All the attributes in these primitive parts savour of Nature and of its simplicity. The very nomenclature is affected by this influence. Thus no historical significance is to be looked for in the name of Tambores—drums. The origin of the word lies in the surrounding table-lands that have grown loftier and more accentuated here than their brethren to the south, and whose shape resembles not a little the instruments of war.
Tambores is a place of comparative importance. It is true that no architectural beauties are to be looked for at the spot, since the quaint collection of edifices that are scattered in the neighbourhood of the station are almost without exception the tin and reed structures common to the district. Such rare exceptions as exist, moreover, hold out merely minor claims to aristocracy in the shape of an entire sheet or two of corrugated iron. Yet these modest precincts guard a really important cattle and wool centre, and even now many hundreds of bales are lying in readiness in their wagons, while cattle stamp impatiently in the trucks that will bear them southwards to Montevideo.
Passing to and fro by the honeysuckle hedge that flanks the platform is a motley collection of folk. The majority of the men are in sad-coloured ponchos, and in bombachos that frequent staining has imbued with an earthy hue. In addition to the railway officials, beshawled women, children, dogs, and hens complete the gathering. A feature that is especially noticeable here is the number of dusky complexions that have come to assert themselves in the midst of the fresh-coloured Uruguayan faces. Quite distinct from the swarthiness of the Indian, the tint here savours undoubtedly of the African. It becomes, moreover, steadily more marked as the Brazilian frontier is approached.
Indeed, the evidence of variety is everywhere. Even the conventional aspect of the train itself and of its passengers has undergone no little alteration since the start. As it pulled out from Montevideo the train was undoubtedly a model of its kind that took no little pride in its well-ordered level line of day coaches, and sleeping and restaurant cars.
Once well out into the country, however, the democratic influence of the land has overcome its patrician make-up. A passenger coach or two has dropped away at one station; some trucks and goods-vans have been added at another, until its appearance has become as heterogeneous as that of a Uruguayan volunteer soldier in a revolution. In fact, the farther from the capital it gets and the nearer to its destination, the more négligé and doubtless practical does its appearance become. Like to a man who starts out for a walk on a hot summer's day, it is metaphorically trudging along bareheaded, with its coat slung over its shoulder.
In the case of the passengers the same may be said without the apology of metaphor. It is in the occupants of the first-class coaches that the transformation is most evident. Many of the men remain in at least portions of the same clothes of metropolitan cut that served them in Montevideo. But ponchos have now been brought out and donned to hide what lies beneath—ponchos of fine texture, these, that stand quite apart from the meaner drapings of the peon, but nevertheless essentially national and of the land.
As for the women, the few who have remained constant to the train since the beginning of the journey remain in much the same trim as when they first entered the carriage. The persistence may be due to the vanity that is alleged by man to be inherent in woman, or merely to the laudable desire of giving the country cousin an object-lesson in costume.
It must be admitted that the garments of these latter tend to comfort somewhat at the expense of appearances. The loosest of blouses, wraps, and skirts are wont to make up a figure in which a waist may at times be suspected, and even occasionally hoped for, but is never seen. Decidedly the procedure savours of rigid honesty on the part of the country cousin. For frankly to promise nothing is surely more admirable than the transient advertisement achieved by the manufacture of merely temporary space in the position rightfully sought for by superfluous material.
Many of these country ladies with the honest and unaccentuated figures are accompanied by their maids, these latter for the most part negresses. The bond between mistress and maid is very close here. Indeed, in Northern Uruguay such episodes as a "month's warning," a demand for an extra "night out," the right to "followers," and all other similar bones of contention that arise in more populous centres between employer and employed are unknown.
Here the maid, whether she be negress, mottled, or white, obtains an assured, if minor, footing in the family circle. Not only her love affairs but her appetite will call forth the ready sympathy of her mistress. Seated together, their meals will be shared in common, as indeed is occurring in the case of sandwiches and wine in the railway carriage even now. To complete the patriarchial atmosphere, the railway guard has joined one of the groups in question in order to assist, purely platonically, at the impromptu meal, and his manner is equally courteous towards señora and maid.