The Correntino gauchos, two or three Paraguayans, and a German married to a Paraguayan wife, were all who entered for the sport. The band struck up, and a young Paraguayan started the first course. Gripping his stirrups tightly between his naked toes, and seated on an old “recao,” surmounted by a sheepskin, he spurred his horse, a wall-eyed skewbald, with his great iron spurs, tied to his bare insteps with thin strips of hide. The skewbald, only half-tamed, reared once or twice and bounded off, switching its ragged tail, which had been half-eaten off by cows. The people yelled, a “mosqueador!”—that is, a “fly-flapper,” a grave fault in a horse in the eyes of Spanish Americans—as the Paraguayan steered the skewbald with the reins held high in his left hand, carrying the other just above the level of his eyes, armed with a piece of cane about a foot in length.
As he approached the arch, in which the ring dangled from a string, his horse, either frightened by the shouting of the crowd or by the arch itself, swerved and plunged violently, carrying its rider through the thickest of the people, who separated like a flock of sheep when a dog runs through it, cursing him volubly. The German came the next, dressed in his Sunday clothes, a slop-made suit of shoddy cloth, riding a horse that all his spurring could not get into full speed. The rider’s round, fair face was burned a brick-dust colour, and as he spurred and plied his whip, made out of solid tapir hide, the sweat ran down in streams upon his coat. So intent was he on flogging, that as he neared the ring he dropped his piece of cane, and his horse, stopping suddenly just underneath the arch, would have unseated him had he not clasped it round the neck. Shouts of delight greeted this feat of horsemanship, and one tall Correntino, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, said to his fellow sitting next to him upon his horse, “The very animals themselves despise the gringos. See how that little white-nosed brute that he was riding knew that he was a ‘maturango,’ and nearly had him off.”
Next came Hijinio Rojas, a Paraguayan of the better classes, sallow and Indian looking, dressed in clothes bought in Asuncion, his trousers tucked into his riding-boots. His small black hat, with the brim flattened up against his head by the wind caused by the fury of the gallop of his active little roan with four white feet, was kept upon his head by a black ribbon knotted underneath his chin. As he neared the arch his horse stepped double several times and fly jumped; but that did not disturb him in the least, and, aiming well he touched the ring, making it fly into the air. A shout went up, partly in Spanish, partly in Guarani, from the assembled people, and Rojas, reining in his horse, stopped him in a few bounds, so sharply, that his unshod feet cut up the turf of the green plaza as a skate cuts the ice. He turned and trotted gently to the arch, and then, putting his horse to its top speed, stopped it again beside the other riders, amid the “Vivas” of the crowd. Then came the turn of the four Correntinos, who rode good horses from their native province, had silver horse-gear and huge silver spurs, that dangled from their heels. They were all gauchos, born, as the saying goes, “amongst the animals.” A dun with fiery eyes and a black stripe right down his back, and with black markings on both hocks, a chestnut skewbald, a “doradillo,” and a horse of that strange mealy bay with a fern-coloured muzzle, that the gauchos call a “Pangaré,” carried them just as if their will and that of those who rode them were identical. Without a signal, visible at least to any but themselves, their horses started at full speed, reaching occasionally at the bit, then dropping it again and bridling so easy that one could ride them with a thread drawn from a spider’s web. Their riders sat up easily, not riding as a European rides, with his eyes fixed upon each movement of his horse, but, as it were, divining them as soon as they were made. Each of them took the ring, and all of them checked their horses, as it were, by their volition, rather than the bit, making the silver horse-gear rattle and their great silver spurs jingle upon their feet. Each waited for the other at the far side of the arch, and then turning in a line they started with a shout, and as they passed right through the middle of the square at a wild gallop, they swung down sideways from their saddles and dragged their hands upon the ground. Swinging up, apparently without an effort, back into their seats, when they arrived at the point from where they had first started, they reined up suddenly, making their horses plunge and rear, and then by a light signal on the reins stand quietly in line, tossing the foam into the air. Hijinio Rojas and the four centaurs all received a prize, and the alcalde, pouring out wineglasses full of gin, handed them to the riders, who, with a compliment or two as to the order of their drinking, emptied them solemnly.
No other runners having come forward to compete, for in those days horses were scarce throughout the Paraguayan Missions, the sports were over, and the perspiring crowd went off to breakfast at tables spread under the long verandahs, and silence fell upon the square.
The long, hot hours during the middle of the day were passed in sleeping. Some lay face downwards in the shade. Others swung in white cotton hammocks, keeping them in perpetual motion, till they fell asleep, by pushing with a naked toe upon the ground. At last the sun, the enemy, as the Arabs call him, slowly declined, and white-robed women, with their “tupois” slipping half off their necks, began to come out into the verandahs, slack and perspiring after the midday struggle with the heat.
Then bands of girls sauntered down to the river, from whence soon came the sound of merry laughter as they splashed about and bathed.
The Correntinos rode down to a pool and washed their horses, throwing the water on them with their two hands, as the animals stood nervously shrinking from each splash, until they were quite wet through and running down, when they stood quietly, with their tails tucked in between their legs.
Night came on, as it does in those latitudes, no twilight intervening, and from the rows of houses came the faint lights of wicks burning in bowls of grease, whilst from beneath the orange trees was heard the tinkling of guitars.
Enormous bats soared about noiselessly, and white-dressed couples lingered about the corners of the streets, and men stood talking, pressed closely up against the wooden gratings of the windows, to women hidden inside the room. The air was heavy with the languorous murmur of the tropic night, and gradually the lights one by one were extinguished, and the tinkling of the guitars was stilled. The moon came out, serene and glorious, showing each stone upon the sandy trails as clearly as at midday. Saddling their horses, the four Correntinos silently struck the trail to Itapua, and bands of women moved off along the forest tracks towards their homes, walking in Indian file. Hijinio Rojas, who had saddled up to put the Correntinos on the right road, emerged into the moonlit plaza, his shadow outlined so sharply on the grass it seemed it had been drawn, and then, entering a side street, disappeared into the night. The shrill neighing of his horse appeared as if it bade farewell to its companions, now far away upon the Itapua trail. Noises that rise at night from forests in the tropics sound mysteriously, deep in the woods. It seemed as if a population silent by day was active and on foot, and from the underwood a thick white mist arose, shrouding the sleeping town.
Little by little, just as a rising tide covers a reef of rocks, it submerged everything in its white, clinging folds. The houses disappeared, leaving the plaza seething like a lake, and then the church was swallowed up, the towers struggling, as it were, a little, just as a wreath of seaweed on a rock appears to fight against the tide. Then they too disappeared, and the conquering mist enveloped everything. All that was left above the sea of billowing white were the two topmost tufts of the tall, feathery palms.