 
 and then a fleet of whale-boats, manned by 
 Genoese, came bounding over the short choppy 
 waves. They seemed to come from nowhere, 
 as no land was visible as far as one could see. 
 All round our ship lay other vessels, rolling 
 about, almost to show their coppers, Genoese 
 and French and English, with a great raking 
 barquentine, hailing from Portland Maine. 
 
 Until the tugs and whale-boats had ap- 
 peared, one could not fathom why so many 
 ships had anchored all together, out of sight 
 of land, in such a choppy sea. Ten minutes' 
 steaming in a whale-boat brought into sight 
 the tops of churches, cupolas and towers, and 
 a few tall palm trees, and then five minutes 
 afterwards a town, white, flat-roofed, Oriental- 
 looking, that seemed to spring out of the 
 waves. 
 
 34
 
 A RETROSPECT 35 
 
 It gradually grew clearer, and to the west 
 appeared a low barranco, but still the town had 
 no foundation, till the steam-tug had gone a 
 little further in. Then the whole town o^rew 
 clear, that is to say, the portion of it nearest 
 to the river-bank, for the ground was so flat, 
 the nearest houses blocked the rest from sight, 
 giving the effect of a long line of white against 
 the yellow wat^r, broken by several round and 
 red-tiled cupolas. 
 
 Eventually, after a passage of some fifteen 
 miles, which left the fleet of anchored steamers 
 quite hull down, the muddy bank on which the 
 town stood was revealed. A wooden mole, 
 broken in places — it was a sempiternal joke in 
 Don Patricio Mulhall's English paper, the 
 Buenos Aires Standard, which he served up 
 every week, under the heading of the '* Hole 
 in the Mole" — ran out a little, say, about a 
 hundred yards, towards the sea. 
 
 The water generally was too shoal for the 
 steam-launches to land their passengers, 
 these usually sea-sick and wet, for the three 
 leagues of water were nearly always rough, 
 and the short, broad-beamed launches, knocked 
 about and plunged like a wild horse, a swarm 
 of shore boats, chiefly manned by Neapolitans
 
 36 A RETROSPECT 
 
 and Genoese, came out and hung about the 
 launches, just as they had hung about the 
 ocean-going ships. Those who were wise re- 
 fused to enter them until they had struck a 
 bargain with these pirates of the shore, for as 
 there was no tariff, or if there was, no one 
 attended to it, you might be asked five or six 
 dollars for the few hundred yards. You landed 
 at the slippery stairs, all overgrown with bar- 
 nacles, and stumbled up upon the pier, when 
 for the first time you had a full view of the 
 town. 
 
 Mostly all heavy merchandise was transferred 
 from shore-going boats to bullock-carts, primi- 
 tive-looking in construction, and with solid 
 wheels. The driver, usually a Basque, banged 
 on the oxen's horns with a stout, wooden mallet 
 as he sat cross-legged on the yoke. The 
 effect of all these various transhipments was to 
 make the landing goods almost as dear as the 
 whole freight from Europe to the Plate. When 
 you had run the gauntlet of the Custom House, 
 which in those days was a most serious affair, 
 you emerged upon some low, arcaded streets, 
 inhabited almost entirely by Italians of the 
 seafaring class. They sat in villainous dark 
 cafes, all playing cards and drinking grappa,
 
 A RETROSPECT 37 
 
 and from the cafes came a babel of all the 
 dialects of their peninsula. 
 
 What struck one, even there amongst those 
 shell-backs, where everything was redolent of 
 the sea, was that a horse or two was standing 
 hobbled about the door of every house. When 
 you emerged and entered one or other of the 
 deep streets, running between raised pave- 
 ments three or four feet high, you met more 
 horses. Men selling milk on horseback, these 
 were chiefly Basques ; men carrying nets for 
 fishing ; men with reeking hides freshly stripped 
 off spread on their horses' backs ; sleek business 
 men on English saddles, made of cheap leather 
 and abominably cut — all passed you, riding, and 
 every horse you saw at first sight had a mouth 
 like silk, the kind of mouth a man in Europe 
 dreams of but never sees ; and here, even the 
 horses that the poorest rode, all had it, and all 
 bent their necks as if they had been put through 
 all the airs of the best manege in the world. 
 All of them had their manes cut into an 
 arch, leaving a mounting lock upon the withers, 
 about two spans in width, and all had tails that 
 would have swept the ground had they not 
 been just squared off at the pasterns to keep 
 them from the mud.
 
 38 A RETROSPECT 
 
 The deep streets led up to the chief plaza, 
 a huge arcaded square, with many old colonial 
 buildings in it. The house of the Conquis- 
 tador, Don Juan Garay, now swept away as 
 ruthlessly as if it had been an old church in 
 London, stood at one corner of the square. It 
 was, if I remember rightly, a low, flat-roofed 
 building, with overhanging eaves, built to resist 
 all time, and should have been preserved in 
 a land where few monuments exist, as carefully 
 as an old beau preserves his last front tooth, 
 as a memorial of the past. 
 
 Other old buildings there were none, except 
 the cathedral, built at an inartistic time, and 
 looking like almost every other church in the 
 New World, from the Franciscan Missions in 
 Arizona and in Texas down to that of Pata- 
 gones, all of which even the great cathedrals 
 of Mexico and Puebla were of Jesuit architec- 
 sure, with a Graeco- Roman facade and a great 
 cupola, like a gigantic beehive, rising from the 
 centre of the pile. 
 
 One church I had forgotten, and one no 
 Englishman should pass, unnoticed, that of 
 St. Dominic. 
 
 In it the kind and tutelary saint had placed 
 the power to catch and hold, so that succeeding
 
 A RETROSPECT 39 
 
 ages might see and marvel, the heretic cannon- 
 balls fired by the Lutheran General White- 
 locke when he attacked the town. In days of 
 greater faith, or perhaps before the masonry 
 had given way, the church held dozens, but 
 in my time there were but three, which 
 Admajorem Dei Gloriam remained a witness 
 to the faith, both of the present generation and 
 the past. 
 
 Inside the church, high up in the west aisle, 
 there used to hang, and I suppose still do so, 
 the colours of three British regiments of the 
 line. A timely warning, as I used to think, to 
 pride, and one which when men were well 
 filled with new wine I used to show them, 
 inviting them to pat their diaphragms and 
 whistle *' Rule Britannia " with the best grace 
 they could. Not that I was not a good 
 patriot, but because I thought, then in my 
 youth, just as I do to-day, that patriotism 
 begins at home, and if St. Dominic appeared 
 and really caught those balls, he did it not, 
 as a saint, but as an Argentine, for saints, 
 I take it, when the celestial telephone is rung, 
 are of the nationality of those who pray to 
 them. In those days, now so far off and 
 forgotten, the city still preserved to some
 
 40 A RETROSPECT 
 
 extent its old colonial look. The greater 
 portion of the houses had flat roofs, though 
 here and there an ugly block of modern 
 buildings, generally overladen with detail, 
 sprung up and dwarfed their fellows, looking 
 like stucco icebergs in a great sea of bricks. 
 One or two houses, such as those of the 
 Auchorenas and the Lumbs, had just been 
 built in a half- Italian style, with patios of 
 marble, filled with palms, with fountains, and 
 with a great opaque glass ball of enormous 
 size, balanced or fastened to a marble pillar, 
 reminding one that after all the world turns 
 round upon its axis, and that the luck may 
 change. 
 
 Meat was sold at about ten cents the kilo, 
 and bread was dearer than it was in Paris. 
 Flour was imported from Chile and the United 
 States, whilst all clothes came ready-made 
 from Europe, and were both bad and dear. 
 
 Almost the entire male population dressed 
 in black, and nearly everyone wore turned- 
 down collars, cut very low upon the neck, and 
 kept in place by narrow neckties like a shoe- 
 string, and no one carried sticks. In fact, a 
 walking-stick was the mark of a new-comer, 
 what was called in those days zm recien
 
 A RETROSPECT 41 
 
 yegao, for pronunciation of the language 
 followed a system of its own. Men prided 
 themselves upon the smallness oi their feet, 
 as if they had been women, although the race 
 was most athletic, and except at Mass or at 
 great social functions, all wore black floppy 
 hats. After a rainstorm, all the side streets 
 became fierce watercourses, owing to the 
 height of the side walks, and men with planks, 
 which they stretched over from one pavement 
 to the other, reaped a rich harvest from those 
 who wished to cross. 
 
 • A mile or two above the town men fished on 
 horseback, riding their horses deep into the 
 water, and after having made a circle with the 
 rope fastened to their girths, galloping to 
 the shore. Tramways had been established for 
 a few months, and yet abounded, for no one 
 walked who possibly could ride, and twenty 
 yards before each car galloped a boy upon a 
 horse, blowing upon a horn. 
 
 One of the chief sights of the place as I 
 remember then, was the great square before 
 the Stock Exchange. Hundreds of horses 
 stood about hobbled, all with their reins 
 fastened behind the cantle of the saddle, 
 making them arch their necks like rocking-
 
 42 A RETROSPECT 
 
 horses. They seldom moved, as they were 
 hobbled short by the forelegs, but now and 
 then turned round, and now and then, one 
 of them who was baq^ieano, with his hobbles, 
 if he espied a friend, would raise his hobbled 
 feet and hop across to him. Perhaps their 
 conversation was as intelligent as was that of 
 those who had brought them there, and of a 
 surety was more innocent. To a new-comer 
 it seemed perilous to adventure upon foot into 
 a maelstrom of four-footed beasts, such as the 
 one that stood before the Bourse, on almost 
 every morning in those days. However, as 
 one of the peculiarities of the breed was that 
 they never bit and hardly ever kicked, one 
 soon grew used to it, and pushed one's way 
 between, quite as contemptuously as if they 
 had been all endowed with reason and gamblers 
 upon 'Change. 
 
 The hotels were few and relatively poor, 
 and most of them were situated in or about 
 the Calle Veinte Cinco de Mayo, from the 
 fashionable ''Argentino" down to Claraz*s, 
 a litde hostelry kept by a Swiss, a man of 
 learning though an hotel-keeper, since widely 
 known by his flora of the Pampa. " Camp " 
 men, who often passed amongst their country-
 
 A RETROSPECT 43 
 
 men, if they were English, under the name of 
 ** Gentle Shepherds," sea captains, mining 
 engineers, and foreign journalists were the 
 chief pillars of the place. A usual sight was 
 the arrival of some sunburned man dressed 
 in a well-cut, but frayed tweed suit, a grey felt 
 hat, a flannel shirt without a collar, and his 
 recao tied in a bundle, and carried by a 
 changador, which was the name that the 
 Portends gave to porters, who nearly all were 
 Basques. 
 
 The Gentle Shepherd generally shouted 
 " Claraz," and was met by the tall black-haired 
 and black-bearded Swiss, like an old friend. 
 
 Paying his changador, he asked who else 
 was in the house, and when he heard their 
 names summoned them all to drink. Then 
 after this half-sacramental action, he ofot down 
 his portmanteau or his box, which Claraz 
 always kept for him up in some attic, and 
 dressed himself in his best clothes, always a 
 little creased, and sallied forth either on busi- 
 ness or to impart vermilion to the town ; but 
 always wearing his soft hat, the outward visible 
 sign of the interior grace of the true '' camp " 
 man, come to town. The little hostelry was 
 built upon the plan of a monastery, with rooms
 
 44 A RETROSPECT 
 
 like cells opening out from a corridor. The 
 last of them, which in those times was mine 
 on the occasions when I was in town, looked 
 right upon the river, and on fine days one saw 
 the houses of La Colonia, in the Republic of 
 Uruguay, some thirty miles away. 
 
 It was expedient not to sit reading late at 
 night at Claraz's, for it might happen that a 
 Gentle Shepherd coming back after an even- 
 ing spent in merriment, might try to shoot 
 your candle out, a thing that has happened 
 at least once or twice to the writer of these 
 lines. 
 
 Each nationality had its Claraz's Hotel, which 
 though not owned by Claraz, yet was run more 
 or less on the same lines, with due allowance for 
 the national characteristics of the guests. The 
 other hotels were, of course, much more cosmo- 
 politan, but all of them, except the ** Argentino," 
 had a homely air, which has long disappeared 
 from all hotels in every quarter of the globe. 
 Society was then not so exclusive as it has 
 become, and foreigners who spoke the language 
 all were well received. Few Argentines spoke 
 English, and not too many French, and with 
 the exception of a few of the richer families 
 who had been in Europe, an evening's enter-
 
 A RETROSPECT 45 
 
 talnment was in the style I recollect in my 
 youth, in Seville and throughout southern 
 Spain. The ladies sat on chairs in a great 
 circle round the room, and men lounged at the 
 doors, and now and then one would advance 
 and ask a girl to dance. This dance was 
 generally a valse, danced very slowly to the 
 music of a jingly piano, and when it finished 
 you slowly led your partner to her seat, and 
 stood beside her murmuring the most ele- 
 mentary compliments. At older- fashioned 
 houses still they danced the cielito and the 
 pericdn — curious old-world and picturesque sur- 
 vivals of an older age, and which perhaps are 
 just as worthy of remembrance as will be the 
 '' Cake- Walk " and the "One-Step " when they 
 are obsolete. 
 
 Women, except those of the poorer classes, 
 seldom walked about alone, but in the evening, 
 under the care of fathers, mothers, and the 
 like, they swarmed in the Calle Rivadavia, 
 which in those days was the chief promenade 
 of the town. 
 
 There, walking up and down, they listened 
 to those fiores, which have from time im- 
 memorial been the custom of the Spanish 
 youth to offer to the fair.
 
 46 A RETROSPECT 
 
 In fact, in those days, Buenos Aires still was 
 a colonial city, but just emerging from its past. 
 Great lines of steamships were just begin- 
 ning to dump their cargoes of Italians and of 
 Basques. Still, there was little difference on 
 the whole between the various classes, and 
 balls were given in the ground-floor rooms of 
 old colonial houses, through whose enormous 
 grated windows the populace gazed, smoking, 
 and criticized the dancers, sometimes apprecia- 
 tively, at others adversely, and always some- 
 thing in the spirit of prospective buyers at 
 a fair. 
 
 The theatres were good and large, and in 
 those days better constructed and more modern 
 than those of London or of Paris, although 
 their prices were enormous, taking into con- 
 sideration the simple life led by the citizens. 
 
 The coinage was depreciated, the paper dollar 
 standing at twopence-halfpenny, and the chief 
 silver, the Bolivian four-real piece, a coin which 
 with its llama and its palm, rough execution, 
 and strange colour, looked like an ancient 
 Roman denarius, and was much counterfeited. 
 
 No view of Buenos Aires of those times 
 would be complete without a glance at the side 
 temples of the Paphian goddess, she who
 
 A RETROSPECT 47 
 
 came from the sea-foam, according to the 
 Greeks, but who the Christian Church averred 
 to have had her origin In mud. 
 
 Few towns could have been better kept sup- 
 plied than was the city of good airs, with raw 
 material. Spaniards and Greeks, Italians, 
 French, English, Mulattresses (all with the 
 catinga), Algerian Jewesses and girls from 
 Paraguay, gazed from the windows of the 
 great casa amueblada In 25th of May Street. 
 
 In bars and in tobacco shops they swarmed, 
 and that in spite of licensed houses by the 
 score. 
 
 Some, such as the great quilombo at 
 what the English know as " one, two, three," 
 Cerrito (Cerrito^ 1 23), were models In their way. 
 
 Inside them all was looking-glass, walls, 
 tables, roofs, and chairs. Upon them lounged 
 the priestesses, and it was fashionable in those 
 days to take one's coffee after dinner there. 
 I have seen an august personage, one set above 
 his fellows by the popular vote, stroll in and 
 sit down In a chair, light a cigar and drink his 
 coffee, chatting the while with all the ladies of 
 the place, so affably that you would not suspect 
 by the enumeration of a few thousand noses, 
 he had become a god.
 
 48 A RETROSPECT 
 
 Such was the city in those days, with but a 
 population of three hundred thousand souls. 
 
 The suburbs, Palermo and Las Flores, were 
 just growing, and at El Tigre and La Boca, 
 the industries that have arisen since lay in the 
 lap of time. But a short league or two away, 
 stretched the flat camps of Ouilmes and El 
 Monte Grande, their grass short, sweet, and 
 eaten down by sheep, green as an emerald in 
 the early spring, then carpeted with La Flor 
 Morada, with red verbena ; a dusty brown in 
 summer, but soon turning green again at the 
 first autumn rain. 
 
 It was a city of good air, and the old Spanish 
 captain, he who sailed with Don Pedro de 
 Mendoza, that gentleman of Almeria, once 
 Chamberlain to Charles V, was right when he 
 first felt the wind coming across the Pampa 
 from the south and looking round remarked, 
 *' Que buenos, son los aires de aqui." 
 
 Although we knew it not, being perhaps 
 more occupied with life than with political 
 economy, the city held within itself the germs 
 of all it has become. I know that it is great 
 and prosperous, wealthy beyond the dreams of 
 avarice ; that the great liners all tie up at stone- 
 built docks, and passengers step from them
 
 A RETROSPECT 49 
 
 into their motor-cars. All this I know, and I 
 am glad, for anche io ftl pittore, that is, I 
 used to ride along the streets of the old Buenos 
 Aires generally upon a little doradillo, that I 
 had, with the great silver spurs just hanging off 
 my heels when I rode up to Claraz's Hotel, 
 after delivering a troop of cattle at the saladero, 
 on the outskirts of the town. 
 
 So may a man who in his youth has seen 
 a gipsy dancer, brown, active, thin, and has 
 admired her from afar, when he has met her in 
 his after life, married to a capitalist, splendid in 
 jewels and in Paris clothes, still think that she 
 looked better in her print skirt and frayed 
 Manila shawl.
 
 EL RODEO 
 
 The vast, brown, open space, sometimes a 
 
 quarter of a mile across, called El Rodeo, 
 
 which bears the same relation to the ocean of 
 
 tall grass that a shoal bears to the surface of 
 
 the sea, was the centre of the life of the great 
 
 cattle estancias of the plains. To it on almost 
 
 every morning of the year the cattle were 
 
 collected and taught to stand there till the dew 
 
 was off the grass. To parar rodeo was the 
 
 phrase the Gauchos used, equivalent to the 
 
 cowboys' "round up" on the northern plains. 
 
 An hour before the dawn, when the moon 
 
 was down, but the sun not up, just at the time 
 
 when the first streaks of red begin to fleck the 
 
 sky, the Gauchos had got up from \}s\€\x recaos.^ 
 
 In those days it was a point of honour to sleep 
 
 on the recao, the carona spread out on the 
 
 ground, \\\^jergas on it, the cojmillo underneath 
 
 the hips for softness, the head pillowed upon los 
 
 bastos, and under them your pistol, knife, your 
 
 * Argentine saddle made in several pieces, which comprised 
 the carona^ jsrgos^ and cojinillo and los bastos. 
 
 50
 
 EL RODEO 51 
 
 tirador, and boots, yourself wrapped up in your 
 poncho and with your head tied up in a hand- 
 kerchief. The Gauchos had looked out in the 
 frost or dew, according to the season of the 
 year, to see the horse they had tied up over- 
 night had not got twisted in his stake-rope, 
 and then returned to sit before the fire to take 
 a matecito cimarron and smoke. Every now 
 and then a man had left the fire, and, lifting 
 the dried mare's-hide that served for door, had 
 come back silently, and, sitting down again, 
 taken a bit of burning wood, ladling it from 
 the fire, upon his knife's edge, and lit his cigar- 
 ette. At last, when the coming dawn had lit 
 the sky like an Aurora Borealis lights a northern 
 winter's night, they had risen silently, and 
 shouldering their saddles, had gone out silently 
 to saddle up. 
 
 Outside the horses stood and shivered on 
 their ropes, their backs arched up like cats 
 about to fight. Frequently when their intend- 
 ing rider had drawn the pin to which they 
 were attached, and after coiling up the rope 
 approached them warily, they sat back snorting 
 like a steam-engine when It breasts a hill. If 
 it was possible, the Gaucho saddled his horse 
 after first hobbling his front feet, although he
 
 52 EL RODEO 
 
 was sure to throw the saddle-cloths and the 
 carona several times upon the ground. When 
 they were put firmly upon his back, the rider, 
 cautiously stretching his naked foot under the 
 horse's belly, caught up the cinch between his 
 toes. Passing the latigo between the strong 
 iron rings both of the encimera and the cinch, 
 he put his foot against the horse's side and 
 pulled till it was like an hour-glass, which 
 operation not infrequently set the horse buck- 
 ing, hobbled as he was. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the horse was but half- 
 tamed, a redomon as the phrase was, his owner 
 led him up to the palenque, tied him up firmly 
 to it, and after hobbling and perhaps blindfold- 
 ing him, saddled him, after a fierce struggle 
 and an accompaniment of snorts. When all 
 was ready, and the first light was just about 
 to break, showing the Pampa silvery with mist 
 and dew, and in the winter morning often pre- 
 senting curious mirages of woods hung in the 
 sky, the trees suspended upside down, the capataz 
 would give the signal to set off. Going up gently 
 to their horses, the Gauchos carefully untied 
 them, taking good care no coil of the ma^ieador 
 should get caught in their feet, and then after 
 tightening the broad hide girth, often eight or
 
 EL RODEO 53 
 
 nine inches broad, led them a Httle forward to let 
 them get their backs down, or buck if they so 
 felt inclined. Then they all mounted, some of 
 the horses whirling round at a gallop, their 
 riders holding their heads towards them by the 
 bozal in the left hand, and with the reins and 
 pommel of the saddle in the right. They 
 mounted in a way peculiar to themselves, bend- 
 ing the knee and passing it over the middle of the 
 saddle, but never dwelling on the stirrup, after 
 the European way, so that the action seemed 
 one motion, and they were on their horses as 
 easily as a drop of water runs down a window- 
 pane, and quite as noiselessly. 
 
 Calling the dogs, generally a troop of mong- 
 rels of all sorts, with perhaps a thin black 
 greyhound or two amongst the pack, the 
 Gauchos used to ride off silently, their horses 
 leaving a trail of footsteps in the dew. Some 
 bucked and plunged, their riders shouting as 
 their long hair and ponchos flapped up and 
 down at every bound the horses made. They 
 left the estancia always at the trotecito, the 
 horses putting up their backs, arching their 
 necks and playing with the bit, whose inside 
 rollers, known as coscojo, jingled on their 
 teeth.
 
 54 EL RODEO 
 
 Then after a hundred yards or so one would 
 look at the others and say "Vamos," the rest 
 would answer *' Vamonos " and set off gallop- 
 ing, until the capataz would order them to 
 separate, telling them such and such a ''point" 
 of cattle should be about the hill which is 
 above the river of the sarandis, there is a bald- 
 faced cow in it, curly all over ; you cannot miss 
 her if you try. Other " points " would have 
 a bullock with a broken horn in them, or some 
 other animal, impossible to miss ... to eyes 
 trained to the plains. 
 
 In a moment all the horsemen disappeared 
 into the "camp" just as the first rays of the 
 sun came out to melt the dew upon the grass. 
 This was called campeando, and the owner 
 or the capataz usually made his aim some 
 "point" of cattle which was the tamest and 
 fed closest to the house, and probably con- 
 tained all the tame oxen and a milk cow or 
 two. When he had found them he drove them 
 slowly to the rodeo, which they approached 
 all bellowing, the younger animals striking 
 into a run before they reached it, and all of 
 them halting when they felt their feet on the 
 bare ground. Once there, the capataz, lighting 
 a cigarette, walked his horse slowly to and fro,
 
 EL RODEO 55 
 
 occasionally turning back any animal that tried 
 to separate and go back to the grass. 
 
 Most likely he would wait an hour, or per- 
 haps two, during which time the sun ascending 
 gathered strength and brought out a keen, 
 acrid smell from the hard-trodden earth of the 
 rodeo, on which for years thousands of cattle 
 had been driven up each day. The ** point" 
 of cattle already there would soon begin to 
 hang their heads and stand quite motionless, 
 the capataz horse either become impatient or 
 go off into a contemplative state, resting 
 alternately on each hind leg. 
 
 Such of the dogs who had remained with 
 him would stretch themselves at full lenorth 
 
 o 
 
 on the grass. At last faint shouts and sounds 
 of galloping and baying dogs would be heard 
 In the distance, gradually drawing near. 
 
 Then a dull thundering of countless feet, and 
 by degrees, from north, south, east and west, 
 would come great *' points " of cattle, galloping. 
 Behind, waving \}ii€\x ponchos, brandishing their 
 short rebenqiies round their heads, raced the 
 vaqueros, followed by the dogs. As each 
 ''point" reached the rodeo the galloping men 
 would check their foaming horses so that the 
 cattle might arrive at a slow pace and not cause
 
 56 EL RODEO 
 
 a stampede amongst the animals that were 
 already on the spot. 
 
 At last all the ''points" had arrived. Three, 
 four, five or ten thousand cattle were assem- 
 bled, and the men who had brought them from 
 the thick cane-brakes and from the montes of 
 the deltas of the streams, after having loosed 
 their girths and lit cigarettes, proceeded 
 slowly to ride round the herd to keep them on 
 the spot. The dogs lay panting with their 
 tongues lolling out of their mouths, the sun 
 began to bite a little, and now and then a wild 
 bullock or light-footed young cow, or even a 
 small "point" of cattle, would break away, to 
 try to get back to its qtierencia, or merely out 
 of fright. 
 
 Then with a shout a horseman, startino- with 
 a bound, his horse all fire, his own long hair 
 streaming out in the wind, would dart out after 
 them, to try to head them back. '* Vuelta ter- 
 nero," " Vuelta vaquilla," they would cry, riding 
 a little wide of the escaping beast. After a 
 hundred yards or so, for the first rush of the 
 wild native cattle was swift as lightning, the 
 rider would close in. Riding in front of the 
 escaping truant, he would try to turn it back, 
 pressing his horse against its side.
 
 EL RODEO 57 
 
 If it turned, as was generally the case, 
 towards the herd, after three or four hundred 
 yards of chase, the Gaucho checked his horse 
 and let the animal return at a slow gallop by 
 itself till it had joined the rest. 
 
 If it was a fierce bullock or a fleet-footed 
 cow, and even after he had bored it to one side 
 it started out again, or stopped and charged, 
 he rode beside it beating it with the handle of 
 his arreador. When all these means had 
 failed, as a last resource he sometimes ran his 
 horse's chest against its flank, and gave it thus 
 a heavy fall. This was called ^wmg'd. pechada, 
 and if repeated a few times usually cowed the 
 wildest of the herd, though now and then an 
 escaping animal had to be lassoed and dragged 
 back, and then if it broke out again the Gauchos 
 used to rope it, and after throwing it, dissect 
 a bit of skin between the eyes, so that it fell 
 and blinded the poor beast and stopped him 
 running off. These were the humours of the 
 scene, till after half an hour or so of gently 
 riding round and round, the rodeo, from having 
 been at first a bellowing, kaleidoscopic mass of 
 horns and hoofs, of flashing eyes and tails lash- 
 ing about, like snakes, a mere confusion of all 
 colours, black, white and brown, dun, cream
 
 58 EL RODEO 
 
 and red, In an Inextricable maze, became dis- 
 tinguishable, and you perceived the various 
 "points," each recognizable by some outstand- 
 ing beast, either In colour or In shape. The 
 capataz and all the Gauchos knew them, just 
 as a sailor knows all kinds of ships, and in an 
 instant, with a quick look, could tell if such 
 and such a beast was fat, or only- in the state 
 known to the adept as came blanca, or if the 
 general condition of the herd was good, and 
 this with a rodeo of five thousand animals. 
 
 Their searching eyes detected at a glance 
 if a beast had received a wound of any kind, 
 if maooots had oot into the sore, and some- 
 times on the spot the cow or bullock thus 
 affected w^ould be lassoed, cast, Its wound 
 washed out with salt and water, and then 
 allowed to rise. Needless to say, this opera- 
 tion did not improve its temper, and as occa- 
 sionally, in order to save trouble, the Gauchos 
 did not rope it by the neck and put another 
 rope on the hind legs, both horses straining on 
 the ropes to keep them taut, but merely roped 
 and cast and then put a fore leg above the 
 horn, and let a man hold down the beast by 
 pulling on Its tail passed under the hind 
 leg, the man w^ho stood, holding the cow's
 
 EL RODEO 59 
 
 horn full of the "remedy," was left in a tight 
 place. 
 
 If he had not an easy horse to mount, the 
 infuriated beast sometimes pursued him with 
 such quickness that he had to dive beneath the 
 belly and mount from the offside. If by an 
 evil chance his horse broke away from him to 
 avoid the charge, two Gauchos rushing like 
 the wind, their iron-handled whips raised in 
 the air like flails, ready to fall upon the bul- 
 lock's back, closed in upon the beast and 
 fenced him in between their horses, at full 
 speed, and as they passed, thundering upon 
 the plain, men, horses and the flying animal all 
 touching one another and straining every nerve, 
 the man in peril, seizing the instant that they 
 passed, sprang lightly up behind the near-side 
 rider, just as a head of thistledown stops for 
 a moment on the edge of a tall bank, tops it, 
 and disappears. 
 
 When the rodeo had stood an hour or so, 
 if nothing else was in the wind, the vaqtieros 
 galloped home slowly, smoking and talking 
 of the price of cattle in the saladeros, the races 
 to be held next Sunday at some pulperia or 
 other, '' La Flor de Mayo," '' La Rosa del Sur," 
 or '' La Esquina de los pobres Diablos," and
 
 6o EL RODEO 
 
 the rodeOy when it felt itself alone, slowly dis- 
 integrated just as a crowd breaks up after a 
 meeting in Hyde Park, and all the various 
 "points" sought out their grazing grounds. 
 
 On days when they required fresh meat at 
 the estancia, when it was necessary in Gaucho 
 phrase to carnear, then the capataz and two 
 peones, coiling their lasos as they went, rode 
 into the rodeo, the cattle parting into lanes 
 before them, and after much deliberation and 
 pointing here and there, with sage remarks on 
 the condition of the herd, he would point his 
 finger at a beast. Then, cautiously, the two 
 vaqueros, with the loop of their lazo trailing on 
 the ground, taking good care to hold it in their 
 right hands, high and wide, so that their horses 
 did not tread in it, would close upon their 
 prey. Watching him carefully, the horses turn- 
 ing almost before the men gave them the signal 
 with the hand or heel, the cattle edging away 
 from them, they would conduct the animal to- 
 wards the edge of the rodeo with his head 
 to the *'camp." 
 
 When he was clear, with a shrill cry they 
 spurred their horses and the doomed beast 
 began to gallop, unless perchance he doubled 
 back towards the herd, in which contingency
 
 EL RODEO 61 
 
 the operation had to be gone through again. 
 Once galloping, the efforts of the riders were 
 directed to keep him on the move, which in 
 proportion to his wildness was harder or more 
 easy to achieve, for a wild cow or bullock 
 generally "parts" more easily than a tame 
 animal. Perhaps the distance was a mile, and 
 this they traversed at full gallop, \i'd!\x, poncho, 
 mane, and tail all flying in the wind, with a 
 thin cloud of dust marking their passage as 
 they went. When they got near the house 
 one rider looked up at the other and said, 
 *' Now Is the time to throw." In an instant, 
 round his head revolved the thin hide-plaited 
 rope, the ring (the last six feet in double 
 plait) shining and glistening in the sun. The 
 wrist turned like a well-oiled machine, the horse 
 sprang forward with a bound, and the rope, 
 winding like a snake, whistled and hurtled 
 through the air. 
 
