In the phantasmagoria we call the world, most things and men are ghosts, or at the best but ghosts of ghosts, so vaporous and unsubstantial that they scarcely cast a shadow on the grass. That which is most abiding with us is the recollection of the past, and . . . hence this preface.
R. B. Cunninghame Graham.
CONTENTS
| Page | |
| Cruz Alta | [1] |
| In a German Tramp | [85] |
| The Gold Fish | [103] |
| A Hegira | [119] |
| Sidi Bu Zibbalà | [145] |
| La Pulperia | [163] |
| Higginson’s Dream | [177] |
| Calvary | [189] |
| A Pakeha | [201] |
| Victory | [209] |
| Rothenberger’s Wedding | [219] |
| La Clemenza De Tito | [227] |
| Sohail | [235] |
CRUZ ALTA
Pasted into an old scrap-book, chiefly filled with newspaper cuttings from Texan and Mexican newspapers containing accounts of Indian fights, the prowess of different horses (notably of a celebrated “claybank,” which carried the mail-rider from El Paso to Oakville, Arizona), and interspersed with advertisements of strayed animals, pictures of Gauchos, Indians, Chilians, Brazilians, and Gambusinos, is an old coffee-coloured business card. On it is set forth, that Francisco Cardozo de Carvallo is the possessor of a “Grande Armazem de Fazendas, ferragems, drojas, chapeos, miudezas, e objectos de fantasia e de modas.”
All the above, “Com grande reduccao nos preços.” Then occurs the significant advertença, “Mas A Dinheiro,” and the address Rua do Commercio, No. 77.—Cruz Alta.
Often on winter nights when all the air is filled with whirling leaves dashing against the panes, when through the house sweep gusts of wind making the passages unbearable with cold, the rooms disconsolate, and the whole place feel eerie and ghostlike as the trees creak, groan and labour, like a ship at sea, I take the scrap-book down.
In it are many things more interesting by far to me at certain times than books or papers, or than the conversation of my valued friends; almost as great a consolation as is tobacco to a bruised mind; and then I turn the pages over with delight tinged with that melancholy which is the best part of remembrance.
So amongst tags of poetry as Joaquim Miller’s lines “For those who fail,” the advertisement for my fox-terrier Jack, the “condemndest little buffler” the Texans called him, couched in the choicest of Castilian, and setting forth his attributes, colour and name, and offering five dollars to any one who would apprehend and take him to the Callejon del Espiritu Santo, Mexico, curious and striking outsides of match-boxes, one entire series illustrating the “Promessi Sposi”; of scraps, detailing news of Indian caciques long since dead, a lottery-ticket of the State of Louisiana, passes on “busted” railways, and the like, is this same coffee-coloured card.