At the door of an estancia house with all the comforts reasonably to be expected in so isolated a location I was met by “Pirirín,” son of a former minister to London and Washington, and brother of a well-known Uruguayan writer. His English was as fluent as my own, with just a trace of something to show that it was not his native tongue. An old woman at once brought us mate, and we sucked alternately at the protruding tube each time she refilled the gourd with hot water. The sun soon set across the rich loam country, which was here and there being turned up by plodding oxen, and threw into relief the three cerros chatos, flat-topped hills that give the region its nickname and which suggest that the level of the country was once much higher before it was washed away into the sea by heavy rains that even now gave earth and sky such striking colors.
The wealth and prosperity of the native estanciero of Uruguay is rarely indicated by the size or dignity of his estancia house. As in the Argentine and Chile, many estates are owned by men living in the capital, if not in Europe, each in charge of a gerente, or overseer-manager. Small as Uruguay is—by South American standards it seems tiny, even though it is almost as large as New England—many of its estancias are immense, especially in these northern departments. There has been much chatter by politicians about limiting the size of estates and setting up immigrants in the place of absentee owners, but so far it has chiefly ended in political chatter. The average Uruguayan estancia house is not particularly well adapted to the climate, at least during the winter months. A little clump of poplars or eucalyptus, occasionally a solitary ombú, invariably marks the site of the main dwelling. Not a few men of comparative wealth pig it out on their own immense estates, scorning modern improvements, cut off by impassable roads from markets and all the outside world several months a year, refusing to subscribe to the rural telephone, depending for their news on private postmen hired by groups of their fellows. A few estate owners, especially those who have lived abroad, demand moderate comfort, whether for themselves or their managers, though even “Pirirín” was content with more primitive conditions than many a small American farmer would endure.
It is quickly evident and freely admitted that the average estancia in Uruguay is loose of morals. Estancieros frankly state that it is better if the cook is old and unattractive. It seems to be the rule rather than the exception, for estancia washerwomen and others of their class to present the estate with a score of children by members of the owning family and perhaps by several of the peons as well. Among this class marriage is unpopular and generally considered superfluous. There is much noise about Uruguay’s “advanced” theories of social improvement, yet the law forces, and costumbre expects, no help from the father in the support of his illegitimate children. If he chooses to acknowledge them and aid in their up-bringing, he is credited with an unusually charitable disposition. The woman, on her side, takes her condition as a matter of course. She will admit with perfect equanimity that she is not certain just who is father of this child or that and pointing out one of a half dozen playing about the estancia backyard she will say laughingly, yet with a hint of seriousness and pride, “Ah, sí, el tiene papá;” that is, he is one of her children whose father has recognized him. Yet these women are as punctilious in general courtesy and the outward forms of behavior as their proud patrón or the hidalgo-mannered peons.
Next day “Pirirín” and I rode away in the Sunday morning sunshine across the immense estate, the teru-terus screaming a warning ahead of us wherever we went. In and about a bañado, a swamp full of razor-edged wild grass that cut the fingers at the slightest touch, we saw specimens of the three principal indigenous animals of Uruguay,—the carpincho, nutria, and mulita. The first, large as an Irish terrier, is grayish-brown in color, with an unattractive face sloping back from nose to ears, squirrel-like teeth, and legs suggestive of the kangaroo. Amphibious and sometimes called the river hog, he looks like a cross between a pig and a rabbit, or as if he had wished to be a deer but had found the undertaking so difficult that he had given it up and taken to the water and to rooting instead. On the edges of Uruguayan streams there are many happy little families of the beaver-like nutria, an aquatic animal large as a cat, with long thick fur and a rat-like tail. Playful as a young rabbit, the nutria is quick of hearing and swift of action, taking to the water at once when disturbed and leaving only its nostrils above the surface; yet when cornered it is savage, as many a dog has learned to his sorrow. When the pulperos, or country shopkeepers, of Uruguay found that nutria skins brought a high price from the furriers of Europe and the United States they set the countrymen to killing them off regardless of age, sex, or season, ruining many of the skins by their clumsy handling and all but exterminating the species. The mulita, also called tatu, is a timid, helpless little animal of the iguana family, half-lizard, half-turtle, with a scaly, shield-like covering that suggests medieval armor, and which, dug out of its hole and roasted over a fagot-fire, furnishes a repast fit for kings.
The flora was also striking, for all the absence of forests and large growths. The sina-sina is a small tree with dozens of trunks growing from the same root, willow-like leaves, and large thorns that clutch and tear at anything that ventures within reach of it. A waterside bush called the curupí contains a poison that the Charrúa Indians formerly used for tipping their arrows. The sarandí, a bush growing on the banks of streams with its feet always in the water; the madreselva, or honeysuckle; the chilca, a thinly scattered bush scarcely two feet high, and the guayacán, a bushy plant with beautiful white flowers in season, were the most common landscape decorations. Thousands of macachines covered the ground, white flowers with now and then a touch of yellow or velvety dark-red.
The gauchos of the estate had been ordered to rodear, to round up a large herd of cattle, and soon we came upon them riding round and round several hundred on the crest of a hillock. On the backs of some of the animals chingolos still sat serenely picking away at the garrapatas or the flesh left bare by them. The latter are the chief pest of an otherwise almost perfect ranching country, for thousands of these aggressive ticks burrow into the hide of the animals and suck their blood so incessantly that great numbers of cattle die of anemia or fever. All but the more backward estates now have a big trough-like bath through which the cattle are driven several times a year as a protection against garrapatas, but even so it is one peon’s sole duty to ride over the estate each day to curear, or skin the animals that have died, carry the skin home, and stake it out in the sun to dry.
A gaucho of Uruguay
A rural Uruguayan in full Sunday regalia