 It fixed as if by magic round the horns, the 
 rider generally keeping in his hand some coils 
 of slack for any casuality that might occur. 
 The instant that it setded round the horns the 
 rider spurred his horse away to the left side, 
 for it was death to get entangled in the rope. 
 In fact, in every catde district maimed hands
 
 62 EL RODEO 
 
 and feet showed plainly how dangerous was 
 the game. The check, called the tiron, came 
 when the animal had galloped twenty yards 
 or so. It brought him to a stop, his hind legs 
 sliding to one side. The horse leaned over, 
 straining on the rope, the victim bellowed and 
 rolled its eyes, lashing its tail against its flanks 
 and pawing up the turf. 
 
 If the position of the animal was near enough, 
 so as to save the carriage of the meat, the last 
 act straight began. If not, after avoiding 
 dexterously a charge or two, keeping the rope 
 taut, and free from his horse's legs or even 
 sides or croup, unless he was a well-trained 
 cattle horse, the other /^^;/ riding up behind, 
 twisting his lazo round his head, urging his 
 horse against the lassoed animal, rode up and 
 drove him nearer in. Once within handy dis- 
 tance from the house, the man who had been 
 driving threw his rope and caught the bullock 
 by the heels. Sometimes they threw him 
 down and butchered him ; at other times, the 
 man who had him by the horns, keeping his 
 lazo taut, he and his horse throwing their 
 weight upon the rope, called to his fellow to 
 dismount and carnear. 
 
 If he was an expert, throwing his reins upon
 
 EL RODEO 63 
 
 the ground, he slipped off quickly, and crouch- 
 ing like a jaguar about to spring, ran cautiously 
 to the offside of the enlassoed beast, drawing 
 his longy^^:^';^. Avoiding any desperate horn- 
 thrust, like a cat avoids a stone, and taking 
 care not to get mixed up with the rope, he 
 plunged his knife deep down into the throat. 
 The gushing stream of blood sprang like the 
 water from a fire-plug, and the doomed creature 
 sank upon its knees, then rocked a little to and fro, 
 and with a bellow of distress, fell and expired. 
 
 If, on the other hand, the animal was fierce, 
 or the man did not care to run the risk, he 
 advanced, and, drawing his facon across its 
 hocks, hamstrung it, and brought it to the 
 ground, and then came up and killed it, when 
 it was rendered helpless. On such occasions 
 it was terrible, and quite enough to set a man 
 against all beef for ever (had there been any 
 other food upon the plains), to see the bullock 
 jumping upon its mutilated legs and hear it 
 bellow in its agony. 
 
 Last scene of all, the horses either unsaddled 
 or attached to the palenque, or else to a stout 
 post of the corral, the slayers, taking off their 
 ponchos or their coats, skinned and cut up the 
 beast. So rapidly was this achieved, that
 
 64 EL RODEO 
 
 sometimes hardly an hour had elapsed from 
 the ''death bellow," to the time when the 
 raw joints of meat were hung in the galpon. 
 The hide was stretched out in the sun, and 
 the chumangos and the dogs feasted upon the 
 entrails, whilst the wild riders, dusty and 
 bloodstained, took a matd in the shade. 
 
 There was another and a wilder aspect of 
 the rodeo, which, like a pampero, burst on the 
 beholders so suddenly that when it passed and 
 all had settled down again, they gazed, half 
 stunned, out on the tranquil plain. It might 
 be that a tropero was parting cattle for a 
 saladero, his men cutting out cattle, riding 
 them towards a "point" of working bullocks, 
 held back by men about a quarter of a mile 
 from the main body of the herd. All might 
 be going well, the rodeo kept back by men 
 riding round slowly. The parties might be 
 working quietly, without much shouting ; the 
 day serene, the sun unclouded, when suddenly 
 an uneasy movement would run through the 
 cattle, making them sway and move about, 
 after the fashion of the water in a whirlpool, 
 without apparent cause. 
 
 If the tropero and the overseer or the owner 
 of the place himself were men who knew the
 
 EL RODEO 65 
 
 *' camp," and few of them were ignorant of all 
 its lore, they did not lose a moment, but calling 
 as gently as possible to the peones, they made 
 them ride as close to one another as they could, 
 in a great circle round about the beasts. It 
 might be that their efforts would pacify the 
 animals, but in all cases the ''cutting out" was 
 over for the day. 
 
 A little thing, a hat blown off, a poncho 
 waving, a horse suddenly starting or falling in 
 a hole, would render all their efforts useless 
 and as vain as those of him who seeks to keep 
 a flight of locusts from lighting on a field. In 
 an instant the cattle would go mad, their eyes 
 flash fire, their tails and heads go up, and, with 
 a surge, the whole rodeo, perhaps ^v^ or six 
 thousand beasts, would, with a universal bellow, 
 and a noise as of a mighty river in full flood, 
 break into a stampede. Nothing could stay 
 their passage — over hills, down steep quebradas, 
 and through streams they dashed, just as a 
 prairie fire flies through the grass. Then was 
 the time to see the Gaucho at his best ; his 
 hat blown back, held by a broad black ribbon 
 underneath his chin, and as he flew along, 
 slipping his poncho off, the capataz galloped to 
 head the torrent of mad beasts.
 
 66 EL RODEO 
 
 The peones, spreading out like the sticks of 
 a fan, urged on their horses with their great 
 iron spurs, and with resounding blows of their 
 rebenques as they strove hard to close and 
 get in front. Those who were caught amongst 
 the raging mass held their lives only by their 
 horses' feet, pushed here and there against the 
 animals, but still unmoved, upright and watch- 
 ful in their saddles, and quick to seize the 
 slightest opportunity of making their way out. 
 If by mischance their horses fell, their fate was 
 sealed ; and the tornado past, their bodies lay 
 upon the plain, like those of sailors washed 
 ashore after a shipwreck — distorted, horrible. 
 
 The men who at the first had spread out on 
 the sides, now closing in, had got in front, and 
 galloped at the head of the mad torrent, waving 
 their ponchos and brandishing their whips. 
 They, too, were in great peril of their lives, if 
 the herd crossed a viscachera or a cangrejdl.^ 
 That was the time for prodigies of horseman- 
 ship. If I but close my eyes, I see, at a 
 stampede on an estancia called ** El Gala," a 
 semi- Indian rushing down a slope to head the 
 
 * A viscachera was a place where viscachas burrowed. A 
 cangrejdl was a colony of land crabs. Both made very 
 dangerous traps for riders.
 
 EL RODEO (>^ 
 
 cattle off. His horse was a dark dun, with 
 eyes of fire, a black stripe down the middle of 
 his back, and curious black markings on the 
 hocks. His tail floated out in the wind, and 
 helped him in his turnings, just as a steering 
 oar deflects a whaleboat's prow. The brand 
 was a small " s " inside a shield. I saw it as 
 they passed. Down the steep slope they 
 thundered, the Indian's hair rising and falling 
 at each spring that the black dun made in his 
 course. His great iron spurs hung off his 
 heels, and all his silver gear, the reins, the 
 pasadores of the stirrups, the chapeao and 
 fiad67\ and the great spurs themselves, jingled 
 and clinked as he tore on to head the living 
 maelstrom of the stampeding beasts. Sud- 
 denly his horse, although sure-footed, keen, 
 and practised at the work, stepped in a hole 
 and turned a somersault. 
 
 He fell, just as a stone from the nippers of a 
 crane, and his wild rider, opening his legs, lit 
 on his feet so truly, that his great iron spurs 
 clanked on the ground like fetters, as he stood 
 holding the halter in his hand. As his horse 
 bounded to his feet, his rider, throwing down 
 his head and tucking his left elbow well into 
 his side, sprang at a bound upon his back and
 
 6S EL RODEO 
 
 galloped on, so rapidly that it appeared I had 
 been dreaming, and only have woke up, thirty 
 years after, to make sure of my dream. Some- 
 times the efforts of the peones were successful, 
 and the first panic stayed, the cattle let them- 
 selves be broken into '' points," and by degrees 
 and with great management were driven back 
 to the rodeo and kept there for an hour or two 
 till they had quieted down. If, on the other 
 hand, they kept on running, they ran for 
 leagues, till they encountered a river or 
 a lake, and plunging into it, many were 
 drowned, and in all cases many were sure to 
 stray and mix with other herds, or, wandering 
 away, never returned again. 
 
 The whole impression of the scene was 
 unforgettable, and through the dust, both of 
 the prairie and the thicker dust of years, I can 
 see still the surging of the living lava stream 
 and hear its thunder on the plain.
 
 UPWARDS 
 
 The steep steps of the old church were thronged 
 with peasants and with the dwellers in the 
 Roman slums. The stair led upwards nearly 
 as steeply as the legendary, perhaps, almost 
 untrodden path that leads to heaven. Upon 
 them a sort of semi-pious, semi-pagan fair was 
 going on, and men and women cried their 
 wares, cheap images of saints, scapularies and 
 rosaries, their beads cut out of bone, with chains 
 of leady-looking tin. A crucifix, stamped out 
 by the hundred dozen in a mill, dangled from 
 each of them. The symbol was the same as if 
 it had been carved in ivory and every link of 
 gold. No doubt, in their last hour to those 
 who bought them the presentment of their 
 Redeemer moulded in tin (or stamped) was as 
 consoling to them as the finest work of the 
 Renaissance. It also served them just as well 
 when they swore falsely, with real tears in their 
 eyes, calling upon the moulded figure to lift his 
 hand and slay them if they were lying, as they 
 
 69
 
 70 UPWARDS 
 
 pressed it to their lips and lied. Withal they 
 were a merry, handsome, loud-voiced crowd, 
 and freely bought the sweetmeats and the 
 flaky pastry which were on sale, together with 
 the pious objects of their faith, out of the super- 
 fluity of their penury. The crowd pushed up 
 the steps, the younger men halting to breathe 
 and spit at every flight ; the elder men and 
 women toiling on, their eyes upon the ground, 
 their hearts perhaps fixed upon heaven, at a 
 slow plodding walk. Most of them wore a 
 look of pleased, but not excited expectation, 
 such as a man has on his face when he returns 
 to some spot well remembered, that he has 
 known for years. 
 
 The old, brown church looked down and 
 seemed to welcome them, with the straw, 
 leather-bound screen before the door, triced up 
 like a lateen. Where the church rose a temple 
 once had stood, and no doubt also seemed to 
 welcome its crowd of worshippers, for both were 
 heaven's altars in their own way. In fact, so 
 little had the ritual changed inside the church 
 that a pagan worshipper would hardly have felt 
 out of place had he awaked after a sleep of 
 centuries and mingled with the crowd. The 
 skin-clad shepherds, with their wild locks and
 
 UPWARDS 71 
 
 shaggy beards, the bold-eyed women with their 
 ample busts and wealth of coarse, black hair, 
 would all have been familiar to him, and to 
 complete the feeling of familiarity, a whiff of 
 burned-out incense mingled with the scent of 
 garlic floated from the church, just as it must 
 have often floated from the temple of the gods. 
 The thin and parchment-looking women, who 
 generally sit outside the church, day in, day 
 out, the whole year through, receiving alms 
 with a certain condescension, for they know 
 that without them the clivers cannot attain to 
 glory through their charity, had given up their 
 posts as a bad job. Nothing blocked the entry 
 to the church, and through the doors the crowd 
 poured in, the men piously crossing themselves 
 in the familiar, syncopated style of all men born 
 in Catholic countries, the women stopping a 
 moment after the pious movement to put a hand- 
 kerchief upon their hair, following the injunc- 
 tion of S. Paul. The crowd passed in, joyous, 
 but orderly, unwashed, yet bearing in every 
 gesture the tradition of a culture that was old 
 lono^ before Britain was a name. Though 
 women jostled against men, men against 
 women, in the space between the door and the 
 body of the church, no cry was heard, or any
 
 72 UPWARDS 
 
 giggling protest, such as is certain to be raised 
 in other countries when people press against 
 each other in the dark. Good manners, or 
 the lack of imagination inherent in the race, 
 kept them all within bounds ; but yet their 
 bounds were drawn so wide that in any other 
 land they would not have restrained. 
 
 Inside, the darkness of the church was in- 
 tensified by scaffolding, which had been up so 
 long its colour hardly was to be distinguished 
 from the stone. Young priests from all the 
 seminaries in Rome were scattered here and 
 there ; their gowns and cassocks, red, green 
 and blue, made blotches of dull colour as they 
 passed to and fro. They moved about in knots, 
 holding their cassocks up a little, just as a 
 woman holds her skirts, for the floor of the 
 church had been strewed with box-leaves, and 
 the passage of the crowd had turned them into 
 mud. There was a look upon their faces half 
 interested, half critical, such as an actor wears 
 in a strange theatre. Tombstones, each with a 
 figure carved in high, relief upon it, composed 
 the pavement, which made it difficult to walk, 
 and the strong scaffolding with which the aisle 
 was filled cut it off into sections, something like 
 loose boxes. Upon the baulks of timber boys
 
 UPWARDS 73 
 
 had climbed up to see the show, just as they do 
 when a procession passes down a street. A 
 crowd was gathered round a table by a great 
 pillar in the aisle. On it stood children, girls 
 and boys, who huddled close up to one another 
 for mutual support, just as wild horses do in a 
 corral. Some priests stood by, and a few 
 women, each with an eye upon her child, 
 regarding it with pride tinged with anxiety. 
 Around the table the various seminarists had 
 secured front places and stood expectant, their 
 faces all suffused with mild excitement and 
 with sympathy. The populace, although in 
 general not used to giving place to anyone, but 
 standing unmoved if right in the middle of a 
 crowded street looking at drivers and remark- 
 ing, *' I am a Roman," instinctively had given 
 way to the young priests, as if it recognized 
 their claim. After some little urging, a boy 
 about twelve years of age, dressed in his ordi- 
 nary clothes, stood forward, and with a gesture, 
 such as S. Paul made when he spoke to the 
 men of Athens, calling for silence, took up his 
 parable: '*My brethren, the heart of Jesus 
 always is open to the pure of spirit. Come to 
 him. . . . Come, my brethren, and hear the 
 words of innocence, I, though a child, speak to
 
 74 UPWARDS 
 
 you, for my heart is pure, the blessed words 
 which, from the time when first the mysterious 
 star stood fast over the stable in the East, and 
 the three kings entered and knelt before the 
 manger, where the Babe was laid . . . the 
 Babe was laid " — he faltered for a moment, and 
 a priest prompted him with " Courage, my son," 
 and the child began again, just like a phono- 
 graph that has stuck for a minute — ** the Babe 
 was laid. The blessed word, the tidings of 
 great joy, that we speak every year at this the 
 blessed season of goodwill on earth and peace 
 to all mankind. Therefore, my brethren, let 
 us pray." Then he knelt down, crossing him- 
 self, and prayed for grace, and, rising to his 
 feet, stretched out his arms in a fine, untaught 
 gesture, and said : " Therefore, my brethren, 
 after our prayer all that I say is, lay yourselves 
 upon the Saviour's heart and listen to a child." 
 His little sermon over, he stepped back amongst 
 the other children, hot and triumphant, and a 
 subdued but audible murmur of applause broke 
 out from the young priests. One of them, a 
 tall German youth, hung on the youthful 
 preacher's words, with a far-off look of rhapsody 
 upon his face, such as a peasant wears when in 
 a church he sees the relics of a saint displayed.
 
 UPWARDS 75 
 
 He said, after a sigh, to a companion, " I often 
 think that only children should be allowed to 
 preach," a sentiment with which many who are 
 not priests could well agree, if there were many 
 preachers like the Italian boy. 
 
 After the boy, a tiny child was lifted up and 
 bleated out that the Madonna never says *' Go 
 away, naughty children " ; but always holds 
 her arms out to them and calls them to her 
 breast. When it was duly kissed and lifted 
 down from its high perch, a girl stood up, in 
 direct contradiction of S. Paul's dictum, and 
 launched into a tale. Tall, slight, with a head 
 of rippling dark brown hair, which gave a look 
 to her as of a youthful Magdalen, she began, 
 twisting her thin, brown hands about, a little 
 tale of a Christian maiden of old times exposed 
 to peril through the wickedness of a young 
 Roman knight. In a high voice she told how 
 Agatha prayed to the blessed Madonna in her 
 peril, and how God's Holy Mother struck the 
 wretch with blindness, which only was removed 
 when, at the Christian maiden's exhortation, 
 the wicked Roman was baptized. " Come, 
 then, to the Madonna, our dear mother, she 
 who has care of all us children, seeing in every 
 one of us the image of her Son."
 
 76 UPWARDS 
 
 The child cast down her eyes, crossed her- 
 self, threw back her hair a little, and, turning, 
 stood a moment for that admiration that she 
 was well aware was due to her. The semi- 
 narists, though perhaps not so much edified as 
 with the boy, were still human enough to look 
 admiringly at the young, pious actress, and 
 then they trooped away across the church 
 towards the presentment of the manger, where 
 ox and ass stood looking at the sleeping Babe, 
 whilst the three kings laid gifts before his feet. 
 Whether the piles of carrots, lettuces, potatoes, 
 and of artichokes that were heaped up before 
 the manger were the gifts of the three kings 
 or those of pious members of the congregation 
 was difficult to say. Still, there they were, 
 giving an air of actuality that the plaster ox 
 and ass, the figure of the shepherd with his 
 gourd hanging from his waist, and all the other 
 pious properties, a little took away. Progress, 
 which had left untouched the sanitary condition 
 of the little streets outside the church, had 
 worked great changes on the presentment of 
 the stable where was laid the Babe. The 
 figures of the Madonna, of Joseph, and of the 
 kings were all of stucco painted in gaudy colours, 
 and evidently had come from France. Their
 
 UPWARDS 77 
 
 costumes had a kind of accuracy, giving them 
 the effect of pious chromolithographs in books 
 on Palestine. 
 
 Far different was the presentation of the 
 manger a generation since. In those days, 
 instead of a white glare from the electric light, 
 three or four candles shed a murky gleam upon 
 the scene. Joseph was dressed in mediaeval 
 clothes, the Blessed Virgin might have stepped 
 from a canvas either of Carlo Dolci or 
 Guercino ; two of the Magi wore what their 
 designer no doubt thought was Babylonian 
 court dress ; the third was painted blacker than 
 the ace of spades, with an enormous turban and 
 a scimitar. Progress had touched the manger 
 in the Ara Coeli with its finger, making it up 
 to date, more realistic and less natural ; but the 
 effect remained the same to the poor peasants 
 and slum-dwellers who were looking on. 
 
 The spectacle, not being sentimental, held 
 no attraction for the knots of seminarists who 
 had pressed closely round the preaching children 
 and stood enraptured at their words. They 
 passed by, if not indifferent, yet half ashamed, 
 one or two muttering, ''These sort of things 
 are of the nature of a kindergarten ... fit 
 for the poor and the uneducated." So may
 
 ^% UPWARDS 
 
 a modernist regard with loathing a poor peasant 
 kissing the brazen toe of the statue of S. Peter, 
 quite unaware that the kiss and the man who 
 kisses form the backbone of the Church which 
 Peter founded, not on philosophy, but on blind 
 faith, without foreseeing that in these latter 
 days mountains would rise and block the path 
 to heaven of the poor worshipper. 
 
 So round the chapel, with its glare of light 
 and paper rocks, its stucco figures, and its ox 
 and ass looking as if they had been borrowed 
 from a child's Noah's ark, there was a throng 
 of humble folk. Ragged old cloaks, so frayed 
 and worn that the edges looked as if they had 
 been fringed, covered up rags, and knotted 
 horny hands that all their lives had toiled to 
 produce all that made life worth living for, for 
 others, leaned upon iron-shod staves. Girls 
 with a dirty pocket-handkerchief balanced upon 
 their heads stood gazing, just as a deer in a 
 park stands gazing at a motor when it passes 
 with a roar. Two soldiers, freshly caught, 
 whose uniforms looked as if they had been 
 made of cardboard, and in whose faces was the 
 stare of wonder that they had brought from 
 some lost village in the Apennines, stood and 
 admired, talkino- in a stranore dialect of the hills.
 
 UPWARDS 79 
 
 Children ran in and out among their elders 
 legs, and on the base of a great pillar sat an 
 old peasant and his wife. Years and hard fare 
 had turned their skins to parchment. No water 
 had defiled their bodies since the day that they 
 were born, and their patched clothes were in- 
 definable in hue, with perhaps a shade of dusky 
 brown giving a note of colour to them, as they 
 sat looking like two bundles of dried vines. 
 They gazed intensely with the air of seeing 
 nothing that is so frequent in aged people who 
 have passed hard lives, and the old man, letting 
 his hand fall gently on his companion's knee, 
 said, "Where is the infant Jesus ; I cannot see 
 Him for the bright light that they have put over 
 the Blessed Virgin's head ; but the ox and ass 
 I see quite plainly looking down at the Babe." 
 He saw the ox and ass ; the crowd saw all the 
 figures of the presepio just as they saw their 
 daily lives, without the understanding of them. 
 The youthful preachers and the manger, the 
 knots of seminarists, the country folk, and the 
 old couple sitting like Philemon and Baucis on 
 the stone base of the great pillar, the church 
 itself, and the religion that it taught, all seemed 
 legitimate descendants of the old worshippers 
 who once had worshipped in the temple that
 
 8o UPWARDS 
 
 had stood upon the place. Their joys and 
 hopes and fears were of an older world, a 
 world human, but outworn, lovable, and yet 
 passing from our eyes, although we gazed upon 
 it as the peasant gazed, striving to see the 
 Babe. 
 
 Slowly the crowd dispersed, tramping out 
 heavily in their nailed shoes, and leaving yet 
 one or two women still looking at the chapel 
 and carrying children in their arms. Over 
 their heads floated two toy balloons, one red, 
 one yellow, and with the children looking up 
 at them as they floated in the air. They soared 
 up heavenwards, and might have reached the 
 sky had not the low roof of the church beaten 
 them down again.
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 My Aunt Alexia, whom I remember vividly, 
 though she died more than forty years ago, was 
 a type of the Yorkshire gentlewoman now long 
 extinct. Short, and dark-haired, with eyes 
 that seemed to be upon the point of starting 
 from her head, she had a strong and wiry 
 moustache, and when by chance she did not 
 pull it out a growth of beard upon her chin, 
 which used to make me shudder when as a boy 
 she kissed me and they grated on the skin. I 
 do not think this outward, visible sign of mas- 
 culine interior forces gave her much trouble or 
 annoyance, for she would say with pride, *' My 
 cousins the Fitzgibbons all have beards, both 
 women and men alike." Family pride was a 
 strong point with my good aunt, as she was 
 nearly related to almost all the county families 
 of Yorkshire, which interparentage a Scottish 
 aunt of mine used to term scornfully in speaking 
 of her, "Alexia and her fatiguing relatives." 
 She always dressed in black, carried eternally
 
 82 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 a bag embroidered with steel beads, and was 
 a little deaf, but never used a trumpet, saying 
 that nearly all her Yorkshire cousins were as 
 deaf as she was, with considerable pride. 
 
 She was a Churchwoman, not because of 
 any special partiality for the ritual of the 
 Church, but because, born as she was a 
 member of a county family, it would have 
 been impossible for her to belong to any other 
 faith. Ladies and gentlemen, as a rule, were 
 Churchmen, unless they happened either to be 
 eccentric in their tastes or Roman Catholics. 
 The latter faith was, as it were, a visitation 
 from on high which they had inherited from 
 birth, in the same way as a hare-lip or a big 
 purple blotch on one side of their face. To 
 be eccentric was permissible if one was either 
 born a Martin, or a Fitzgibbon, or any 
 other of the hierarchy of the West Riding, 
 such as a Mundell or a Milton- Rounde. A 
 gamekeeper might be a dissenter, but not a 
 coachman or a butler, for it was painful to sit 
 behind a man who was not properly baptized, 
 or to drink wine poured out by one who did 
 not walk up the church on a Sunday as it were 
 strewed with eggs. 
 
 My Aunt Alexia, either by reason of her
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 83 
 
 deafness or descent, had a hard temper, much 
 like the disposition of an Airedale terrier ; in 
 fact, all her relations said that she was '' var- 
 mint," a term which in their mouths was 
 laudatory, for they applied it indifferently to 
 dogs and horses, animals at least as sacred in 
 their eyes as was the cat to the Egyptians, as 
 well as to mankind. Still, she was kind-hearted, 
 through brusque and masculine, and not with- 
 out a vein of tenderness. As a child I stood 
 in awe of her, partly on account of her exterior, 
 partly because she was so deaf; but she had 
 humour, a gift that always wins the confidence 
 of children in a way older people seldom 
 understand. 
 
 As fate would have it, this lady, a pattern of 
 propriety and commonplace, with all the virtues 
 and the failings of her class, her strong self- 
 will and great austerity of face and bearing, 
 had for a mate a man as different from her as 
 the day is from the night, or, as she would 
 have said, as chalk from cheese, in her old- 
 fashioned speech. 
 
 Born in a military prison at Verdun, General 
 Hickman Currie had grown up, not only speak- 
 ing French, but quite a Frenchman in his 
 ideas and ways. Short and well-made, he
 
 84 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 must have been in youth what he called un 
 joli gargon; but in the days when I remember 
 him he was a wizened little man, alert and 
 active, and with a chestnut wig that could have 
 taken in nobody, and least of all a boy. Well 
 over seventy, I remember him rolling his eyes 
 and playing the guitar, as he sang love-songs 
 in the Spanish tongue, which language he had 
 acquired in youth, and spoke it volubly in the 
 Gallic fashion, accentuating every syllable 
 alike, so that it seemed a kind of gibberish 
 more than a human speech. 
 
 His wigs were my delight, for he had three 
 of them, and now and then, when he was 
 staying at a country house, he would appear 
 with one a little longer than the last, and after 
 looking in the glass would say, " My hair has 
 grown ridiculously long," and go off into 
 town. 
 
 All his upbringing and his military life, for 
 he had served with credit in several campaigns, 
 were not much calculated to make him what 
 is called "domesticated," and his chief object 
 to the last day of his life was what he euphe- 
 mistically styled gallantry, being, as he said, 
 *' equally at home with any one of them." 
 How such a man, with all his graces and his
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 85 
 
 wigs, his songs to the guitar, his love of 
 women, and his way of looking at the world, 
 could have endeared himself to Aunt Alexia, 
 always puzzled me. They seemed to pull 
 together passably, for he, no matter what his 
 practice may have been, always was outwardly 
 discreet, and treated her with deference, and, 
 though he made no secret of his tastes, never 
 gave cause for scandal, and yet one felt that 
 there was something not quite right between 
 them, rather divined than seen. Their mar- 
 riage had been one of Inclination, for Aunt 
 Alexia was by report in those days not Ill-look- 
 ing in an Amazonian fashion, and possibly less 
 deaf. Money they neither of them had, though 
 each had something, and of course the General 
 had his pension, for in the days when I re- 
 member him he had long turned his sword Into 
 a walking-stick, and had become a pillar of the 
 club in a small watering-place. 
 
 Nothing restrained the General from his 
 universal love-making ; but by the time that 
 I remember him it had become rather an affair 
 of making compliments and eyes than of what 
 he called "pushing the attack." Still, the old 
 spirit lingered in him, for at a picnic, when a 
 lady had got into some difficulty, he turned to
 
 86 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 me and told me to go to her assistance, and 
 when I, boy-like, said she did not seem to need 
 my help, rejoined, " A woman always is in 
 want of help, my boy . . . especially on occa- 
 sions when there is no need of it." My aunt 
 looked upon his vagaries leniently enough in 
 those days, though in the past they must have 
 been of some annoyance to her, as I learned 
 from another aunt of mine, whom report said 
 the General had offended, either by making or 
 not making love to her, 
 
 ''My dear," said this good lady, ''your 
 Aunt Alexia has had a great deal to put up 
 with from the General." 
 
 I could not help thinking that perhaps the 
 General also had had something to put up 
 with, but said nothing, knowing that if I did 
 my aunt would not impart the information that 
 was trembling on her tongue. '' You see, my 
 dear," she said, " your Aunt Alexia was one 
 of those who understood when it was politic 
 not to see everything." No one could possibly 
 have accused my Aunt Margaret of not seeing 
 everything. She was an Ogilvy, she used to 
 say with pride, in the same way she might 
 have stated she was vertebrate, and one of the 
 mammalia, and certainly she could weigh a
 
 A MORAL VICTORY ^7 
 
 person in the balance and find him wanting at 
 a glance. 
 
 Aunt Margaret resumed : '' Your Aunt and 
 General Hickman, a person whom I never 
 liked, for I could not abide his airs and graces, 
 respected and possibly loved each other, for 
 now that all is past see what a happy pair they 
 are. Still, dear, your Aunt Alexia once was 
 young, although to look at her to-day . . ." 
 Aunt Margaret was a good seven years senior 
 to my other aunt, and took snuff freely, drying 
 her handkerchiefs before the fire after the 
 operation, and at no epoch of her life could 
 possibly have been attractive ; but still re- 
 mained a woman at the heart in matters that 
 affected others of her sex. " You know it is 
 galling for a woman to have her husband run- 
 ning after everyone, even if you have a mous- 
 tache yourself, my dear." I agreed, and she 
 resumed : " Your aunt always kept up appear- 
 ances, and I think, in her secret heart, was 
 rather proud of the General's reputation in the 
 abstract ; but yet, my dear, no one likes con- 
 crete things, no matter what they say. Your 
 Uncle Arthur, although he said he was a 
 Buddhist, swore fearfully when he had an 
 attack of gout. So, dear, when any of her
 
 88 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 friends — you know what fearful gossips your 
 dear Aunt Charlotte and your Cousin Rachel 
 are — used to come to your Aunt Alexia with 
 tales about her husband, she always said they 
 were all lies. Still, like a prudent woman, she 
 did not talk too much. You recollect our 
 Scottish proverb, 'Juke and let the jaw gae 
 by'.?" 
 
 I thought my aunt kept, so to speak, her 
 finger on the trigger for an unconscionable 
 time ; but knew that once primed she would 
 fire at last and hit the bull's-eye, so I merely 
 nodded, saying, " What a memory you have 
 for proverbs. Aunt Margaret ! Better than 
 Sancho Panza, I believe." "Ah yes, Sancho," 
 she rejoined, and set about to gather up the 
 disjointed fibres of her tale. 
 
