THE PAMPA COACH.
Just outside the walls they met a pampa coach containing two passengers, who were evidently travelling in style. The vehicle was a huge and clumsy affair, the rough roads of the country requiring that it should be very strongly constructed. It was drawn by four horses, and each horse carried a postilion, who was armed with a short whip or a bundle of stout thongs of rawhide. As they approached this nondescript concern its horses took fright at the apparition of the wagon, and reared and plunged in a way that greatly interfered with their linear progress along the road. When the postilions had lashed them into good behavior they darted off at full gallop, and were soon inside the fringe of poplars that surrounds the city.
Before the railway was constructed, this style of carriage was employed on the pampas for those who could afford the expense and risk of coach and postilions. A passenger could carry an unlimited amount of baggage with the coach, and take his own time for it; by arranging for relays he could make very good time, but could not equal the speed of the government couriers, who went on horseback and made quick changes at the stations.
When the Indians are troublesome the coach is objectionable, on account of the increased danger arising from its use. It is obliged to follow the road, where it often raises such a cloud of dust as to indicate its locality and character to watchful Indians miles and miles away. While in the region of Indians, mounted horsemen always keep on the grass at the side of the road, and thus avoid making a dust-cloud. Then, too, the coach, with its baggage and the iron of its wheels, is a valuable prize to a people with whom iron is a scarce commodity.
OX-CARTS NEAR MENDOZA.
They met groups of guachos and other inhabitants of the country on their way to Mendoza, everybody, without exception, being mounted on horse or mule, or riding in a cart. The carts were the same rude affairs with which Frank was already familiar; the wheels consisting of single trucks or sections cut from logs, four or five feet in diameter. A hole in the centre of the truck admits the axle; there is no tire on the truck, and when it is worn too small it is thrown aside and a new one takes its place. The axles are never greased, and when a dozen carts are in motion across the plain the creaking is fearful. It is said the Indians take advantage of this creaking to guide them to trains moving along the road in fog or darkness, and certainly it is as clearly audible as a fog-horn on the sea-coast. Whether the natives have ever circumvented the savages by the simple expedient of greasing the wheels is not recorded in the local chronicles.
Long before Frank reached Mendoza, on his way from Buenos Ayres, he had seen the magnificent chain of the Andes filling the western horizon, and from the plaza of the city it seemed as though he could almost reach the summits of the nearest peaks with a bullet from a rifle. The air is wonderfully clear and pure at Mendoza, and the consequent deception regarding distances reminded our youthful traveller of his view of the Himalayas from Darjeeling, and of the Rocky Mountains from Denver.