NATIVE HOUSES AND HABITS.
Uruguay is essentially a pastoral country, and the finest animals of South America are there raised. It is said that "Uruguay's pasture lands could feed all the cattle of the world, and sheep grow fat at 50 to the acre." In 1889, when I first went there, there were thirty-two millions of horned cattle grazing on a thousand hills. Liebig's famous establishments at Fray Bentos, two hundred miles north of Montevideo, employs six hundred men, and kills one thousand bullocks a day.
Uruguay has some good roads, and the land is wire-fenced in all directions. The rivers are crossed on large flat-bottomed boats called balsas. These are warped across by a chain, and carry as many as ten men and horses in one trip. The roads are in many places thickly strewn with bones of dead animals, dropped by the way, and these are picked clean by the vultures. No sooner does an animal lie down to die than, streaming out of the infinite space, which a moment before has been a lifeless world of blue ether, there come lines of vultures, and soon white bones are all that are left.
On the fence-posts one sees many nests of the casera (housebuilder) bird, made of mud. These have a dome-shaped roof, and are divided by a partition inside into chamber and ante-chamber. By the roadside are hovels of the natives not a twentieth part so well-built or rain-tight. Fleas are so numerous in these huts that sometimes, after spending a night in one, it would have been impossible to place a five-cent piece on any part of my body that had not been bitten by them. Scorpions come out of the wood they burn on the earthen floor, and monster cockroaches nibble your toes at night. The thick, hot grass roofs of the ranches harbor centipedes, which drop on your face as you sleep, and bite alarmingly. These many-legged creatures grow to the length of eight or nine inches, and run to and fro with great speed. Well might the little girl, on seeing a centipede for the first time, ask: "What is that queer-looking thing, with about a million legs?" Johnny wisely replied: "That's a millennium. It's something like a centennial, only its has more legs."
After vain attempts to sleep, you rise, and may see the good wife cleaning her only plate for you by rubbing it on her greasy hair and wiping it with the bottom of her chemise. Ugh! Proceeding on the journey, it is a common sight to see three or four little birds sitting on the backs of the horned cattle getting their breakfast, which I hope they relish better than I often did.
A WAKE, AND HOW TO GET TO HEAVEN.
During my journey I was asked: Would I like to go to the wake held that night at the next house, three miles away? After supper, horses were saddled up and away we galloped. Quite a number had already gathered there. We found the dead man lying on a couple of sheepskins, in the centre of a mud-walled and mud-floored room. "No useless coffin enclosed his breast," nor was he wound in either sheet or shroud. There he lay, fully attired, even to his shoes. Four tallow candles lighted up the gloom, and these were placed at his head and feet. His clammy hands were reverently folded over his breast, whilst entwined in his fingers was a bronze cross and rosary, that St. Peter, seeing his devotion, might, without questioning, admit him to a better world. The scene was weird beyond description. Outside, the wind moaned a sad dirge; great bats and black moths, the size of birds, flitted about in the midnight darkness. These, ever and anon, made their way inside and extinguished the candles, which flickered and dripped as they fitfully shone on the shrunken features of the corpse. He had been a reprobate and an assassin, but, luckily for him, a pious woman, not wishing to see him die "in his sins," had sprinkled Holy Water on him. The said "Elixir of Life" had been brought eighty miles, and was kept in her house to use only in extreme cases. The poor woman had paid the price of a cow for the bottle of water, but the priest had declared that it was an effectual soul-saver, and they never doubted its efficacy. Around the corpse was a throng of women, and they all chattered as women are apt to do. The men, standing around the door, talked of their horse-races, fights or anything else. For some hours I heard no allusion to the dead, but as the night wore on the prophetess of the people came forth.
If my advent among them had caused a stir, the entrance of this old woman caused a bustle; even the dead man seemed to salute her, or was it only my imagination—for I was in a strangely sensitive mood—that pictured it? As she slowly approached, leaning heavily on a rough, thick staff, all the females present bent their knees. Now prayers were going to be offered up for the dead, and the visible woman was to act as interceder with the invisible one in heaven. After being assisted to her knees, the old woman, in a cracked, yet loud, voice, began. "Santa Maria, ruega por nosotros, ahora, y en la hora de nuestra muerte!" (Holy Mary pray for us now, and in the hour of our death!) This was responded to with many gesticulations and making of crosses by the numerous females around her. The prayers were many and long, and must have lasted perhaps an hour; then all arose, and máté and cigars were served. Men and women, even boys and girls, smoked the whole night through, until around the Departed was nothing but bluish clouds.
The natives are so fond of wakes that when deaths do not occur with great frequency, the bones of "grandma" are dug up, and she is prayed and smoked over once more. The digging up of the dead is often a simple matter, for the corpse is frequently just carried into the bush, and there covered with prickly branches.