 *' Where had I got to ? Oh yes, your Aunt 
 Alexia always kept a stout heart to a stae brae, 
 as the saying is, and never noticed many a 
 thing that perhaps was not worth the noticing. 
 Perhaps she never saw, and what the eyes do 
 not see the heart does not grieve for, so it may 
 be that she was wise enough. Deaf people 
 are hard to understand. You never know 
 what or when they hear ; but seeing is a 
 different thing, and your aunt had a vision like
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 89 
 
 a lynx. Well, well, the General was appointed 
 to a command in India. In those days the 
 passage round the Cape took ninety to a 
 hundred days. All of a sudden he became 
 so attentive to your aunt that everybody was 
 surprised. He used to bring her flowers, and 
 walk about with her just as he must have done 
 before their honeymoon. Your Aunt Alexia 
 never seemed at ease when, as she used to say, 
 her husband was too French in his behaviour. 
 Anyhow, the General said what could he do in 
 India alone without his chere petite Alexie, and 
 discoursed on the hardships of the voyage, for 
 as the appointment was for a short time your 
 aunt thought it was hardly worth her while to 
 go so far afield. It was arranged that all good- 
 byes were to be said at home. The General 
 said he could not bear to see his wife standing 
 upon the shore and waving a wet handkerchief 
 . . . a woman with her pocket-handkerchief 
 rolled up into a ball, red eyes, and hair flying 
 in the wind ... he used to say decoiffde, but 
 always translated it and every other French 
 word that he used, for your Aunt Alexia spoke 
 no language but her own." 
 
 My aunt turned towards me, and, looking at 
 my expectant face, said : " I am not sure if it is
 
 90 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 altogether charitable to go on with my story, 
 but it may serve you as a warning some day, 
 so I will just go on." Aunt Margaret, being 
 a Scotchwoman, had the saving gift of humour, 
 so with a twinkle in her eye she went on with 
 the story that she was bursting with desire to 
 tell. '' For several weeks — a voyage was a 
 serious thing in those days — the General 
 seemed to live down at the docks. He used 
 to come back home to dinner worn out, as he 
 said, with making proper preparations for his 
 men. The soldier, he would say, lives through 
 the stomach ; feed him and he will follow you 
 through fire ; starve him and he will leave you 
 in the lurch. Your Aunt Alexia, who I think 
 had been captivated in the past by her hus- 
 band's bonhomie, his easy manners, and his 
 air of the complete man of the world, and who 
 had always clung to him in spite of all his 
 /reclames, as he called them, saying, ' Men 
 will be men,' to which he answered, * Yes, my 
 life, and women women,' for he had no illusions 
 as to woman's soulful love, now really began 
 to respect him, as in her mind's eye she saw 
 him labouring for the welfare of his men. As 
 the time of sailing drew nearer day by day it 
 seemed to Aunt Alexia as if she had been
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 91 
 
 acting meanly in letting her husband take the 
 voyage all alone. Though it had been agreed 
 she should not come down to the ship to spare 
 the General's feelings and her own at parting, 
 as the day of his departure drew near, whether 
 she suspected anything or whether she thought 
 she ouo^ht to 2^0 and see if he was comfortable 
 on board, she took a sudden resolution and 
 drove down to the docks upon the morning of 
 the day before the vessel sailed. The steward 
 met her at the gangway, and as he ushered 
 her below remarked ' We was on the look-out 
 for you, Mum ; the General's had the cabin 
 done up beautiful, and only half an hour ago 
 he sent a barrowful of flowers.' " What my 
 aunt thought no one but she herself could 
 possibly have told ; however, she was varmint, 
 and made no sign, and quiedy followed the 
 steward down below. 
 
 The first glance round the cabin must have 
 shown her how the land lay, for evidently the 
 General did not contemplate a solitary voyage. 
 Fresh chintz and flowers with plate and pic- 
 tures gave the cabin an air as of a yacht, and 
 two sea-cots standing beside each other, an air 
 of domesticity unusual in the cabin of a trans- 
 port In those far-distant days.
 
 92 A MORAL VICTORY 
 
 My aunt looked round as if she had expected 
 everything just as she found it, said, ** It is all 
 very nice, though the fresh paint and varnish is 
 a little overpowering. . . . Send me a cup of 
 tea." The plan of her campaign must have 
 sprung to her brain at once intuitively, as to 
 the brain of a consummate general in the field, 
 for, taking off her bonnet and her wrap, she 
 wrote a letter, which she sent back by the cab. 
 After an hour or two the cab returned brinorinof 
 her boxes, which she instantly unpacked. In 
 the afternoon the General came down, whistling 
 a little air, to see that all was right before he 
 went off home to take a tearful farewell of his 
 wife. What passed between them when they 
 found themselves together in the cabin none 
 ever knew but the two principals, and they 
 never divulged a word. 
 
 Later in the afternoon another cab arrived 
 piled high with luggage, but a mysterious note 
 handed in by the steward caused it to turn 
 about and return silently to town. Early next 
 morning the vessel put to sea, and as my aunt 
 was a bad sailor, perhaps the General had an 
 easier time for the first week than by all rights 
 he had deserved. As the mysterious lady who 
 was to have occupied the cot in which my aunt
 
 A MORAL VICTORY 93 
 
 reposed had never shown herself aboard, 
 matters remained in a vague condition of con- 
 jecture, and my Aunt Margaret when she told 
 the story always declared that she thought 
 Aunt Alexia most probably never let her hus- 
 band really know that she suspected anything 
 was wrong. How she explained her unex- 
 pected presence in the ship Aunt Margaret 
 had no idea, but she opined there must have 
 been some awkward moments at the captain s 
 table when conversation flagged, and when 
 their cabin door was closed, and they retired 
 to rest.
 
 BISMILLAH 
 
 A FLOCK of goats lay on the rocky hill, their 
 parti-coloured backs looking like stones amongst 
 the scrub of lentisk and low palm. The noon- 
 day sun had made them drowsy, even the 
 whirring of a dragon-fly as it passed like a 
 humming-bird, barely made them raise their 
 heads. Below the hill spread out the bay, 
 blue, calm, and looking almost artificial, or as 
 if drawn by an indifferent painter, it was so 
 conventional, with its white waves breaking 
 upon a pebbly beach in a long, soothing swish. 
 At one end of the bay rose the white town, 
 surrounded by a ruined wall. The houses 
 mounted up the hill in steps, flat-topped, and 
 painted a pale pink or a metallic blue. One 
 or two slender towers and a few palm-trees 
 stood up here and there. No smoke defiled 
 the atmosphere, and thus the town looked 
 empty and unreal. So might Pompeii have 
 appeared had it been left deserted and not 
 overwhelmed. About the middle of the bay 
 
 94
 
 BISMILLAH 95 
 
 two or three fishing-boats lay becalmed, their 
 high lateens sticking up straight, just as the bar 
 of an old Arab draw-well, with its tall arm and 
 heavy stone tied to its butt with an esparto 
 rope, sticks up on a brown plain. A long 
 white line, fleecy and sparkling in the sun, 
 showed where a tide-rip crossed the straits, 
 although so still was everything it might have 
 been but painted by the inferior draftsman 
 that had drawn the sea. The other arm of 
 land that formed the bay was high and rocky, 
 and was crowned by an old watch-tower stand- 
 ing on a cliff Villages, shown by their cactus 
 hedges, which cut them into squares like a vast 
 chess-board, with here and there a round white 
 dome that marked a saint's house springing 
 up like a mushroom in a field, were almost 
 indistinguishable from the scrub. 
 
 Sea, land, and hills, the patches of dark 
 bush, the grove of fig-trees round the 
 crumbling fort, in which the cannon all lay 
 prone beside their carriages . . . the end of 
 war is peace . . . were bathed in a white 
 light, which cast black shadows on the sand. 
 All was so quiet that you could almost hear 
 the growth of plants, and the faint, twitter- 
 ing notes of the goatherd's pipe, cut from a
 
 96 BISMILLAH 
 
 green cane, seemed to fill all the air. A little 
 sandy river ran beneath the fort. 
 
 Some ragged cattle, and thin mares with 
 their feet hobbled with a palmetto cord, stood 
 about listlessly. A knot of camels grazed on 
 the sparse and wiry grass. Storks chattered 
 on the thatched roofs of the village by the salt- 
 pans, and the remains of an old Roman port 
 still stood up stoutly after ten centuries of pill- 
 age and decay. All was so peaceful and so 
 primitive that if Theocritus had come to life 
 again, he could not but have taken up his pen 
 to write another idyll, to prove the golden age 
 had never passed away. 
 
 All round the hillock, upon which, amongst 
 palmetto bushes and the rocks, the goats were 
 lying, ran like a lake a tract of sandy ground, 
 white with the efflorescence of the salt that 
 flowed out from the pans. On it the grass 
 grew sparely, and little flowers, pink and pro- 
 cumbent, appeared between its stalks. The 
 guardian of the flock lay with his head under a 
 clump of dwarfish palm, his two brown legs, 
 tanned with the sun that he had fought with 
 all his life and that his ancestors brought in 
 their blood from the far Yemen or the Hejdz, 
 looked like the roots of the thick bushes that
 
 BISMILLAH 97 
 
 the sand had left uncovered at his feet. His 
 dark and liquid eyes were not unlike those of 
 the goats he herded, and as he played upon his 
 pipe a strange wild air, the intervals so wild 
 and so uncertain that a bird might have been 
 deceived by it and flown about him, thinking 
 that one of its own kind was in distress, a little 
 kid, white but for a spot or two about its nose, 
 nestled up to his side. Now and again he 
 patted it, and the two seemed but a little 
 separated from one another, in nature or degree. 
 As the day wore on the goats slowly began 
 to rise and feed ; the boy got up, leaving a 
 little hollow in the sand where he had lain by 
 the palmettos, and, drawing out his sling, lazily 
 sent a stone or two whistling towards the goats. 
 As the stones struck the ground near to the 
 animals they drew their feet together in a 
 bunch, jumped to one side, and then, after 
 stretching out into a long line, dispersed about 
 the stones to graze. A flight of cranes, look- 
 ing like aerial camels, passed overhead, their 
 shrill, harsh cries lost in the stillness of the air. 
 Nature awoke after its midday torpor, and in 
 the valley the lean Arab mares, dragging their 
 hobbled feet slowly along or rising in a sort 
 of stifled rear, turned their heads towards the
 
 98 BISMILLAH 
 
 breeze as they began to feed. Their foals, 
 that had lain looking as if half dead, rose to 
 their feet, and, shaking off the sand, whinnied 
 and trotted after them, their stilt-like legs 
 giving them an air of those strange animals 
 drawn by the cave-dwellers upon the rocks. 
 
 Slowly the little river filled. Stones on the 
 sandy flat were covered as if by magic by the 
 incoming tide, so imperceptibly that you could 
 no more mark the rising of the flood than 
 follow the slow movement of the hands of 
 a cathedral clock as they eat time before your 
 eyes. The droning of the insects ceased, save 
 for the sharp metallic chirp of crickets, and 
 caravans of asses and of mules that had arrived 
 too late to pass the river were turned back to 
 the grass to feed or struck a winding path 
 between high bushes to seek another ford. As 
 the goats fed, the small, white kid followed the 
 little goatherd like a dog, stopping to eat, 
 then trotted up to him to rub its nose against 
 his legs. He took its innocent caresses just 
 as a man acknowledges those of his dog, as 
 if they were his due ; but at the same time 
 something he prides himself upon as testifying 
 to his worth. All day the goats fed happily 
 amongst the stones or browsed upon the
 
 BISMILLAH 99 
 
 thorns. Sometimes they ran along the trunk 
 of a fallen tree like tight-rope dancers, to reach 
 its branches, or bounding on a rock, stood for 
 an instant motionless, and leaping down again, 
 began again to feed, with just the air that a 
 man wears upon his face after some sudden 
 foolish action into which he is betrayed. 
 
 By slow degrees the sun began to slant, 
 gilding the mosque towers in the town across 
 the bay, painting the sails of fishing-boats and 
 throwing ever-lengthening shadows on the 
 sand. The massive walls of the deserted 
 Roman port turned to a dullish yellow in its 
 rays, and the far-off mountains above Tetudn 
 seemed to draw nearer as the light haze raised 
 by the heat was slowly dissipated. As the 
 sun sank, tribesmen returning from the town, 
 all dressed in white as if they had been 
 shrouded for their own burial, came trooping 
 homewards, crossing the river seated on their 
 mules. One would go forward with his white 
 garments tucked up, sounding the water with 
 a stick. Then came the caravan, some 
 mounted, some on foot, the women passing 
 with their garments held up round their necks, 
 but with their faces all veiled chastely, for, as 
 the Arabs say, the devil enters at the mouth.
 
 loo BISMILLAH 
 
 The mules' and ponies' feet, In the swift, 
 running walk that they affect, seemed not to 
 leave the ground, and yet the riders, rocked by 
 the motion, swayed in their seats just as a man 
 does on a camel, as it slides through the sand. 
 They brushed through beds of the palmettos 
 making a noise as of the opening of a fan. 
 Passing the little plain, in the midst of which 
 stood the steep hillock where the goats had 
 lain amongst the stones, they disappeared down 
 the rough path that crossed a stream, and 
 reappeared upon the bush-clad hill, looking 
 like a flock of sheep in their white clothes, 
 then faded out of sight. 
 
 Sometimes, instead of these white friar-like 
 figures, a knot of men from the far highlands, 
 dressed in their short brown cloaks, their scarlet 
 flannel gun-cases wound turban-like about their 
 heads, passed at a swinging trot. They bore 
 their rifles in their hands and danced along 
 like fauns, occasionally firing a shot or two or 
 simulating a hill-fight, whirling their guns about 
 and uttering wild cries. As they passed on 
 their way, either on foot or mounted, the little 
 flock of goats, with that pathetic trust in man 
 that Eastern animals seem to have above all 
 others of their kind, scarcely avoided them,
 
 BISMILLAH loi 
 
 and now and then a pony's tail seemed to be 
 whisked to brush the flies off, it passed so near 
 their heads. 
 
 Their little shepherd stood playing on his 
 reed or plaiting a palmetto cord, his two brown 
 feet, with their prehensile toes holding the 
 ground just as a monkey's paws curve around 
 a rope. At last all the returning village folk 
 had gone, the sun sank lower, and the boy, 
 gathering his flocks together, walked towards 
 home in front of them piping on his reed. 
 
 In a long line they followed, the kids occa- 
 sionally stopping to browse upon the cytisus 
 and the lentiscus bushes. The milk-white kid 
 followed the closest at his heels. The little 
 river, from which the tide had now retired, was 
 almost empty, and the flock passed it with the 
 water scarcely up to their knees. They threaded 
 through the open gateway of the old Roman port, 
 passed by the salt-pans and drew near to an 
 Arab village, built of reeds and thatched with 
 thistle stalks, giving the huts the look as of 
 the nest of some gigantic bird. Upon a little 
 plot of grass outside the village sat several 
 elders, men of grave mien, bearded and formal 
 in their manners, who by their appearance 
 should have been discoursing on religion, the
 
 I02 BISMILLAH 
 
 unity of God or on his attributes ; but who 
 were probably talking about the price of grain. 
 An air of peace, such as one fancies reigned on 
 earth when Boaz courted Ruth, hung over 
 everything. Girls lingered at the well and 
 talked, and then, their slender water-jars filled 
 up, and with a tuft of tender canes or reeds 
 floating on the top, went homeward, stepping like 
 deer upon their naked feet and swaying with 
 their load. Bells tinkled on the kine, and 
 now and then a homing stork circled about the 
 huts and dropped into its nest. 
 
 Over the straits was stealing by degrees a 
 greenish light that made the hills in Spain still 
 more intensely vivid, flushed as they were with 
 red. The fishing-boats began to look myste- 
 rious as the day faded, and the town to stand 
 out white and unnatural-looking, like a dead city 
 in the moon. As the flock and its shepherd 
 reached the village one of the grave and bearded 
 men arose. He stopped the boy, and speaking 
 to him in sonorous Arabic said something, and 
 the boy, reaching out a lean brown hand, caught 
 the white kid and held it for a moment. The 
 village elder felt its neck, and then drawing out a 
 knife, after a pious '' In the name of God," rapidly 
 cut its throat. The kid uttered a little cry, and
 
 BISMILLAH 103 
 
 from its neck the blood spirted out in a stream 
 upon the grass. One Httle jet fell on the boy's 
 brown foot, and as he watched the last contor- 
 tions of the dying kid with interest, but without 
 feeling for his playmate's loss, dried in the 
 warm sea breeze and looked as if a vein had 
 been exposed. 
 
 Slowly the kid's head sank and coggled 
 limply, and with a heaving motion of its 
 flanks its life was finished. Mystery of mys- 
 teries ! Still the same air of peace hung over 
 everything, and as the flock passed to its pen 
 the call to prayer was wafted up to heaven 
 from the village mosque, fitful and quavering.
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH 
 
 Some say the name Menteith meant a peat moss 
 in Gaelic, and certainly peat mosses fill a third 
 of the whole vale. However that may be, its 
 chiefest attribute is mist. Shadows in summer 
 play on the faces of the hills, and snow in 
 winter spreads a cold carpet over the brown 
 moss ; but the mist stays the longest with 
 us, and under it the semi-Highland, semi- 
 Lowland valley puts on its most familiar air. 
 
 When billowing waves wreathe round the 
 hills, and by degrees encroach upon the low, 
 flat moors, they shroud the district from the 
 world, as if they wished to keep it from all 
 prying eyes, safe and inviolate. Summer and 
 spring and winter all have their charms, either 
 when the faint green of the baulked vegetation 
 of the north breaks out, tender yet vivid, or 
 when the bees buzz in the heather in the long 
 days of the short, nightless summer, or when 
 the streams run noiselessly under their shroud 
 
 of ice in a hard frost. The autumn brings the 
 
 104
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH 105 
 
 rain, soaking and blurring everything. Leaves 
 blotch and blacken, then fall swirlino- down on 
 to the sodden earth. 
 
 On trees and stones, from fences, from the 
 feals upon the tops of dykes, a beady moisture 
 oozes, making them look as if they had been 
 frosted. When all is ready for them, the mists 
 sweep down and cover everything ; from the 
 interior of the darkness comes the cries of 
 wild ducks, of herons as they sit upon the 
 trees, and of geese passing overhead. Inside 
 the wreaths of mist another world seems to 
 have come into existence, something distinct 
 from and antagonistic to mankind. When the 
 mist once descends, blotting out the familiar 
 features of the landscape, leaving perhaps the 
 Rock of Stirling floating in the air, the three 
 black trees upon the bare rock of the Fairy 
 Hill growing from nothing, or the peak of the 
 Cobbler, seeming to peer above enormous 
 mountain ranges, though in reality nothing 
 more vast than the lono- shoulder of Ben 
 Lomond intervenes, the change has come that 
 gives Menteith its special character. 
 
 There are mists all the world over, and in 
 Scotland in particular ; mists circling round the 
 Western Islands, filling the glens and boiling
 
 io6 MIST IN MENTEITH 
 
 in the corries of the hills mists that creep out 
 to sea or in towards the land from seawards, 
 threatening and dreadful-looking ; but none 
 like ours, so impalpable and strange, and yet 
 so fitting to our low, flat mosses with our 
 encircling hills. In older days they sheltered 
 the marauders from the north, who in their 
 gloom fell on the valley as if they had sprung 
 from the night, plundered and burned and 
 harried, and then retreated under cover of the 
 mist, back to their fastnesses. 
 
 As they came through the Glen of Glenny, 
 or the old road behind Ben Dhu, which comes 
 out just a little east of Invertrossachs, when 
 the wind blew aside the sheltering wreaths of 
 steam, and the rare gleams of sun fell on the 
 shaggy band, striking upon the heads of their 
 Lochaber axes, and again shifted and covered 
 them from sight, they must have seemed a 
 phantom army, seen in a dream, just between 
 consciousness and sleep. 
 
 The lake, with its three islands, its giant 
 chestnuts, now stag-headed and about to fall, 
 the mouldering priory, the long church with 
 its built-up, five-light window, the castle, over- 
 grown with brushwood, and with a tree spring- 
 ing up from the middle hall, the heronry, the
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH 107 
 
 rope of sand the fairies twisted, which would 
 have made a causeway to the island had they 
 not stopped just in the nick of time, the single 
 tree that marks the gallows, and the old church- 
 yard of the Port, all these the mist invests 
 with a peculiar charm that they lack when the 
 sun shines and shows them merely mouldering 
 ruins and decaying trees. 
 
 So of the Flanders Moss. It, too, in mist 
 seems to roll on for miles ; its heathy surface 
 turns to long waves that play against the foot 
 of the low range of hills, and beat upon Craig- 
 forth as if it were an island in the sea. Through 
 wreaths of steam, the sullen Forth winds in 
 and out between the peat hags, and when a 
 slant of wind leaves it clear for an instant it 
 looks mysterious and dark, as might a stream 
 of quick-silver running down from a mine. 
 When a fish leaps, the sound re-echoes like a 
 bell, as it falls back into the water, and rings 
 spread out till they are lost beneath the 
 banks. 
 
 After a day or two of gloom life begins 
 somehow or another to be charged with 
 mystery ; and, walking through the woods, 
 instinctively you look about half in alarm 
 as a roe bounds away, or from a fir-tree
 
 io8 MIST IN MENTEITH 
 
 a capercailzie drums or flies off with a noise 
 as if a moose was bursting- through the 
 trees. 
 
 Peat smoke floats through the air from 
 cottages a mile away, acrid and penetrating, 
 and fills the nostrils with its scent. The little 
 streams run with a muffled tinkle as if they 
 w^ished to hide away from sight ; rank, yellow 
 ragweeds on their banks, bowed down with the 
 thick moisture, all hang their heads as if they 
 mourned for the lost sunshine and the day. 
 Now and then leaves flutter down slowly to 
 the ground like dying butterflies. Over the 
 whole earth hangs, as it were, a sounding- 
 board, intensifying everything, making the 
 senses more acute, and carrying voices from a 
 distance, focussed to the ear. 
 
 So through our mists, a shepherd "s dog bark- 
 ino- a mile ofl'. is heard as loudlv as if it were 
 a yard or two away, although the sound comes 
 slowly to the hearing, as when old-fashioned 
 guns hung fire and the report appeared to 
 reach one through a veil. Thus does the past, 
 with its wild legends, the raiders from the 
 north, the Broken iNIen, the Saxon's Leap, the 
 battles of the Grahams and the McGregors, 
 come down to us veiled by the mist of time.
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH 109 
 
 In the lone churchyards, whose grass is always 
 damp the whole year round, whose earth, when 
 a new grave is dug, is always wet, so wet that 
 not a stone rolls from it to the grass ; the 
 tombstones, with the lettering overgrown with 
 lichens, only preserve the names of the old 
 enemies who now lie side by side, in a faint 
 shadowy way. The sword that marks the 
 resting-place of the men of the most turbulent 
 of all the races of that borderland is usually 
 only the shadow of a sword, so well the mist 
 has done its work, rounding off edges and 
 obliteratinor chisel marks. 
 
 Boats on the Loch o' the Port, with oars 
 muffled by the cloud of vapour that broods 
 upon the lake, glide in and out of the thick 
 curtain spread between the earth and sky, the 
 figure of the standing fisher in the stern looming 
 gigantic as he wields his rod in vain ; for, in 
 the calm, even the water-spiders leave a ripple 
 as they run. In the low, mossy "parks" that 
 lose themselves in beds of bulrushes before 
 they join the lake, the Highland catde stand 
 at gaze, the damp congealing on their coats in 
 whitish beadlets, and horses hang their heads 
 disconsolately, for no matter in what climate 
 they are born, horses are creatures of the sun.
 
 no MIST IN MENTEITH 
 
 Under the shroud of gloom it seems that some- 
 thing strange is going on, something impal- 
 pable that gives the valley of Menteith its own 
 peculiar air of sadness, as if no summer sun, 
 no winter frost, no fierce March winds, or the 
 chill cold of April, could ever really dry the tears 
 of moisture that it lays up under the autumn 
 mist. So all our walls are decked with a 
 thick coating of grey lichen on the weather 
 side that looks like flakes of leather, and on 
 the lee side with a covering of bright, green 
 moss. 
 
 Thatch moulders, and from it springs a 
 growth of vegetation ; a perpetual dripping 
 from the eaves opens a little rill below it, in 
 which the pebbles glisten as in a mountain 
 stream. 
 
 Along the roads the scanty traffic rumbles 
 fitfully, and on the Sabbath, down the steep 
 path towards the little church, knots of fantastic 
 figures seem to stalk like threatening phantoms. 
 When they draw near, one sees that they were 
 but the familiar faces of McKerrochar of 
 Cullamoon, Graham of Tombreak, Campbell 
 of Rinaclach, and Finlay Mitchell, dressed in 
 their Sunday clothes. They pass the time of 
 day, daunder a little in the damp kirkyard, so
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH in 
 
 heaped with graves they have to pick their way 
 between them just as sheep pick their way 
 and follow one another on a steep mountain 
 path, or when they cross a burn. 
 
 Although their talk runs on their daily life — 
 the price of beasts at the last market or the 
 tryst, upon bad seasons and the crops, all in 
 the compassed and depreciatory vein charac- 
 teristic of their calling and their race, they 
 once have been fantastic figures towering above 
 the dry-stone dykes that edge the road. That 
 glory nothing can take away from them, or 
 from the valley where they dwell. 
 
 Nothing is stable. Snows melt and rain 
 gives place to sun, and sun to rain again ; 
 spring melts into summer, then autumn blends 
 insensibly with winter, and the year is out. 
 Men come and go, the Saxon speech replaces 
 Gaelic ; even traditions insensibly are lost. 
 
 The trees decay and fall, then they lie prone 
 like the great hollow chestnut trunks, blackened 
 by tourists' fires, in Inchmahome. Our hills 
 and valleys all have changed their shapes under 
 the action either of fire or ice. Life, faiths, 
 ideals, all have changed. The Flanders Moss 
 that was a sea is now crossed by a railway and 
 by innumerable roads. What, then, shall we,
 
 112 MIST IN MENTEITH 
 
 who have seen mists rising up all our lives, 
 feared them as children, loved them in riper 
 years, cling to, but mist ? 
 
 Refuge of our wild ancestors, moulder of 
 character, inspirer of the love of mystery, chief 
 characteristic of the Keltic mind, spirit that 
 watches over hills and valleys, lochs, clachans, 
 bealachs and shaggy baadans, essence com- 
 pounded of the water of the sky and earth, 
 impalpable, dark and threatening, Fingal and 
 Bran and Ossian, and he who in outstretching 
 Ardnamurchan strung his harp to bless the 
 birlinn of Clanranald, all have disappeared in 
 thy grey folds. 
 
 Whether thou art death stealing amongst us, 
 veiled, or life concealed behind a curtain, or 
 but an emanation from the ground, which the 
 poor student, studying in Aberdeen, working 
 by day upon the wharves and poring over books 
 at night, can explain as easily as he can solve 
 all other mysteries, with his science primer, 
 who shall say ? 
 
 All that I know is that when the mantle of 
 the damp rolls down upon us, battling with the 
 rough oak copse upon Ben Dearch or Craig- 
 more till all is swallowed up and a smooth 
 surface stretches out over what, but half an
 
 MIST IN MENTEITH 113 
 
 hour before, was a thick wood of gnarled and 
 secular trees that stood like piles stand up in 
 an embankment, eaten by the sea, the mist has 
 conquered. 
 
 Somehow, I think, its victory brings a sense 
 of rest.
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 The river spread out broad, but swift and deep, 
 just underneath the little town, which stood 
 upon a sandy bank, the whitewashed, flat- 
 roofed houses, appearing from the far side of 
 the pass, buried in gardens and in trees. To 
 the east, the river's banks were buried in a 
 forest of nandzibay, of coronillo and chaiidr. 
 In the great bend it formed, the monte grew so 
 thickly that when you penetrated it in search 
 of horses, or to put up strayed cattle, to the 
 rodeo, it seemed you were in another world 
 from that of the open grassy prairies, only a 
 league away. 
 
 Paths ran about between the thickets, passing 
 round clumps of cactus, and avoiding pools. 
 The scent came from the blossoms of the 
 espinillo de olor, and from the arasd, filling the 
 nostrils with a perfume almost of the tropics ; 
 the creeping plants in places bound the thickets 
 in a net of living cordage — impenetrable, 
 mysterious, and as if nature had set a challenge 
 
 114
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 115 
 
 to mankind, saying, *' Thus far . . . but there 
 are secrets that you shall not solve." 
 
 Birds, as the little black-and-white viudita, 
 with its forked, twitching tail ; the plump, 
 metallic-looking, purple-winged/.^^?/ ; the fran- 
 colin, and half a hundred others, flashed across 
 the path. From overhanging boughs the nests 
 of the hornero hung. Humming-birds poised 
 themselves, brighter than jacinths, more iri- 
 descent than the beryl, as they sucked the 
 honey from the great trumpet-shaped and 
 dark-red, fleshy cactus flowers. Closer to the 
 river, cormorants sat meditating on bald 
 boughs, and in the stream aigrettes and herons 
 fished, whilst gorgeous kingfishers flitted across 
 the surface of the water and disappeared into 
 the sedge. 
 
 Mares, with long, ropy manes, stood feeding 
 in the clearings : then bounded back into the 
 bush with a sharp snort at the first sight of 
 man. Domestic cattle that had gone wild, 
 bellowed and pawed the ground as you passed 
 on your way, as if they somehow, in some 
 mysterious way, remembered that their ances- 
 tors had one day been as free as were the 
 forest deer — shyest of all the animals in the 
 River Plate.
 
 ii6 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 Such was the river on the east. 
 
 Towards the north, a line of stony hills, not 
 high, but steep, extended towards the frontiers 
 of Brazil. The grass was wiry, and the stones 
 seemed to have been strewn by accident ; 
 between them sprung up tufts of thorny 
 bush. 
 
 The hills ended about a leao^ue or two from 
 the river-bank, leaving a space of open prairie 
 to the west, which gradually shelved down 
 towards the Pass. 
 
 Tracks, like those that the Arabs make all 
 through the desert, made their appearance 
 several hundred yards before the last descent ; 
 tracks not made by wheels, for nothing but the 
 weekly diligence and a rare bullock cart or two 
 ever passed on the road. Horses and mules 
 and cattle, flocks of sheep and still more horses, 
 mules and cattle and more flocks of sheep, 
 were what had made the tracks ; and yet the 
 prairie was so wide, the carpet of long grass so 
 strong, that almost all tracks ceased when once 
 the trail had come out on the plain. From 
 the last little rise, one saw the river, yellowish 
 green, and swirling quietly in its channel, 
 making smooth whirlpools here and there. It 
 ran so silently, that it looked like oil, and now
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 117 
 
 and then small landslips, either of sand or mud, 
 fell with a splash into the stream that under- 
 mined the banks. Occasionally a fish sprang 
 from the water and then fell back with a loud 
 crash, and now and then a water tortoise raised 
 its head. The pass itself spread out about a 
 quarter of a mile in width, and on the land side 
 to the west stood several straw ranches and 
 a white flat-topped pidperia, known as the 
 ''Twenty-Fifth of May." 
 
 A row of posts for hitching horses were 
 driven deep into the ground^^^before the door, 
 and at them all the day stood horses blinking 
 in the sun. The cojinillos of the saddles were 
 doubled forward over the pommel to keep the 
 seat cool in hot weather or dry in rain. The 
 reins were tied back to the cantle of the saddle 
 to prevent them falling down and being stepped 
 upon. Sometimes a man, emerging from the 
 pulperia, with a gin bottle in his hand, or a bag 
 oi yerba, placed them in his saddle-bags, and 
 carefully undoing his hide halter, girthed up 
 his horse, putting his foot against its side, then, 
 mounting, struck into the road towards the 
 ''camp" at a fox-trot, which after a hundred 
 yards or so he changed to the slow gallop of 
 the plains, his right arm moving rhythmically
 
 ii8 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 up and down as he allowed his whip to dangle 
 on his horse's flanks to keep him to his pace. 
 
