I traveled fifteen hundred miles on the network of the Ferrocarril Central of Uruguay. This and the equally British “Midland” reach all towns of importance in the republic, though they still by no means cover it thoroughly. Railway travel in South America is seldom as luxurious as in the United States, but in the dwarf republic both cars and service are, on the whole, excellent; the trains are so much more comfortable than many of the towns through which they run that it is not strange that scores of the inhabitants come down to sit in them as long as they remain. There are few accidents, the trains are seldom late, though not particularly swift, and while fares are high there are frequent low-priced excursions, announced on handbills as in our own land. The English-made cars are on a modified American plan, some of the first-class coaches having leather-upholstered divans as large as beds, even second-class boasting little tables between the seats for those who care to lunch or play cards. Between the two classes at opposite ends of the train there is usually a compartment with kitchen stove and pantry that serves as a combination café and dining-car, a generous dinner costing a peso, wine, or “cork rights” from those who bring their liquor with them, extra. Sleeping-cars, journeying on both lines in order to find distance enough for an all-night trip, run from Montevideo to Paysandú and Salto, on the shores of the River Uruguay bounding on the west the republic of the “Eastern Bank.” Compared with Chile, railroading in Uruguay is palatial and immaculate, though even here the only heating arrangements for bitter June days are doormats between the seats, and the only really serious criticism to be made is against the bad habit, common throughout South America, of starting the trains at some unearthly hour in the morning.
I took the shortest line first and, rambling at moderate speed across a somewhat rolling country more fertile in appearance than the Argentine, brought up at Minas. A broad stone highway, here and there disintegrated by the heavy rains, led the mile or more from the station to the town, an overgrown village in a lap of low rocky hills monotonously like any other Uruguayan or Argentine town of its size, with a two-towered church and a few rows of one-story buildings toeing wide, bottomless streets. As in the Argentine, there are no cities in Uruguay that compare with the capital; the present department capitals were originally forts against the Indians and the Portuguese around which people gathered for protection, and few of them have cause to grow to importance.
The second journey carried me into the northwestern corner of the country. As far as Las Piedras, a suburban town twenty miles from the capital, there are a score of daily trains in either direction. Street-cars come here also, the place being noted for a granite monument topped by a golden winged Victory commemorating a battle for independence in 1811, from the terrace of which Montevideo’s fortress-crowned Cerro still stands conspicuously above all the rest of the visible world. Then this chief “Oriental” landmark disappears and to the comparative cosmopolitanism of the federal district succeeds the bucolic calm of the campaña, as the pampa is called in Uruguay. The absence of trees alone gives this a mournful aspect. The “Oriental” has tried half-heartedly to make up for the natural lack of woods by planting imported eucalyptus and poplar, at least about his country dwellings, but nowhere do these reach the dignity of a forest. Uruguay has less excuse for poor roads than the Argentine, for if it has as much rain and even heavier soil, it has an abundance of stone, rare in the land across the Plata. Yet though several stone highways leave the capital with the best of intentions, they soon degenerate into sloughs seldom navigable in the wet winter season. Most Uruguayan roads are merely strips of open campaña, the legal twenty-two meters wide, flanked by wire fences, or occasionally by cactus hedges. Estates a few miles off the railroads have no chance of getting produce to market during a large portion of the year; yet the prosperity of the country depends almost entirely on the exporting of foodstuffs.
Fertile rolling lomas, with now and then a solitary ombú spreading its arms to the wind on the summit, made up most of the landscape, a scene not greatly different from, yet infinitely more pleasing than, the dead flatness of Argentine pampas. The ombú is the national tree of Uruguay, of majestic size and always standing in striking isolation on the crest of a loma, because, according to the poet, it loves to overlook and laugh at the silly world, though the botanist explains that it is planted by birds dropping single seeds in their flight and reaches maturity only on hillocks out of reach of stagnant water. Beyond Mal Abrigo, rightly named “Bad Shelter,” granite rocks thrust themselves here and there through the soil; for long stretches coarse brown espartillo grass covered the country like a blanket. This and the abundant thistles often ruin the black loam underneath, but the average “Oriental” estanciero abhors agriculture, preferring to give his rather indolent attention to cattle and sheep, for he considers planting fit only for Indians, peons, and immigrant chacreros. Nor is the lot of these Basque, Spanish, or Italian small farmers always happy, even though they hold their plots of earth on fairly generous terms, for locusts have been known to destroy a year’s labor in a few hours. There were a few riding gang-plows, however, drawn by eight or ten oxen, and many primitive wooden plows behind a pair or two of them. Sleek cattle, and horses of better stock than the average in South America, grazed along the hollows and hillsides; now and then an ostrich of the pampas, occasionally a whole flock of them, legged it away across the rolling campaña. Though most of the country people lived in thatched huts made of the rich loam soil, sometimes laid together with a clapboard effect and oozing streaks of mud at this season, both sexes were well and cleanly dressed.
