Formation of the land—A survey of the country—Features of the soil—Types of wild flowers—A land of hill, valley, and stream—The glamour of the distance—"The purple land"—Breezes of the Campo—An exhilarating country—The dearth of homesteads—The Uruguayan Gaucho—His physique—The product of the blowy uplands—Matters of temperament—His comparative joviality—The Gaucho as worker, player, and fighter—The manipulation of feuds—A comparison between Argentina and Uruguay—Warrior ancestors of the Gaucho—His sense of dignity and honour—Conservative habits and customs—Costume and horse gear—Strenuous bailes—Some homeric feats of dancing—Stirring revelry—The Uruguayan land-owner—Foreign elements in the land—Negro inhabitants of the Banda Oriental—The numerical status of the Africans in the north and in the south—Absence of a racial question—The slavery of former days—The employment of black troops in war—Lenient treatment of negro slaves—Harsh measures applied to aboriginal Indians—A lesson in human economy—Testimony of a contemporary writer—Immigrant colonies.
The Uruguayan Campo is not to be described without a certain amount of hesitation. It would be simple enough for one who had caught only a distant passing glimpse of the land of the pastures to put down the country without further ado as rolling grass upland watered by many streams. That such is the foundation of the Campo is undeniable. Nevertheless to begin and end with such a phrase would be equivalent to a description of the peacock as a bird who wears coloured feathers.
The subtle charms of the Uruguayan Campo are not to be discerned through the medium of the bioscope-like glimpses that so many travellers obtain of it. Very rightly, it refuses to reveal itself fully until a certain amount of familiarity has justified a nearer acquaintance. From an æsthetic point of view it certainly holds far more than might be expected from a country of such comparatively limited attributes.
If you desire to watch the moods of this rural Banda Oriental, ride out to mount one of the higher shoulders of the downland, and wait there, either in the saddle or out of it. You will obtain little sympathy in the task. Eccentric to the mind of the estancieros, frankly mad in the eagle eyes of the Gaucho—a calm survey of the Campo is worth all such merely human depreciation!
The aspect of the country in the immediate neighbourhood of where the observer has taken his stand will be green in the main, although the unbroken verdure by no means obtains throughout. Here and there the ground is strongly marked by the occasional heaps of stones that come jostling to the surface, and that recline in the fashion of small bleak islands in the midst of the green waves. But, should the time be spring, these latter are themselves flecked frequently almost to the extinction of their own colouring. The great purple bands and patches of the flor morala lie thickly upon the land. These, however, stand apart, since where they glow the serried ranks of blossom permit no others to raise their heads.
A PASTORAL SCENE.
To face p. 238.
But these, though the boldest of their kind, are by no means the sole occupants of the landscape. Indeed, one of the chief characteristics of the Banda Oriental Campo is the wealth of beautiful and comparatively lowly plants that grow amidst the grasses. They are of the type of English blossoms, peering out shyly from between the green blades, blowing purely and sweetly in their innocence of the heavy sickliness of the tropics. It is where the ground is chiefly dotted with these fresh flowers that the smile of the Campo is most brilliant.