First following them were, creaking loudly, fourteen clumsy carts loaded with yerba, sugar, iron, and other merchandise. Next came fifteen or twenty spare oxen, as many horses, with about a dozen mules, driven by an old guide, two youngsters, and the carpenter of the troop, who also acted as assistant capataz. I walked in advance of the patron, though he advised me to enter the cart, as walking, he said, was injurious to the system.
Our course lay over a level country covered with fine grass, which, having been pastured by cattle, was very short. After journeying four miles, we came to a halt; the oxen were unlashed, and allowed to feed by the roadside, while the men kindled a fire of thistles, roasted a strip of meat, and took their gourds of Paraguay tea.
The manner of cooking meat on the pampas is worth a moment’s attention. After an animal has been killed, the meat is cut into pieces, without any regard to anatomy, or to the butcher’s “regular cuts,” and an iron spit called the asador is run longitudinally through each strip. The asador is stuck into the ground close by the fire, and, being carefully watched, the steak is gradually cooked in a manner that would gain no discredit in a well-regulated kitchen. The result of this method of cooking is that none of the juices of the meat are lost.
When our asados were sufficiently roasted, the chief took them from the fire, and, driving the point of the spit into the ground, invited me, with a profound salaam, to commence my repast. Cutting a small piece from the roasted strip, and taking it upon the point of my knife, I put it, as a matter of course, into my mouth. At this the group around me broke into a boisterous laugh, and one swarthy fellow volunteered his services in teaching me how to eat à la gaucho. Drawing from his belt that inseparable companion which the gaucho never parts with—a long knife—the fellow cut off a strip of meat, and, holding one end with his fingers, dropped the other into his mouth; then followed a quick upward stroke with the knife, so close to his lips that I involuntarily started, severing the meat, and leaving a huge piece between his teeth. This feat was accomplished so rapidly that it astonished me; but as I found that it was the universal custom among the peons, I attempted to imitate them. But on the first trial the blade of my knife came in contact with the end of my nose, cutting it enough to draw blood. At this a loud laugh went through the group, at the expense of “Bostron the gringo,” which name they insisted upon calling me, notwithstanding my efforts to show that Boston, and not Bostron, was my native city.
After the usual siesta, we continued our journey. Nothing of importance occurred until sunset, when, as I glanced across the plain, it seemed to at once become endowed with life. As the sun sank below the horizon, the owners of innumerable little burrows, which I had noticed through the greater part of the afternoon all over the plains, came out of the holes in such numbers as to astonish the uninitiated. As I watched one of the holes, I saw first a little round head, enlivened by a pair of black, twinkling eyes, peeping out; then followed a dusky body, and, finally, the animal, having become satisfied that our intentions were not unfriendly, sat by his doorway with the greatest nonchalance imaginable; but in a moment, after observing us curiously, he scampered off to join the hundreds, if not thousands, that were playing about in the grass around us.
Sometimes we saw an old female trotting along with four or five young ones on a visit to a neighbor; and frequently we saw some of these reunions, in which, while the old people were exchanging compliments, the juvenile members of the family chased each other merrily about the mounds.
These animals, which bore some resemblance to the marmots, were called by the natives bizcacha. The species is the Lagostomas trichodactylus of naturalists. Its habits are similar to those of the proper marmots; in size it exceeds the opossum of North America.
About the entrance of the burrows I noticed that a quantity of rubbish is usually collected, such as the bones of deceased relatives and of other animals, mixed with thistles, roots, &c. These bizcachas are found all over the pampas, as far south as the confines of Patagonia, beyond which, however, they have never been observed.
The singular habit of collecting all compact substances about their burrows seems peculiar to these animals. A traveller’s watch, which had been lost, was found at the entrance to one of their domiciles, the animals having dragged it from the camp near by.
Darwin says the bizcacha is found as far north as 30° south latitude, and “abounds even to Mendoza, and is there replaced by an Alpine species.”