The railroad wound around every loma, refusing to take more than the slightest grades. Now and then we climbed ever so little up the flanks of such a knoll and discovered to vast depths of haze-blue horizon a plump, rolling country of purplish hue, dotted with dark little clumps of eucalyptus, from each of which peered a low farmhouse and occasionally a Cervantes windmill for the grinding of grain. There were many such estancia houses, yet they were all far apart in the immensity of the little Republic of the Eastern Bank. Why most stations were so far from the towns they served, in this level country, was a mystery. The towns themselves varied but slightly in appearance,—a scattered collection of one-story buildings, in most cases covered with a stucco that had at some time been painted or whitewashed, a pulpería, or general store, sacred chiefly to the dispensing of strong drink, and, radiating from it, wide roads plowed into knee-deep sloughs of black earth. A few sulkies and huge two-wheeled carts, an occasional country wagon with four immense wheels, from which produce was leisurely being loaded into freight-cars set aside by the local switch engine—to wit, a yoke of oxen—some real estate and auction signs offering the chance of a life-time, completed the background of the picture. In the foreground the inevitable gang of shouting, mud-bespattered hackmen was almost lost in the throng of wind-and-sun-browned men in bloomer-like trousers. Peons smoked their eternal cigarettes; gauchos shod in low alpargatas or high, soft, wrinkled leather boots, a white or a red kerchief floating about their necks, the short, stocky riding whip known as a rebenque hanging from a wrist, lounged about the door of the pulpería, to posts before which were tied trail-spattered horses saddled with several layers of sheepskins. An incredibly motley collection of dogs; a majestic policeman in full uniform and helmet above his voluminous bombachas, looking essentially peaceful for all the sword dangling at his side; a few men and youths, bare-legged to the knee, wading about with cheerful faces, as if the rainy season were at worst a temporary inconvenience more than offset by the long months of fine weather, added their picturesque bit to the gathering. Every movement and gesture showed these people to be of quicker intelligence than the dwellers in the high Andes. Few women were seen either on trains or at stations, except at the smaller towns, where there were sometimes groups of them, wholly white with few exceptions, but wearing earrings worthy the daughters of African chieftains. At each halt the station-master in his best clothes, looking busier and more important than a prime minister on coronation day, stood watch in hand, the bell-rope in the other, waiting for the time-table to catch up with us; the town notables looked on, half-anxiously, half-benignly, as if they considered themselves very indulgent in allowing the train to run through their bailiwick and felt deeply the responsibility involved; boys of assorted sizes, barefoot and shod, wormed their way in and out of the throng staring at everything with wondering eyes; a few comely girls sauntered about to see and be seen, and friends and relatives took the hundredth last embrace amid much chatter and mutual thumping of backs. Then all at once the station-master gives the bell three sharp taps, as much as to say, “I mean it, and I am not a man to be trifled with,” and as the train gets slowly under way some town hero grasps the opportunity to show his fearlessness by catching it on the fly, and dropping off again half a car-length beyond with a triumphant, sheepish grin on his sun-browned countenance.
Two days later the sun, rising huge and red over my left shoulder, painted a brilliant pink the rounded lomas flanking the Y-shaped line to Treinta y Tres (also written “33”) and to Melo, far to the northeast of Montevideo, then spread a pale crimson tint over all the gently rolling world. Fluffy lambs turned tail and fled as we approached, the watchdog, true to his calling even unto death, charging the train against all odds and putting it to ignominious flight. Here and there lay a whitening skeleton, the animal’s skull sometimes stuck up conspicuously on the top of a fence-post. There is no unsettled despoblado in Uruguay, no deserts or haunts of wild Indians, but there is still much land put to little or no use and not a few remains of the destruction wrought during the civil war that ended in 1852. Rare, indeed, is the standing structure in the rural districts that was not built since that time.
