A more animated scene is presented by the hato of a regular farmer, a proprietor living on the premises, employing several hands and working with them. Here we may expect to see a solid house of several rooms, with mud walls and an earth floor. If the farmer is a person of substance and taste, his bedroom may be furnished with an up-to-date bedstead, and a wardrobe or chest of drawers, and a few chairs, while the chief living-room probably has a rough table and a few chairs also. In the living-rooms the mud or clay of the walls is broken here and there about six feet above the ground, giving glimpses of the wooden framework inside the wall. This is, however, not due to accidental damage or neglect, for at night strangers, or some of the farm hands, sleep in these living-rooms, and passing their hammock-ropes through these holes, attach them to the wooden posts inside.
Round about the house, or near it, is an enclosed stockyard, built, like the houses, of upright posts, with horizontal poles attached to them. In the middle of this yard is an upright post, to which the beasts requiring any sort of operation are secured one at a time. There are, perhaps, other similar enclosures, some covered with palm thatch, in which any part of the stock may be kept separate if desired. These yards are also used at times for the accommodation of travelling herds, especially if the farm be on or near the recognised route to some market town or port. The drovers pay the farmer a small rental, generally based on the number of cattle they have, and secure them for the night, thus preventing them from straying about the plains and ensuring an early start in the morning.
Near the house, in a roofed shed, is the bakery; there we may find a small fireplace with clay walls, the top of which is formed by a circular iron plate about three feet in diameter, the whole being about the height of an ordinary table. On this the cassava-bread is baked. The flour, duly prepared and freed from superfluous water, is thinly spread on the iron and rapidly baked, the finished loaf being a large circular disc very hard and brittle, and thinner than our ordinary milk biscuits.
The cattle may be seen dotted about the plain, and near to the homesteads a few horses are grazing, tethered so that they may be at hand when wanted. There is none of the continuous work, laborious cultivation of the soil, constant attention to the live stock, &c., which we are accustomed to connect with farming at home. The farm hands spend a good deal of their time loafing about, chatting, smoking, and playing their guitars and maracas. At other times there is plenty of bustle and activity; they rush for their horses and gallop off to collect the cattle, or such of them as may be required, and drive them into the enclosure, where they are lassooed one at a time, and milked, or fastened to the post in the middle to be branded, or have hurts attended to, as the case may be. The amount of comfort to be found in these farms, and the amount of skill and energy displayed in their exploitation varies a good deal from place to place, depending mainly, after all, on the tastes and character of the owner, but partly on circumstances. In many cases absolute slackness and indifference prevail, the cattle are almost entirely left to shift for themselves, and the human beings are content to exist miserably rather than bestir themselves. There are some estates, again, where the owner is a wealthy, educated, and perhaps a travelled man, which are managed on far better lines than the average.
Maturín has a creditable record from the War of Independence, a Spanish army having been twice repulsed, and finally almost completely destroyed there. At Areo, a day and a half west of Maturín, there is in the open space by the church a huge wooden screw press, like a giant letterpress, which the inhabitants say was used by the Spaniards to press cotton. At Urica, farther west, the inhabitants are somewhat interesting. They have the reputation of having been of a brave and warlike disposition from the earliest times, and fought desperately in the War of Independence. There is something in their appearance, and a general suggestion of freedom and independence in their manner, in their very gait, which can scarcely fail to strike the traveller, even if he be unacquainted with their history.
At the little village of Curataquiche, near Barcelona, are the ruins of the Mission of St. Joseph; the walls of one end of the church, and a bit of the adjoining enclosure, very solidly built in stone, are all that remain of a once important mission. The church bells have been preserved, and are hung to a large wooden trestle on the village green.
Most of these towns and villages possess churches, but resident priests are rarely to be found. The inhabitants generally meet on Sundays and hold some sort of service among themselves, but can only hear Mass when a travelling priest comes their way. At either end of a village, at the side of the track, a plain wooden cross is generally erected, and often in its neighbourhood will be found a small shrine about which are hung various little objects placed there by pious hands as thankofferings for answers to prayers. These shrines generally contain a cross with the instruments of crucifixion, the ladder, nails, hammer, crown of thorns, spear shaft with sponge, dice, &c., but without the figure of Christ. They are often illuminated with a little flickering light at night. To the west of Barcelona there is one on the spot where a man was killed. It contains his skull, which is lit up from inside at night, producing a somewhat weird effect.
MESA OF ESNOJAQUE: TRUJILLO.