 Some of the horses at the hitching posts were 
 saddled with old recaos covered with sheep- 
 skins, and others blazed with silver, and now 
 and then a wild-eyed redomon sat back and 
 snorted when an incautious stranger came too 
 near. 
 
 Occasionally three or four men came out 
 together, some of them half drunk ; but in an 
 instant all had mounted lightly, and so to speak 
 took wing, just like a flight of birds. No 
 diving for their stirrups, and no snatching at 
 the reins, no sticking out the body in an 
 undignified position as they got up, and no 
 resounding whack of the leg on the off-side of 
 the horse, after the European style, ever 
 occurred amongst these centaurs as they rode 
 slowly off Occasionally a man who had drunk 
 too freely of Carlbn or of Cachaza, and topped 
 up with some gin, swayed in his saddle, but his 
 horse seemed to catch him as he swayed, so 
 perfect was his balance, and so firm his grasp 
 between the thighs. 
 
 A stout stockade of posts of nandubay set 
 touching one another was thrown about the 
 house, leaving the entrance narrow enough to
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 119 
 
 close with a long pole, a precaution which at 
 times was not unneeded, when some Gaucho 
 tried to ride into the court. 
 
 The actual door led into a low room in which 
 a counter ran from wall to wall, surmounted by 
 a railing of light wood, in which a little trap 
 was cut ; through it the owner passed the 
 drinks, the boxes of sardines, the packages of 
 raisins or of figs, which constituted his chief 
 articles of trade. 
 
 Outside the counter lounged the customers, 
 for in those days the pulperia was a sort of 
 unofficial club to which the idlers of the district 
 all resorted, to while away their time. The 
 clank of spurs sounded like fetters on the hard 
 mud floor, and night and day a cracked guitar, 
 with either every string fashioned of wire, or 
 else the catgut mended up with strips of hide, 
 twangled eternally. The payador^^ if so be 
 that there was one present, took It of right, 
 and after tuning up — an operation which 
 generally took some time — played silently for 
 a few bars, usually only a few simple chords, 
 and then struck into a wild song, sung in a 
 high falsetto, prolonging all the vowels and 
 finishing upon the highest note he could attain. 
 
 * Improvisatore.
 
 I20 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 These songs almost invariably dealt with love, 
 and were of the most melancholy complexion, 
 according strangely with the fierce look and 
 wild appearance of the singer and the grim 
 faces of the listeners. 
 
 Occasionally a man would rise, and coming 
 to the window in the railing say " Carl6n," 
 and would receive the dark red, heady Cata- 
 lonian wine in a tin mug that held about a 
 pint, and pass it round to all the loungers, 
 beginning always with the payador. 
 
 In North America, upon the prairies in 
 similar circumstances, you kicked the counter 
 and said '* How," with perhaps the addition of 
 " Boys, here's the hair off your heads " ; but at 
 the pulperia upon the Yi the etiquette was to 
 take the mug and murmur **Gracias," or if you 
 were a man of parts some pretty phrase or 
 other, for though all men the whole world over 
 are the slaves of etiquette, in different lands, it 
 takes a different form, just as one star differs 
 from another in briorhtness and in size. 
 
 Men would come in, and, after salutations, 
 drink silendy and go, touching their hats, and 
 others instantly plunge into a conversation 
 about the almost certain revolution or any other 
 topic of the "camp," just as men do in clubs.
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 121 
 
 where some make friends and others pass their 
 lives hedged in behind their collars, speaking 
 to nobody. Occasionally a fight would come 
 about after a quarrel, and sometimes two 
 known valientes would challenge one another 
 to fight until first blood, the loser to pay a pint 
 of wine or something of the kind. 
 
 That was the time for elaborate preparations. 
 Spurs would be taken off and given to the 
 pulpero and ponchos rolled about the arm. 
 Then some authority would instruct the com- 
 batants where the knives should be held, 
 leaving an inch, two inches, or the half blade 
 beyond the hand, and the two heroes would 
 begin. These contests were more formal than 
 when they fought in earnest, and body blows 
 were barred. Usually, after springing to and 
 fro like cats, parrying, passing and crouching 
 low, catching the blows upon their arms de- 
 fended by their summer ponchos, they would 
 pause for breath, whilst the assistants criticized 
 the strokes. As all the cuts were levelled 
 either at the arm or face, the contest sometimes 
 lasted five or six minutes, and when at last the 
 blood was drawn the beaten man, calling for 
 wine, handed it courteously to his opponent, 
 who passed it back to him, with many compli-
 
 122 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 ments. This was the summer weather, so to 
 speak, of pulperia life, but now and then a 
 sudden fury, after a bout of drink or any cause, 
 would make some man get up vociferating like 
 a maniac and drawing \\\'$^ facon. 
 
 Such a sight I remember once, not at the 
 pulperia on the Yi, but near Bahia Blanca, 
 where a grim old man, his long grey hair hang- 
 ing a foot or more upon his shoulders, suddenly 
 bounded on the floor, and drawing his long 
 knife, beat furiously upon the counter and the 
 walls, yelling out, '* Viva Rosas, mueran los 
 unitarios Salvajes," and foaming at the mouth. 
 He looked so terrible that most of those assem- 
 bled either drew their arms, or sliding out like 
 cats to the pale^ique took the hobbles off their 
 horses, and stood waiting by their sides. The 
 pulpero hurriedly drew down his window, then 
 taking his revolver in his left hand, carefully 
 placed some empty bottles in a row upon the 
 counter, ready to throw upon the crowd. After 
 a minute, which, I confess, seemed longer than 
 an hour, and after having menaced everyone 
 with death unless they cried out *' Viva Rosas," 
 the old man's knife fell from his hand upon the 
 ground, and he himself, tottering towards a 
 seat, sat silent, rocking himself to and fro, and
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 123 
 
 mumbling in his beard. The Gauchos sheathed 
 their knives, and one of them muttered, " He 
 is thinking of the deaths he owed when he was 
 young. Leave him in peace." 
 
 The owner of \}i\^ pulperia on the Yi was one 
 Eduardo Pefia, a sort of cross between a Gaucho 
 and a townsman, wearing a coat and waistcoat, 
 but no shirt collar, and with his loose bombachas 
 tucked into high riding-boots with patent leather 
 tops, worked with an eagle in red thread. 
 Tall and athletic, the lump inside his coat by 
 his right elbow showed where his pistol was, 
 and everybody knew in politics he was a Blanco, 
 although he generally kept his opinions pretty 
 quiet, being, as he said, '* a kind of a guitar for 
 all to play upon." 
 
 No one had ever seen him with a oood horse 
 to ride, which he explained by saying he was 
 half a sailor, being the owner of the balsa on 
 the Pass. 
 
 The balsa, a flying bridge, worked by men 
 pulling on a rope, which was swept across the 
 river by the action of the stream, gave Eduardo 
 Pena a position of importance midway between 
 the dignity of an estanciero and of a merchant 
 in the town. 
 
 Although there was a ford in average weather,
 
 124 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 three or four hundred yards above the flying 
 bridge, few used it, as it was deep and dangerous, 
 the bottom full of holes, and after several hours 
 of rain became impassable. 
 
 Lounging about the river's edges stood the 
 balseros, generally Correntinos, an amphibious 
 race of men, as much at home in a canoe as on 
 a horse's back, tall, slight, and Indian-looking, 
 talking a curious dialect of Spanish, all mixed 
 with Guarani. 
 
 A colony of little huts, some made of straw 
 and others out of old tin cans, was set about a 
 hundred yards from the water-side. In them 
 lived several chinas^ who drove a thriving trade 
 in love amongst the passers-by. One or two 
 of them, such as '* Boton de Oro " and ^'Moli- 
 nillo de Cafe," and in especial a half- Indian 
 girl known as *' La Laucha," almost deserve a 
 place in history, considering the time they lived 
 about the place and their resisting powers. 
 
 All of them on occasions were ready with 
 their knives, and it would have been a bold 
 man indeed who tried to better them at playing 
 monte or la taba, or any of the games, so 
 called of chance, played by the habituds of the 
 Pass. 
 
 As all the whole world over extremes meet,
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 125 
 
 it was curious to see how the old customs of 
 the Greeks were to be seen in the straw ranchos 
 near the balsa on the Yi. If any of the chinas 
 were employed on what for want of a more 
 explicit term we may refer to as l'o7tvrage de 
 dames, she dropped the mare's hide which 
 served as door, and no one troubled her, just 
 as in Hellas ladies of the same profession were 
 wont to close their doors. All the night long 
 the tinkling of guitars came from the ranchos, 
 and usually by day the occupants slept and 
 recuperated until the evening, when they came 
 out and sat at the receipt of custom, and hence 
 the name of Las Murcidlagas, by which they 
 all were known. Although the river ran within 
 a hundred yards of their straw ranchos, no one 
 had ever seen one of these '' bats " bathe or do 
 anything but draw a can of water from its 
 stream. Had they been asked, it is not im- 
 probable that they had answered, '' Only 
 Indians bathe. We are Christians and clean," 
 or something of the kind. So does the pride 
 of race blind people to their welfare, and take 
 away all of our senses, including that of smell. 
 Day in, day out, horses and catde waited at 
 the Pass, their owners hailing the balsa, which 
 was safe to be upon the other side, and sitting,
 
 126 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 with one leg crossed on the pommel of the 
 saddle, smoking their cigarettes. 
 
 A fine green dust, composed of every kind 
 of animal manure, filled all the air upon fine 
 days, and as there were no trees within a 
 quarter of a mile, the heat was tropical, and 
 the few sheds which stood about for shelter from 
 the sun, sure to be occupied. 
 
 The cattle hung their heads as if they had 
 been on rodeo, and the peons, placed upon the 
 bank for fear of a stampede, slumbered upon 
 their saddles, though with one eye always half 
 open for the first sign of movement in the herd. 
 Sometimes a troop of mules, wild and un- 
 broken, going to Brazil, gave more excitement, 
 for the first sight of the great balsa arriving at 
 the bank was sure to frighten them, when in a 
 moment, in a cloud of dust, they disappeared 
 into the camp, the negro peons from Rio 
 Grande rushing to head them back. Some- 
 times the owner or his capataz, a dark Brazilian 
 riding a horse covered with silver trappings, his 
 saddle kept in place by a crupper — a most 
 unusual thing amongst the Gauchos of the 
 plains — wearing a sword stuck through his 
 girths, and with a pair of silver-mounted pistols 
 at his saddle-bow, by dint of galloping was able
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 127 
 
 to head the troop into a swamp or angle of the 
 river, or against some wood, and gradually get 
 them calmed down and manageable. All 
 generally went well as long as the frightened 
 animals could be kept all together, but if they 
 separated and cut out into '' points," days might 
 elapse before the troop again was got up to the 
 Pass. As mules that once had been stampeded 
 were always liable to stampede again, the 
 utmost care was needed to make them by 
 degrees, and twenty at a time, enter the da/sa 
 and allow themselves to be transported to the 
 other side. 
 
 Occasionally all efforts were in vain. Then 
 came the time for Don Eduardo Pena and his 
 men. Two Correntinos in canoes, one up the 
 stream and one below, lay on their paddles 
 ready to keep the swimminganimals from getting 
 washed away. Gently, and with infinite precau- 
 tion, they were conducted to the ford, and when 
 at last they all were huddled on the bank and 
 stood there terrified, the mounted men closed 
 in upon them with a shout. Forcing their 
 horses up against the mules, they yelled, and 
 swung their /azos and their whips. At last 
 some mule, bolder or more experienced than the 
 rest, would stretch its ears out towards the
 
 128 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 water and take a cautious step. Then was 
 the time for noise to cease, for mules are twenty 
 times more self-reliant than are horses, and it 
 was ten to one if the first mule should enter, 
 the rest would follow him. 
 
 If the first mule took his decision and began 
 to swim, others soon followed, and by degrees 
 the troop would take the water, their heads 
 sticking out straight like camels, and a faint 
 line of back appearing as they swam. 
 
 In their canoes the Correntinos splashed 
 water with their paddles to keep the animals 
 together, and when the whole were swimming, 
 paddled beside them to prevent them turning 
 back. The Brazilian negroes crossed, swimming 
 on their horses, and the capataz, when he had 
 seen them land and gather up the mules into a 
 bunch, rode slowly to the balsa, and forcing in 
 his horse by dint of spurring was taken over dry. 
 
 Sometimes he too had his adventures, as one 
 who, I remember, ridina a half-tamed horse, 
 had it jump with him on its back over the rail- 
 ing of the balsa in the middle of the stream. 
 Swearing in Portuguese, and spouting water 
 like a whale, he clambered back again, but, like 
 a perfect Gaucho as he was, still holding fast 
 the reins. His horse swam after him, and the
 
 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 129 
 
 fierce current carried it sideways till it lay help- 
 less, when it was towed along. 
 
 His cojinillo was turned back, showing a 
 pair of boleadores which he had placed across 
 the saddle underneath the seat. Little by little 
 the current washed them off, amidst the laughter 
 of the people on the raft. Just as they seemed 
 about to disappear, a Gaucho, sitting on his 
 horse, threw himself sideways, and, hanging by 
 his heel, caught them upon the end of his 
 facon. 
 
 The discomfited Brazilian, both his hands 
 occupied in keeping up his horse's head, 
 murmured a " muito obrigado^' amid the 
 laughter of the crowd. 
 
 All day the balsa journeyed to and fro, and 
 Don Eduardo Peila lounged about, smoking 
 and taking his receipts, varying his occupation 
 by an occasional visit to \\\s pulperia, to take a 
 vermouth or a vino seco with a friend. 
 
 All day the stream of life, going northward 
 to Brazil and south towards the capital, was 
 focussed at the Pass. 
 
 Horsemen as still as statues waited for their 
 turn, the only sign they were alive being when 
 their horses shook their heads, making the 
 coscojo of the bit rattle against their teeth. 
 
 K
 
 I30 THE PASS OF THE RIVER 
 
 Horsemen came up at a slow trotecito, their 
 horses playing with the bit, the riders' hands 
 holding the reins as lightly as they had been 
 silk threads, and other riders came up with a 
 succession of wild snorts and bounds, their half- 
 wild horses shying from the <^^/^^,and only enter- 
 ing it after a stubborn fight. Great herds of 
 cattle, flocks of sheep, long trains of bullock 
 carts loaded with wool, and, once a week, the 
 diligence, drawn by six horses, with a boy 
 riding a seventh fastened by a lazo from the 
 cinch to a great iron hook upon the pole, 
 passed with a rattle of glass windows, in a 
 dense cloud of dust. 
 
 Such were the humours of the Pass, focus 
 and brief epitome of Gaucho life in Uruguay. 
 
 Now without doubt a hideous iron bridge 
 stretches across the Yi. Trains pass and 
 rumble, and out of them lean passengers who 
 look out at the Pass, which once was the chief 
 interest of all life between Durazno and San 
 Fructuoso, in a perfunctory way, then ring the 
 bell and ask how long a time they have to 
 wait before the dinner hour.
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 We lay so near the shore in a steam tug that 
 we could hear the noises of the city, and see 
 the lights that looked so close it seemed that 
 you could touch them by stretching out your 
 hand. The watchmen called each hour, in- 
 forming us that the night was serene, after 
 having hailed the Blessed Virgin in a long- 
 drawn-out wail. 
 
 Though we had lain there for three days in 
 quarantine, none of us could sleep, partly on 
 account of the mosquitoes and partly from the 
 uneasy pitching of the tug-boat in the muddy 
 current of the River Plate. 
 
 Three of us whiled away the time by fishing 
 and by telling stories, the travellers' resource 
 at such times, as we sat and smoked. Our 
 budget was exhausted, and after having sat a 
 long time silent in the sweltering heat, Mansel 
 said suddenly : *' I have told you all my yarns, 
 but I can recollect a thing, there is no story in 
 it, that left a strong impression on my mind." 
 
 131
 
 132 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 We looked towards him gratefully as he sat 
 cutting tobacco on his riding boot, with a long 
 silver-handled knife. Tall, dark, and nervous, 
 with round, prominent eyes, a sparse mous- 
 tache, a skin tanned by the sun to a brick- 
 dark red, his thick, brown hair cut short like a 
 French soldier's, or, as he called it, ''all the 
 same dogs back," although he wore the loose 
 black merino trousers worn by all *' camp-men " 
 in those days, shoved into patent leather riding- 
 boots, and slept, as we said, in his spurs, you 
 saw he once had been a sailor, at the first 
 glance. The sea leaves marks upon its votaries 
 that even time never entirely rubs out, perhaps 
 because, being an element so hostile to man- 
 kind, the difficulty of accustoming oneself to 
 all its moods alters a man for life. 
 
 Rough-tongued and irascible, he was one of 
 those who in their dictionaries had never come 
 upon the verb "to fear." 
 
 He slowly rolled his cigarette and sheathed 
 his silver-handled knife behind his back, leaving 
 the haft just sticking out below his elbow on 
 the right side. After expelling through his 
 mouth and nostrils a sort of solfatara of blue 
 smoke, he said : '' Yes, call my yarn a memory, 
 a recollection ... for it is not a story, only
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 133 
 
 a circumstance that I remember vividly, just as 
 one never can forget an object seen in a flash 
 of lightning . . . perhaps the word should be 
 . . ." One of us interjected "An Impression"; 
 he nodded and began his tale : — 
 
 '' Night caught me, miles from a house, on a 
 tired horse, and with a storm of wind and rain, 
 such as you only see upon the plains. At first 
 I galloped, hoping to arrive at some place 
 where I could pass the night under a roof, and 
 then as the darkness thickened, my horse, im- 
 pervious to the spur, slackened down to a jog, 
 which in these parts they call a trotecito. An 
 hour or so of stumbling through the darkness, 
 broken occasionally by lightning that seemed 
 to run along the ground, of being suddenly 
 brought up against a stream which seemed 
 impossible to pass, and having to ride up banks 
 to find a crossing, and the jog-trot became a 
 walk. 
 
 '' No matter how I spurred, nothing could 
 move my horse ; but just as I was thinking 
 that I should have to pass the night out in the 
 'camp,' I thought I heard the distant barking of 
 a dog. My horse had heard it too, and, turn- 
 ing him towards the sound, I felt him quicken 
 up again to a slow, shuffling trot. It seemed
 
 134 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 I rode for hours, until at last the barking 
 grew more furious, and in the distance a feeble 
 light gleamed rather than shone, just like a 
 vessel's mast-head light at sea. I brushed 
 through some tall thisdes, and by dint of whip 
 and spur drove my horse, now so tired he 
 could scarcely drag himself along, towards the 
 barking of the dogs. 
 
 " At last my horse emerged out of the long, 
 rough grass that clothes the southern Pampas, 
 on to the open space before a house. Though 
 it was dark I felt the difference at once, and 
 the soft rustlinof of the wild p^rasses that sounds 
 at night almost as if you rode through water 
 ceased, and I began to hear my horse's foot- 
 fall on the hard-trodden ground. The folded 
 sheep were bleating in the chiqtiero, and 
 when I turned towards it, I divined rather than 
 saw the piles of cut, dried thorns, ranged in a 
 circle, after the fashion that one sees amongst 
 the Arabs, forming the corral, from which an 
 acrid smell, rising from all the fleeces closely 
 packed together, floated on the night air. 
 
 ** Advancing still a little further, I saw the 
 house, a mud and wattle rancho, with its low 
 thatched roof. Through the interstices of the 
 walls came the reflection of the fire, which
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 135 
 
 burned right In the middle of the floor. It 
 seemed as If at last, after long years of battling 
 with the storm, that I had reached a haven 
 of some sort. The rancho stood forlorn upon 
 the open space. No tree, no shrub, no garden, 
 or any patch of cultivated ground cut It off 
 from the plain, that seemed to flow right up 
 to it on every side. 
 
 ** A dried and crumpled mare's hide formed 
 the door. As the wind beat on It and got 
 in between it and the jambs. It surged about, 
 reminding me of a boat heaving at a wharf 
 Right opposite the door, and twenty yards or 
 so away, stood a hitching post of iiandu- 
 bay, at which to fasten horses, and spurring 
 up to It, I called out, ' Ave Maria purisslma,' and 
 received the answer, ' Sin Pecado Concebida.' 
 A man seemed to rise from the darkness by 
 my side, and saying in a gentle voice, * Wel- 
 come, get off and let your horse loose, he is 
 too tired to stray,' called off the pack of bark- 
 ing dogs and led me by the hand Into the 
 house. The mare's hide swung to behind us 
 stiffly, blotting out the night, and the bright 
 glare from the blazing hearth was almost blind- 
 ing to my eyes, fresh from the storm and rain. 
 Sit, down upon one of those bullocks' heads,'
 
 136 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 said my entertainer, ' your horse cannot go far, 
 and if he is too tired to travel in the morning I 
 will give you one of mine.' 
 
 *' He spoke, and as he stood before the fire 
 that burned on the low hearth, erect and 
 sinewy, with his long mane of jet-black hair, 
 a little flecked with grey, falling down on his 
 shoulders, I saw that he was blind. His eyes 
 appeared quite perfect, but evidently saw 
 nothing, and as he moved about the rancho 
 he now and then touched with his shoulder or 
 his head some of the horse gear that hung 
 from pegs upon the walls. He must have 
 somehow felt I saw his great calamity — for out 
 upon the plains what cross could possibly be 
 heavier to bear ? — for he said, * Yes, I am 
 blind. The visitation came from God, only 
 three years ago. It crept upon me by degrees, 
 no one knows how, although a doctor in the 
 town said it was paralysis of the optic nerve ; 
 not that I cared much what he said, for when 
 a man is blind it comes from God, like death 
 or any other ill.' 
 
 "He paused and motioned with his hand 
 towards me, just as if he saw, towards the 
 bullocks' heads, and when I squatted dov^n, he 
 too took his seat on one of them. ' Take off
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 137 
 
 your boots,' he said, 'and dry yourself, and 
 throw some wood upon the fire — it is there in 
 the corner ; my son, he who sleeps there on 
 his recadoy took care to pile up plenty, for I 
 smelt the coming of the storm.' 
 
 ** I had not seen the boy, who now turned 
 on his elbow and looked up. His father went 
 on : 'He is tired, for at this moment we are 
 alone here in the rancho ; my wife and family 
 have gone to town, and he has had to be on 
 horseback all the day, from the time when the 
 false dawn streaks the sky, till sundown, doing 
 all the work.' As I piled the wood upon the 
 fire my host looked towards me and said, 'How 
 tall you are ! ' And when I asked him how he 
 knew, said, ' The voice comes from the rafters, 
 as it were. We blind think much on things 
 that in our seeing days we took no notice of.' 
 
 *'The storm still raged outside, and as my 
 things dried before the fire of bones and nandu- 
 bay, that feeling of contentment that comfort 
 brings with it after exposure to the weather 
 for long hours, stole over me. The boy upon 
 his saddle had turned his face away from the 
 glowing embers, and the hut felt like a ship at 
 sea ; and I, a passenger under the guidance of 
 a pilot who was blind, felt myself listening to
 
 138 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 his talk, as if he were a friend of years, as 
 happens in the plains when men meet casually, 
 just as it happens with the other animals. A 
 horse puts out its head and snuffles, and his 
 fellow instantly becomes his friend, or at least 
 he is not actively his enemy, and the same 
 thing occurs with men. 
 
 '' Under the directions of my host, I put a 
 side of mutton down to roast, skewering it 
 upon an iron spit, which he said I should find 
 stuck in the thatch. The roast crackled and 
 sputtered, and the rich juices fell into the fire 
 and made it fiercer, and as it roasted slowly, we 
 passed round the maU, I having put the kettle 
 and the bag of yerba into the blind man's 
 hand. Practice had made it just as easy for 
 him to pour the water into the hole cut in the 
 gourd as it is for a man who wears a sword to 
 sheathe it in the dark. So after having filled 
 the gourd, and taking a long pull of it to see 
 that it was working properly, he passed it to 
 me, and I sucked the hot, bitter mixture with 
 the avidity of a man who has been storm- 
 tossed and has not eaten since the early 
 dawn. 
 
 " My host had not the unnatural curiosity 
 of a defenceless man upon a frontier to know if
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 139 
 
 there was any recent movement amongst the 
 Indians, for his fate would not have been un- 
 certain if at any time — even upon the night 
 we sat and talked — a raiding party of the 
 Tchehuelches or the Pampas had happened to 
 pass by. 'Our lives/ he said, 'are in God's 
 hand,' a truism which it was hard to controvert, 
 though at the same time, situated as we were, 
 the intervention of a good and speedy horse 
 might have assisted fate. Still, when he 
 listened now and then, and held the matd 
 half-way to his lips, and gave that strained 
 attention that makes the attitude of listening 
 in blind men seem, as it were, to indicate some 
 extra sense in them, I watched him with some 
 trepidation till he said : 'It is nothing, only a 
 stallion rounding up his mares. Each night,' 
 he said, ' I saddle up a horse and leave him 
 tied under a shed behind the house, and if I 
 could but get my hand upon his mane I might 
 yet lead the Indians a dance.' He felt my 
 look of wonder, and rejoined : ' I should ride 
 keeping the wind upon my cheek, and as the 
 night is dark, I and the Indians would be on 
 an equality. In fact, I think that if there were 
 any advantage, it would be upon my side, for 
 I know all the "camps" for leagues on every
 
 I40 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 side, so well, that I can cross them easily, even 
 though I am blind.' 
 
 " I looked at him, and thought what a fine 
 figure he would look wrapped in a double dark- 
 ness, with his hair flying in the wind, and his 
 eyes open, but unseeing, as he galloped through 
 the night. When the roast was ready, I took 
 the horn in which was kept the salt and water, 
 from a peg and sprinkled it, and then, with 
 a courteous gesture, my host pointed towards 
 the meat, and we fell to, cutting great junks 
 off with our knives and holding one end in our 
 teeth, cut them down to our lips. We talked 
 about the usual topics of the * camp,' the marks 
 of horses, Indian incursions, the accursed ways 
 of government, the locusts, and the things that 
 in such countries replace the reports of parlia- 
 ments and police-courts, and all the villainies 
 of city life. 
 
 " Then we lay down upon our saddles, after 
 the tall, blind Gaucho, whose name I learned 
 was Anastasio Lucena, had said the rosary. 
 
 *' Morning broke fine and clear, with a slight 
 film of frost upon the grass. In the chiquero 
 the sheep were bleating to be let out, and cattle 
 on the hills got up and stretched themselves, 
 looking like camels as they stood with their
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 141 
 
 heads high and their hind-quarters drooping to 
 the ground. A distant wood behind a Httle 
 hill was hung suspended in the sky, with the 
 trees growing towards the earth by an effect 
 of mirage, and from the world there came a 
 smell of freshness and a sensation of new 
 birth. My horse was not in a fit state to 
 travel, and when the boy had driven the tropilla 
 up to the corral, Anastasio Lucena unsaddled 
 and let loose the horse he always kept tied up 
 at night for fear of Indians, which rolled and 
 neighed and then galloped off to seek its 
 fellows In the 'camp.' We stood in the corral, 
 and, as I swung the lazo round my head 
 two or three times to see it had no kinks, I 
 said to Anastasio, ' Which of the horses may I 
 catch ? ' 
 
 *' He looked towards them just as if he saw 
 them perfectly, and answered, ' Anyone you 
 like except the little doradillo. He is my 
 wife's and she will soon be back again from 
 town, where she has gone to buy the children 
 clothes.' 
 
 *' As the tropilla galloped round the corral I 
 marked a cream-coloured with a black tail and 
 mane, and threw the lazo, which uncoiled just 
 like a snake and settled round his neck.
 
 142 ANASTASIO LUCENA 
 
 * Which have you caught ? ' asked Anastasio ; 
 and I answered, ' The black-cream-colour.' He 
 smiled and said : * A little quick to mount, but 
 a good horse — well, let him loose to-night just 
 after dark, when you get to the Estancia de la 
 Cascada, a short ten leagues away, and by the 
 morning he will be back at home. Your horse 
 I will have collared to the mare, and you can 
 send for him in a week or so, when he is rested 
 and fit again for work.' 
 
 ** I saddled up, thanked Anastasio Lucena 
 for his hospitality, who answered that he was 
 my servant, and that his house was mine 
 whenever I might pass. Then mounting, not 
 without difficulty, for the black-cream-colour 
 was quick as lightning in the turns he made 
 the instant that you raised your foot towards 
 the stirrup, and started with a rush. After 
 the first bound or two was over and the horse 
 settled to a steady lope, I turned and looked 
 back towards the rancho where I had passed 
 the night. Upon the threshold stood its owner, 
 tall and erect ; his long black hair just flecked 
 with grey, falling down on his shoulders, re- 
 minded me somehow of pictures of Christ that 
 I had seen. His head was turned towards the 
 sound of the black-cream-colour's hoofs, and
 
 ANASTASIO LUCENA 143 
 
 his eyes, open but sightless, seemed to take in 
 the Pampa with its indomitable space." 
 
 Mansel stopped, passed his own hand across 
 his eyes as if they pained him with the intensity 
 of the impression they had received long years 
 ago, and then, as if he were talking to himself, 
 said : 
 
 *'Adios, Anastasio Lucena — or perhaps I 
 ought to say 'so long.' Perhaps he has now 
 taken the long galopito on which his want of 
 sight was not a hindrance to him, or perhaps 
 he now sees better than we do ourselves. 
 Quien sabe ? Anyhow, he has come back to 
 me to-night, and I am glad to thank him once 
 more for his hospitality, and his good cream- 
 colour with the black tail and mane."
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 My friend McFarlane lived in a curious old 
 house, far from the world. When you had 
 driven up the long, neglected avenues, you felt 
 that you could pass your life there happily, just 
 as some kind of sailors must have felt when 
 they had been marooned upon a lonely island 
 lost in the South Seas. He and his wife, a 
 studious woman, but yet with an adventurous 
 strain, lived quietly as was befitting to their 
 narrow circumstances, due to the fall in agri- 
 cultural values, which in those days had just 
 begun. 
 
 Tall, thin, and freckled, McFarlane had no 
 Scottish accent in his speech, only that faint 
 and whining intonation which reminds one of 
 the wind running out of the chanter of a bag- 
 pipe after a Lament. '* I would like to tell 
 you," he once said, " of my one excursus into 
 mining — that is, if when you have heard 
 the tale you think it worthy of the name." I 
 had known miners up and down the world ; 
 
 144
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 145 
 
 had seen them In the Sierra Madre, in Arizona, 
 at the Real de Famatima, in Spain, in Portu- 
 gal, and in Africa, and knew they all imagined 
 that they held Golconda at the sharp end of 
 their picks, if they were poor, and that their 
 mine was the best in the whole world if they 
 were rich. 
 
 So I pricked up my ears, and said, *' Go on, 
 let's hear about it" McFarlane, after he had 
 lighted up his pipe, slowly began to talk. 
 
 "In my old house there were two upright 
 bookcases in the recesses of the long, low 
 Adams' room, with its four pillars, its double 
 fireplaces, its five great windows, and its look- 
 out on the steep terraces and rushy parks, in 
 which grew islands of sycamores and limes, 
 with here and there a wind-swept birch, whose 
 roots, laid bare by winter rains, were honey- 
 combed with rabbit-holes. Beyond the belts 
 of planting, between which ran the public road, 
 was a round hill planted with beech-trees, and 
 further on, or rather flowing up against its side, 
 as if it were a sea, a billowing, brown moss. 
 