At a small station we were joined by a youth of twenty, pure Caucasian of race, of the class corresponding to our “hired man.” His long, wavy, jet-black, carefully oiled hair contrasted strangely with his complexion, very white under the tan; his eyes were light-brown, as was also the labial eyebrow he now and then affectionately stroked. He wore a raven black suit, the coat short and tight-fitting, the trousers, or bombachas, huge as grainsacks, disappearing in great folds into calfskin half-boots. A black felt hat of the squared shape once popular at our colleges was held in place by a narrow black ribbon tied coquettishly under his chin. The bit of his speckless shirt that could be seen was light green; above it was a rubber collar and a cream-colored cravat adorned with a “gold” scarfpin; on the third finger of his left hand he wore a plain gold band; about his neck floated a huge, snow-white, near-silk kerchief, and a foreign gold coin hung from the long gilded watch-chain looped ostentatiously all the way across his chest. About his waist he wore a leather belt six inches wide, with several buttoned pockets or compartments in which he kept money, tickets, tobacco, and other small possessions, and from the back of which, barely out of sight, hung his revolver. A poncho of faint pink-white, as specklessly clean as all the rest of his garments, and thrown with studied abandon over one shoulder, completed his outfit.
He rode first-class, and having produced his ticket with a millionaire gesture meant to overawe the modest guarda whose duty it was to gather it, he strode into the dining-car with great ostentation and called for a drink. With the same air of unbounded wealth he paid his reckoning, flung a generous tip to the waiter, who probably got more in a week than this at best low-salaried farm-hand in a month, and strutted back to his seat. It was evident that he was not traveling far, or he would have sneaked into the second-class coach in his old clothes. At each station he got off to parade haughtily up and down the platform, casting peacock glances at the dark-tinted criolla girls who embroidered it. I approached him at one such stop and asked permission to take his picture. He refused in very decided and startled terms. I felt that his “no” was not final, however, and scarcely a mile more lay behind us before he came wandering up with a companion and sat down beside me. Why did I want his picture? Would it cost anything? How many copies of it would I give him? Well, if it was true, as I claimed, that they could not be finished on the spot—and why not?—I could of course send them to him? Gradually he reached the opposite extreme of begging me to take his picture. His companion having suggested that it might be published “allá en Europa,” he kept his delight down to becoming gaucho dignity with difficulty, and before we descended to take the picture at the station where he left the train, after a short and evidently his only railway journey in months, he was assuring me that I might publish it “over there in Europe, in ‘Fray Mocho’ of Buenos Aires” (which the raucous-voiced trainboy incessantly offered for sale) “or anywhere else.” Only when the train had gone on without him did I discover that he was a blanco fleeing from arrest in his own department for the killing of a rural official in some political squabble, a fact that seemed to be common knowledge among my fellow-passengers and which must have made a bit startling my sudden request to photograph him.
The Cerro lighthouse was still flashing through the dense black night when, late in June, on the shortest day of the year, I took the tri-weekly train for Brazil. By the time the edge of darkness was tinted pink by a cloudless day which gradually spread upward from the horizon, we were already halting at country stations where thickly wrapped rustics who had driven miles in their bulky two-wheeled carts, a lantern set on either side of them in a sort of wooden niche raised aloft on a stick, were unloading battered cans of milk. Durazno, a good-sized department capital strewn over a low knoll and terminating in a church, was so flooded by the River Yi at its feet that its parks, alameda, and “futbol” field were completely under water and many poor ranchos stood immersed to their ears. The names of the stations were often suggestive,—Carda, Sarandí, Molles, all named for indigenous trees, so striking is one of them in this almost treeless landscape. From Rio Negro, another of the department capitals which pass in close succession on this line, the “Midland” railway paralleled our own for a dozen miles before striking off over the brown lomas toward Paysandú. Well on in the afternoon the smoothly rolling country broke up into the little rocky gorge of a small stream lined with bushy trees. It was probably not five hundred feet anywhere from the bottom of the brook to the top of the rock-faced hill, but this was such unusual scenery to “Orientals” that I had been hearing since hours before of the extraordinary beauty of this natural phenomenon, and all prepared to drink their fill of it from the windows of the train. It was named Valle Eden, but times seem to have changed in that ideal spot, for a policeman in mammoth bombachas stood on the station platform, and of Eve there was not so much as a fig-leaf to be seen.
I had ridden the sun clear around his short winter half-circle when I descended at Tacuarembó. The town had a hint of tropical ways,—women going languidly down to the little sandy river with bundles of clothing on their heads, the streets running out into grassy lanes scattered with carelessly built ranchos. Features, which had grown more and more Indian all day along the way and in the second-class coaches, here sometimes suggested more aboriginal than Caucasian blood. Here, too, there had been much rain, and the very bricks had sprouted green on the humid, unsunned south ends of the houses. The shortness of the days was emphasized by the discovery that I was back in candle-land again, where there was nothing to do in the evening but stroll the streets or go to bed.