not being able to hold slaves, they were obliged to adopt a different tone to men in general than that they practised in the Empire of Brazil.  But in the time of which I write, in their own country they still carried swords, slaves trotted after the rich “fazendero’s” horse, the women of the family never sat down to table with the men, and if a stranger chanced to call on business at their house, they were as jealously kept from his eyes as they had all been Turks.

The “Fazenda” houses had great iron-studded doors, often a moat, and not infrequently a rusty cannon, though generally dismounted, and a relic of bygone time.  The traveller fared, as a general rule, much worse than in the Banda Oriental, for save at the large cattle-farms it was impossible to buy a piece of meat.  Admitted to the house, one rarely passed beyond the guest-chamber, a room with four bare white-washed walls; having for furniture a narrow hard-wood table with wrought-iron supports between its legs; chairs cut apparently out of the solid block, and a tin bucket or a large gourd in the corner, with drinking-water; so that one’s sojourn at the place was generally brief, and one’s departure a relief to all concerned.  Still on the frontier the Gaucho influence made itself a little felt, and people were not so inhospitable as they were further in the interior of the land.  Two or three leagues beyond the pass there was a little town called “Don Pedrito,” towards which we made; but a “Pampero,” whistling from the south, forced us to camp upon a stream known as the “Poncho Verde,” where, in the forties, Garibaldi was reported to have fought.

Wet to the skin and without food, we saw a fazenda not a mile away, rode up to it, and for a wonder were asked inside, had dinner in the guest-chamber, the owner sitting but not eating with us; the black Brazilian beans and bacon carried in pompously by three or four stalwart slaves, who puffed and sweated, trod on each other’s naked toes, and generally behaved as they had been carrying sacks of corn aboard a ship, only that in this instance no one stood in the gangway with a whip.  Much did the conversation run on politics; upon “A Guerra dos Farapos,” which it appeared had riven the country in twain what time our host was young.  Farapo means a rag, and the Republicans of fifty years ago in Rio Grande had adopted the device after the fashion of “Les gueux.”  Long did they fight, and our host said: “Praise to God, infructuously,” for how could men who wore moustaches and full beards be compared to those who, like our host himself, wore whiskers carefully trimmed in the style of those which at the same epoch in our country were the trade-mark of the Iron Duke?  Elective kings, for so the old “conservador” termed presidents, did not find favour in his eyes; and in religion too the “farapos” were seriously astray.  They held the doctrine that all creeds should be allowed; which I once held myself, but now incline to the belief that a religion and a name should be bestowed at baptism, and that it should be constituted heresy of the worst kind, and punishable by a fine, to change or palter with either the name or the religion which our fathers have bestowed.

Politics over, we fell a-talking upon other lands; on Europe and England, Portugal, and as to whether “Rondon” was larger than Pelotas, or matters of that sort.  Then our host inquired if in “Rondon” we did not use “la bosa,” and I not taking the thing up, he rose and stretching out his hands, set them revolving like a saw, and I then saw our supposed national pastime was what he meant; and told him that it was practised, held in repute, and marked us out as a people set apart; and that our greatness was largely founded on the exercise he had endeavoured to depict.  We bade farewell, not having seen a woman, even a negress, about the place; but as we left, a rustling at the door showed that the snuff-and-butter-coloured sex had been observing us after the fashion practised in Morocco and in houses in the East.  The hospitable “conservador” sent down a slave with a great basket full of oranges; and seated at the camp we ate at least three dozen, whilst the man waited patiently to take the basket back.

Night caught us in the open “camp,” a south wind blowing, and the drops congealing as they fell.  Three of us muffled in ponchos rode round the horses, whilst the others crouched at the fire, and midnight come, the riders rode to the fire, and stretched on the wet mud slept fitfully, whilst the others took their place.  Day came at last; and miserable we looked, wet, cold, and hungry, the fire black out, matches all damp, and nothing else to do but march till the sun rose and made life tolerable.  Arrived at a small rancho we got off, and found the owner was a Spaniard from Navarre, married to a Brazilian woman.  In mongrel Portuguese he bade us welcome; said he was no Brazilian, and that his house was ours, and hearing Spanish brightened up, and said in broken Spanish, mixed with Portuguese, that he could never learn that language, though he had passed a lifetime in the place.  The country pleased him, and though he had an orange garden of some three acres in extent, though palms, mameyes and bananas grew around his door, he mourned for chestnuts, which he remembered in his youth, and said he recollected eating them whilst in Navarre, and that they were better than all the fruit of all Brazil; thinking, like Naaman, that Abana and Pharpar were better than all the waters of Israel, or rivers of Damascus; or perhaps moved in some mysterious way by the remembrance of the chestnut forests, the old grey stone-roofed houses, and the wind whistling through the pine woods of some wild valley of Navarre.  At the old Spaniard’s house a difficulty cropped up with our men.  I having told a man to catch a horse which looked a little wild, he answered he was not a horse-breaker, and I might ride the beast myself.  I promptly did so, and asked him if he knew what a wild horse was, and if it was not true that horses which could be saddled without tying their hind legs were tame, and the rest laughing at him, he drew his knife, and running at me, found himself looking down the barrel of a pistol which my partner with some forethought had produced.  This brought things to a crisis, and they all left us, with a hundred horses on our hands.  Several Brazilians having volunteered, we took them, bought a tame horse accustomed to carry packs, procured a bullock, had it killed, and the meat “jerked”; and making bags out of the hide, filled them with food, for, as the Spaniard said, “in the country you intend to cross you might as well be amongst Moors, for even money will not serve to get a piece of beef.”  A kindly soul the Spaniard, his name has long escaped me, still he was interesting as but the truly ignorant can ever be.  The world to him was a great mystery, as it is even to those who know much more than he; but all the little landmarks of the narrow boundaries of his life he had by heart; and they sufficed him, as the great world itself cannot suffice those who, by living in its current, see its muddiness.

So one day told another, and each night found us on horseback riding round the drove.  Through forest, over baking plain, up mountain paths, through marshes, splashing to the saddle-flaps, by lone “fazendas,” and again through herds of cattle dotting the plain for miles, we took our way.  Little straw huts, each with a horse tied day and night before them, were our fairway marks.  Day followed night without adventure but when a horse suddenly threw its rider