 " Time sometimes hung a little heavy on my 
 hands in the long spells of rain which visited 
 that portion of the world . . . although you 
 know," my friend observed, after the fashion
 
 146 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 of so many of his countrymen, '' our climate Is 
 no worse than that of England, after all. 
 
 '' The damp exuded from the walls and fur- 
 niture all * bloomed ' . . . that was the word 
 the housemaids used to use . . . showing a 
 kind of bluish moisture, and grates turned red 
 with rust. At such times, far from a town, 
 and when old favourites had been read, re- 
 read, and put away, one set about exploring 
 one of those books that all men have upon 
 their bookshelves, which they have never read, 
 and yet know the outside, the binding, and the 
 lettering on the backs so well that they have 
 but to shut their eyes to see them in their own 
 particular place In some old room, although 
 the books themselves have long been sold, and 
 perhaps now lie blistering in the sun upon 
 a tray outside a shop . . . they that in times 
 gone by were dusted once a week, and cared 
 for almost as if they were alive. 
 
 " Such a book there was, in folio, which 
 always stood upon a lower shelf between Sir 
 Walter Raleigh's History of the World and 
 Gerarde's Herbal. 
 
 " Parkinson stood a lltde further on, with 
 Sir James Wo'^^'^ Scottish Fencing Master, The 
 Parfait Mareschal, and a tall Montaigne, which
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 147 
 
 had been bought in Paris from a lead box 
 upon the quays. 
 
 *'Andrade's Arte da Cavalkeiria, and Gar- 
 cilasso de la Vegas' History of Peru, a folio 
 Bible (seldom read), Douglas's Peerage, and 
 Nisbet's Heraldry, almost made up the shelf. 
 
 '' The book in question (two volumes folio) 
 was bound in sheepskin, with the name on 
 the back done with a thick quill pen, a rose 
 below the lettering as an ornament, and a small 
 piece of sheepskin gone from near the top of 
 Volume II, leaving the threads that bound the 
 leaves together exposed to daylight, an acci- 
 dent which, like the sticking of the curtain at 
 a theatre, always seems to let you peer, as it 
 were indelicately, into the secrets of a life which, 
 to be held at its true value, should be inviolate. 
 
 '' The hand-drawn lettering set forth in 
 Spanish that the two bulky volumes were the 
 works of Pliny. Inside, upon the title-page, 
 it appeared that in addition to the Natural 
 History were commentaries by Fray Geronimo 
 de Huerta, Familiar of the Holy Office of the 
 Inquisition. These commentaries were in the 
 way of additions, and contained facts that the 
 heathen writer did not know, as they had hap- 
 pened after his decease.
 
 148 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 *' Books like the Spanish Pliny are not to be 
 embarked upon without consideration, so I, the 
 owner of it, after unfastening the little loops 
 of cato^ut into which fitted two small shells as 
 buttons, looked at the title-page and saw that 
 the Holy Office had approved and certified the 
 work. 
 
 *' In addition, the Rector of Salamanca of 
 that day, the King's confessor, and several 
 reverend Churchmen had read the book and 
 had approved it, finding, as they said, ' that 
 although written by a heathen, it contained 
 nothing subversive of morality, or anything 
 which we find ourselves forced to condemn, so 
 that it may go forth and be sold here in the 
 Court, and generally throughout the Spains, 
 the Indies, and in the other realms of his 
 most gracious Majesty the King.' 
 
 '' Four or five prefaces and forewords from 
 various scholar-clerics introduced one by de- 
 grees to Pliny's work ; but slowly and as if the 
 writers only stopped because had they gone on 
 they would have written the whole book. In 
 a spell of bad weather no book could possibly 
 be more appropriate than was the Pliny with 
 its two portly tomes. 
 
 '' Long had I swithered, as we say beyond
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 149 
 
 the Tweed, about the matter, being well aware 
 that, in any case, probably it was not only the 
 first step that counted, but that the second and 
 each succeeding one would be as heavy as the 
 last. Long did I dally with the first volume, 
 reading the various prefaces and the * cen- 
 suras,' and wondering how anyone could 
 possibly have piled so many words on one 
 another without at last being forced to say 
 something or other, if only by mistake. 
 
 '' Then looking at the introduction, and 
 being struck, as always is the case when I now 
 look at the old book and smile at the adventure 
 which grew out of my first attempt at reading 
 it, by the fact that Pliny was a gentleman, I 
 turned the leaves over in the perfunctory way 
 that one is apt to fall into upon a rainy day. 
 I remember too, how, given the state of natural 
 history of the time, it struck me that the know- 
 ledge Pliny had about the various birds and 
 beasts, plants, planets, stones, and minerals 
 that he describes, was accuracy itself compared 
 to the additions of the Spanish monk, who 
 thought that he was bringing Pliny up to date, 
 with his dull commentaries. 
 
 " I soon got tired of reading it, and made it 
 over to my wife. She read and annotated,
 
 I50 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 after her custom, and in a day or two asked 
 me if I remembered hearing of a Roman gold 
 mine in Galicia, upon a journey we had made. 
 
 *' The thing had slipped my memory, though 
 when she spoke of it I thought I had heard 
 something of the sort, in a vague kind of way. 
 
 '' So she took up the Spanish Pliny and read 
 me out a passage, in which the writer talked 
 of a gold mine in Lusitania, which, of course, 
 in his days comprised Galicia. Then I re- 
 membered how the country people used to go 
 down to the sands upon the River Sil and 
 wash for gold, and an infinity of stories we had 
 heard, near Carraceido, a little village by a 
 lake, not very far from Villa Franca in the 
 Vierzo, a most neglected part of Spain, twenty 
 or thirty years ago. 
 
 ** Well, well, my wife in half a moment had 
 perceived the connection, intimate and quite 
 complete, between the page of Pliny and the 
 tales the Spanish peasantry had told us on the 
 River Sil." He said this, proud of his clever 
 wife, not that for a single moment he appeared 
 to have been deceived by her quick jump to 
 the end of the long chain and her omission of 
 the links. These he saw clearly were all 
 wanting ; but yet he knew his wife's perception
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 151 
 
 and quick intuition were superior to his own, 
 and he was Scotch enough to know when he 
 was outclassed, although no doubt In the realm 
 of things that can be acquired he thought 
 himself omniscient after the fashion of his 
 race. 
 
 So he resumed, half smiling, and yet pleased 
 both with himself and her. '* Nothing would 
 content my wife but that I should go at once 
 and find the gold mine, which she was certain 
 by the system that she had of mental triangula- 
 tion would be there waiting for me. 
 
 '' She said, not without reason, I confess, 
 that nobody in Spain had ever heard of Pliny 
 but as a troublesome historian about whom 
 boys were bothered when at school, and that 
 although throughout the district, which she 
 remembered now was called the Val de Orras, 
 traditions lingered, no one had thought of 
 making a survey. I, who knew Spain as well 
 as she did, thought there was something in her 
 arguments, but still was unconvinced about the 
 mine. 
 
 *' Yet, there is something in the confidence 
 of one you live with that, if it does not at once 
 impel belief, still keeps your mind upon the 
 stretch. In the evening, several days later,
 
 152 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 when we were sitting in the long drawing- 
 room, which on the one side of the house was 
 flush with the carriage-drive, and on the other 
 raised ten or twelve feet above the terraces, 
 the petroleum lamps casting dark shadows, for 
 we had done away with our gasometer (my 
 father's joy) as not being artistic, and sat in 
 semi-darkness, blowing the half-green logs of 
 wood that seethed and spluttered in the grate, 
 we fell a-talking of the passage that my wife 
 had found. 
 
 '* Man," said my friend, with one of those 
 half lapses into the vernacular that Scotchmen 
 use amongst themselves when they wish either 
 to disarm criticism or capture sympathy, '' it 
 may have been the loneliness of the old house, 
 the moonlight streaming in at one of the five 
 windows — neither myself nor yet my wife ever 
 drew blinds or curtains — or maybe it was that 
 by the firelight a proposition seems more con- 
 vincing than in the light of day ... at least, 
 I think so. 
 
 *'A11 that I do know is that we agreed that 
 evening that I should go and find the place 
 where Pliny said the Romans drew much of 
 their gold in Spain. 
 
 *' We laughed, I mind it well, although it
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 153 
 
 was so many years ago, and my wife had not 
 a single silver thread In that bonny head of 
 hair of hers, as black as a crow's wing." 
 
 "Time flies," and as he spoke he looked 
 into the glass above the mantelpiece, as if he 
 wished to mark its hand upon himself; and 
 then, as one who, after gazing in a crystal ball, 
 sees a sad vision in it, sighed and took up his 
 tale. 
 
 '' How well I see us sitting by the fire in our 
 old lonely house that evening, with all our dogs 
 about us. When we had once got the thing 
 settled in our minds, the next step was to get 
 a mining engineer, for I knew nothing about 
 mines, though I had lived in places in Mexico 
 where mysterious strangers used to come up to 
 you, and, after looking round to see that no one 
 had their eye upon them, produce a dirty 
 packet from the recesses of their rags, and after 
 taking off a dozen bits of paper, show you 
 a piece of dull red-looking rock, and say that 
 it was ' plata pina,' the richest specimen known 
 to the world, and that for a consideration they 
 would impart its whereabouts and make you 
 a rich man. They never would explain, when 
 they had a treasure such as they swore they 
 knew of, why they were always In such poverty,
 
 154 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 so I concluded they were all philanthropists 
 and did not care for gold. 
 
 *' My wife knew of an engineer, one Thomas 
 Garnard, whom she had met in some forgotten 
 place in Spain. As he lived in Madrid, and 
 fortune had not smiled upon him, he seemed 
 the very man. 
 
 ''He wrote and said that he would meet me 
 at Orense, for with the care that people quite 
 inexperienced in business always take in 
 matters such as these, we had not informed 
 him, but in vague terms, of our projected 
 search. 
 
 '' I confess when I found myself on board 
 the steamer bound for Vigo, with a treatise 
 upon placer-mining in my bag, I felt inclined 
 to laugh. 
 
 " I read the mining treatise, and made little 
 of it, and then took out my pocket-book and 
 conned the passage we had copied out of Pliny, 
 and found it vaguer in the full light of day than 
 it had seemed at home in the dark Georgian 
 room. However, there was nothing to be 
 done, and in a twinkling, as it seemed, the 
 vessel passed the narrow channel between the 
 islands that guard Vigo harbour, and ran into 
 the bay. Little by little she opened up the
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 155 
 
 town clustering upon its hill, and dominated 
 by the two fangless castles, looking like blind 
 lions, impotent, but awful to behold. 
 
 " The great black rock of the Cabron, the 
 long and winding channel up to the Lazaretto, 
 I saw just for a moment, as the vessel turned 
 and steamed up to her anchorage, and then the 
 Monte de la Guia, crowned with its hermitage, 
 seemed to project and shut them out of view. 
 I went ashore, almost, as we say, in a dwawm, 
 and heard mechanically the boys who always 
 cluster round a foreio^ner, all screaminor out, * I 
 say.' Nothing had altered. The Guardias 
 Civiles stood in their glazed three-cornered 
 hats and their green worsted gloves, impassive, 
 motionless, and looking like the law embodified. 
 No one could possibly have ever been so law- 
 respecting as they looked. The bullock-carts, 
 with their high wicker sides and solid wheels, 
 looking like Roman carts upon a coin of 
 Hadrian, still creaked along, although, as I was 
 told, the new Alcalde contemplated putting out 
 an order that the axles should be greased. 
 Still, as of yore, some horses played upon the 
 green beside the sea, although a nasty, little 
 public garden, with young magnolias, dusty 
 oleanders, a stuccoed fish-pond and a fountain
 
 156 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 with a boy struggling with a goose, so much 
 distorted that the boy looked like an abortion 
 in a jar, and the goose seemed like a bladder 
 full of lard, had filched a portion of the ground. 
 The usual dollar passed me through the 
 custom-house, and sitting down upon a plaster 
 bench In the new garden, I observed with 
 pleasure that the wreck of the three-masted 
 schooner, which I knew had lain just at high- 
 water mark upon the shore for the last twenty 
 years, was still almost intact, although some of 
 her copper had been torn away, leaving a rent 
 upon her side. Gone was the Alameda, with 
 its tall elm-trees, and In its place a walk the 
 natives called El Bulevar, with a tin kiosk, 
 where newspapers should have been sold had 
 there been anyone to buy them, and on its 
 paths a man or two wandered about discon- 
 tentedly, carrying those tall tin cylinders with 
 a small roulette board upon the top, selling 
 the wafers known as barquillas, the joy of 
 nurserymaids and their attendant swains in 
 every Spanish town. 
 
 "These signs of want of progress gave me 
 courage, for I argued, if here In Vigo, in this 
 place, which after all Is a provincial capital, 
 things never seem to change, how much less
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 157 
 
 likely is there to be change out in the district 
 where the mine was situated. So after break- 
 fast, which, though the waiter told me that it 
 would be ready shortly after twelve, was only 
 served at half-past one, I took the train for 
 Orense, where I had arranged to meet my 
 mining engineer. 
 
 *' The line followed the harbour, running by 
 Redondela and breaking off through some wild 
 moors, past oak woods, maize fields, vineyards* 
 and little brown-roofed towns ; now passing 
 mountain Calvaries, with their stone crosses 
 overgrown with lichen, and then by streams 
 upon whose banks women were washing in 
 the sun. 
 
 ** We passed by Rivadavia, which lay swelter- 
 ing in the heat, and towards evening, in a cloud 
 of dust, slowly steamed into Orense, with the 
 rough jolting on the ill-closed points, well 
 known on Spanish trains. A grateful cool- 
 ness was just setting in as I drove rattling and 
 jingling through the streets, passing the lofty 
 bridge, one of the wonders of the place. The 
 proverb says, ' Three things Orense has, the 
 like of which are not in Spain. Its Bridge, its 
 Christ, and its three Boiling Springs, the 
 Burgas ' ; and it is true enough.
 
 158 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 " The heat was tropical, and the inhabitants 
 all were sitting at their doors, exhausted by 
 their battle with the sun, to catch the evening 
 breeze. 
 
 " Men sat on chairs, tilted against the walls, 
 with their shirt collars loosened, and women 
 leaned from windows, pale and exhausted, 
 while in the shade lay panting yellow dogs, 
 snapping occasionally at flies as they buzzed 
 round their jaws. I reached the inn begrimed 
 with perspiration and with dust, and as I did 
 so I was greeted by a man, who grasped my 
 hand and welcomed me to Orense, which he 
 remarked was just as hot as Lima or as the 
 hob of hell. I guessed that he was Garnard, 
 and in a moment he had introduced himself, 
 shoving a limp and dirty card into my hand. 
 On it I read, in faintish lettering, the legend, 
 *Tomas Garnard,' and an address in Lima, 
 which had had a pen drawn through it, and 
 * Horno de la Mata, 17 Madrid,' inserted in its 
 stead. 
 
 "When I had read it carefully and handed 
 him my own, we went into the inn, dined and 
 then talked, until the small hours of the night, 
 about the Roman mine. 
 
 " Don Tomas Garnard was a man to whom
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 159 
 
 life was a fairy tale. Nothing astonished him 
 if it was only wild enough ; but on the other 
 hand the merely credible did not appeal to 
 him, and he subjected it to strict examination, 
 finding it, as a general rule, impossible, and not 
 worthy of belief. 
 
 ** He had met my wife at an hotel in Lima 
 ... I mean Madrid, he added . . . and talked 
 with her about the district where we now found 
 ourselves, and she had told him of the legends 
 she had heard amongst the peasantry. He 
 knew no Latin, except the names of minerals, 
 but when I read the passage I had copied out 
 at home he became fired at once, though I 
 confess, each time I read the words, they seemed 
 less definite. 
 
 '' Next morning saw us in the diligence, on a 
 hot morning, one of the hottest I remember in 
 my life, jolting towards the Val de Orras, but 
 luckily seated beside the driver in what is 
 known as the pescanU, a kind of hood, from 
 which he kept up a perpetual fire of oaths and 
 blows and cigarettes, lighting a fresh one from 
 the last one smoked, all throug^h the livelonor 
 day. His assistant, an active-looking lad, got 
 down occasionally, even although the coach was 
 going at full speed, and taking out a handful of
 
 i6o A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 well-chosen pebbles from his sash, threw them 
 with great precision at the mules, and then 
 laying one hand upon the rail, leaped back 
 into his seat. Inside, the unlucky passengers 
 were packed like sardines, and all day long, 
 across the dusty plains, up barren hills, on 
 which the stones reflected back the heat, we 
 jingled noisily. Now and again the old rope 
 harness broke, and we stopped half an hour to 
 get it spliced, and then jogged on again. 
 
 '' Sometimes we crawled along at a foot pace, 
 and then again rushed down a hill-side madly, 
 the diligence swaying and rocking like a ship 
 at sea and lurching on the stones. When we 
 changed horses we all oot down, and smoked 
 and drank a little agtiardiente, tossing it off and 
 swallowing water after it, for it was hot as fire. 
 
 "We stopped and dined in a small inn at a 
 four- cross-road, and as the food was cooking at 
 a huge, open fireplace in the great dining-room, 
 I listened to the vicissitudes of my new friend's 
 life in the Andean mining camps, and gathered 
 that he had brought more treasure home from 
 the New World in knowledge of mankind 
 than in mere specie. However, he appeared 
 skilled in his own profession, and certainly was 
 most agreeable as a travelling companion, and
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY i6i 
 
 well endowed with all that optimism which but 
 intensifies in every miner as he gets on in life. 
 
 " Late in the evening the diligence jogged 
 into a little town, the horses and the mules dead 
 beat, and all the passengers shaken like walnuts 
 in a sack, stiff, bruised and sore, dusty and 
 travel-stained." 
 
 My friend McFarlane paused in his tale, and 
 looking at me said, '' I wish you could have 
 seen me with my mining engineer, seated at 
 the long table under the evil-smelling lamp, 
 with the heterogeneous company that assembles 
 for dinner in the best inn of a small Spanish 
 town. Three Government officials, an officer 
 or two, with several commercial travellers 
 and a priest, were the sole company on this 
 occasion, and, as was not unnatural, their 
 curiosity was aroused as to the reason that 
 could have brought two foreigners, evidently 
 not travelling to sell goods, to a place so 
 remote. 
 
 ** We bumped into the little village of Carra- 
 ceido in the afternoon, and saw the diligence 
 go on, after it had changed horses, with some- 
 thinof of the feelingf that a man on a raft must 
 have when a ship passes without perceiving 
 him and leaves him to his fate. 
 
 M
 
 i62 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 "I tell you," said McFarlane, '* I felt just 
 like the Scotchman who was going to be 
 hanged . . . you know the story . . . disgusted 
 with the whole proceedings . . . there, on that 
 afternoon. 
 
 ** The whole thing was so utterly absurd, to 
 have come so far about a mine that it was 
 twenty-five to one never existed, or if it had, 
 was worked out centuries ago and clean for- 
 gotten by mankind. 
 
 '' However, there we were, I and my mining 
 engineer, in the remote and tiny Spanish 
 village, and the best thing we had to do was 
 to take up our bags and walk into the inn. 
 We watched the diligence on the straight, dusty 
 road till it had vanished, and then turned to 
 the innkeeper, a fat, broad-shouldered man in a 
 short jacket edged with imitation astrakhan, a 
 wide black sash round his tight trousers, and his 
 feet shod with alpargatas, who gravely greeted 
 us. Following him through the great store- 
 room on the ground floor, which led into the 
 stables at one end, we stumbled up a stair 
 steep as a ladder, and were ushered to a 
 room. 
 
 *'Two iron beds, with vignettes of the 
 Madonna at the head in coloured tin, the mat-
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 163 
 
 tresses stuffed with dried maize leaves, two 
 rickety rush-bottomed chairs, a wooden table, 
 and a small wash-stand were the adornments 
 of the place — not much, but yet sufficient for 
 the wants of the stray guests who visited the 
 inn. 
 
 '' ' Here can your worships rest,' our host 
 remarked, and left us to ourselves. Don 
 Tomas Garnard, as by this time I called the 
 mining engineer, rose to the occasion, and 
 after saying that a tambo in the Andes of 
 Peru was ten times worse, and that at least we 
 had the sun in Carraceido, opened the window, 
 and we looked out upon the hills. 
 
 *' Groves of great chestnut-trees covered 
 them, clothing the slopes with a thick veil of 
 green. Through the thick copse, the bright 
 red soil appeared as if the ground was bleeding, 
 and above the trees stretched the brown hill- 
 side, covered with cistus and with thyme, 
 which gave a scent so pungent and so keen that 
 it filled all the air. Upon the other side the 
 lake of Carraceido lay, broad, dark, and 
 motionless. Great banks of bulrushes seemed 
 to fence it in, and through them lanes were 
 cut, in which lay several flat-bottomed boats, 
 and, nearer to the shore, cattle were standingf
 
 i64 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 knee-deep in the water, with their tails lashing 
 off the flies. 
 
 *' In the far distance rose the Asturian moun- 
 tains, whilst a small river running near the inn 
 tinkled amongst the stones. 
 
 " It was a lovely landscape, just like an idyll 
 by Theocritus ; in it the vines hung from stone 
 trellises, the husbandman at evening, shoulder- 
 ing his plough, made from a piece of wood and 
 tipped with iron, slowly walked homewards, 
 smoking, and shepherds who piping on a reed 
 were followed by their sheep without a dog to 
 bark and worry at their heels, as in more 
 favoured lands." 
 
 McFarlane sighed, and his mind seemed to 
 dwell upon the sight of flocks in England driven 
 towards the slaughter-houses with blows and 
 curses, two or three bob-tailed dogs, far more 
 humane, if not so human as their masters, 
 urging them on to death. 
 
 He did not give his thoughts expression, 
 and no doubt in every case the sheep's fate is 
 to be eaten, just as the swimmer's is to be 
 taken by the sea. " You mind," he said, " the 
 Roman legionaries, when they got to the place 
 — for after all the Val de Orras is not far from 
 the famed river that they took for Lethe —
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 165 
 
 refused to cross, sat down, and but for their 
 commanders would have beat their short broad- 
 swords either to ploughshares or to reaping- 
 hooks." 
 
 I nodded, and he went on : 
 
 ** Next morning, after a night I shall not easily 
 forget, although the landlord denied with oaths 
 that there were fleas, as if we thought of 
 them, having seen the far too friendly little faces 
 of much greater wonders of the insect world 
 peer out at us from every quarter of the room, 
 we dressed and wandered out. 
 
 " The Roman mine was a tradition of the 
 place, well known to everyone, and in the River 
 Sil after a flood people occasionally washed out a 
 pan or two and got a little gold. This set my 
 friend afire, and all the day he wandered up 
 and down, jotting down what he heard in a 
 crushed note-book, greasy and dog-eared, in 
 order, as he said, to strike an average of the 
 lies when he had panned them out. 
 
 '* I wonder at myself," remarked McFarlane. 
 '* I do so now ! I did so then ! But by degrees 
 the whole fantastic thing — scheme, expedition, 
 or adventure, call it what you will — took hold 
 of me, and I began half to believe I was about 
 to make a fortune, half to believe I was a fool.
 
 i66 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 Never in all my life, since my brief sojourn at 
 the Zacatecas Mines, did I hear so much mining 
 talk. Pay-dirt and bed-rock, gold in the quartz, 
 in placer-diggings, and many other terms of 
 which I had no real idea of the true value, 
 were always in my head. One morning Don 
 Tomas came rushing in, roaring ' Eureka ! * 
 but luckily more suitably attired than Archi- 
 medes, and explained that he had found a man 
 who knew the Roman gold-mine, that it was 
 three leagues off amongst the hills, and by 
 the account must have been a great placer- 
 working in the old Roman times. 
 
 *' For some strange reason, which I forget or 
 disremember, for the two states of memory are 
 very different, we arranged to start about an 
 hour before the sun went down and camp 
 amongst the hills. We left the village mounted 
 on mules, with a man following upon a donkey 
 carrying provisions, late in the afternoon. 
 
 '' Most of the inhabitants stood at their doors 
 to see us start, for every living soul knew of 
 our expedition, and the Roman mine had been 
 a household word to all of them from their 
 earliest youth, not much believed in, but still 
 ever present to their minds. 
 
 *' With the grave cynicism of Spanish
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 167 
 
 peasants, they looked on us as madmen ; but 
 with the materialism of their race were quite 
 prepared to take advantage of the fruits of our 
 mad brains. In the meantime, the hire of the 
 mules had been a godsend to them, for in the 
 village hardly any money circulated, although 
 for all that the inhabitants were as ready at a 
 bargain as if they had been brought up on the 
 Stock Exchange. 
 
 " Don Tomas Garnard ... as he now styled 
 himself with pride . . . went about making 
 preparations as if he thought the mine was 
 found, the money got together to exploit it, 
 and that we were in some way benefactors of 
 mankind, and deserved well of Spain. Speak- 
 ing but little Spanish, and understanding less, 
 he was immune from the disparaging remarks 
 that fell so freely from the villagers, who, as is 
 usually the case the whole world over, were 
 critical just in proportion to their ignorance — a 
 reflection artists of every kind may take for 
 their own consolation when they read hostile 
 comments on their work set forth with circum- 
 stance. Our landlord, who was a man who had 
 a certain knowledge of the world, having often 
 been in Lugo, and even visited Leon, looked 
 on himself as an authority. We heard him
 
 i68 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 saying, ' No, friends, I do not think these men 
 are mad. They paid my bill in good, sound 
 money, for I tested every piece. The madman 
 does not pay. Therefore I think they must be 
 really engineers, these Frenchmen, and it may 
 be they will discover something beneficial to us 
 all. Myself, I understand them well, having 
 seen many of the French in Lugo, and I can 
 vouch they both are honourable men.' 
 
 ** This testimony did us much good, and I 
 believe we started out upon that scorching 
 afternoon, leaving the villagers in the same 
 spirit of half-respectful admiration, tinged a 
 little with contempt, that the inhabitants of 
 Palos manifested towards Columbus, as he 
 walked down to the beach to sail for the New 
 World. 
 
 " The track we followed in the sweltering 
 heat led upwards for a mile or two through 
 chestnut woods, the bright, red soil covered 
 with banks of cistus in the open places, whose 
 flowers looked like a flight of great white 
 butterflies. The scent of thyme and rosemary 
 penetrated to our souls, poignant and aromatic, 
 as our beasts stumbled on the stones. Behind 
 us, calling out ' Arr^ ! ' in a perfunctory way, our 
 guide walked by his loaded donkey, smoking,
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 169 
 
 and singing now and then a Ribeirana In a 
 falsetto key. About half-way, just as we rested 
 for a moment by a projecting rock, the light 
 began to fail, and from the village rose the 
 Angelus, just as a sheep-bell tinkles in the hills 
 to warn the sheep that may be wandering, that 
 it is folding-time. 
 
 *' The moon rose brilliantly, casting strange 
 shadows on the wild path that we were follow- 
 ing. Stones turned to boulders, dead stumps 
 of trees to threatening figures pointing strange 
 weapons at us in her distorting rays ; and frogs 
 and crickets filled the night with melody. 
 
 '' After an hour or two of struggling upwards, 
 the path got easier to travel, and led us out Into 
 a little open glade amongst some chestnut- 
 trees. 
 
 "Our guide dismounted, for he had clambered 
 up upon his beast and had been sitting side- 
 ways on the pack, let loose his donkey, hobbled 
 its feet, and, drawing out his flint and steel, 
 soon had a bright fire burning underneath a 
 tree. 
 
 " When we had made some tea and smoked 
 a cigarette, we strolled across the little clearing, 
 and a most wondrous view, made still more 
 marvellous by the moon's glittering beams, lay
 
 I70 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 stretched beneath us, for the green glade ended 
 abruptly in a precipice. Sheer down it went, 
 and seemed unfathomable. It looked as if a 
 monstrous bowl had been duo^ out of the red 
 earth about a quarter of a mile across. A 
 chestnut wood, dark and mysterious in the 
 moonlight, covered the bottom of the bowl. 
 The depth and the false perspective that the 
 moonlight gave to everything, made it look 
 like a carpet. Here and there in patches you 
 could see the ground, and from the patches 
 towered great pinnacles of dark red earth 
 three or four hundred feet in height. 
 
 " Upon their tops grew bushes, making them 
 look like some fantastic vegetable. The moon- 
 beams played upon them, magnifying and dis- 
 torting them, and striking here and there upon 
 a pebble in their sides, which sparkled bril- 
 liantly. So still was everything that we stood 
 looking, awestruck, till the guide, advancing 
 cautiously up to the hedge, held out a lean, 
 brown finger and said, ' That is the Roman 
 mine.' 
 
 " I almost had to pinch myself to be sure I 
 was awake, the whole thing was so strange. 
 Here I was a relatively sensible man, who 
 after having left his house a thousand miles
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 171 
 
 away, upon the wildest wild-goose chase 
 imaginable, without an indication but a vague 
 passage in a book written nearly two thousand 
 years ago, and yet I heard our guide's remark, 
 which he proffered quite as a thing of course, 
 and with my eyes I gazed into the mighty 
 chasm in the hill that I at once saw was in 
 some way or other the work of human hands. 
 Don Tomas Garnard, on the contrary, saw at a 
 glance the whole affair, and with a shout ex- 
 claimed, ' A placer-working ! What wonderful 
 men the Romans were. In some way that I 
 cannot see from here, they had washed down 
 the whole hill-side just as we do to-day.' 
 
 " I wandered up and down the clearing, 
 smoking, but always coming back to the edge 
 of the chasm, listening occasionally to Don 
 Tomas, who had become almost ecstatic in his 
 joy. 'To-morrow, when It is light,' he said, 
 * we must get down from this place where the 
 idiot of a guide has brought us to, and get to 
 work at once.' The night wore on, and just 
 about the dawn the howling of a wolf deep in 
 the hills just reached us, but clear enough to 
 startle both the mules, who strained upon their 
 ropes and trembled, and would have broken 
 loose had we not quieted them.
 
 172 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 '' The world seemed just as far away as the 
 fixed stars, and we ourselves felt as if all its 
 inhabitants had disappeared, leaving alive only 
 ourselves and the three animals, under the 
 starry sky. 
 
 " Early next morning we began our work, 
 after having got down to the level of the great 
 placer-digging by a winding path made by the 
 goats in the hill-side. 
 
 " We found our guide, for reasons known but 
 to himself, had brought us to the highest point, 
 though on the other side of the great basin 
 there was no precipice. Perhaps he thought 
 the effect was better from the height, but any- 
 how the view into the corrie was magnificent, 
 and from no other point could we have had the 
 same sensation when he said 'There is the 
 Roman mine.' 
 
 *' We had to move our camp, for the goats' 
 track was not the most convenient path to use 
 in going up and down. So we established our- 
 selves under a spreading chestnut-tree, and sent 
 the guide back on a mule for more provisions, 
 and then began to look the proposition (as Don 
 Tomas said) in the face. 
 
