Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/121



FROM RIO DE JANEIRO TO MONTE VIDEO. 91

teen, Tvitli an annual income of 30/. to cease after five years, had determined upon despatching him in quest of fortune to Buenos Aires. Such a step woukl entail ruina- tion of body and mind. The unfortunate would not die of starvation, but â€” man cannot live upon mutton and hard bread alone â€” he could aspire to little beyond the situation of a puretero (shepherd), or a peon (wool-farmer^s flock- tender) under the Capataz or Majordomo of the estate. His sole occupation would be to drive out the sheep every morning, and to drive in the sheep every evening. His food would be raw rum and the contents of a cutty pipe, tough meat and old biscuit. His home would be a hovel, gar- nished at best with a Chi nit a, or whitey-yellow girl : a hide would be his bed, and his raiment flannel shirt and overalls, the former generally worn till it falls ofi". He would have no time to do anything, yet he would have nothing to do : here the English settler learns to excel all others in the art and mystery of loafing and dawdling. It is not wonderful that after a few years of such ignoble dis- comfort â€” such fatal monotony â€” the man becomes brutalized, and that his fellows detect in his features and expression a shade of approach to those of his rams. I have myself seen the ovine countenance, and it is curious to trace the same degradation in the faces of Schwein Konigs and pig- drivers, menagerie servants, and attendants upon the insane. Briefly to conclude, the end of our victim, commenced by the dreariest of isolation, would most probably be, unless he fled robbing the till, drunkenness â€” here the more drink the more honour â€” and debauchery, disease, and death.

Such are the present prospects for the gentleman-adven- turer become a " multi pastor odoris^^ in these regions. But sheep-farming and cattle-breeding, low as the industry now is, may possibly improve. A Russian war would, after