 '* At the first glance, that is, at the first glance 
 to a man experienced in such things, the place
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 173 
 
 had been worked systematically. Don Tomas 
 pointed out the cuttings, waterways, and places 
 where he said the Romans had their sluices, 
 and I said * Yes ' to everything, and by degrees 
 began to think that I was mad. 
 
 '' Enthusiasm is so catching," said McFar- 
 lane, and smiled, half at himself, half at 
 humanity in general. "Without it, where 
 would have been the founders of religions, 
 discoverers, prophets, and leaders of all kinds, 
 who, after all, when they stood out and shouted 
 * follow me,' had nothing to depend upon except 
 the trust that they excited in themselves ? Any- 
 how, for the next day or two we washed out 
 countless pans of dirt, hoping always that the 
 Romans, who, I was assured by Don Tomas, 
 must have worked in a primitive though scien- 
 tific way — that is, for the times in which they 
 lived — had left enough gold in the ground to 
 make it worth our while to go and what is 
 called denounce the mine, and claim it for our- 
 selves. We washed and worked, prospecting 
 all the ground as thoroughly as possible, Don 
 Tomas walking over the whole basin just as 
 a spaniel quarters a cover, and talking volubly 
 about our prospects of success. 
 
 '* He said if we could get only the colour,
 
 174 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 which I understood to mean the smallest par- 
 ticle of gold, that we should have enough to 
 make our fortunes twenty times over, for in the 
 hollow where the ancient workings lay there 
 must have been ten acres at the least. Each 
 time we washed a pan towards the end the 
 same thing happened : Don Tomas grew ex- 
 cited, swearing that this time we were certain 
 of it ; and when each time nothing but fine red 
 sediment remained, mixed with some little 
 pebbles, he was quite sure that the next try 
 was certain to give something better, and so 
 the time wore on. 
 
 '' For my part, the first day was quite suffi- 
 cient ; and though the enthusiasm of my com- 
 panion had worked a little on my mind, and 
 the site of the ancient placer-digging certainly 
 stirred a vaguish kind of hope, I had had 
 enough of it, and my back ached with wash- 
 ing out the pans. I had not told you that a 
 small stream ran through the middle of the 
 working, and on its edge we stood and washed 
 until I grew to hate the very sight of the whole 
 place, and it seemed that in all my life I had 
 done nothing else but wash out mud in a tin 
 pan, and then begin again. 
 
 ** Still Don Tomas was not discouraged, for
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 175 
 
 he maintained that the Romans, who had evi- 
 dently disposed of water-power by damming 
 Lip all the streams in the district, for in our 
 rambles we had found remains of ancient 
 dams, had worked the surface dirt so clean 
 that there was nothing we could get at by our 
 rude attempts ; but for all that, a scientific 
 assay might reveal the presence of some gold. 
 
 *' He argued that in the columns which were 
 left standing, columns which neither of us 
 could explain, there must be earth which never 
 had been touched. Therefore, if in that basin 
 there had once been gold, in the parts of it 
 that never had been worked, some gold must 
 still remain if we could hit upon it. 
 
 *' As this seemed reasonable, we loaded up 
 a mule with two great sacks of earth dug from 
 the heart of one of the tall pillars, and after 
 having taken a last look at the great corrie in 
 the hill, its groves of chestnut trees, its bright 
 red soil, its growth of cistus, and its banks of 
 thyme, germander, and of rosemary, we loaded 
 up our beasts with the remains of the provi- 
 sions, our pots and kettles, our blankets and 
 the abominable tin pans, and took our way to 
 Carraceido, tired, eaten by mosquitoes, sun- 
 burned, with our hands blistered, and in that
 
 176 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 state of mind in which a man will quarrel with 
 his dearest friend about the colour of a mule. 
 However, Don Tomas was not a man to 
 quarrel with, and as he sat upon his mule, his 
 knees almost upon a level with his chin, his 
 gaiters half unbuttoned, a stick cut from a bush 
 in his right hand, and the reins in his left all 
 in a bunch, tugging continually at the beast's 
 mouth, he looked so comical, with his red face, 
 surrounded by a frill of greyish whisker, his 
 keen grey eyes peering out on the world as if 
 it were a mine to be prospected, one could not 
 help but laugh, however much you were an- 
 noyed. 
 
 ** All his talk ran upon what we should do in 
 Lima, for he could never get out of his head 
 that he was not still in Peru, and of the proba- 
 bilities of our success. I let him talk, feeling 
 that our success lay but in the experience we 
 had acquired, and the possession of the view 
 of the old Roman working, first seen by moon- 
 light, from the lone clearing in the woods. 
 Nothing could ever stamp that out, nothing 
 destroy the wildness of the sound of the long- 
 drawn-out howling of the wolf heard on that 
 moonlit night. 
 
 " Soon we drew near the village, and if our
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 177 
 
 setting out had been received but coldly, 
 nothings could well have been more cordial 
 than our welcome on our return. The vil- 
 lagers went immediately from one extreme 
 right to the other, and when they saw the 
 laden mule, the wildest rumours as to our sue 
 cess were set about at once. The little street 
 was full — women stood at the doors, and chil- 
 dren ran about like rabbits, whilst men stepped 
 forward to cong-ratulate us on havlno- found the 
 mine. 
 
 *' The innkeeper hailed us as the saviours of 
 the district, and after we had washed and had 
 a meal, the precious sacks, having been put 
 beneath the beds and the door locked, a sort 
 of deputation of the chief Inhabitants, with the 
 priest at its head, appeared to interview us on 
 all that we had seen. 
 
 " We sat down In the patio and called for 
 wine, after having sent out to the estanco for 
 cigars. The priest stepped forward, and, 
 taking off his hat, harangued us briefly on the 
 ancient Romans, on British energy, and on the 
 wealth that he supposed would flow into the 
 town when we had got the mine in order and 
 once begun to work. He said that, owing to 
 bad government, the state of parties, and the
 
 178 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 lack of confidence existing betwixt man and 
 man, so contrary to the principles of our holy 
 faith, Spain had gone through a period of 
 decay. This, as a patriot, he deplored, and 
 trusted that with the well-known energy of 
 Englishmen . . . Spain, he observed, had 
 always been the friend of England since 
 Vilanton had come to help the Spaniards to 
 expel the French ... we should at least in 
 Carraceido . . . that Carraceido which had 
 always been well known for its patriotic prin- 
 ciples ... be enabled to remove the curse that 
 lay upon our land. 
 
 '* He thanked us both — me for my public 
 spirit, and Don Tomas for that hard-headed 
 shrewdness and engineering knowledge that 
 distinguished him — and hoped that when Pac- 
 tolus had poured a stream of gold into the 
 place, two of the streets of the new town that 
 would arise should bear our honourable names. 
 
 '^ The miller was more brief, and merely 
 said he knew we had the gold, for he had seen 
 the sacks upon the mule. No one could come 
 to him, as he said, with celestial music ; he 
 was a practical and a hard-working man, but 
 seeing is believing, and so he wished us luck, 
 remarking that he cared little for the ancient
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY 179 
 
 Romans, who he had always understood were 
 hardly better than the Moors ; but in all cases, 
 if they had been so foolish as to leave their 
 gold up in the hills, it was a right and proper 
 thing Christians should profit by their careless- 
 ness. 
 
 **We then drank gravely to the health of 
 England and of Spain in a rough, heady, new, 
 red wine, tasting of earth and pigskin, and 
 liofhtinor our cio^ars, lono- rolls of blackish-look- 
 ing leaf that burned as if they had been dipped 
 in nitre, tilted our chairs against the wall and 
 fell a-talking as we smoked. Much did we 
 say about the badness of the Government, the 
 infamy of those in high estate, the price of 
 bullocks at Braiiuelas market, and other topics 
 of the kind, till someone went and fetched the 
 music, which consisted of a man who played 
 on a shrill pipe called the dulzaina^ to the 
 accompaniment of a little drum, on which 
 the executant beat with his right hand just as 
 the Arabs beat a tom-tom, and with his left 
 scratched on the parchment with a stick. The 
 noise was terrible, and echoed in the courtyard 
 until the very walls appeared to tremble, and 
 lasted for a full hour, until the players ceased 
 as suddenly as they began, and, after tossing
 
 i8o A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 off their wine, deigned to accept of half a 
 dollar, and retire, leaving us stupefied. As 
 the performers went down the village street 
 their deafening harmony by degrees became 
 assuaged, and, in the silent air, gradually blended 
 into a curious mixture of the singing of a 
 cricket and of the noise made by a water-mill, 
 not disagreeable and quite in character with 
 the half-savage nature of the place. 
 
 '' Next morning found us with our luggage 
 and our sacks waiting to take the dilig-ence as 
 it passed by the little inn. The landlord, who 
 had been so surly and indifferent, had now 
 become a friend. He shook us warmly by the 
 hand, asking us to remember that Ildefonso 
 Lopez was our friend and servant, and that he 
 trusted on our return we would not forget him, 
 for upon his part he accompanied us in spirit 
 upon our mission to the Court, and wished us 
 great success. 
 
 ''When we had piled our things into the 
 rickety, old coach, drawn by its four thin mules 
 and an apocalyptic horse, and it began to 
 jingle off, I looked back on the place which I 
 had visited under such curious circumstances 
 with the feeling of regret mingled with joy 
 with which a shipwrecked sailor, who has been
 
 A PAGE OF PLINY i8i 
 
 rescued by a passing ship, might look upon the 
 island where he has spent so many lonely 
 months, as it sinks back into the sea. 
 
 " Of course, I knew that the whole thing- 
 was finished, and was half sorry ; but Don 
 Tomas was still enthusiastic, and remained so 
 until we watched the final process of the assay 
 in the Mining College of Madrid. 
 
 " Needless to say, it proved infructuous, 
 though I will not deny, as we watched the final 
 firing down of our two sacks till they became 
 a handful of red dust in the last crucible, that 
 I was stirred by hope and fear in an uncon- 
 scionable way." 
 
 McFarlane ceased. In the smoking-room 
 of his old Georgian house the fire burned low 
 upon the hearth, and its light flickered on the 
 faces of his orrim-visaored ancestors whose 
 effigies adorned the walls and seemed to smile 
 at him. 
 
 From the terraces outside came the low 
 belling of a roe, and the long branches of the 
 cedars, stirred gently by the breeze, looked 
 almost human, as if their fingers wished to 
 clutch at something, as they swayed to and fro. 
 
 McFarlane sighed, and, as he lit another 
 cigarette, said quietly :
 
 i82 A PAGE OF PLINY 
 
 '' Sometimes as I sit here alone, watching 
 the moonbeams mingle with the fire, I fancy 
 that I own a mine in which there are no share- 
 holders, no calls for money, and which has no 
 quotations of its stock. I work it, only by 
 moonlight and with the help of the old Romans, 
 and it yields millions to me, both in experience 
 and recollection, as I await the day when the 
 chief street in the regenerated Carraceido 
 shall bear my honourable name."
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 Many a shadowy figure has flitted through the 
 valley of Menteith. Just as the vale itself is 
 full of shadows, shadows that leave no traces 
 of their passage, but, whilst they last, seem just 
 as real as are the hills themselves, so not a few 
 of those who have lived in it seem unsubstantial 
 and as illusive as a ghost. 
 
 Perhaps less real, for if a man detects a 
 spectre with that interior vision dear to the 
 Highlanders and to all mystics. Highland or 
 Lowland, or from whatever land they be, he 
 has as surely seen it, for himself, as if the 
 phantasm was pictured on the retina of the 
 exterior eye. 
 
 Pixies, trolls, and fairies, the men of peace, 
 the dwellers in the Fairy Hill that opens upon 
 Hallowe'en alone, and from which issues a long 
 train, bringing with them our long-lost vicar 
 Kirke of Aberfoyle. True Thomas, and the 
 rest of all the mortals who forsook their por- 
 ridge three times a day, for the love of some 
 
 183
 
 i84 TH^ BEGGAR EARL 
 
 elf queen, and have remained as flies embedded 
 in the amber of tradition, are in a way- 
 prosaic. Men have imagined them, enduing 
 them with their own qualities, just as they 
 have endued their gods with jealousy and hate. 
 Those born in the ordinary, but miraculous, 
 fashion of mankind, who live apparently by 
 bread alone, and yet remain beings apart, not 
 touched by praise, ambition, or any of the 
 things that move their fellows, are the true 
 fairies after all. 
 
 Such a one was the beggar earl. All his 
 long life he lacked advancement, finding it 
 only at the last, as he died, like a cadger's 
 pony, by a dykeside in the snow. That kind 
 of death keeps a man's memory fresh. 
 
 Few can tell to-day where or in what manner 
 died his ancestors — the mail-clad knights who 
 fought at Flodden, counselled kings, with the 
 half- Highland cunning of their race, and 
 generally opposed the Southrons, who, im- 
 potent to conquer us in war, yet have filched 
 from us most of our national character by the 
 soft arts of peace. A mouldering slab of free- 
 stone here and there, a nameless statue of a 
 Crusader with his crossed feet resting upon his 
 doer, in the ebenezerised cathedral of Dun-
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 185 
 
 blane ; a little castle on a little reedy island in 
 a bulrush-circled lake, some time-stained parch- 
 ments in old muniments preserve their memory, 
 . . . to those who care for memories, a futile 
 and a disappearing race. 
 
 His is preserved in snow. Nothing is more 
 enduring than the snow. It falls, and straight 
 all is transfigured. All suffers a chromatic 
 change : that which was black or red, brown, 
 yellow or dark grey, is changed to white, so 
 white that it remains for ever stamped on the 
 mind, and one recalls the landscape, with its 
 fairy woods, its stiff, dead streams, its suffering- 
 trees and withered vegetation, as it was on 
 that day. 
 
 So has the recollection of the beggar earl 
 remained, a legend, and all his humble life, his 
 struggles and his fixed, foolish purpose been 
 forgotten ; leaving his death as it were em- 
 balmed in something of itself so perishable 
 that it has had no time to die. 
 
 No mere success, the most vulgar thing that 
 a man can endure, would have been so lasting, 
 for men resent success and strive to stifle it 
 under their applause, lauding the result, the 
 better to belittle all the means. His life was 
 not especially eventful, still less mysterious,
 
 i86 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 for the poor play out their part in public, and 
 a greater mystic than himself has said, *' The 
 poor make no noise." 
 
 Someone who knew him said he was '*a 
 little man ; a little clean man, that went round 
 about through the country. He never saw him 
 act wrong. . . . He was — just a man asking 
 charity. He went into farmhouses and asked 
 for victuals ; what they would give him ; and 
 into gentlemen's houses." 
 
 This little picture, drawn unconsciously, shows 
 us the man he was after ill-fortune overtook 
 him. For a brief season he had been well 
 known in Edinburgh. In 1744, when he was 
 studying medicine, he suddenly appeared at the 
 election of a Scottish peer and told the assembly 
 who he was, and claimed the right to vote. 
 
 From that time till his death, he never 
 dropped his claim, attending all elections of 
 a Scottish peer till he got weary of the game. 
 Then disillusion fell on him, and he withdrew 
 to beg his bread, and wander up and down his 
 earldom and the neighbouring lands, until his 
 death. 
 
 Once more he came into public view, in the 
 year 1747, when he published his rare pamph- 
 let, T/ie Fatal Consequences of Discord, dedicated
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 187 
 
 to the Prince of Wales. In it he says "that 
 there can be no true unity without religion and 
 virtue in a State." 
 
 This marks him as a man designed by nature 
 to be poor, for unity and virtue are not com- 
 modities that command a ready sale. 
 
 He had not any special gift, but faith, and 
 that perhaps sustained him in his wanderings. 
 Perhaps he may have thought that he 
 would sit some day in a celestial senate, and 
 this belief consoled him for his rejection by an 
 earthly house of peers. One thing is certain, 
 even had the House of Lords, that disallowed 
 his claim, although he voted several years in 
 Edinburgh, approved him as a peer, it would 
 not have convinced him of his riaht one atom 
 more ; for if a man is happy in conviction, he 
 had it to the full. 
 
 It is said he bore about with him papers and 
 pedigrees that he would never sell. No barter- 
 ing of the crown for him, even for bread. 
 A little, grey, clean-looking man, mounted upon 
 an old white pony, falling by degrees into most 
 abject poverty and still respected for his up- 
 rightness, and perhaps a litde for his ancestry, 
 for in those days that which to us is but a 
 mockery, was real, just as some things which
 
 i88 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 with us are valued, in those days would have 
 been ridiculous. 
 
 So through the valley of Menteith, along 
 the Endrick, and by Loch Lomond side, 
 past the old church at Kilmaronock, through 
 Gartocharn, and up and down the Leven, 
 he took his pilgrimage. 
 
 Over the wild track on the Dumbarton moor, 
 and past the waterfall at the head of the glen 
 of Galingad, he and his pony must have 
 wandered many times, reflecting that the 
 lands he passed over should have been all 
 his own, for he was really Earl of Menteith 
 by right and by descent, no matter though his 
 fellow peers refused to recognize him. He 
 talked at first, in any house he came to, of his 
 rights, and people having little news to distract 
 them in those days, were no doubt pleased 
 to hear him and to inveigh against injustice 
 in the way that those who had themselves 
 received it all their lives are always pleased to 
 talk. 
 
 So does a goaded ox lower his head and 
 whisk his tail, and then, after a glance thrown 
 at his fellow, strain once again upon the yoke. 
 Then, when the novelty was over they would 
 receive his stories with less interest, driving
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 189 
 
 him back upon himself, until most likely he 
 bore his wrongs about with him, just as a 
 pedlar bears his pack, in silence, and alone. 
 So did he, when the first efforts to obtain his 
 title and his rights had spent their force, 
 quit Edinburgh as it had been a city of 
 the plague when there was any election of 
 a peer. 
 
 Whilst he was wandering up and down the 
 parishes of Kilmaronock and of Port, Scodand 
 was all convulsed with the late rising of '45. 
 Parties of soldiers, and bands of Highlanders, 
 retreating to the north, must have passed by him 
 daily, and yet he never seems to have had the 
 inclination to change sides. Staunch in his 
 allegiance to the Government, and with a faith 
 well grounded in the Protestant Succession, as 
 his pamphlet shows, most probably he was a 
 Church and State man, as he would have said, 
 up to his dying day. 
 
 Of such, as far as kings and rulers are con- 
 cerned, are the elect, and thrones are founded 
 on this unquestioning belief, more strongly than 
 on armies or in Courts. 
 
 As the years passed, and he still wandered 
 up and down Menteith, losing by degrees the 
 little culture that his studies had implanted in
 
 I90 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 him when he attended the Edinburgh schools, 
 the farmers must have begun to treat him, first 
 as one of themselves, and then just as they 
 would have treated any other wandering beggar- 
 man. Still, on the few occasions when he had 
 to write a letter he always signed " Menteith," 
 especially to begging letters, and the signature, 
 no doubt, consoled him many a time for a 
 refusal of his plea. 
 
 Few could have known all the traditions of 
 the district as did the wandering earl ; but he 
 most probably, living amongst them, thought 
 them not in the least remarkable, for it needs 
 time and distance to make old legends inter- 
 
 estmor. 
 
 He and his pony must have been familiar 
 figures on the roads, and when he came to a 
 wild moorland farm, no doubt they welcomed 
 him, expecting news from the outside world, 
 and were a little disappointed when he sat silent 
 in the settle, gazing into the smouldering peats, 
 brooding upon his wrongs. 
 
 At such times, most likely he drew out his 
 cherished papers from his wallet and pored 
 upon them, though he must long ago have 
 known them all by heart, and as he read them 
 all his pride in his old lineage revived, and the
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 191 
 
 long day upon hill tracks may have seemed 
 light to him as he sat nodding by the fire. His 
 hosts, with the old-fashioned hospitality of 
 those times, would set before him a great 
 bowl of porridge, which he must often 
 only have eaten for good manners' sake, and 
 then gone off to sleep beside his pony on the 
 straw. 
 
 How many years he wandered through the 
 mosses and the hills, how many times he saw 
 the shaws in April green upon the Fairy Hill, 
 or the red glow upon the moor in autumn, 
 is not quite clear ; but all the time he never 
 once forsook his wanderings. Offers were made 
 him, by many of his friends, to settle down ; 
 but either the free life held something for him 
 that no mere dwelling in a house could give, 
 or else he thought himself more likely to attain 
 his object by being always on the road, travel- 
 ling, as it were, like a Knight of the Holy 
 Grail, towards some goal unseen that fascinated 
 him, still always further on. 
 
 No doubt the darksome thickets by loch 
 sides, in which he and his pony must have 
 passed so many summer nights, were pleasanter 
 than a smoke - infested Highland shieling. 
 Sleeping alone in them he could hear all the
 
 192 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 mysterious voices of the night ; hear wild ducks 
 whirring overhead, the cries of herons in the 
 early morning, the splash made by the rising 
 trout, and watch the mist at dawn creeping 
 upon the water as he lay huddled in his 
 plaid. 
 
 All our old tracks, so long disused, but visible 
 to those who look for such things, by their 
 white stones, on which so many generations 
 of brogue-clad feet have passed, and by the 
 dark green grass that marks them as they 
 meander across uplands or through the valleys, 
 he must have known as well as did the drovers 
 coming from the north. 
 
 Lone wells, that lie forgotten nowadays, but 
 of which then the passers-by all knew and 
 drank from, he too had drunk from, lying upon 
 his chest, and with his beard floating like sea- 
 weed in the water as he lay. 
 
 Mists must have shrouded him, as he rode 
 through the hills, and out of them strange faces 
 must have peered, terrible and fantastic to a 
 man alone and cut off from mankind. 
 
 Possibly to him the faces seemed familiar and 
 more kindly than were those he generally saw 
 upon his pilgrimage. If there were fairies 
 seated on the green knolls, he must have
 
 THE BEGGAR EARL 193 
 
 seemed to them one of themselves, for certainly 
 he was a man of peace. 
 
 Cold, wind and rain and snow must have 
 beat on him as they do upon a tree, but not for 
 that did he once stay his wanderings up and 
 down. As agfe drew on him it was observed 
 that by degrees he seldom left his native parish, 
 Kilmaronock, where he was known and under- 
 stood by all. 
 
 There is a tract of moorland, high-lying and 
 bleak, from which at the top you see Loch 
 Lomond and its islands lying out as in a 
 map beneath. The grey Inch Cailleach, and 
 dark Inch Murren with its yews float in the 
 foreground like hulks of ships, and the black 
 rock of Balmaha rises above a little reedy 
 bay. Just at the bleakest part of the bare 
 moor the wandering earl was seen by some 
 returnino^ drovers on a cold winter's nioht. 
 Light snow was falling, and as they passed him 
 on the wild track that leads down to the vale 
 of Leven, huddled up on his pony, they spoke 
 to him, but he returned no answer, and passed 
 on into the storm. All night it snowed, and in 
 the morning, when the heritors were coming 
 to the old kirk of Bonhill parish, they found 
 him with his back against a dry stone dyke.
 
 194 THE BEGGAR EARL 
 
 and his beloved parchments in his hand. Not 
 far away his old white pony, with the reins 
 dangling round his feet, stood shivering, and 
 in the snow where he had thrust his muzzle 
 deeply down to seek the grass were some faint 
 stains of blood.
 
 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 The Minister of Costalarga lived at the corner 
 of a gaunt, new square, just at the back of the 
 old convent of Las Salesas, in Madrid. The 
 enormous red brick building, now turned into 
 a law court, filled one corner of the square. 
 
 Well did the Madrilenian people say it was 
 a barbarous affair, built in a barbarous style, 
 by a barbarian queen. 
 
 Dwindling acacias, burned by the sun and 
 wind, with a few clumps of dusty oleanders, 
 stood forlornly here and there, and in the 
 cables of the tramway line, the tails of kites 
 were always to be seen entangled, draggled 
 and dirty, and looking like dead birds. 
 
 The nymph that stood upon a dolphin in 
 the middle of the stuccoed fountain basin 
 seemed to be taking medicine through the 
 conch-shell which was stuck into her mouth, 
 and pointed at the sky. One longed to take 
 it from her lips, throw it away, and tell her she 
 had had enough of it. 
 
 195
 
 196 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 Over the doorway of the house in which the 
 representative of Costalarga Hved was hung 
 the shield of the Republic, barred in broad 
 strips of blue. In the chief quarter of the 
 shield appeared a chain of mountains, on one 
 of which was hung a cap of liberty. Over the 
 last peak of the chain, the sun was rising with 
 a grin. All the compatriots of the Minister, 
 who were marooned, as it were, from want of 
 funds, asked their way to the house on which 
 the arms of the Republic were displayed. 
 
 On almost every day, at office hours, that is, 
 between eleven and three, one or two olive- 
 coloured men were certain to appear. Andrds, 
 the old Galician hall-porter, looked on them 
 with great disfavour, observing, " There goes 
 another Indian in a top-hat ; he is safe to touch 
 our Minister for money ! That's all they come 
 about " ; then he would curse their mothers, 
 quite in the Oriental style, calling them sons of 
 sitters at the windows, on the look-out for men. 
 
 His fears were not ill-founded, for in addition 
 to his compatriots, there was a constant influx 
 of distressed literary men, who came to the 
 Legation knowing the Minister himself was 
 known, as they would say, in the Republic of 
 the Muses, and for a tender-hearted man.
 
 A BELLY-GOD 197 
 
 Standing, and looking from his window in 
 the square, one day he saw a man reading a 
 newspaper. At the first glance, he knew he 
 was a foreigner, ragged and miserable. The 
 man folded his newspaper, which fell into its 
 folds as if it were a map, stuffed it into his 
 pocket, dusted his trousers, pulled up his collar, 
 and fastening up his coat, began to walk towards 
 the house. Then he went back, and sitting 
 down again, once more drew out his dirty 
 newspaper. 
 
 ''I watched him," said the Minister, ''half- 
 compassionately ! that is to say half in compas- 
 sion for myself, for I was married and had 
 children, half in compassion for his misery, for 
 I discerned at once that in the end he would 
 choke down his shyness and his pride and 
 come and call on me. 
 
 '' At last he did so, and having run the 
 gauntlet of Andres, was ushered up to where I 
 sat, in a room filled with papers and with 
 books, which perhaps gave him courage to 
 speak out, by their familiar air. Before he 
 spoke he had reminded me of the protagonist 
 in an old Spanish comedy. El Vergonzante en 
 Palacio, he was so ill at ease and shy and 
 awkward in his ways. Beginning in a halting
 
 198 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 Spanish, with all the verbs in the infinitive, he 
 lapsed at once into his native tongue, when I 
 addressed him in it, after having read his card. 
 On it was written 'Mr. William Heyward' — 
 why do you English alone of all the world, 
 put * Mr.' on your cards, I wonder ? — and the 
 address of a poor boarding-house kept by an 
 Englishwoman, one Senora Smith. I looked 
 at Mr. Heyward as he sat twisting his hat round 
 in his hands. Instantly I seemed to read his 
 history. His thin and undecided-looking hands 
 had several warts upon them, and his whole 
 air showed he was fed on tea and bread and 
 butter, which had turned his skin to a faint 
 muddy colour, something like a frog. 
 
 " Withal, I saw he was a man of education, 
 and so when I had given him a cigarette, I 
 asked what it was I could do for him, although 
 I knew he wanted work and food. 'Your 
 Excellency,' he said, and when I said ' For 
 God's sake do not call me Excellency,' he began 
 again, * Your Excellency, I have ventured . . . 
 ventured to call upon you, though it has cost 
 me a great deal.' 
 
 '* I knew about his effort, for I had seen it, 
 and knew exactly in which pocket the crushed 
 and much-read newspaper reposed, but merely
 
 A BELLY-GOD 199 
 
 smiled at him in as encouraging a way as 
 possible. 
 
 *' ' Your Excellency/ he went on, ' the fact is, 
 I am almost beat. There is nothing for an 
 educated man to do, at least an educated for- 
 eigner, here in Madrid. I have been a tutor, 
 teaching English in a family, but lost the job, 
 partly on account, I think, of my bad clothes, 
 and partly because I have no aptitude for 
 teaching anything. I have done a litde in the 
 office of an agent for patent medicines, and I 
 have kept Sefiora Smith's accounts. She is 
 the owner of the boarding-house where I am 
 staying, but now she tells me that she cannot 
 afford to keep me on, and so I have been 
 wandering about looking for literary work . . . 
 to the Consulate, the Embassy, and all the 
 bookshops, but they all bowed me out' 
 
 ** I looked at him and did not wonder, for 
 you know what Madrid is like. Everyone 
 writes and no one reads, and even natives of 
 the place have a hard fight to live. A fight, 
 yes, that is the word, for life ; there is a 
 battle with the climate to begin with, and then 
 with everyone. To make a long story short, I 
 took him into my employment, for I was then 
 at work upon a thousand things. I think I had
 
 200 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 a book on Costalarga and its resources, mineral 
 and agricultural, and as a field for emigration, 
 on the stocks ; some poetry of my own, a 
 novel, and no end of work which rightly should 
 have fallen to the Consul, if we had had one 
 in Madrid. 
 
 " Poor Mr. Heyward was profuse in thanks, 
 and I soon found him useful enough for work 
 requiring no initiative. Naturally he could not 
 write shorthand, knew little French, was quite 
 impossible in Spanish, and what I had often 
 found in educated Englishmen, had not the 
 least idea of English grammar or of style. 
 As I paid him every week, he by degrees got 
 into better case, bought a few clothes, and 
 even had a little colour in his cheeks, and I 
 once heard him whistling a ' Tango,' but 
 grossly out of tune. 
 
 " Andres, my porter, never was reconciled to 
 him, and used to speak of him as ' the found- 
 ling Englishman the Minister has got to serve 
 as secretary.' I think I told you that Andres 
 was a Galician, with all the vices and the 
 virtues of his race. No one, not born a 
 millionaire, could possibly have had the senti- 
 ment of property better developed than Andres. 
 
 ** Though he had never had much property
 
 A BELLY-GOD 201 
 
 himself, he looked on it as something sacred, 
 and on me, though I confess I could hardly 
 be called a man of property, as his especial 
 charge. 
 
 *' He used to reason with me, about putting 
 money in a bank, an institution which, as he 
 said, is liable to break, whereas if put into a 
 stocking between two mattresses, or buried in 
 a hole, money is safe, unless a man finds out 
 the hiding-place. 
 
 " Nothing that Mr. Heyward possibly could 
 do removed the suspicions of Andres, who 
 always looked on him in some way as an inter- 
 loper, and used to ask me, * Are there not plenty 
 of poor Spaniards, men who understand the 
 pen, but that you must take a foreigner, making 
 your house a foundling hospital ? ' My porter 
 had the spirit of the province and the town 
 so strongly rooted in his blood, that almost 
 everyone he looked on as a potential enemy, in 
 the same way, no doubt, his Celt- Iberian and 
 Suevian ancestors had looked upon mankind. 
 Two years of service in his youth in Ceuta had 
 but intensified the feeling, though now and then 
 he used to say he had met honest Moors, ' men 
 of one word,' as he expressed it, although but 
 infidels. As regards human sympathy, he was.
 
 202 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 just as I fancy are so many Spaniards, far more 
 In sympathy with the Moors than with North 
 Europeans, and certainly a Moor in their streets 
 does not attract half so much criticism as would 
 a Swedish countryman, clothed in his native 
 dress. 
 
 ** However, quite unconscious of the enmity 
 he had evoked, Hey ward went on writing my 
 letters, helping me with my translations, for even 
 if a man knows English pretty well, as I do, 
 there are always niceties that he must miss in 
 a work of long breath." 
 
 In point of fact, the Minister's command of 
 English, Hey ward used to say, was quite un- 
 canny, and made him feel as if he were the 
 foreigner, and his employer was the Englishman. 
 
 " As time went on, I got to like the fellow, 
 and to understand his Anglo-Saxon and his 
 special reticences. 
 
 " Sometimes he used to bring crushed, rather 
 withered-looking flowers for my wife, and sweet- 
 meats for the kids. He even would have given 
 cigarettes to the hall-porter had he met with 
 the least encouragement. In fact, he had the 
 milk of human kindness in his blood, and to 
 myself was grateful in so heartfelt a way, it 
 used to make me quite uncomfortable. You
 
 A BELLY-GOD 203 
 
 know amongst us Latins envy replaces your 
 hypocrisy, and to oblige a man is generally to 
 make an enemy. 
 
 ''One thing there was about my secretary 
 that was a constant wonder and a source of pity 
 to me. We, you know, have still preserved a 
 little more formality in our address in Spanish 
 countries than you have in the north. When- 
 ever any of these long salutations inquiring as 
 to his health and that of all his family was 
 addressed to him, Heyward would colour up, 
 flush, and become confused, and never find the 
 right reply, but trip up in his speech. 
 
 *' This attitude was incomprehensible to 
 Spaniards, who used to call him proud and 
 speak of him as being of a despotic character, 
 and a despiser of the poor. When he first 
 learned this, it pained him to the heart, for if 
 he had to help a dog to jump upon a chair, he 
 did it with humility, as if he did not wish to 
 show the animal that it was in the least inferior 
 to him, even in degree. Little by little he 
 became extremely useful to me, and I used to 
 put off on to his shoulders things that I ought 
 to have looked into personally, about the 
 Embassy. 
 
 *' A countryman of mine of an inventive turn
 
 204 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 of mind sent several cases to Madrid of some 
 sort of compressed food that he wanted me 
 to press upon the Government to take up for 
 the troops. I can see the stuff arrive in three 
 middling- sized cases, abnormally heavy, and 
 soldered down with lead. 
 
 " Heyward and I opened them, and took 
 note of the contents. I remember thinking if 
 there was anything in the world that possibly 
 could make a soldier's life more Ignominious, 
 it was to have to eat such horrid-looking stuff 
 and read the misleading adjective * palatable ' 
 stamped upon each slab. After a week of 
 constant writing, I heard from the War Office 
 that General Canaheja would be glad to see me 
 on a day, his secretary wrote, that would be 
 convenient to him. 
 
 " I very nearly did not go, the form of his 
 communication was so insolent, but after all, I 
 thought, I do not want anything myself, so I 
 will bear It for my countryman, and if his food 
 is so deleterious as It looks, at least it will kill 
 some of them. ' Another Spaniard gone to 
 hell,' as we used to say when we killed one of 
 them during our wars for independence, in my 
 grandfather's time. 
 
 ** Accompanied by Heyward, for he under-
 
 A BELLY-GOD 205 
 
 stood the stuff better than I did, we visited the 
 General at the War Office. The house, which 
 was the palace of Godoy, Prince of the Peace 
 (and lover of the Queen), in the days when 
 Napoleon was about to receive the first kick, 
 here In Spain, that showed mankind that he 
 was vulnerable, was an enormous, red brick 
 building with the windows faced in stone. It 
 stood upon a little hill, in the middle of a 
 garden, and day and night sentries paced up 
 and down before its doors. When it so 
 happened that a regiment of cavalry had to 
 furnish men, the additional ridicule was added 
 of a man walking to and fro in spurs, and 
 looking like an alligator when he waddles on 
 the sand. The enormous mass, which, as I 
 said, in old days was the town house of Godoy, 
 and now the focus of all that is most reactionary 
 in Spain, impressed me disagreeably from the 
 first moment that I entered it. One felt that 
 constitutional liberty was left behind outside its 
 iron gate, and that a heavy, but a stupid, hand 
 lay over everything. Orders were shouted 
 even if the men to whom they were delivered 
 stood but a yard away, and the same man 
 who stood so quietly to listen to them, turned 
 and repeated them in the same voice and
 
 2o6 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 key to his inferior, who roared to someone 
 else. 
 
 **One official passed us on to another, and 
 at last we stood, after climbing innumerable 
 stairs, in the presence of the great man. He 
 received us civilly enough, and promised — I 
 had been a Minister myself in my own country, 
 and know what a man in that position has to 
 say — to look into the matter of the stores. As 
 I looked at his short, squat figure, his blood- 
 shot eyes and bristly moustache, his hairy 
 hands, his ill-made civilian clothes, and recol- 
 lected that it was he who had shot so many 
 prisoners in cold blood, tortured a few, and 
 finally returned from the last war a millionaire 
 without seeing a shot fired, a mad desire came 
 over me to spring and strangle him. 
 
 **Then I laughed at myself, for I reflected 
 that, short-sighted as I was, all I should do 
 would be perhaps to upset the inkstand, and 
 that the General only had to call and I should 
 be conducted out with ignominy, and in the 
 morning the papers would appear with leaded 
 types and with the headline, * Sudden insanity 
 of a Minister, and a Field-Marshal's calm.' 
 
 ** So, after thanking General Canaheja, I 
 withdrew, taking my secretary, and certain
 
 A BELLY-GOD 207 
 
 that the incident was closed, and the General 
 would have forgotten all about the stores before 
 I well had got into the street. However, I had 
 complied (as we say), and now could write with 
 a clear conscience to my poor friend at home. 
 
 ** A few days afterwards, I received a sudden 
 telegram calling me with all my family to Paris, 
 and I remember now, as we walked up and 
 down the station waiting for the train to start, 
 that my poor secretary seemed to be struggling 
 to say something ; but I was occupied, and 
 articulate speech was never his strong point, 
 poor fellow, at any time of day. I see him now, 
 as the train slowly drew out of the station, 
 standing, as it were, framed in the rapidly 
 diminishing glass arch, just like a miniature. 
 
 '' Two months went by, in which I was 
 so occupied in Paris that all thoughts of my 
 secretary or of Madrid were quite obliterated. 
 When I returned at last, as the train slowly 
 jolted through Castile, passing the rocky desert 
 between Avila and the Escorial, stopping at 
 little stations where no one ever was known 
 either to get in or out, all seemed familiar and 
 yet strange to me. Spain has a hold on me 
 that I believe no other country takes, life is so 
 primitive and yet so intense, it seems as if you
 
 2o8 A BELLY-GOD 
 
 touched the Middle Asfes and the most ultra- 
 modern life, when you stretch out your hands. 
 
 '' Andres, the porter, welcomed me with a 
 long string of most minute inquiries as to my 
 health, that of my wife and child, and as to how 
 we had got through the journey, the whole 
 concluding with his congratulations on our 
 being once more in the Court. Nothing was 
 to be seen of Mr. Hey ward ; but on my writing- 
 desk was a long consular report I had asked 
 him to draw out, carefully done and put where 
 I could not have missed it ; but without a word 
 from him who drew it up. None of my servants 
 could, or would, tell me about him, till I 
 bethought me of Andres. 
 
 '* He came up, bursting with his subject, and 
 informed me that he had something to impart 
 that would astonish me. 
 
 " ' That secretary/ he said, * was nothing but 
 a thief, a stealer of the sacrament. I never 
 liked him from the first. A man that blushed 
 and could not look you in the face when you 
 but said good morning or good evening in 
 Castilian to him ; that made me think about 
 him evilly. Your Excellency, pardon me, not 
 being a son of the country, was too confident. 
 My father always told me, "Andres, never be
 
 A BELLY-GOD ' 209 
 
 confident, do not facilitate a rogue. A rogue 
 is like a Moorish horse ; when things are going 
 well, all of a sudden he spies a mare, sets up 
 his back and squeals, and then where are 
 you ? " My father, too, had served, as I have, 
 against the infidel. 
 
 *' ' Yes, Excellency, I will be brief. After a 
 week or two, I remember this John, for I will 
 not now give him the treatment of Don, which 
 he has forfeited, seemed to fall back aoain into 
 his old ways. He got more shy than ever — 
 *' Never trust a shy man, a friar, or a male mule," 
 the proverb says — and never changed his shirt. 
 
 '* * With licence, I may say, I think he had 
 no shirt, and by degrees he used to bring in 
 newspapers, handfuls of straw and sticks, that 
 he had gathered in the streets, and other nasti- 
 ness. One would have thought he was an 
 ostrich about to build a nest. There used to 
 be a smell of burning, and when I tried to 
 look through the keyhole, I found it was 
 plugged up. 
 
 " ' Time went on so, and I each day more ill 
 at ease, for. Excellency, I feared the man was 
 plotting something ; at last, after ten days or 
 so, myself just like S. Lawrence on his grid- 
 iron, he went away ; and from that moment I 
 p
 
 2IO A BELLY-GOD 
 
 have never looked upon his face. After a day 
 or two I went into your study, for I had been 
 so put about I was unable to attend to any- 
 thing . . . even my duties to your Excellency. 
 What a sight was there ... a heap of ashes 
 in the grate, and all your Excellency's boxes 
 of compressed food standing quite empty, ex- 
 cepting one that had been burned to cook his 
 delicacies. I saw it at a glance, this unlucky 
 John had eaten everything. A wolf, your 
 Excellency, a perfect belly-god. A man born 
 without shame.' 
 
 " He stopped at last, and stood with a 
 pleased look upon his face, certain that he had 
 done his duty, and waiting for a word of 
 compliment from me on his fidelity. 
 
 "A light broke in upon me, and a tingling, 
 running from my toes, passed up my spinal 
 marrow, making my very hair feel stiff and my 
 skin turn as rough as sandpaper. 
 
 '' Now I saw why Mr. Heyward's speech had 
 remained undelivered when he came to see me 
 off, despite the throes as of a parturition, which 
 had so shaken him. 
 
 *' You see, I used to pay him every Saturday, 
 poor devil, and in the two long months that I 
 had been away he had been famishing."
 
 A BELLY-GOD 211 
 
 The Minister of Costalarga passed his hand 
 over his sleek black hair uneasily, as he walked 
 up and down the room ; then, going to the 
 window, he threw it open with a jerk and 
 gazed out anxiously. No one was seated on 
 the stucco benches of the great, deserted plaza, 
 except a soldier of the Princesa's regiment, in 
 his blue uniform guarded with silver lace. He 
 sat, with a burned-out cigarette just hanging 
 on his lips, in animated conversation with a 
 girl carrying a basket on her arm, who, on her 
 way to market, had stopped a moment, most 
 probably to talk of military matters, with the 
 warrior. The nymph, standing dejectedly 
 upon her dolphin in the water-basin, was the 
 sole witness of their interview. The con^ch- 
 shell, seen from the side on which they sat, 
 looked a little like an ear-trumpet which she 
 had turned to spy upon their talk and catch 
 their confidences. They did not heed it, and 
 as a light air from the Guadarrama stirred the 
 acacia leaves, making them shiver, and the 
 dry oleanders rustle mournfully, the Minister, 
 coming back into the room, shut to the window, 
 murmuring, '' I had half hoped that he might 
 have been there, on the look-out for me."
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 In these days when every vestige of old 
 custom and old speech is being rapidly sub- 
 merged in the dumb waves of progress, the 
 word *' Tryst " should be preserved by Act of 
 Parliament. How well it figures in the Border 
 Ballads — **Atte the Reidswire, the Tryst was 
 set/' " Gailie she came to the Trysting Tree," 
 and half a hundred other instances, show what 
 a fine poetic word it is. None other in the 
 language could supply its place, . . . the 
 trysting oak, at w^hich Wallace is said to have 
 convened his merry men in the Blane Valley, 
 would sound poor enough, as poor as the 
 Holy Scriptures, put into the modern vulgar 
 tongue. Besides all this, it is a word that to 
 Scotchmen (such as have no Gaelic) gives an 
 air of superiority over the mere Englishman. 
 Many years ago I crossed with a lady who 
 always had maintained that between English 
 and Lowland Scotch there was no difference, 
 from the West Ferry to Dumbarton, in the 
 ferry-boat. 
 
 212
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 213 
 
 It was raining cats and dogs, and, as we 
 waited in the rain beside the rickety old pier 
 below the castle, a cab drove slov^ly up. We 
 eyed it curiously. I asked the driver to take 
 us to the railway station. He rather surlily 
 refused. Whereupon one of a host of long- 
 shore youths who were standing, heedless of 
 the rain, watching a full-rigged ship being 
 towed down the Clyde (being moved apparently 
 by the air of discomfort which the lady who 
 was with me showed), remarked, ''Hurl them 
 up, Jimmy." Jimmy relaxed his features, and 
 answered in an apologetic way, " I canna, man, 
 I'm trysted." 
 
 We tramped up to the station in the rain, 
 but never afterwards did my companion main- 
 tain that the two languages were identical. 
 
 During my boyhood, Falkirk Tryst was an 
 event to be looked forward to, for droves of 
 ponies from the Islands and the north used 
 to be driven down the pass by an old drove 
 road which passed Aberfoyle. Thin and wild- 
 eyed, with ropy manes and tails that swept the 
 ground, they strayed along. 
 
 Chestnuts and piebalds, duns with a black 
 stripe down their back and markings like a 
 tiger on the hocks, cream-colours with dark
 
 214 FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 tails and manes, skewbalds and bays (never a 
 single roan), they used to remind me of the 
 troops of mustangs that I had read of in Mayne 
 Reid. Behind them on a pony, with his knees 
 up to his mouth, a broken snaffle bridle, and in 
 his hands a long, crooked hazel stick, the drover 
 followed, always enveloped in his plaid. A 
 dog or two hung at his pony's heels, and in a 
 language that was strange to us as Telegu, he 
 used to shout anathemas at beasts that lagged 
 behind. 
 
 Slowly they trailed along, for time was what 
 the driver had most at his command, stopping 
 to crop the grass, or drink at the broad, 
 shallow crossing of the mountain burns, stand- 
 ing about in knots knee-deep, and swishing 
 with their tails, just as in after life I have seen 
 wild horses do in both Americas. Foals trotted 
 by their mothers' sides, and the whole road 
 was blocked between its dry-stone dykes, sur- 
 mounted by their feals. 
 
 Usually these herds of ponies, collected from 
 the far Highlands and the Islands, were the 
 first sign of the approaching Tryst. Some- 
 times, however, early in the morning if we 
 were going out to fish, at one of those broad, 
 grassy spaces, which in those days existed at
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 215 
 
 the crossing of four roads, one used to come 
 upon men lying round a fire. Wrapped in 
 their plaids on which the frost showed white, 
 or the dew shone just as it does upon a spider's 
 web, their sticks laid near their hands, they 
 slumbered peacefully. Around them grazed 
 West Highland catde, black, dun, or chestnut, 
 their peaceful disposition belied by their long, 
 curving horns and shaggy foreheads, and as 
 you passed, one of the men was sure to rise 
 upon his elbow, pull his plaid off his head, and 
 after looking around to see the cattle had not 
 strayed, throw wood upon the fire, and then lie 
 down to sleep again, after muttering a saluta- 
 tion either in Gaelic or in the sing-song English 
 which in those days men of his kidney spoke. 
 Great flocks of blackfaced sheep were also to 
 be met with coming southwards to the Tryst, 
 driven by men who daundered on behind them 
 with that peculiar trailing step that only those 
 who passed their lives upon the road were able 
 to acquire. Generally two or three accom- 
 panied the herd, dressed usually in homespun 
 tweeds, which smelt of wool and peat smoke, 
 and were so thick that those who wore them 
 looked like bears, as they lounged heavily 
 along.
 
 2i6 ' FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 All of them had a collie, which If he was not 
 trained, they led tied by a cord, without a collar 
 round his neck, and fastened to a button on 
 their coats. The dogs looked lean and wolfish, 
 for it was long before the times when they 
 were fashionable as pets, and at a sign, or In 
 response to some deep guttural Gaelic order, 
 they turned back straying sheep so dexterously, 
 one used to wonder where the line that separated 
 their Instinct from their master's reason, ended 
 or began. 
 
 As the droves slowly took their passage 
 through the land, the drovers often would sell 
 a pony-beast, or a stot that had got footsore, to 
 farmers on the way. These sales were not 
 concluded without expenditure of time and 
 whisky and an infinity of talk. 
 
 Then the tired colt or calf was led into the 
 byre, and the long line of ponies or of cattle 
 started again, filling the road from side to side 
 and leaving as It passed a wild, warm smell of 
 mountain animals. 
 
 Such were the outward visible signs of 
 Falkirk Tryst as I remember them, so many 
 years ago, before the railways and the weekly 
 sales reduced It to a mere cattle market, shorn of 
 importance and of historic connection with the
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 217 
 
 past. The country folks in upland farms and 
 grazing districts looked on it as one of the 
 important functions of the year. 
 
 " So many weeks from the October Tryst," 
 "It would be aboot the Tryst that Andra 
 married Jean," " I canna pay ye till the Tryst," 
 were all familiar sayings, and the date itself was 
 as well known to all, as Halloween or Hog- 
 manay, or even the New Year. 
 
 In those days Christmas was not held as a 
 holiday except in districts such as Strathglass, 
 Morar, or Moidart, or in the islands where the 
 old faith prevailed, and where the phrases "if 
 you please " and '' thank you " were usual acci- 
 dents of speech, which to a free and self- 
 respecting man were not derogatory. 
 
 Mankind, however, must have festivals, and 
 thus the Tryst had somehow crept into the 
 Scottish Colin Clouts' Calendar. 
 
 The drovers and the droves, coming as they 
 did from the mysterious regions '' above the 
 pass," brought with them something of romance, 
 and, in fact, as they strayed along our roads 
 they always called to my recollection etchings 
 by Callot of the Hungarian gipsies which, 
 bound in an old crushed morocco cover, used 
 to lie in the drawing-room and be shown
 
 2i8 FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 to us as children on Sundays and wet after- 
 noons. 
 
 It may be, too, that, unknown to themselves, 
 the Lowland ploughmen working in the fields 
 looked at the drovers as a man accustomed to 
 office work looks on a sailor as he passes by, 
 with feelings oscillating between contempt and 
 envy of his adventurous life. 
 
 Certain it was that the old Highland drovers 
 would not have changed their mode of life for 
 anything. To wake up on a bright morning 
 in October, and shake the hoar frost from one's 
 clothes, collect the cattle, and having sent the 
 whisky bottle round, once more to find oneself 
 upon the road, with the scene changing con- 
 stantly as you strolled along, must have been 
 pleasanter by far than settled occupation with 
 its dull daily round. 
 
 To travel round the Highlands buying a 
 pony here, another there, three or four ewes or 
 stots on one farm, and then setting out upon 
 the trip to Falkirk, sleeping by the herd, and 
 after perhaps a fortnight arriving at the Tryst, 
 to find the booth set up, the other drovers 
 gradually dropping in, exchanging notes on 
 prices, and on the incidents of the march, pro- 
 duced a kind of that Scotland knows no more.
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 219 
 
 The *' parks" by Larbert where the Tryst 
 was held presented on the fateful day the 
 aspect of a fair, with the tents and the crowd 
 of country people. 
 
 Sheep bleated and cows lowed, and, as it 
 generally was raining, a smell of tar and wool 
 hung in the air. Knots of men wrapped in 
 plaids, their clothes showing the signs of 
 having camped by the roadside, their faces 
 tanned or reddened by the sun, their beards as 
 shaggy as the coats of the rough kyloes that 
 they passed their lives with, chatted with Low- 
 land shepherds from the Cheviots. 
 
 Dealers from England, better dressed but 
 slower in their minds and speech than any 
 Scotsman possibly can be, surveyed the animals, 
 poking them with their sticks, and running 
 down their points after the fashion of the in- 
 tending buyer in every country of the world. 
 Rough-looking lads, but with that air of super- 
 natural cunnino^ that commerce with the horse 
 imparts, ran ponies up and down. 
 
 Beefy-faced cattle-dealers from the Midlands 
 roared at Highlanders whose English was 
 defective, thinking to make them understand 
 by noise ; and Highlanders, who themselves 
 understood English almost as well as they did,
 
 220 FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 and spoke it far more purely, pretended to mis- 
 take their meaning to get more time to think 
 what they should say. 
 
 When, after an infinity of haggling, a price 
 was reached, to which the seller gave assent, 
 both parties would adjourn to one or other of 
 the tents, to wet the bargain, and sit down at 
 a white, deal table, placed upon the grass, and 
 swallow whisky in a way that no one not con- 
 nected with the cattle trade could possibly 
 achieve. On them it had no more effect than 
 milk, unless to make the fiery faces of the 
 Yorkshire dealers a thought redder, and set 
 the Highlanders a-talking still more fluently 
 than when they had gone in. 
 
 Quarrels were rare, and drunkenness not 
 common with such seasoned vessels ; but on 
 the rare occasions when the whisky had proved 
 stronger than the head, they lay down peace- 
 fully to sleep it off, beside their animals, with 
 their heads buried in their plaids. 
 
 The day wore on, amidst the lowing of the 
 beasts and noise of bargaining, and towards 
 evening the roads were full of strings of 
 animals being driven off, either towards the 
 railway, or on the way to their new homes. I 
 often wondered if they missed the rough and
 
 FALKIRK TRYST 221 
 
 shaggy men, so near to them in type, or 
 thought about the upland pastures in the glens, 
 or the sweet, wavino- arass of island *' machars " 
 in the lush Lowland fields. 
 
 It pleases us and stills our conscience to say 
 that animals know no such feeling, but yet ** I 
 hae my doots," and the wild winnyings and 
 jerks back on the halter must mean something, 
 . . . but after all they have no souls. 
 
 Not that such speculations ever entered any- 
 body's head at Falkirk Tryst. Well, well, the 
 Tryst, that is as I knew it in my boyhood, has 
 slipped away into the realms of old, forgotten, 
 far-away memories. 
 
 It formed a link between the modern world 
 and times when kilted drovers with their targets 
 at their backs, girt with their claymores, their 
 feet shod in the hairy brogues by which they 
 gained the name of the Rough-Footed Scots, 
 drove down their kyloes and their ponies 
 through the very bealach that I remember in 
 my youth. They are all gone with the old 
 world they lived in ; but still the shadows fall 
 upon the southern slopes and creep into the 
 corries of the Ochils that overlook the historic 
 parks by Larbert in which the Tryst was held. 
 Heavy-nailed boots now press the grass that
 
 222 FALKIRK TRYST 
 
 once was brushed so lightly by the Highland 
 brogues. No one now sleeps beside the roads, 
 nor, rising with the dawn, wrings out the dew- 
 drops from his plaid. 
 
 The life that once was real, now seems fan- 
 tastic ; not half so real as the shadows on the 
 hills, and even they only endure whilst the sun 
 shines, chasing one another up and down till it 
 peeps in again.
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 I FOUND the other day an old bundle of papers 
 docketed as above in my own hand. 
 
 Many years ago I must have come on 
 them at Gartmore, and as in those days it was 
 what the people called a " sort o' back-lying 
 place," traditions of the doings of loose and 
 broken men still survived, though vaguely and 
 as in a mist. The loose and broken men, 
 whose fame still echoed faintly in my youth, 
 were those who after the ''Forty-five" either 
 were not included in the general amnesty, 
 or had become accustomed to a life of violence. 
 
 Once walking down the avenue at Gartmore 
 with my old uncle Captain Speirs, we passed 
 three moss-grown lumps of pudding-stone that 
 marked the ancient gallows-tree. Turning to 
 it he said : 
 
 *' Many's the broken man your ancestor, old 
 Laird Nicol, hangit up there, after the * Forty- 
 five.' " He also told me, just as if he had been 
 speaking about savages, " When I was young, 
 
 223
 
 224 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 one day up on Loch Ard-side, I met a Hieland- 
 man, and when I spoke to him, he answered 
 ' Cha neil Sassenach ' ; I felt inclined to lay 
 my whip about his back." 
 
 Even then I wondered why, but prudently 
 refrained from saying anything, for the old 
 Captain had served through the Peninsular 
 Campaign, had been at Waterloo, and, as the 
 country people used to say, he had "an eye 
 intil him like a hawk." 
 
 This antipathy to Highlandmen which I 
 have seen exhibited in my youth, even by 
 educated men who lived near to the Highland 
 Line, was the result of the exploits of the 
 aforesaid loose and broken men, who had 
 descended (unapostolically) from the old 
 marauding clans. 
 
 The enemy came from '' above the pass " to 
 such as my old uncle, and all the glamour Scott 
 had thrown upon the clans never removed the 
 prejudice from their dour Lowland minds. 
 
 Perhaps if we had lived in those times we 
 might have shared it too. 
 
 One of the documents in the bundle to which 
 I have referred is docketed ** Information for 
 Mr. Thomas Buchanan, Minister of Tullyallan, 
 heritor of Gouston in Cashlie." Gouston is a
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 225 
 
 farm on the Gartmore estate, on which I, in 
 years gone by, have passed many long and wet 
 hours measuring drains and listening to com- 
 plaints : '' Laird, ma barn flure's fair boss," 
 ** Ye ken a' the grips are wasted," ''I havena 
 got a gate in the whole farm," with much of the 
 same kind ; complaints no doubt all justified, 
 but difficult to satisfy without Golconda or the 
 Rand to draw upon, are ever present in my 
 mind. 
 
 The document itself, one of a bundle deal- 
 ing with the case, written I should judge by a 
 country writer (I have several documents drawn 
 up by one who styles himself ** Writer in Gar- 
 rachel," a farm in Gartmore barony), is on that 
 thick and woolly but well-made paper used by 
 our ancestors, and unprocurable to-day. The 
 writing is elegant, with something of a look 
 of Arabic about its curving lines. It states 
 that : 
 
 '' Ewan Cameron, Donald M'Tavish in 
 Glenco, Allen Mackay in thair [" in thair " 
 seems what the French would call **une terre 
 vague," but has a fine noncommittal flavour in 
 a legal document], John and Arch. M'lan, his 
 brethren, Donald M'lan a/ias Donachar, also 
 Paul Clerich, Dugald and Duncan M 'Person 
 Q
 
 226 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 in Craiguchty, Robert Dou McGregor and his 
 brethren, John and Water M'Watt, alias For- 
 rester, in Ofference of Garrochyle belonging to 
 the Laird of Gartmore . . . came violentlie 
 under cloud of nioht to the dwellinor-house of 
 Isabell M'Cluckey, relict of John Carrick, tenant 
 in the town of Gouston with this party above 
 mentioned and more, on December sixteen hun- 
 dred [the date is blank, but it occurred in 1698], 
 and then on the same night, it being the Lord's 
 Day, broke open her house, stript [another docu- 
 ment on the case says ** struck," which seems 
 more consonant to the character of the High- 
 landers] and bound herself and children con- 
 trarie to the authorltie of the nation, and took 
 with them her whole inslcht and plenishing,* 
 
 * The subjoi7ied Inventory^ dated 1 698, shows hoiu thoroughly 
 the work was do?ie. It also shows what a careful housewife 
 Isabell M''Luckie was, and that she was a past mistress of the 
 scie7ice of maki7ig a ''''poor mouth. ^^ 
 
 Ane particular List of what goods and geir utencills and 
 domicills was taken and plundered from Issobell 
 M'Luckie Relict of the decest John Kerick by Eun 
 Cameron and his Accomplices as it was given up by 
 her self : 
 
 In primis there was Ane gray meir estat to 040 00 o 
 
 Item other three meirs estat to 20 lib p.p. is 060 00 o 
 It Ane flecked horse and ane black horse estat 
 
 to 24 hb p.p 048 00 o 
 It there was taken away ten tydie Coues estat to 
 
 p.p. 24 lib is 240 00 o
 
 I 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 227 
 
 utensils and domlcil, with the number of six 
 horses and mares, sixteen great cows, and their 
 followers, item thirty-six great sheep and lambs 
 and hogs equivalent, and carried them all away 
 violentlie, till they came to the said Craiguchty, 
 where the said Ewan Cameron cohabited." 
 I fancy that in Craiguchty, which even in 
 
 It three forrow Cowes giving milk estat to 20 lib 
 
 pp is 060 00 o 
 
 It two yeild Cowes estat to 12 lib p.p. is 024 00 o 
 
 It two twoyeirolds estat to 8 lib p.p. is 016 00 o 
 
 It there was taken away thirtietwo great south- 
 land Sheep estat to thre pound Scots p 
 pice is 096 GO o 
 
 It there was fourtein hogs estat to 2 lib 10 sh: 
 p.p is 
 
 It of Cloath and wolen yairn estat to 
 
 It Eight plyds viz four qrof double and four single 
 estat to 
 
 It ane pair of woUen Clats estat to 
 
 It Ane pair of Cards estat to 2 mk is 
 
 It two heckles viz Ane fyne &: ane courser estat to 
 
 It of mead neii harn in shirts 30 elns estat to 
 
 It of neu Linning in Shirts 24 elns estat to 
 
 It ten petticoats estat to 
 
 It four westcoats for women estat to 
 
 It thre gouns for women estat to 
 
 It on ax two womels a borrall & a hamer estat to 
 
 It two brass pans estat 
 
 It two dozen & a half of spoons estat to 
 
 It on pair of sheetts & and on pair of blanqwets 
 estat to 
 
 It on Covering estat to 
 
 It two bibles estat to 
 
 It on pair of tongs estat to 
 
 It 2 pair shoes & 2 pairs stockings estat to 
 
 021 
 
 00 
 
 G 
 
 035 
 
 GO 
 
 G 
 
 048 
 
 OG 
 
 G 
 
 001 
 
 16 
 
 G 
 
 001 
 
 6 
 
 8 
 
 003 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 012 
 
 GO 
 
 G 
 
 012 
 
 GG 
 
 G 
 
 030 
 
 GG 
 
 G 
 
 004 
 
 6 
 
 
 
 012 
 
 G 
 
 G 
 
 002 
 
 IG 
 
 
 
 003 
 
 12 
 
 G 
 
 001 
 
 18 
 
 
 
 005 
 
 00 
 
 G 
 
 004 
 
 GG 
 
 G 
 
 003 
 
 IG 
 
 G 
 
 000 
 
 IG 
 
 G 
 
 005 
 
 00 
 
 G
 
 228 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 my youth was a wild-looking place, the ** autho- 
 ritie of the nation " had little sway in those 
 days. From another document in the bundle, 
 it appears that not content with driving off the 
 stock and bearing away the " insicht and the 
 plenishing," the complainants and their servants 
 ** were almost frichted from their Witts, through 
 
 
 two green aprons estat to 
 
 003 00 
 
 G 
 
 
 Ane pair of plou Irons and plough graith 
 
 
 
 
 estat to 
 
 012 GO 
 
 G 
 
 
 Ane pistoll and a firelock estat to 
 
 010 GO 
 
 G 
 
 
 of readie Cash 
 
 013 06 
 
 8 
 
 
 ane buff belt 
 
 001 04 
 
 
 
 
 two plyds estat to 
 
 016 00 
 
 G 
 
 
 of Muslin and Lining and oyr fyn Close estat 
 
 
 
 
 to 
 
 020 00 
 
 
 
 
 ten elns of new black felt in yearn & wool 
 
 GIG 00 
 
 G 
 
 
 Sick Sack of tueling four elns each 
 
 gg8 og 
 
 G 
 
 
 a canvas eight eln 
 
 002 13 G4 
 
 
 a quarter of Butter & a half ston 
 
 G02 GO 
 
 G 
 
 I flacked horse 4 year old 
 
 1 bell broun horse 3 whyt feet 8 year old 
 
 2 bell broun mares whyt foted whyt nosed 7 year old 
 
 Merk of her sheep 
 prope in ye far lug & only cloven in ye near 
 lug- 
 Loss of 20 bols of red land whyt corn sowing 
 It a hundred cups of sheep muck 
 It Sixtie cups of cows muck 
 It of silver rent 
 It of Lome meal ten bols 
 It of expenses wt. M'Luckie at sevrel trysts 
 It of spy money 
 
 33 
 
 13 04 
 
 09 
 
 OG 
 
 OG 
 
 G2 
 
 GO 
 
 GG 
 
 6g 
 
 00 
 
 OG 
 
 8g 
 
 OG 
 
 GO 
 
 IG 
 
 GG 
 
 OG 
 
 IG 
 
 GO 
 
 00 
 
 204 
 
 13 
 
 4
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 229 
 
 the barbarous usadge of the said broken and 
 loose men." 
 
 However, the " mad - herdsmen," as the 
 phrase went then, drove the *' creagh " to- 
 wards Aberfoyle. The path by which they 
 carried it was probably one that I once knew 
 well. 
 
 It runs from Gartmore village, behind the 
 Drum, out over a wild valley set with junipers 
 and whins, till after crossing a little tinkling, 
 brown burn, it enters a thick copse. Emerging 
 from it, it leaves two cottages on the right 
 hand, near which grow several rowans and an 
 old holly, and once again comes out upon a 
 valley, but flatter than the last. In the middle 
 of it runs a larger burn, its waters dark and 
 mossy, with little linns in which occasionally a 
 pike lies basking in the sun. 
 
 An old-world bridge is supported upon 
 blocks of pudding-stone, the footway formed 
 of slabs of whin, which from remotest ages 
 must have been used by countless generations 
 of brogue-shod feet, it is so polished and worn 
 smooth. Again, there is another little copse, 
 surrounded by a dry-stone dyke, with hoops of 
 withies stuck into the feals, to keep back sheep, 
 and then the track comes out upon the manse
 
 230 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 of Aberfoyle, with its long row of storm-swept 
 Spanish chestnuts, planted by Dr. Patrick 
 Graham, author of Sketches of Perthshire. 
 From this spot, Ewan Cameron, Donald M'lan 
 {alias Donachar) and Robert Dhu M'Gregor 
 might have seen, though of course they did 
 not look, being occupied with the creagh, the 
 church and ancient churchyard of Aberfoyle, 
 and the high-pitched, two-arched bridge, under 
 which runs the Avon-Dhu. 
 
 All this they might have seen as " Ewan 
 Cameron cohabited at Craiguchty," near the 
 Bridge of Aberfoyle. Had they but looked 
 they would have seen the clachan with its low, 
 black huts looking like boats set upside down, 
 the smoke ascending from the wooden box-like 
 chimneys — these they did not mark, quite 
 naturally, as they were the only chimneys they 
 had ever seen ; nor did the acrid peat-reek 
 fill their nostrils, accustomed to its fumes, with 
 the same smell of wildness as it does ours 
 to-day. 
 
 Craigmore and its White Lady was but a 
 ruckle of old stones to them, and if they 
 thought of any natural feature, it may have 
 been the Fairy Hill to which the Rev. Robert 
 Kirke, their minister, had retired only six years
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 231 
 
 before, to take up habitation with the Men of 
 Peace.* 
 
 Most probably they only scrugged their 
 bonnets, shifted their targets on their backs, 
 called out to any lagging beast, or without 
 stopping picked up a stone to throw at him. 
 The retiring freebooters "lay there (Craig- 
 uchty) the first night." One can see them, 
 going and coming about the little shieling, and 
 Ewan Cameron's wife and children, with shaggy 
 hair and uncouth look, coming out to meet 
 them, just as the women of an Arab duar 
 come out to meet a marauding party, raising 
 their shrill cries. 
 
 Some of the men must have been on guard 
 all night to keep the animals from straying and 
 to guard against surprise, and as they walked 
 about, blowing upon their fingers to keep them 
 warm, the cold December night must have 
 seemed lono^ to them. 
 
 They would sleep little, between the cold 
 and fear of an attack. Long before daylight 
 they would be astir, just as a war party of 
 Indians, or cattle-men upon an expedition in 
 
 * See the Secret Cotnmonwealth of Elves ^ Fairies and Fauns ^ 
 written in 1691 (?) and supposed to have been first published in 
 18 1 5. It was reprinted in 1893, with Introduction by Andrew 
 Lang.
 
 232 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 America, who spend the colder hours before the 
 morning seated around the fire, and always rise 
 just before dawn to boil their coffee pots. We 
 know what took the place of coffee with Ewan 
 Cameron and his band, or can divine it at the 
 least. 
 
 Next night they reached Achray, '* in the Earl 
 of Menteith's land, and lay there in the town." 
 By this time the "said hership " (that is, the 
 stolen beasts) must have been rather trouble- 
 some to drive, as the old trail, now long 
 disused, that ran by the birch copse above 
 the west end of Loch Dunkie, was steep 
 and rocky, and ill adapted for ''greate 
 cowes." 
 
 Both at Craiguchty and Achray they had 
 begun to sell their booty, for the tenants there 
 are reported as not having been ** free of the 
 hership." 
 
 In fact, "Walter and John M'Lachlin in 
 Blairwosh " bought several of the animals. 
 Their names seem not to have been concealed, 
 and it appears the transaction was looked upon 
 as one quite natural. 
 
 One, Donald Stewart, "who dwells at the 
 west end of Loch Achray," also " bought some 
 of the geare," with "certaine" of the sheep,
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 233 
 
 and ''thereafter transported them to the high- 
 land to the grass." 
 
 Almost unconsciously, with regard to these 
 sheep, the Spanish proverb rises to the mind, 
 that says, "A sardine that the cat has taken, 
 seldom or never comes back to the plate." 
 
 So far, all is clear and above-board. Ewan 
 Cameron and his band of rogues broke in and 
 stole and disposed of such of the booty as 
 they could, sharing, one hopes, equitably 
 between them the sum of "fiftie six pounds, six 
 shillings and eight pennies " (Scots) that they 
 found In the house, reserving naturally a small 
 sum. In the nature of a bonus, to Ewan 
 Cameron, for his skill In getting up the raid. 
 
 As I do not believe In the word *' stripping," 
 and am aware that if we substitute the homelier 
 ''striking" for it, no great harm would prob- 
 ably be done in an age when the stage direc- 
 tions in a play frequently run " beats his servant 
 John," when speaking of some fine, young- 
 spark, all hitherto seems to have been con- 
 ducted In the best style of such business known 
 on the Highland line. 
 
 Now comes in one "Alexander Campbell, 
 alias M'Grlgor," who "informs"; oh, what a 
 falling off was there. In one of the Gregarach.
 
 234 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 This hereditary enemy of my own family, 
 and it is chiefly upon that account I wish to 
 speak dispassionately . . . sed niagis amicus 
 Veritas . . . informed, that is he condescended 
 to give his moral support to laws made by the 
 Sassenach, ''that Duncan Stewart in Baad of 
 Bochasteal, bought two of the said cowes." 
 Whatever could have come into his head ? 
 Could not this Campbell, for I feel he could not 
 have been of the sept of Dougal Ciar Mor, the 
 hero who wrought such execution on the shave- 
 ling band^ of clerks after Glen Fruin, have left 
 the matter to the *' coir na claidheamh " ? 
 
 So far from this, the recreant M'Gregor, 
 bound and obliged himself '' to prove the same 
 by four sufficient witnesses " — so quickly had 
 he deteriorated from the true practice of his 
 clan. His sufficient witnesses were " John 
 Grame and his sub-tenant in Ballanton, his 
 neighbour Finley Dymoch, and John M'Adam, 
 Osteleir in Offerance of Gartmore." A little 
 
 * I am well aware that gentlemen of Clan Gregor have in- 
 dignantly denied that Dougal Ciar Mor was the author of the 
 slaughter of the students in Glen Fruin. If though we hold 
 him innocent, how is he to be justified in the eyes of fame, for 
 he seems to have done nothing else worthy of remark, . . . 
 except of course being the ancestor of Rob Roy, an entirely 
 unconscious feat of arms on his part.
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 235 
 
 leaven leaveneth the whole, and the bad ex- 
 ample of this man soon bore its evil fruit. 
 
 We find that '' Robert Grame in Ballanton " 
 (that is not wonderful, for he was of a hostile 
 clan and had received none of the spoil as 
 justifiable hush money) also came forward, 
 with what in his case I should soften into 
 " testimony." Far more remains to tell. *' Jean, 
 spouse to the said Ewan Cameron," that very 
 Ewan who so justly received a bonus as the 
 rent of his ability, also came forward and 
 informed. She deponed '' that Walter M'Watt 
 was of the band," although we knew it all 
 before. 
 
 It is painful to me to record that the said 
 M'Watt was ''tenant to said Laird of Gartmore," 
 for it appears, according to the evidence of 
 Ewan Cameron's wife, that "he brocht the said 
 rogues to the said house, went in at ane hole in 
 the byre, which formerly he knew, opened the 
 door and cutted the bands of the said cowes and 
 horse." This man, who after all neither made 
 nor unmade kings, but only served his lord 
 (Ewan Cameron), '' got for his pains, two sheep, 
 a plyde, a pair of tow-cards, two heckles and a 
 pair of wool elects, with ane maikle brass pan 
 and several other thinges." The harrying of the
 
 236 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 luckless Isabell M'Cluckey seems to have been 
 done thoroughly enough, and in a business-like 
 way. However, punishment possibly overtook 
 the evil-doers, as Thomas M 'Galium, *' who 
 changed the said brass pott with the said 
 MWatt for bute,'"^' testified in confirmation 
 of the above. 
 
 " Item Janet Macneall giveth up that she saw 
 him take the plough irons out of a moss hole 
 the summer thereafter with ane pott when he 
 flitted out of Offerance to the waird, and that he 
 sent the plaid and some other plenishing that he 
 got to John Hunter his house in Corriegreenan 
 for fear of being known. Item the said Walter 
 MWatt died tenant to the Laird of Gartmore, 
 and his spouse and the said John Hunter took 
 and intromitted with the whole geir. Item 
 Elizabeth Parland spouse to umquhile George 
 M'Muir, Moorherd in Gartmore, informs, she 
 being ane ostlere, that they gave a cow that 
 night they lifted the hership to Patrick Graeme 
 in Middle Gartfarran in the byegoing betwixt 
 him and his brother Alexander Graeme in Bor- 
 land and also that the said Robert M'Grigor 
 and his brethern with the said John M'Watt met 
 them in the way, although they came not to 
 the house. 
 
 * Bute = spoil or exchange.
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 237 
 
 '* Item that they sold the rest of the geir at 
 one Nicol IVrNicol's house in the Brae of 
 Glenurchy and the said Nicol M'Nicol got a 
 flecked horse for meat and drink from them and 
 lastly Dugald McLaren and his brother Alexan- 
 der got aquaviti among them. This is the true 
 information of the said persons that I have 
 endeavoured to get nottrie att, and if they be 
 not material bonds and grounds of pursuit in it 
 I give it over, but as I think the most material 
 point is in the third article." 
 
 So ends the document, leaving us in the 
 dark as to what happened in the end, just as is 
 usually the case in life. 
 
 The names of nearly all the witnesses, as 
 Elizabeth Parlane, John Ffisher, Robert Carrick, 
 Robert M'Laren, Thomas M'Millan, the pseudo- 
 M'Gregor, and of course the Grames, were all 
 familiar to me in the Gartmore of my youth. 
 
 All the place-names remain unchanged, al- 
 though a certain number of them have been 
 forgotten, except by me, and various old semi- 
 Highlanders interested in such things, or accus- 
 tomed to their sound. Ballanton, Craiguchty, 
 Cullochgairtane (now Cooligarten), Offerance of 
 Garrachel, Gouston of Cashlie, Bochaistail, 
 Gartfarran, Craigieneult, Boquhapple, Corrie-
 
 238 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 greenan, and others which I have not set down, 
 as Milltown of Aberfoyle, though they occur in 
 one or other of the documents, are household 
 words to me. 
 
 What is changed entirely is the life. No one, 
 no one alive can reconstruct a Highlander of 
 the class treated of in my document as Loose 
 and Broken Men. 
 
 Pictures may show us chiefs ; song and 
 tradition tell us tricks of manner ; but Ewan 
 Cameron, Robert Dou M'Grigor, and their 
 bold compeers elude us utterly. A print of 
 Rob Roy, from the well-known picture once 
 in the possession of the Buchanans of Arden, 
 hangs above the mantelpiece just where I write 
 these lines. He must have known many a 
 " gallowglass " of the Ewan Cameron breed ; 
 but even he was semi-civilized, and of a race 
 different from all my friends. Long-haired, 
 light (and rough) footed, wild-eyed, ragged 
 carles they must have been ; keen on a trail as 
 is an Indian or a Black-boy in North Queens- 
 land ; pitiless, blood-thirsty, and yet apt at a 
 bargain, as their disposal of the '* particular 
 goodes, to wit, four horses and two mares," 
 the sheep and other ''gear," goes far to prove. 
 
 The mares and horses are set down as being
 
 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 239 
 
 worth ''thirttie six pound the piece overhead," 
 and I am certain Ewan Cameron got full value 
 for them, even although the price was paid in 
 Scots, for sterling money in those days could 
 not have been much used ''above the pass." 
 It must have been a more excitinor life in Gart- 
 more and in Aberfoyle than in our times, and 
 have resembled that of Western Texas fifty 
 years ago. In London, Addison was rising 
 into fame, and had already translated Ovid's 
 Metamorphoses. Prior was Secretary to the 
 Embassy in Holland, Swift was a parish priest 
 at Laracor, and in the very year (1698) in 
 which Ewan Cameron drove his "creagh" past 
 the Grey Mare's Tail, on the old road to Loch 
 Achray, Defoe published his Essay 011 Projects, 
 and two years later his True Englishman. 
 
 Roads must have been non-existent, or at 
 least primitive in the district of Menteith. This 
 is shown clearly by the separation, as of a 
 whole world, between the farm of Gouston, 
 near Buchlyvie, and the shores of Loch Achray, 
 where it was safe to sell, in open day, beasts 
 stolen barely fifteen miles away. 
 
 Men, customs, crops, and in a measure even 
 the face of the low country through which those 
 loose and broken men passed, driving the
 
 240 LOOSE AND BROKEN MEN 
 
 stolen cows and sheep, have changed. If they 
 returned, all that they would find unaltered 
 would be the hills, Ben Dearg and Ben Dhu, 
 Craig Vadh, Ben Ledi, Schiehallion, Ben Voir- 
 lich, distant Ben More, with its two peaks, and 
 Ben Venue peeping up timidly above the road 
 they travelled on that December night ; the 
 Rock of Stirling, the brown and billowy 
 Flanders moss, and the white shrouding mists.
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 It was full harvest-time throughout Castile. 
 The corn, short in the stalk and light, as is all 
 corn that ripens early, stood ready to be reaped. 
 In places it had been already cut, and lay in 
 sheaves upon the ground. In others it was 
 cut and carried, and again, between some 
 patches, carts loaded high were creaking 
 through the fields, if the word field can be 
 applied to ground that has no hedges or 
 divisions visible to any other eyes than those 
 accustomed from their birth to the brown plains. 
 Across the dusty, calcined steppe the Sud- 
 Express had crawled since daybreak, stopping 
 at every wayside station, jolting and creaking 
 like a bullock wagon. The passengers had 
 long ceased to look out, and sat perspiring in 
 their darkened berths, for the Castilian plain 
 in summer is not for eyes accustomed to see 
 beauty only in places where even nature puts 
 on a sort of easy, meretricious dress, and decked 
 in pine woods, set with hills and waterfalls, 
 R 241
 
 242 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 seems to invite the applause of travelling photo- 
 graphers. Castile only reveals itself to those 
 who know it under every aspect, wind-swept 
 and drear in winter, sun-baked in summer, and 
 at all times adust and stern, a mere wide steppe 
 bounded by distant clearly cut hills, from which 
 nothing is to be expected but strange effects of 
 
 light. 
 
 On every side, right up to where it joined 
 the distant hills, stretched the brown plain. 
 The sun had scorched the very trunks of the 
 trees till they appeared to suffer and to be 
 about to burst, just as they crack and suffer in 
 a frost. The only flowers left alive were a few 
 yellow thistles and some clumps of artemisia, 
 which reared their heads, as it were, in defiance 
 of the sun. Long lines of men mounted on 
 donkeys crossed between the fields of stubble 
 and of corn. The Castilian summer had turned 
 them black as Arabs, and their sad, high- 
 pitched songs, as they kept on their way in- 
 domitably in the fiery heat, seemed to complete 
 the likeness to the men from whom they had 
 inherited all that they knew of agriculture. 
 
 Over the steppe, the narrow line of railway 
 formed the connecting link with the outside 
 world, the world of newspapers, of motor-cars.
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 243 
 
 of aviation, and of telephones. Glistening 
 bright in the sun, like a steel ribbon, ran the 
 line. It passed by little tile- roofed towns, each 
 clustering round its church, brown and remote 
 — towns where a sandy, unpaved street ran 
 out until it lost itself in the great plain ; towns 
 only joined to one another by a narrow track 
 meandering through the corn fields, or the 
 sparse round-topped pine woods, tracks that 
 avoided all the obstacles, passing round, stony 
 hills and following watercourses till they came 
 on a shallow place to cross. Often the 
 towns were only visible like ships hull down, 
 the church towers seemingly hung in the air 
 without foundations, they were so far off from 
 the line. The train jogged on, passing by 
 Ataquines, Palacios de Goda, Ar^valo, Adanero 
 and other little stations, where no one possibly 
 could have got in or out since first the line 
 was laid. It entered them and stopped under 
 some dust-laden acacias or China-trees. A 
 man emerged and called the station's name, 
 adding "a minute" or "two minutes" as 
 the case might be, although the train was 
 just as likely to stop ten minutes or a quarter 
 of an hour, whilst the electric bell twittered 
 so faintly that at times one was not sur^ if it
 
 244 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 was really an electric bell that sounded or only 
 crickets in the sand chirping metallically. Some- 
 times a horse stood blinking in the sun tied to 
 a post, a gun upon the heavy old-world saddle 
 and a brown blanket hanging from the pommel, 
 almost to the ground ; sometimes some char- 
 coal-burners' mules stood waiting to be un- 
 loaded, and generally some ragged-looking 
 fowls, half buried in the sand, were squatted 
 at the lee-side of the round, mud-topped oven, 
 striving to dodge the heat. Occasionally a 
 half-dressed woman peeped from a window, 
 her blue-black hair wild as a pony's mane, 
 holding the blind between her teeth as she 
 looked out upon the train. Such were the 
 stations, mere islands in a sea of brown ; each 
 one the faithful copy of the other, and every 
 one of them cheaply constructed and sun- 
 bleached till they had all become as much a 
 part and parcel of the landscape as the mud 
 houses with their red-tiled eaves. 
 
 So from one little, ill-built point of contact 
 with the world, to the next, as ill-built as the 
 last, the train crept on, the heat increasing and 
 the subtile air becoming more diaphanous, so 
 that the distant mountains almost appeared to 
 be transparent, and the dead haulms of fennel
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 245 
 
 and of mullein to stand out so clearly that they 
 looked like trees. 
 
 Herds of black cattle stood by dried-up 
 water-holes, occasionally a bullock licked the 
 earth where it appeared almost like china, 
 polished and glazed as it had dried and baked, 
 and then stamping and bellowing, slowly walked 
 back into the h^rd. Brown shepherds stood 
 immovable as posts, their shadows forming a 
 refuofe for their does, their flocks all huddled in 
 a ring, with their heads crouched low upon the 
 ground, to escape their enemy, the sun. Nature 
 stood silent in the violet haze, and as the train 
 rattled across the ill-closed catch-points outside 
 another little station, a porter called out in a 
 long-drawn melody, ''Sanchidrian, five minutes," 
 and the express came alongside the platform, 
 the engine throbbing as if it were something 
 living and glad to be at rest. A goods train 
 standing just outside the station bore the in- 
 scription, written with a piece of chalk, '* No 
 water in Velayos," and the whole plain looked 
 parched and suffering as if the rain of fire that 
 fell from heaven upon it had burned into its 
 heart. No passengers stood waiting, even the 
 little groups of country people that generally 
 throng Spanish stations, making the platform
 
 246 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 a public promenade, were missing, for San- 
 chidrian itself was distant from the line. 
 
 The weary stationmaster in his gold-laced 
 cap and uniform frock-coat was, with the porter 
 who had called the station's name, the only 
 living thing except two nearly naked children, 
 sitting by the draw-well, and a lean yellow dog. 
 The five minutes that the train ought to have 
 remained might just as well have been abridged 
 to one, or, on the other hand, drawn out to 
 twenty, and no one would have cared, had not, 
 emerging from a cloud of dust, a rider come 
 up to the hitching-post, dismounted hurriedly, 
 and holding in his hand his saddle-bags, walked 
 quickly to the open door, at which the cooks 
 and waiters of the dining-car stood trying to 
 catch a little air. ** Friends," he said, taking 
 off his hat and passing his brown hand across 
 his forehead, "have you any ice?" They 
 stared at him as he stood in his short black 
 jacket edged with imitation astrakhan, his 
 tight, grey trousers strapped inside the leg with 
 the same cloth from which they had been made, 
 his black serge sash showing beneath his waist- 
 coat with its silver buckles, and his red-worsted 
 saddle-bags, tasselled and fringed, thrown over 
 his right shoulder and hanging down his back.
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 247 
 
 ** Ice, why of course we have It," said the 
 waiter. *' Who In this heat could live without it 
 shut in the hot train ? " answered the con- 
 ductor, interested and glad to have the oppor- 
 tunity of a chance word with anyone outside 
 his little world. 
 
 The horseman, who looked anxiously at the 
 somnolent train out of the corner of his eye as 
 if It were a colt that might spring forward at 
 any minute and leave him In the lurch, began 
 again : ** You could not live without ice here 
 in this train, you say, eh ? My father cannot 
 die without it. For days the fever has con- 
 sumed him, and In the night, listening to every 
 hour the watchman calls, he says ' Miguel,' that 
 is my name — Miguel Martinez, at your service 
 — * I could die easier if I had some Ice ... a 
 little ice to put upon my forehead and between 
 my lips.' Ice in Sanchidrlan ! As well go out 
 to gather artichokes at sea. To-day he seemed 
 just going, and the priest said to me, ' Miguel, 
 saddle the Jerezano and go down and meet the 
 train ; there they have ice, for certainly those 
 who travel by it must drink cool.' So I have 
 come ; say, can you spare me a lump of ice, for 
 what I spoke about ? " 
 
 The electric bell stopped twittering, and the
 
 248 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 porter called '' Passengers aboard," but still the 
 train stood at the platform, although the engine- 
 driver had clambered slowly to his post. He 
 whistled, and the couplings tightened with a 
 jerk, just as a waiter holding a lump of ice 
 about as big as a large loaf came to the door, 
 wrapping it, as he walked, in straw. He gave 
 it to the horseman, who stood waiting in the 
 sun. '' A thousand thanks," he said. '' A son 
 thanks you in his father's name. What is the 
 value of this piece of ice ? " The man who 
 gave it, and the little knot of cooks and waiters 
 standing at the open door of the long dining- 
 car as the train began to move, looked at each 
 other, and one said, '' Friend, we do not sell 
 our ice, it is not ours to sell. Moreover, may 
 it relieve your father." Miguel, now walking 
 swiftly by the moving train, said, '' Once again, 
 a thousand thanks ; take, then, this packet of 
 cigars," and handed to the last man he could 
 reach one of those bundles of ill-rolled salitrose- 
 looking parcels of cigars sold in the estancos of 
 small Spanish towns. 
 
 The train swung on and rumbled past him, 
 leaving him standing for a moment in the heat, 
 waving his hand to the white-clad cooks and 
 waiters grouped on the platform of the dining-
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 249 
 
 car. Miguel stood waiting till it had cleared 
 the station, and then, walking outside to where 
 his horse stood waiting, unhitched him and 
 threw the saddle-bags across the saddle, then 
 gathering his reins in his left hand he mounted 
 in one motion, and settling himself, drew out 
 an olive switch which he had left sticking 
 between the pommel and his horse's back ; 
 then having felt the lump of ice with his right 
 hand, touched his horse with the spur and set 
 his face towards his home. Putting the butt- 
 end of his cigarette behind his ear, Miguel 
 struck out into the road. The thick, white dust 
 lay on the narrow track like snow, dulling the 
 horse's footfalls and o'ivino- him the look of 
 shuffling in his gait, although Miguel, holding 
 his reins high and a little to the near side of 
 the high pommel, and with his spurs dangling 
 behind the cinch, kept him up to the full stretch 
 of the Castilian pace. 
 
 His olive face, under his broad-brimmed, 
 grey, felt hat with its straight brim, looked 
 anxiously ahead, and when his little, nervous 
 horse had got well warmed and the dried sweat 
 melted again upon the skin, Miguel, pressing 
 him with his legs, put him to a slow gallop, 
 now and again putting his hand behind the
 
 250 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 saddle to feel how the precious lump of ice was 
 standing the fierce sun. 
 
 A constant dripping through the worsted 
 saddle-bags warned him to hurry, so he pressed 
 on, passing long lines of mules laden with char- 
 coal or with great nets of straw, and men on 
 donkeys, who looked at him with wonder as he 
 flew past them at three-quarter speed upon the 
 road. Some of them merely said " Adios," 
 and others shouted inquiries as to his haste, 
 but he in every case answered with a wave of 
 his hand and pressed his spurs into the cinch. 
 He passed through groves of olive trees, 
 silvery, gnarled and secular, under whose scanty 
 shade men sat, eating their mid-day meal, their 
 broad-brimmed hats lying beside them on the 
 ground, their close-shaved heads wrapped in 
 old-fashioned, blue-checked handkerchiefs, tied 
 in a knot behind. 
 
 As he passed in a cloud of dust, pointing to 
 their olives and their bread and to their leathern 
 skins of wines, they made the gesture of in- 
 viting him to eat, and he returned their courtesy 
 by a movement of his hand, taking a pull upon 
 his horse as the track grew steeper and stonier, 
 as it ran through an aromatic waste of cistus 
 and wild thyme. His heavy Arab stirrups
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 251 
 
 brushed through the sticky cistus which grew 
 on each side of the narrow, sandy path, till 
 they became all coated with their gum and 
 everything stuck to them as if they had been 
 smeared with birdlime. 
 
 Butterflies hovered over the great, white 
 flowers, and lizards ran up tree-trunks, pausing 
 and looking round just before they disappeared 
 from view. From the recesses of the waste 
 came an incessant hum of insects, and now and 
 then a flight of locusts shot across the path, 
 and plunged into the bushes, just as a school of 
 flying fish sinks into a wave. 
 
 The hot half-hour between the bushes, 
 strug"o-linQf throuo^h the sand, had told its tale 
 upon the gallant, little horse, whose heaving 
 flanks, distended nostrils and protruding eyes 
 showed that he had almost had enough. When 
 they emerged again into the plain and saw the 
 little brown-roofed town, only a short league 
 away, Miguel dismounted for a moment, and 
 after slackening his cinch anxiously secured 
 his saddle-bags, from which large drops of 
 moisture fell upon the ground. Tightening 
 his girth again, he mounted, and the Jere- 
 zano, who had stood head to wind, responding 
 to the spur, struck into a short gallop, his
 
 252 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 rider holding him together and pressing him 
 with both legs into his bit. 
 
 They passed a threshing-floor, on which 
 a troop of mares was being driven round to 
 thresh the corn, followed by a man seated 
 upon a hurdle laid on a heavy stone. 
 The floor itself was white and shiny, and 
 seemed as hard as marble, trodden by the 
 horses' feet. Near it some sun-burned men 
 threw grain into the air with wooden spades 
 to winnow it, and as Miguel passed by upon 
 the road they called out to him, giving him the 
 time of day and asking how his father was ; 
 but to them all he only waved his hand and 
 pressed his spurs into his horse's sides, which 
 now were red with blood. 
 
 Outside the town the track passed through 
 the bed of a dry stream, and came out on the 
 other bank on a paved causeway set with 
 pebble-stones that led into the town. A heavy 
 stumble on the stones showed him his horse 
 was failing, and he pulled him back into a trot. 
 Passing the straggling cottages, each with its 
 corral for goats, he came into the little street, 
 and as he rode by the church door he touched 
 his hat and crossed himself as his horse 
 slithered on the stones. Turning out of an
 
 AT SANCHIDRIAN 253 
 
 angle of the dusty plaza with its stucco seats 
 and dwarfed acacias, he came into a street in 
 which the houses seemed of a richer sort of 
 folk, his horse now beaten to a walk. As he 
 neared one which had a roughly sculptured 
 coat of arms over the doorway a sound of 
 wailing fell upon his ears. He stopped, and 
 getting off his horse, he threw the reins 
 mechanically on the ground. A priest came 
 out to meet him. "Miguel," he said, ''your 
 father, may God have pardoned him, has left 
 this vale of tears more than an hour ago. The 
 Lord in his great mercy, for the fever burned 
 like fire in his veins, was pleased to make his 
 parting easy, and for an hour before he died 
 he murmured now and then, ' How cool the 
 ice is! It stills the throbbing of my forehead 
 and slakes my thirst — my son Miguel rode for 
 it to the train.'" 
 
 Miguel turned to his horse, and taking from 
 the saddle-bags the lump of ice, now little 
 bigger than an apple, followed the priest into 
 the great bare room, where on his bed his 
 father's body lay. Round it stood weeping- 
 women, and the children in a corner of 
 the room holding each other's hands gazed
 
 254 AT SANCHIDRIAN 
 
 stolidly at the brown face that looked like 
 walnut-wood against the linen of the bed. 
 
 Falling upon his knees, Miguel kissed the 
 thin hands crossed on the chest, and then 
 after a prayer he rose and put the precious 
 lump of ice first on his father's forehead and 
 then upon his lips. He crossed himself, and 
 after having said some words of consolation to 
 the women, went out again to where in the hot 
 sandy street his horse stood waiting, with his 
 lees stretched a little forward and his head 
 hanging to the ground. The sweat had made 
 a little pattern in the sand as it dropped from 
 his belly and his flanks. Miguel slowly undid 
 the girths, and taking off the bridle, led the 
 horse into the stable, and after throwing hay 
 upon the manger, went back into the room. 
 
 The priest was praying, and the sobbing of 
 the women sounded like surf upon a beach, 
 whilst from outside the crickets' chirping filled 
 the air with its wild melody. Far to the south 
 the Sud-Express still crept along its narrow 
 ribbon of bright rails towards Madrid. 
 
 WILLJAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PRINTERS, PLYMOyTH
 
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